O'Malley calls for 'shameful' detention of undocumented migrants to end
Democratic presidential candidate tells protest in Arizona: 'We should not be breaking up families. We should not be interning families. We're better than this'
Martin O'Malley said the practice of mass immigrant detention centers was 'not in keeping with our principles as a people'. Photograph: D Ross Cameron/Zuma Press/Corbis
Lauren Gambino
@laurenegambino
Fri 11 Dec 2015 09.59 EST
Last modified on Wed 26 Feb 2020 13.02 EST
Sandra Ojeda clearly remembers the last time her husband, Miguel Cornejo, a Mexican immigrant, was home. It was 17 August 2014, the day US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents stopped him in Tempe, Arizona, and deported him to Nogales, Sonora, right across the border from Arizona.
Since May, Cornejo has been held at Eloy, a detention facility in southern Arizona. Fearing for his life in Mexico he had sought asylum at the US border and is currently waiting for his application to be processed, Ojeda said. She visits him every Saturday, a full day trip which she says costs her about $70 to $80 in gas and food.
"I think the emotional harm will never leave us all our lives," Ojeda said in Spanish.
On Thursday, Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley joined Ojeda and other activists outside a county jail in Phoenix to advocate for an end to what he called the "shameful and growing" detention of undocumented immigrants.
"I came here to Arizona today to say that we must end the shameful practice of mass immigrant detention centers in our country," O'Malley said as he stood outside a jail run by the controversial Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio.
"This is not in keeping with the United State of America. This is not in keeping with our principles as a people, this is not how we are a moral leader in this world and this is not how we are able to give to our children a better and more just future."
If elected, O'Malley said he would direct his officials to use alternatives to detention and allow families to remain together while awaiting court proceedings with narrow exceptions for cases that present public safety or national security concerns.
"We should not be breaking up families," O'Malley said. "We should not be interning families. We're better than this as a people."
The issue has been gaining traction through a string of protests this year led by detainees at detention centers across the country to draw attention to what they say is inhumane treatment inside the facilities, especially the ones that house families and children.
Ending the immigration detention system would not only require an unlikely act of bipartisanship in Washington, but the resolve to take on the multibillion-dollar private prison industry.
Private prison companies play a prominent role in immigration detention in part because of a so-called "bed mandate", which obliges ICE to keep 34,000 detainees a day in custody, a quota driven by conservative calls to secure the border.
Activists say the companies' cost-cutting measures create prison-like conditions in the centers, with inadequate medical and legal services.
"Detention is not driven by real immigration policy or need," said Francisca Porchas, the organizing director of Puente Human Rights Movement, a Phoenix-based advocacy group that opposes the detention of immigrants. "It's driven by money and by numbers … It's time to shut it down and allow people to fight their cases from the outside."
Puente, which provided help to Ojeda after her husband was deported in August 2014, participated in the campaign event on Thursday.
Porchas conceded that closing all detention centers in this political climate is unlikely but said that O'Malley's stance is important in pushing the other Democratic contenders to support similarly progressive immigration policies.
"Clearly Donald Trump hasn't held back in moving the conversation to the far right," Porchas said. "So it's important for O'Malley to take this stand and actually move the conversation more to the left, where we are talking about people's humanity; we're talking about the trauma people suffer inside detention; we're talking about the families being separated."
The Democratic contenders have all vowed to reform the immigrant detention system by relying more on alternative solutions and ending contracts with private prison companies.
On Thursday, O'Malley, who continues to trail Clinton and Sanders in the polls, criticized them for "talking out of both sides of their mouth" on immigration.
"Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton say different things to different groups," he said.
The former Maryland governor has released a detailed immigration plan and said he would extend privileges under the federal healthcare law to undocumented immigrants. As governor, O'Malley moved to allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver's licenses and receive in-state tuition rates at public universities.
"It's perfect," Ojeda said of O'Malley's proposal. "It's perfect because we need all the detention centers to be closed."
Additional reporting by Bastien Inzaurralde