Internal Immigration and customs Enforcement (ICE) internal records, obtained with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, reveal a "bleak picture of the inside of the nation's immigration detention system," according to the Houston Chronicle newspaper. The records indicate that in its haste to deport aliens without proper documentation, ICE is causing unnecessary human suffering.
It is also apparent that the U.S. government's policies on immigration have created what human rights organizations have termed as a "detention-industrial complex". The proliferation of private detention centers and prisons have created problems in enforcing federal immigration laws similar to the problems the increase in private Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and state and county detention centers have caused in the criminal justice system, however, the abuses inflicted upon often defenseless immigration detainees has gone largely unnoticed.
The American penchant for increasing and maintaining high prison populations that has prevailed since the 1980s has spilled over into immigration enforcement. The U.S., despite numerous studies showing long prison terms do not reduce crime, still houses roughly 1/4 of the entire world's detainees. Between 1970 and 2005, the number of people imprisoned in the U.S. increases over 100%. Although extreme overcrowding in the BOP and a hefty budget that have increased public skepticism of the high prison population, the massive increases in ICE's budget has so far escaped criticism.
