The baby girl reached out to hug her father. He smiled and lifted his arms lovingly, but a cold window of glass blocked their embrace. This heartbreaking image has been stuck in my mind since I first visited the Elizabeth Detention Center near Newark Airport. A quarter of the inhabitants of the Elizabeth Detention Center are men, women, and children seeking asylum in the United States from conflict and dangerous conditions in their home countries. Many are torture survivors and victims of human trafficking from Africa and the Middle East. They had envisioned the United States as a utopia in which they could finally enjoy lives of security and comfort, but, unfortunately, they lacked the luxury of time to secure appropriate legal documents to enter the United States Many have been placed in detention centers like Elizabeth and are treated like hardened criminals.
The detention center maintains a “non-contact” policy in which visitors are only allowed to speak to detainees on phones through glass windows. No detainee is ever allowed to venture outside the facility. Instead, detainees get one hour a day of “outdoor” time in a room with a skylight. Their mail, phone, and television time is extremely limited, and any attempt to defy these strict regulations is often punished with solitary confinement. These asylum seekers are people just like us, but due to unfortunate circumstances in their own countries, they are punished as criminals in ours. A violation of immigration laws, however, is not considered a crime, but rather a minor “civil violation.” Yet immigrant detainees in the United States have reportedly been subjected to “physical and sexual abuse, sleep deprivation, and isolation” according to the Detention Watch Network.
Sound unjust to you? Why would anyone treat innocent people so inhumanely? Answer: to make a profit. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Department of Homeland Security contracted companies like the Corrections Corporation of America to “anticipate, preempt, detect and deter threats to the homeland” by building detention centers to house these “illegal aliens” while they awaited their sentences. These companies have a cash incentive to imprison more people because the more heads there are inside the centers, the more money the companies will receive from the Department of Homeland Security. This is why there has recently been an exponential increase in innocent asylum seekers in these centers. And, apparently, the CCA maximizes its profits by minimizing “unnecessary” costs in the centers like decent food, quality medical facilities, well-trained security guards, and semi-decent living conditions.
These practices are a direct violation of basic human rights principles. Citizens of the U.S. should promote the establishment of favorable conditions in other countries so that people do not need to seek asylum. We have a moral duty to help all developing countries reach a sustainable state of social, economic, and political stability. A lack of any of these conditions inevitably breeds conflict from which people will surely flee. We should also appeal to government officials to ensure humane treatment of any immigrants in our country. It will take the combined effort of both political leaders and members of civil society to ensure that our tax money is not spent treating innocent people inhumanely.
Fortunately, some have already begun to take steps to alleviate this problem. Columbia University graduate student David Fraccaro introduced me to the “Sojourners Visitation Program,” a system run by Riverside Church that matches volunteers with detainees in the Elizabeth Detention Center who don’t have family or friends in the United States. The program’s goal is to provide moral support to these detainees, many of whom have been victims of discrimination or torture in their own countries. When asked for the ideal solution to the plight of people seeking asylum, he said, “For me, the essential goal is finding alternatives to detention that affirm the humanity of some of the world’s most vulnerable and traumatized people. A monitoring program in cooperation with numerous non-profits that could provide initial social services for asylum seekers would be a great start.”
There have been many protests on campus addressing the immigration question. I have heard intellectual, well-researched arguments for and against proposed immigration policies. But we must also contemplate the treatment of immigrants who are already inside the United States.
So, you be the judge: Where would you rather have your tax dollars go? To punishing innocent people or helping them achieve a state of confidence and self-reliance? On my way out of the Elizabeth Detention Center, I noticed a mural painted on a wall facing the detainees emblazoned with stately eagles and the American flag. The writing below stated, “God Bless America.” I turned away, enraged by the ironic symbolism of the mural. Not until we treat everyone humanely will I believe that our country deserves any of God’s blessings.
The author is a Barnard College first-year. She is a volunteer in the Sojourners Visitation Program.