Deaths of Immigrants in Detention

It seems like every day sees a wealth of news stories about the increase in immigrant detention, abuses of immigrants in detention, the breaking up of families because of detention, the horrible conditions of detention, deaths of detained immigrants, etc.  You get the idea.  The public and private detention industry boomed with the 1996 immigration reforms, which greatly increased the number of immigrants subject to detention.

Nina Bernstein of the N.Y. Times reports that the U.S. government has provided a list of 66 deaths that occurred in immigration custody from January 2004 to November 2007. The list was compiled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after Congress demanded the information, and was obtained by the Times under the Freedom of Information Act.  Immigrant detention is a patchwork of federal centers, county jails and privately run prisons. The difficulties in obtaining the list reflects “the difficulty of getting information about the fate of people taken into immigration custody, even when they die.”

KJ