Alternative To Detention: A Case Study

Another type of alternative to detention is the community-based support and case-management services. This alternative is what every advocacy group is fighting for because it can be as effective as the other alternatives, and it has a much more humane approach. It removes the stigmatization that ankle monitors and other restrictive forms of supervision cause. This type of alternatives helps immigrants understand their legal obligations, resulting in higher rates of court appearance. ICE has been working closely with the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops by piloting community support programs but they have not received the funding necessary to improve them. Recently, it has been announced that
After many critiques coming from different advocacy groups and human rights groups, Andrew Lorenzen-Strait, ICE deputy assistant director for custody programs said “I can't get into how people might perceive our partners, but I can tell you that we really aim to ensure that there's a wide variety of different tools that we can use for compliance." (NPR, 2015) He also said “The new program will help connect immigrants with local nonprofits that provide legal services, transportation and housing assistance and help with medical and educational needs, among other services.” (Lorenzen-Strait, 2015) The question here is why the ICE has to spend a huge amount of money on a contract with a private company that only wants to increase their profit, when they can easily provide that same amount of money to different religious groups like the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. These groups have already been working with immigrants for years and they have the necessary knowledge on how to help them, and are truly willing to take on this
Where should our focus go to? To begin with, we must re-define the term “illegal alien”. We need to start using the term “undocumented immigrant” or find a better and more accurate term to describe immigrants. The Drop the I-Word is a campaign that aims to stop using the word “illegal” in the immigration discussion. Many media newsrooms such as ABC, NBC, CNN, and The Huffington Post have dropped the term. Now is the society, on a daily basis, that needs to make this change