IMMIGRANT DETENTION AND AN INTERCULTURAL FUTURE

by Sam Colvett WRIT 1133: Writing & Research | Professor Libby Catchings

IMMIGRATION POLICY IS, WITHOUT A DOUBT, ONE OF THE most contentious issues in modern American politics. At the time of this writing, the incoming Biden Administration has promised to form immigration policy based on “the basic premise that our country is safer, stronger, and more prosperous with a fair, safe and orderly immigration system that welcomes immigrants [and] keeps families together” (“President Biden Outlines Steps”). If the Biden Administration is successful in this goal, it will mark a significant departure from the immigration system that has mixed criminal law and civil immigration law in a phenomenon scholars call “crimmigration.” One product of this historic criminalization is an abusive detention system that has been prevalent in American immigration policy for decades. Indeed, immigrant detention has risen to the forefront of national attention in recent years; many organizations have publicly denounced immigrant detention as an institution and implemented humanitarian efforts to confront some of the abuses rampant within it.

One such organization is Casa de Paz, a Colorado-based nonprofit founded in 2012 near the GEO Group-run Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Aurora. Casa de Paz provides “hospitality to families separated by immigrant detention”; it was created by executive director Sarah Jackson after spending time at the U.S.-Mexico border with people in detention and witnessing immigrant

families being separated from one another (“About Us”). I initially became involved with this organization in 2019 as a first-year student at the University of Denver through a service-learning class, and I continued to volunteer throughout the remainder of the year as much as possible. Despite my limited experience as a volunteer, I would offer that Casa de Paz represents something significant—a more humane response to the complexities of modern

immigration than immigrant detention. In contrast to the criminalization of immigration, which has led to painful and abusive detention practices, Casa de Paz serves as an example of the beauty that an intercultural and welcoming view of immigration could create. Since its inception, Casa de Paz has established temporary housing for previously detained people and families visiting those still detained, produced a documentary, written a book, started a “Casa on Wheels” program to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, and drawn volunteers from all over the Denver area (“About Us”).

One such volunteer, Fernando Pérez Ventura, has embodied this intercultural and welcoming approach to immigration particularly well. Fernando is a Mennonite pastor from Mexico who had originally come to the United States in 2016 as a part of his religious work on intersections between faith and interculturality. At an event in a Mennonite Church in Denver, Fernando and his wife, Rebeca, advocated for interculturality as a spiritually transformative way of interacting with others, one that recognizes the diversity and dignity of all people. Beyond the more well-known concept of multiculturalism—which, in their framework, refers to multiple cultures being present in the same place—Fernando and Rebeca argue that interculturality is characterized by learning from and being transformed by other cultures (Pérez Ventura and Torres Gonzales). As a result of this work, shortly after arriving in the Denver area, Fernando became involved with Casa de Paz.

We would often volunteer on Thursday nights together. As joyful as he is wise, Fernando boldly claimed, with conviction and energy, that “God is an immigrant.” One minute, he would be speaking with me, a new college student volunteer, about theories of international relations; the next, he would be across the room, letting a previously-detained immigrant know that he was there for them and loved them. To paraphrase something Fernando once told me: it is not enough to simply say you love another; you must actively welcome the other into life with you and show them this love. From this guiding point of interculturality, detention seems to be the exact opposite of the appropriate response to immigration.

Instead of intercultural welcoming, the increasing interconnectedness of law enforcement and immigration policy—along with the growing perception of immigration as criminal—has resulted in a system that essentially treats all immigration violations as criminal violations (Marín and Jefferis 956–58), even though “a noncitizen’s eligibility to enter, reside, work, and eventually naturalize in the United States is found within administrative law, not the criminal code” (956). As legal scholar César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández points out, the first examples of immigrant detention in the United States were on privately-owned residential facilities that shipping companies bought to hold immigrants until their status could be determined by an immigration official (24). Immigration policy later evolved in response to the shifting demographics of immigrants to the United States. These policies ranged from the explicitly racist, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, to the implicitly racist, such as the 1920s’ quota laws (García Hernandez 23, 30). The specifically punitive detention practices we see today rose from several additional factors, of which some of the primary drivers were “the government’s ‘detention as deterrence’ platform” and its “mandatory detention” programs in the 1980s and 1990s (Marín and Jefferis 961).

