Immigration Update 2014: Detentions of Immigrants Fall 39 Percent in US Over Past 18 Months
Detentions of immigrants in the United States fell 39 percent between the end of Fiscal Year 2012 and 2014, recent studies published Wednesday shows.
Data compiled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement were included in a study and published Wednesday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse research center.
ICE detained about 9,000 people per month in the 18 months between October 2012 and March 2014.
The results are based on the number of detentions as per ICE detention orders obtained by TRAC.
The research center reported during fiscal 2012 that ICE issued more than 250,000 detention orders.
The number of detention orders was more than 22,800 per month on average, making it a reduced total amount of 17,777 during fiscal 2013.
Detention is an expensive business where the U.S. already has much cheaper alternatives.
The number of Central American migrants coming across the southern border has declined over the past few months.
ICE officials are looking to open a new immigrant family detention center for those immigrants in southern Texas, according to a report by the Texas Observer.
Human rights Advocates have long criticized immigrant detention.
A 2009 ICE report stated that the majority of immigrant detainees were considered to have a "low propensity for violence."
Family detentions are to make sure that undocumented immigrants appear at their court hearings most of the time.
Back in August, a coalition of civil rights groups filed a lawsuit against the federal government for leaving people in bad conditions and depriving the immigrants there of due process.
California and Texas have the largest numbers of detentions. Forty-two percent of the detention orders issued by ICE during the period were from those two states which experienced reductions of 55 percent and 28 percent.
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