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SOUTHEAST TEXAS RECORD

Friday, March 29, 2024

USCCR report recommends shut down of immigration detention centers, dissenters cry politics

Detention

On Sept. 17 the U.S. Commission on Civil rights released a report recommending the Department of Homeland Security release families being held at immigration dentition centers and that Congress cut off all funding.

Out of the 28 states with long-term immigration detention facilities, Texas has the most, with 11 centers.

The report states the commission found evidence the government was interfering with the constitutional rights afforded to detained illegals, including serving food infested with maggots, lack of medical treatment and child abuse, physically and sexually.

However, not everyone on commission agrees with the report, as two members issued dissenting statements suggesting the report was solely crafted to further the pro-union and pro-immigration agenda and enrich immigration lawyers.

In a dissenting statement, Commissioner Gail Heriot says the USCCR went into the project intent on uncovering a social scandal.

“Instead of conducting an actual investigation, it structured its initial fact-finding simply to amplify stale rumor and innuendo,” Heriot wrote. “No effort was undertaken to establish whether the allegations—all of which were already public—were fact or fancy.”

Heriot questions several of the commission’s actions, including ignoring an extensive DHS investigation that found an allegation of sexual abuse to be without evidentiary foundation.

“It is said that where there is smoke, there is fire,” Heriot wrote. “But sometimes where there is smoke, there is only a smoke-making machine, busily stoked by publicists working for activist organizations. When the Commission fails to take its fact-finding mission seriously, it runs the risk of becoming part of such a smoke-making apparatus.”

Heriot also states that conditions at the two detention centers the commission actually visited were not nearly as bad as they had been led to believe.

“Some of our Commission members and staff appeared to be quite surprised at the quality of treatment they saw,” Heriot wrote. “The real scandal in this report is how little first-hand observation of fact or critical analysis has gone into it. Both the detainees and the detention center employees deserve better. So do the taxpayers.”

Heriot noted the report heavily criticized privately run centers, which pay employees less and aren’t largely influenced by prison and security guard unions.

In his dissent, Commissioner Peter Kirsanow says the final report “masquerades” as a civil rights document” and is in line with the Obama Administration’s efforts to gut the enforcement of the immigration laws.

“The report discusses President Obama’s initiatives to suspend the deportation of millions of illegal immigrants and grant them work authorizations, which it characterizes as ‘attempting to fix the U.S. immigration system,’” Kirsanow wrote.

“This is hardly a neutral description of the President’s actions. One could just as easily point out that the President’s efforts to fix the U.S. immigration system along his preferred lines have further eroded the rule of law and dealt a serious blow to our government’s separation of powers.”

Kirsanow notes that while the majority of commissioners recommend that taxpayers pay for attorneys for illegal immigrants, the reason why exactly a nation that is 18 trillion dollars in debt should pay for attorneys for people who broke its immigration laws is unclear.

“Taxpayer funding for immigration attorneys would, however, be a boon to the immigration bar and to open borders advocates,” Kirsanow wrote.

“This report is primarily motivated by the interests of those two groups and the need to provide political cover to the Administration’s lawlessness, so perhaps that is the only explanation needed for a recommendation that would extend plundering of taxpayers and gutting of immigration enforcement into a new realm.”

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