These practices have been increasingly prevalent and cruel in the past few years under coordinated efforts by the Trump Administration. A damning report from the House Judiciary Committee finds that the Administration “began formulating

its plan to separate parents from their children as early as February 2017” (2). The “zero-tolerance” detention policy used to justify those separations began mandating the prosecution of border crossings at unprecedented levels (Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives 11). According to ICE data published by the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), the total average daily population in detention rose from 33,124 individuals in 2009 to 44,872 individuals in fiscal year 2018 (Glassanos, Facility List-Main),1 marking record-breaking highs almost every year (Cullen). More recently, Human Rights Watch reports that the Trump Administration had “the intent to expand ICE’s daily detention capacity to 60,000 people on any given day” in fiscal year 2021 (Cho et al. 5).

What Casa de Paz and volunteers like Fernando remind us of is that these problematic policy decisions have tangibly detrimental impacts on detained individuals. Counts vary widely depending on the source, but on the local level—and according to ICE data published by the NIJC—the Denver Contract Detention Facility, the Aurora facility to which Casa de Paz responds, has a max capacity of 848 individuals and has operated at around 70% of daily capacity for the last several years (Glassanos, Facility List-Main). René Lima-Marín, who spent time both in prison and in this ICE detention center, noted “how cold it (was) in the facilities” and further stated that “the immigration detention center did not allow contact visits,” which is even more restrictive than prison incarceration (Marín and Jefferis 964–965). Casa de Paz volunteers who participate in its detention visitation program support Lima-Marín’s assessment of these sites as worse than prison in some regards. They report that contact visits are prohibited and that detained immigrants are allowed only to speak through phones and plexiglass windows with visitors. Further, at the time of this writing, Jason Crow’s congressional office is still conducting regular oversight visits to this center due to “multiple cases of disease outbreaks” reported in the facility in February of 2019 (“ICE Accountability Report”).

There is a notable sense of gravity whenever the subject of the detention facility comes up at Casa de Paz, as it often does, and its effects are quickly and personally observable in people’s responses to being there. I myself have seen a woman excited to receive a Coke because there were none offered in detention. I have heard people express excitement for showering, as there was not regular access to showers in detention. And I have been disheartened to hear a man claim, “This is my first day in the United States”; he had been in detention in the US for months, and he had yet to experience America outside of detention walls.

Further, detention is widely acknowledged as having adverse mental health effects on detained individuals, and these can be compounded for people who are seeking asylum or humanitarian protection in the United States. A review of twenty-six studies from eight different countries found that “adverse mental health consequences of immigration detention are consistently recognized across the literature”; these adverse effects include “high levels of anxiety, depression and PTSD and poor quality of life” (Werthern et al. 14). Re-traumatization in detention is also prevalent; the Physicians for Human Rights and the Bellevue Program for Survivors of Torture claim that “detained asylum seekers find themselves locked up in a foreign system that can be reminiscent of the persecution they fled” (Keller et al. 68–69).

These conditions pose a stark contrast to the environment of Casa de Paz. Casa de Paz is a direct response to the criminalization of immigration and is grounded in an authentic desire to make the world a more welcoming place by whatever means available. Evident in every aspect of Casa de Paz is a desire to make people feel welcome as an alternative approach to crimmigration and detention. This includes offering a home-cooked meal, a place to shower, a place to eat, a place to sleep, a person like Fernando to talk to, and help with transportation to wherever is next. From volunteers offering previously detained immigrants a hug to laying cards on the beds that simply say “You are loved,” Casa de Paz demonstrates what it can mean for the US to serve as an oasis for those who have gone through hell, and it provides a microcosm of the future interculturality we should hope will come to define our world.

1 The NIJC data sheet created by Glassanos is publicly available and linked within Cullen, though it can be difficult to find by searches for author or title. For ease of reference, each citation to Glassanos includes the spreadsheet page where the corresponding information can be found.

WORKS CITED

“About Us.” Casa de Paz, https://www.casadepazcolorado.org/about-us. Accessed 21 Feb. 2021. Cho, Eunice Hyunhye, et al. Justice-Free Zones: U.S. Immigration Detention Under the Trump Administration.

