LGBT Immigrants See High Detainment Rates, Report Finds: Law360

Allissa Wickham, Law360, May 15, 2015 - "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained gay and transgender immigrants nearly 70 percent of the time when the agency’s internal assessment tool allowed for their release, according to an analysis published Thursday by the Center for American Progress.

According to CAP, which based its report on information obtained from a Freedom of Information Act request, ICE officers opted to detain lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people in 68 percent of cases in which the agency’s detention assessment tool allowed the possibility of release.

The report also found that ICE agents detained “two out of every three” LGBT people that the detention tool, known as Risk Classification Assessment, suggested be released.

Sharita Gruberg, a senior policy analyst with CAP who posted the analysis, speculated that pressure on ICE agents to fill the 34,000 detention beds that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is required to maintain could explain why ICE detains people that RCA recommends for release.

“The result of this arbitrary quota is the detention of a vulnerable class of people when detention is neither mandatory under the law nor a priority under DHS policies,” Gruberg wrote.

ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice, asked whether ICE agreed with the report’s findings or planned to reassess its detention policies for LGBT immigrants, didn’t explicitly rebut the findings but said that “custody determinations are made based on a comprehensive review of each individual’s case.”

“In making such decisions, ICE weighs a variety of factors, including the person’s conviction record, immigration history, ties to the community, risk of flight and whether he or she poses a potential threat to public safety,” Kice said.

She added that the number of people detained by ICE each day has “hovered around 26,000,” rather than 34,000.

CAP said it based its analysis on records received from a FOIA request that sought ICE’s risk classification assessments for LGBT immigrants from October 2013 to October 2014. The request also asked for the RCA’s detention suggestions and ICE's final detainment decisions.

ICE launched the RCA tool in early 2013 following a 2009 review of immigration detention. When ICE first detains an immigrant, it uses RCA to generate recommendations for release, detention, bond amount and other factors, according to a February report from the DHS Office of Inspector General.

CAP’s analysis came the same day U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., reintroduced a bill aimed at improving detention center conditions, the Accountability in Immigration Detention Act of 2015. According to the congressman’s office, the bill would require detainees to be treated humanely and prohibit retaliation for peaceful protests like hunger strikes.

ICE also vowed to increase oversight of its family detention centers on Wednesday, including through a new review process for long-detained families. However, Leslie A. Holman, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, criticized the announcement as “almost meaningless” at its core and called for an end to family detention.

The anti-detention movement also picked up publicity Friday when the editorial board of theNew York Times argued that immigration detention should be eliminated. The practice, the Times argued, tramples on due process rights, hurts families and traumatizes children."