32,000 Migrant Political Prisoners in the U.S.A

32,000 Migrant Political Prisoners in the U.S.A

By Raúl Alcaraz Ochoa // www.antifronteras.com

November 11, 2011

Cuba. Nigeria. Mexico. Panama. Guatemala. The Philippines. El Salvador. Honduras. Iran. Cameroon. India. Haiti. Colombia. Brazil. Fiji. Vietnam. Pakistan. Barbados. Ecuador. Ghana. Iraq. Guinea. Afghanistan.

These are some of the many countries of origin of the more than 32,000 migrants from all over the world held prisoners in immigration detention centers on any given day throughout the United States.

Their crime? Being born poor, wanting a better life and/or being political or economic refugees and asylum seekers. In many countries, the U.S. has caused either the political conditions that force people to migrate (such as Afghanistan or Haiti) or the economic policies that impoverish people in that country (such as Mexico or Honduras).

Many have been forced to migrate to the United States to improve their chances at survival and sustainability. Feeling the political threat of a migrant population, largely non-white, what does the U.S. government do?

The so-called ‘nation of immigrants’ spends billions of dollars criminalizing, persecuting, targeting, detaining, arresting and deporting the migrant population so highly regarded as a political threat to the national security of this state. Thus, the detention and deportation system is massive.

The ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) detention system is made up of detention beds, located in about 350 facilities nationwide. Only a few facilities are operated by the Department of Homeland Security/I.C.E. Most are actually state and county lock-ups and for-profit prisons—like Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Geo Group—where migrants are detained under federal contracts.

Militarizing the border and persecuting and detaining migrants seem to be key national security priorities. The Homeland Security 2011 budget includes:

• $4.6 billion to support 20,000 Border Patrol agents and complete the first segment of Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) virtual border fence.
• Includes $94 million for 300 new CBP Officers for passenger and cargo screening at ports of entry as well as expansion of pre-screening operations at foreign airports and land ports of entry.
• More than $1.6 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement programs to expeditiously identify and remove from the United States undocumented people. Included in this total is continued support for the Secure Communities program.
• $137 million for enhancements and expansion of immigration related verification programs (E-Verify) at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

• In fiscal year 2011 over 396,906 people went through immigration custody and were eventually deported.
• Over 32,000 immigration detainees are in custody on any given day
• The ACLU and other national groups and reports have documented systematic cases of physical and sexual abuse and medical negligence, among other inhumane conditions, in detention centers. http://www.acluaz.org/detention-report-2011
• The immigration detention system costs taxpayers $166 per day, per detainee (that’s $60,590/year).

For fiscal year 2012, DHS proposes the following:

• Detention Beds: The FY 2012 Budget increases U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Custody Operations funding by $157.7 million to support 33,400 detention beds and remove more than 200,000 criminal aliens in FY 2012.

These statistics speak to how politically and financially invested the U.S. government is to detain and remove as many “removable aliens” as possible.

One point to make clear is that the 32,000 people incarcerated are not detainees. They are political prisoners.

According to Random House Word Menu, a political prisoner is “a person deemed politically dangerous by state and falsely imprisoned for supposed crimes.”

In the past I have had family members held in detention. My mom, dad and myself got a nice, big welcoming by Border Patrol agents–we were placed in detention. I was a baby. I was practically almost born in a detention custody. And currently I have friends in immigration detention. They are political prisoners because their very existence is considered subversive and a threat to the political and economic/capitalist structures of the U.S. nation state. Migrants, by in large, defy border lines, undermine legal structures, reject law enforcement authority, work outside the formal capitalist economy, rarely depend on state institutions, and are mostly non-traceable by the state. In short, migrants represent a defiance to U.S. power, authority and control.

Now a migrant coming to the U.S. to work to feed her family may or may not recognize her actions as political. But the U.S. views them as such and therefore politically imprisons hundreds of thousands (more like millions if you count the larger U.S. prison population). This is the basis of migrant imprisonment, even though it is masked in law and order rhetoric.

By regarding migrants in detention centers as political prisoners rather than detainees we in effect reject the legitimacy of their imprisonment and by extension the entire system of detention, deportation and incarceration.

Prior to 1890 there were no detention centers anywhere.

A world without detentions and prisons is possible.

Please check out the following links:

ACLU Report «In their Own Words» http://www.acluaz.org/detention-report-2011

«Immigration Detention: The Case for Abolition» http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-guskin/immigration-detention-the_b_121374.html

Detention Watch Network http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/aboutdetention

Critical Resistance http://criticalresistance.org/

NMD Report: «A Culture of Cruelty» http://www.nomoredeaths.org/cultureofcruelty.html