USA Today Point, Counterpoint Discusses Immigration Detention Reform

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 26 Mar 2009 - 7:00 PDT

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USA Today on Wednesday published an editorial and an opinion piece addressing the U.S. immigration detention system. Summaries of the pieces appear below.

• USA Today: The whole U.S. immigration detention system "needs an overhaul," a USA Today editorial states. According to the editorial, "Problems with America's immigration detention system have been documented in a slew of studies." USA Today continues, "Several of the reports highlight cases in which people in custody have died unnecessarily because of poor access to medical care." According to USA Today, "Dora Schriro, the Obama administration's new special adviser on immigration detainees, has promised a review. The sooner the better." The editorial concludes, "The U.S. should not have an immigration detention system more befitting a lawless Third World country" (USA Today, 3/25).
  
  
• Dora Schriro, USA Today: "We are beginning to see progress" from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in "transform[ing] a detention system that has been a source of outrage into a reflection of our best selves," Schriro, special adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Detention and Removal, writes in a USA Today opinion piece. ICE already has made "appreciable gains by adopting detention standards and monitoring compliance with those standards," according to Schriro. However, she writes, further opportunities for "meaningful reform" are "ripe." Schriro writes that she will "review detention strategies and detainee health care" and "conduct a thoughtful review" by working "with others to identify and capitalize on opportunities to improve the detention operations of ICE" (Schriro, USA Today, 3/25).

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