American Civil Liberties Union, 2020, https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/supporting_resources/justice_free_ zones_immigrant_detention.pdf. Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives. The Trump Administration’s Family Separation Policy:

Trauma, Destruction, and Chaos. Majority Staff, Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, Oct. 2020, https:// judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/the_trump_administration_family_separation_policy_trauma_destruction_and_ chaos.pdf?utm_campaign=4526-519. Cullen, Tara Tidwell. “ICE Released Its Most Comprehensive Immigration Detention DataYet. It’s

Alarming.” National Immigrant Justice Center, 13 Mar. 2018, https://immigrantjustice.org/staff/blog/ ice-released-its-most-comprehensive-immigration-detention-data-yet. García Hernández, Cesar Cuauhtémoc. Migrating to Prison. The New Press, 2019. Glassanos, Christopher J. ERO Custody Management Division: Faculty List Report. 6 Nov. 2017, https://immigrantjustice.org/sites/default/files/uploaded-files/no-content-type/2018-06/ICE_Facility_List_11-06-2017-web.xlsx. “ICE Accountability Report.” Jason Crow, Congressman from Colorado’s 6th District, https://crow.house.gov/about/ice-accountability-report. Accessed 30 Mar. 2021. Keller, Allen S., et al. From Persecution to Prison: The Health Consequences of Detention for Asylum Seekers. Physicians for Human Rights and the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, 2003, https://phr.org/wpcontent/ uploads/2003/06/persecution-to-prison-US-2003.pdf. Marín, René, and Danielle C. Jefferis. “It’s Just Like Prison: Is a Civil (Nonpunitive) System of Immigration Detention

Theoretically Possible?” Denver Law Review, vol 96, no. 4, 2019, pp. 955-972. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3345768. Pérez Ventura, Fernando. Personal interview. February 14, 2020. Pérez Ventura, Fernando and Rebeca Torres Gonzales. “Interculturality and the Church.” First Mennonite Denver, 19

Jan. 2020, https://www.fmcdenver.org/adult-education/2020/1/21/interculturality-and-the-church. “President Biden Outlines Steps to Reform Our Immigration System by Keeping Families Together, Addressing the

Root Causes of Irregular Migration, and Streamlining the Legal Immigration System.” The White House Briefing

Room, The White House, 2 Feb. 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/02/02/ fact-sheet-president-biden-outlines-steps-to-reform-our-immigration-system-by-keeping-families-together-addressing-the-root-causes-of-irregular-migration-and-streamlining-the-legal-immigration-syst/. Werthern, Martha von, et al. “The Impact of Immigration Detention on Mental Health: A Systematic Review.” BMC

Psychiatry, vol. 18, no. 382, 2018, pp. 1-19, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-018-1945-y.

Originally from Franklin, Tennessee, Sam Colvett is a second-year student at the University of Denver studying international studies and public policy, with minors in leadership and Spanish. Next year, he will begin graduate work in international studies through the Korbel 5 Program. He has concentrated on immigration-related topics throughout both of his majors so far, and he hopes to continue studying these everimportant topics.

In my WRIT 1133 class with Dr. Libby Catchings, our final project was to produce an ethnographic research project using responsible methodology on a distinct community in our lives. I decided I wanted to focus on my volunteer experiences with Casa de Paz. Since starting to volunteer with the organization the prior fall, I had already had extremely impactful experiences with Casa de Paz’s mission, environment, and other volunteers, and I wanted to explore some of this in writing.

One of my favorite aspects of this project was that I got to have more in-depth discussions with Fernando, a volunteer at Casa de Paz who has been particularly influential in my worldview. As I mention in my piece, I believe Fernando embodies many of the core values of Casa de Paz, and I think his outlook on life and immigration has a lot to offer the world. What he and many other people involved with Casa de Paz remind me is that, even in the midst of something as horrible as immigrant detention, there is still some hope for the future, if we can take interculturality and welcoming seriously. This is reflected even in the name of the organization, which literally translates to “house of peace.”

Another fascinating aspect of this piece is how the American societal context has shifted since I initially turned in the project. Since the Winter Quarter of 2020, President Joe Biden has succeeded Donald Trump after only one term in office, and the incoming Administration has promised dramatic shifts in immigration policy. Even with the potential improvement in the political environment, however, structural inequalities and violence inherent in the immigration system are no easy matters to fix. Nevertheless, there is some hope for much-needed change in the future.

image provided by author