Congressional Hearing on Detention Reveals Confusion

Yesterday, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) convened a hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security's Subcommittee on Border, Maritime, and Global Counterterrorism to discuss improving the detention system used to house immigrants awaiting immigration court dates or deportation.

The current immigration detention system has drawn fire from international and domestic rights groups who say detained immigrants aren't afforded adequate rights and that it is inappropriate to incarcerate non-criminal immigrants and asylum seekers alongside criminals. Here locally, Immigration and Customs Enforcement rents space in Yuba, Sacramento and Santa Clara County jails, but immigrants arrested in the Bay Area could be sent to facilities in Arizona or other states depending on the availability of beds.

Among the revelations of yesterday's hearing--which included testimony from five immigration experts-- was how confused even some members of Congress are about how our immigration court system works and the rights of those within it. At one point, ranking Republican Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) complained--incorrectly--that the federal government pays for attorneys to represent detained immigrants.

Witness Donald Kerwin of Migration Policy Institute corrected him and explained that in fact there is no federal funding for legal representation in immigration proceedings, but Souder remained skeptical, sparking a back and forth between the two. (In fact a number of recent reports by legal organizations, including this one by the non partisan Constitution Project, recommend there should be government appointed counsel for indigent immigrants to ensure due process rights and make the court system more efficient).

After the hearing, Sanchez told KALW, "One of the most important things I learned was that the members of Congress don’t really understand the process of what is going on, there was a big debate going on whether the people in detention get lawyers in detention...The answer is they don’t. Flat out we don’t pay for that."  

Sanchez said members of Congress will have to work through all of the misconceptions and myths surrounding the immigration system in order to move forward. She plans to introduce a bill to establish national standards for detention facilities.