Detain and Deport (Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation Ser.) by Nancy Hiemstra

Author:Nancy Hiemstra [Hiemstra, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Migration, USA
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2019-03-14T23:00:00+00:00

ISOLATION

Many detainees feel a disturbing sense of isolation, cut off from family and support networks. In addition to isolation negatively impacting their ability to contest deportation, it also fundamentally determines how they experience their confinement. Communicating with the world outside detention becomes a challenging, fraught endeavor for migrants immediately upon detention. Javier explained that while detained, “I lost contact with my family, I lost contact with everyone. That is, from the moment that Migration took me, I lost contact with, with everyone, and from there I couldn’t make calls or tell anyone where they could find me.”

Any cell phones are confiscated upon apprehension, making direct calls impossible and also resulting in the temporary loss of contact information stored in those phones. Most facilities do not permit incoming calls to a detainee. While communication by mail is possible, the process of sending and receiving letters, especially internationally, can be complicated and time consuming. Also, frequent transfers mean that a letter may arrive after the migrant has been moved from the facility. Email access, now becoming available in some facilities, is highly controlled, monitored, and not free. Consequently, with few exceptions, communication between a detainee and the outside world depends on the detainee initiating a call.

But the process of making a phone call is not straightforward or cheap, particularly for detainees attempting to communicate outside the United States. Migrants are technically entitled to one free domestic call upon arrival at a new place of detention. The experiences of several interviewees, however, suggest that this call is not always granted. Paúl reported, “When I was in [one facility], the official gave me a call, but I talked for only a minute, and no one answered the phone, but he marked it down on the paper as taken, so I never got a call.” The free call may not include international calls (apparently depending on individual facilities’ policies), complicating efforts to communicate with family members in countries of migrant origin. What’s more, one free call falls far short of needs for communicating with family, legal counsel, and other support networks, especially for detainees held extended periods of time.

To communicate outside detention, therefore, detained migrants must purchase phone time, a process that can be plagued with challenges (National Immigrant Justice Center 2010; ACLU 2011; Conlon and Hiemstra 2014). Phone systems in detention facilities are contracted out to private, for-profit companies, and call rates tend to be grossly inflated. Even the procedure for obtaining a calling card may be challenging. For example, purchase requests for cards often take a week to fill. Calling cards are facility specific, so if transferred a detainee loses purchased cards. And, of course, if a migrant is not detained with money on her or his person, then the ability to buy a calling card depends on receiving money from family or friends (which can be a complicated process in itself) or earning money by working in the detention facility (discussed below).5 While many ICE personnel informed me that detainees could make

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