Now Detention Centers and Jails outsourcing to be discontinued

Immigration violations being civil in nature and not of criminal nature, putting violators along with hardened criminals may produce another hardened criminal. Moreover high cost of maintaining a prisoner, that ranges up to $ 65 a day per detainee and still facing allegations of poor health care and food arrangements, federal government is coming out with idea of discontinuing outsourcing of detention centers.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has decided to build its own facilities for jails and detention centers; hitherto operated by private contractors. Presently, it relies on county jails or private prisons for its 32,000 detention beds. It is always flooded with complaints about substandard medical treatment and food for immigration detainees. Often it has run into problems with deficient security at some rural jails housing state inmates.

ICE plans to build less costly accommodations that are more like dormitories than prisons. Though, it could be inherently more expensive to build a new system from scratch, however, over the long term, once the initial hurdle of capital investment is crossed, the new system could be cheaper to operate.

Ultimately, of course, the biggest money-saver would be comprehensive immigration reform that would create a guest worker program for farm labor and other low-skill and high-skill trades that more accurately reflects market demands.

In the meantime, a stronger direct role for ICE in operating detention centers will have to do.