Opinion: ICE does not belong in Austin's jail

6/19/08 OPINIION
ICE does not belong in Austin's jail


By Ansel Herz

For Austin's immigrant community, particularly those who are undocumented, the prospect of landing in the Travis County Jail has recently become far more frightening.

In January, news broke that Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton was establishing an expanded and permanent office space for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in the jail. ICE, a division of Homeland Security, requested the space to beef up its presence in the jail as part of its escalating enforcement- only approach to immigration.

The agency made 4,900 arrests in 2007, almost a tenfold increase from 2002, largely due to hundreds of brazen raids on factories, schools, nightclubs and workplaces nationwide.

ICE's raids, like the border wall, do nothing to address the root causes of illegal immigration. But they generate the kind of insecurity and fear that immigrants in their communities tried to escape when they left home - where economic mobility and human rights are often in short supply, due largely to U.S.-backed "free trade" policies and support for right-wing authoritarians across much of the Global South.

The raids break up families when a parent is suddenly detained or deported. In San Pedro, Calif., a school principal told the news magazine In These Times that the raids and presence of ICE agents near the school has created a climate of "ongoing, relentless terror," with more students absent from school or distracted by the possibility of their parents being gone when they arrive home. After a huge ICE raid in Iowa last month, detainees alleged in a federal lawsuit that many immigrants' children were left stranded with babysitters and other caretakers.

Once an undocumented worker is in custody, he or she may be drugged and sedated without consent, according to a recent Washington Post report.

The paper identified more than 250 cases in which detainees were given "dangerous antipsychotic drugs" before being deported, without any medical reason.

Last year Sen. Ted Kennedy prompted ICE to adopt a set of discretionary humanitarian guidelines, but immigrants rights' advocates say they are not being enforced, and ICE detainees are often denied a speedy hearing or access to immigration lawyers.

Austin became an official sanctuary city for immigrants in 1997, prohibiting police from checking a person's immigration status or reporting it to the federal government. But that label is rendered almost meaningless by Hamilton's unilateral decision to facilitate ICE's expansion into the Travis County Jail.

The first three months of this year saw a 400 percent increase in immigration holds placed by federal agents on persons brought to the county jail over last year, according to the Austin American-Statesman. Sixty-two percent of those individuals were charged with misdemeanors, and some with no crime at all.

The impact of ICE's presence in the jail goes well beyond its increased capacity for detaining and deporting inmates. It brings the climate of fear associated with raids and the prospect of deportation into our community. The installation of ICE at the local jail, along with closer cooperation with local police, is undoubtedly a powerful deterrent to immigrants and undocumented workers in Austin from reporting crimes.

"There's a very bad feeling in the community about ICE to start with," Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, told a community forum in March. "When that is tied in with the perception that there's going to be collusion or cooperation, it creates a reluctance on the part of the community to use law enforcement," he said.

This decision puts Austin's immigrant population at significant risk of inhumane treatment, detention, deportation and family separation by an agency notorious for its hostility toward immigrants.

In the absence of comprehensive immigration reform, threatening one of the few sanctuaries immigrants have left is not a just or effective solution.

Herz is a journalism senior.