Immigrant-detention reform

Browse the article below for reference and the link following starting June 25, 2002 and what you will understand is Americans in Mexican prisons must pay for their own meals, toilet paper, water, bed, clothing and any other normal health hygiene or safety items.

Inmates are allowed to buy a little comfort. Some prisoners split the $200 monthly rent to live in cells with their own toilet and shower. Convicts can buy small refrigerators, stoves, fans, and TVs -- cable is available, for $30 a month. Some individual cells even have window- unit air conditioners.

Thats correct, when sentenced to a Mexican prison you are required to provide for yourself. Mexico provides the walls everything else is provided by family members who pay prison guards or physically bring your needed items to the prison.

At CERESO I, prison administrators allow the inmates to create their own miniature cash economy. The prison has five privately operated snack bars. Most of the American prisoners are lucky enough to have relatives send them money -- but poor inmates have to earn money inside the prison by shining shoes, washing clothes or doing odd jobs.

In addition while incarcerated in a hellish unmaintained Mexican prison run by drug lords and street gangs like MS-13, however you get to learn Spanish for free.
We however can not seem to maintain international standards of treatment here in the US. Our illegal Alien prisoners are packed in to closely, forced to eat substandard free meals. The free medical, free dental and Cable TV entertainment are substandard too. How can we allow this situation to continue? The honest South Americans, Mexicans and other Hispanics illegally crossing our borders are being subjected to substandard detainment. We have again failed to live up to an international standard set by a Socialists run U.N. or an International agency like the Red Crescent. One that is unconcerned with the fact that life in an American prison eating Salisbury steak and watching cable TV while waiting for your OBGYN to give you the update on your new delivery date is far better than living almost anywhere on the planet much less a prison. Third World especially in Mexican prisons are reminiscence of European second world war detainment camps complete with parasites in the drinking water and contagious diseases like cholera, but those are "A, OK" for Americans. Yet Americas standard of detainment is in clear violation of these illegal aliens civil rights. Hit this link to see the prison camp conditions we subject these poor aliens to.

Here is my solution that will satisfy everyone but never happen! The United States should hire a Mexican Company to provide detainment services just over the border in Mexico. The Mexican Government will pay and we will maintain the facility to International standards with Mexican workers. The U.S. part of the equation will be to over see the operation hire and train the staff to U.N., Amnesty International, International Red Cross and Red Crescent Standards. Now thats a real solution!

Immigrant-detention_reform_includes_move_to_Leesport_facility.
By Michael Matza Inquirer Staff Writer The federal department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement yesterday announced an immediate overhaul of its sprawling, complaint-ridden system for detaining more than 32,000 immigrants in 350 facilities. While the reforms are designed to have impact nationally, one change puts a spotlight on Pennsylvania.

ICE said yesterday that it would immediately close the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility in Texas, which immigrant advocates have assailed as inadequate for children. From now on, families facing deportation or awaiting decisions on asylum applications will be detained only at Berks Family Residential Center, a facility of about 80 beds, in Leesport, Pa.

"As I understand it, Berks is smaller than Hutto. Unless they are adding more beds, they will have to look at alternatives to detention, which I think would be a good thing," said lawyer Judi Bernstein Baker, of HIAS and Council, an advocacy group, which runs a project at the Berks facility to provide legal representation for detainees.

June 25, 2002 -- Every year, a handful of American citizens have the bad judgment, or bad fortune, to land in Mexican prisons. An international agreement allows American citizens to transfer to a U.S. federal prison to serve out their sentence.