Detention Centers
See also: Immigration detention#United StatesICE operates detention centers throughout the United States that detain illegal aliens who are apprehended and placed into removal proceedings. About 31,000 aliens are held in immigration detention on any given day, in over 200 detention centers, jails, and prisons nationwide.
In 2006, the T. Don Hutto Residential Center opened specifically to house non-criminal families. Other significant facilities are located in Lumpkin, Georgia, Austin, Texas (at the Travis County Courthouse); Elizabeth, New Jersey; Oakdale, Louisiana; Florence, Arizona; Miami, Florida; Seattle; York, Pennsylvania; Batavia, New York; Aurora, Colorado; Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, and all along the Texas–Mexico border.
A December 2009 article by The Nation alleges that the ICE maintains 186 unlisted and unmarked subfield offices, which are not subject to ICE Detention Standards, and amount to secret detention. The article quotes James Pendergraph, formerly the executive director of ICE's Office of State and Local Coordination, as stating "If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he's illegal, we can make him disappear."
Read more about this topic: U.S. Immigration And Customs Enforcement
Famous quotes containing the words detention and/or centers:
“I would like you to understand completely, also emotionally, that I’m a political detainee and will be a political prisoner, that I have nothing now or in the future to be ashamed of in this situation. That, at bottom, I myself have in a certain sense asked for this detention and this sentence, because I’ve always refused to change my opinion, for which I would be willing to give my life and not just remain in prison. That therefore I can only be tranquil and content with myself.”
—Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937)
“[Madness] is the jail we could all end up in. And we know it. And watch our step. For a lifetime. We behave. A fantastic and entire system of social control, by the threat of example as effective over the general population as detention centers in dictatorships, the image of the madhouse floats through every mind for the course of its lifetime.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)