In recent years, the number of inmates in U.S. immigration detention centers (mainly undocumented immigrants and political refugees) has surged. These numbers are expected to continue to rise in the near future, which is why in their respective versions of the immigration reform bill both the Senate and the House of Representatives provide for a significant increase in the capacity of these institutions.

Critics of the crackdown policy point out that not only are considerable funds needed to run immigration detention centers but that laws regulating prisoner care are imperfect. There is also the fact that an increasing number of inmates, especially those seeking political refugee status, pose no threat whatsoever to society. These people escaped persecution and the danger of bodily harm in their own countries, only to end up behind bars in the United States, where they sought freedom. This is the bitter irony of fate.

Without a doubt, the situation of this group of foreigners has drastically deteriorated since

9/11. Erring on the side of caution, the immigration service under ultra-conservative former Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped differentiating between those who aroused legitimate suspicion and those seeking refugee status.

According to statistics from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), there are currently over 21,000 inmates in U.S. immigration detention centers. Some spend several weeks behind bars, others a month, a year or more. Over the course of a year, hundreds of thousands of people pass through the detention center system, which is organized in the following manner: Eight of the large detention centers are directly administered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement; six of the institutions are managed by private companies; the majority of illegal immigrants and foreigners seeking refugee status (57 percent) are held in 312 county and municipal jails that have contracts with the federal government.

Experts have concluded that conditions in ICE jails do not stand up to scrutiny. Regardless of the criticism, however, Congress has already outlined plans to expand the system significantly. The Senate plans to allocate funds for building 20 new federal detention centers that would hold no less than 20,000 people.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement maintains that there should be more detention centers with less than 35,000 inmates. Security agencies are trying to convince Congress that this is the only way to isolate candidates for deportation.

According to the immigration service, there are currently 544,000 foreign subjects at liberty who should be arrested and deported. For the ICE, the fact that these people are at liberty, frequently due to a lack of space in the detention centers, amounts to nothing other than a mini-amnesty for the worst violators of U.S. laws.

As a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, I have first-hand knowledge of this problem. It must be noted that individuals who have ended up in detention centers do not have an easy time obtaining legal defense. For the most part, inmates are poor and it is difficult for them to request the assistance of a lawyer. It’s also not easy to get in touch with relatives (if there are any); phone calls are either restricted or too expensive for people who don’t have a penny to their name.

Several years ago, I wrote about the case of a Russian citizen who was placed in a remote detention center in Louisiana. His relatives in Moscow had no idea where he had disappeared to or what had happened to him. They appealed to Russian Bazaar, and we, in turn, appealed to the Russian Embassy in Washington. In the end, the man was taken from prison and sent home. If his wife had not sounded the alarm, who knows how long he would have spent in the torture-chamber of a godforsaken Louisiana county.

It’s easy to see by looking at a map of immigration detention centers that the majority of them are located in the rural Southwest. Human rights advocates maintain that this was done intentionally. If someone has hired a lawyer in New York or New Jersey, it’s difficult to expect that the lawyer will make it out to the sticks very often; indeed, in the majority of cases, the lawyer does not.

Those who have served time in U.S. detention centers believe that the situation calls not so much for additional allocations as for a change in the attitude of prison administrations towards people who have come to this country in search of a better life. At the very least, it is indecent to treat them as criminals.