美国国家公共电台 NPR Unequal Outcomes: Most ICE Detainees Held In Rural Areas Where Deportation Risks Soar（在线收听）

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement needs more space to house undocumented immigrants. And increasingly, the agency is finding it in rural regions. A new analysis by NPR indicates a majority of detainees are held in rural areas. But as NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports, those detained in far-flung places also have a much harder time finding lawyers and are far more likely to be deported.

YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: It took 10 1/2 months for Yoel Alonso to meet with a lawyer. Alonso had turned himself over to immigration officials in Laredo, Texas, seeking asylum from Cuba last October. Since then, he's been detained in two rural facilities, first in Louisiana and now in Adams County, Miss., about a two-hour drive from Baton Rouge.

Alonso's wife, Midalis Rodriguez, is a permanent U.S. resident. She lives in southern Florida with their two children.

MIDALIS RODRIGUEZ: (Speaking Spanish).

NOGUCHI: "It's very, very far from anything," she says, "too far to afford hiring a private attorney."

Lack of legal help is one of many challenges for undocumented immigrants and an even bigger problem for those detained in remote locations, yet ICE is adding detention facilities far from cities. Over half - 52% - of detainees are held in rural areas according to NPR's analysis of ICE data. And that rate is increasing. Liz Martinez is a board member of advocacy group Freedom for Immigrants.

LIZ MARTINEZ: It's a very concerning trend that immigration detention is moving to rural areas, remote areas where that makes it so much harder for a person in detention to get the support that they need.

NOGUCHI: Detainees in urban areas are at least four times more likely to find attorneys to represent them according to a 2015 University of Pennsylvania Law Review study. Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center sued ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security. The civil rights group alleges the government is deliberately detaining people in rural areas far from legal resources. ICE, which currently detains nearly 56,000 people, declined comment on that case. In an emailed statement, an ICE spokesman says the agency looks at airports, health care and legal resources when selecting facilities. He also says detainees have access to phones and video teleconferencing and can meet with lawyers during visiting hours.

But many immigration attorneys complain rural facilities lack necessary resources. There aren't enough phones or translators, call connections are poor, visiting hours are too restrictive, and it's simply too far to travel.

Yoel Alonso's wife has been able to visit him only once. Alonso was recently diagnosed with lung cancer, which makes the wait more excruciating. He eventually found a lawyer - one of the rare detainees with free representation. But his wife says his asylum request and two requests for parole have been denied.

RODRIGUEZ: (Through interpreter) What more could a wife with a sick husband want other than to be with him? At the very least, I want to offer him my support and for my children to offer support.

NOGUCHI: One of the key reasons detainees are held in remote regions appears to be money.

LAUREN-BROOKE EISEN: Cheap labor, cheap land.

NOGUCHI: Lauren-Brooke Eisen is acting director of the Brennan Center's Justice Program. She says many rural areas viewed prisons as job engines. Hundreds of new facilities were built in the 1990s. Inmate populations peaked then declined, leaving lots of empty beds.

ICE is now contracting with those rural prisons. It needs those beds as it continues to detain more immigrants. Just last week, ICE arrested nearly 700 workers at food processing plants in Mississippi. Loyola University law professor Andrea Armstrong says she sees that happening across Louisiana.

ANDREA ARMSTRONG: When the criminal justice reforms were enacted, that left empty beds that were ripe for contracting with ICE.

NOGUCHI: Those contracts can be lucrative. The state pays local sheriffs $24.39 a day to house an inmate. By comparison, ICE pays five times that, an average daily rate of more than $126. ICE confirmed it recently opened eight new detention facilities, seven of which are in Louisiana. All but one of them are in sparsely populated areas.

Lisa Lehner is director of Americans for Immigrant Justice. She represents detainees in Glades County, Fla., about 100 miles from Miami. Glades is the state's fourth least populated county, surrounded by acres of sugar cane fields.

LISA LEHNER: I've never seen an immigration attorney up there - never.

NOGUCHI: You've never seen one?

LEHNER: Nope, never.

NOGUCHI: Detainees there, she says, are treated like hardened criminals. Glades has been the subject of a number of complaints and lawsuits. They allege everything from misuse of pepper spray and solitary confinement to religious persecution. Lehner argues conditions are worse in rural facilities in part because fewer people can observe what's happening. By contrast, she says, when a Brooklyn New York ICE facility lost heat for a week during a cold snap in January, there was an outcry.

LEHNER: If there's lawyers going in and out, you would imagine that the people who are detaining the immigrants are going to behave in a more careful way.

NOGUCHI: It's not just that treatment might differ. Immigration courts in rural areas deny many more asylum cases, sending detainees back to their home countries. NPR's analysis of research from Syracuse University found judges in rural immigration courts denied 87% of asylum cases compared to just over half in urban courts. Romy Lerner is associate director of the immigration clinic at the University of Miami's law school.

ROMY LERNER: It is an issue because it means if you have the bad luck of being detained in a certain facility, then you're almost guaranteed to be deported.

NOGUCHI: Mississippi detainee Yoel Alonso hopes to beat those odds. He's appealing his case for asylum and hopes to reunite with his family.

Yuki Noguchi, NPR News.

[POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In this report, we said an ICE-contracted jail in Brooklyn, N.Y., lost heat during a cold snap in January. In fact, that facility no longer contracts with ICE and was not doing so at the time.]

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