Could Illinois impose a statewide ban on immigration detention centers?

I’m sure the ideologues amongst us were extremely satisfied when officials in downstate Dwight, Ill., voted to allow a detention center to be built within their boundaries.

Is detention center issue best settled at Statehouse, … 

The center is viewed as a place where people facing violations of federal immigration policy could be detained while officials work through the legal process of deporting those individuals out of the United States.

IT IS A facility that officials have proposed building in so many different communities throughout Illinois AND Indiana, only to run into constant opposition from local officials who don’t want any such thing being built within their communities.

Because no matter how much ideologues try to disguise such facilities as a humane place to hold people facing charges of immigration violations, the simple fact is that they are jail-like in nature.

There’s just no disguising it. We’re looking to lock up people, even though most of them haven’t done anything criminal in nature. And no, not even their immigration violation – which is more a civil offense rather than something for which they could face incarceration in a real prison facility surrounded by other criminals.

Anyway, it seems Dwight was a facility far enough from Chicago that the locals weren’t inclined to share the hostile feelings that many locals have about having a prison-like facility built within their boundaries.

IF ANYTHING, IT seems that Dwight was willing because the community has a history of containing prison facilities. Dwight was once the site of the prison for women within the Illinois Department of Corrections.

I’m sure some locals remember the idea of prisons as being a source of local jobs. Even though I always wondered about people who work in corrections facilities – it is, after all, work in prison. One literally has to go to jail every day. Possibly amongst the most depressing employment environment one could find.

… or something best left to the locals?

Which is why I find the Illinois House of Representatives’ latest actions intriguing – led by state Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago, they’re pushing for a new law that would make it illegal for local governments to permit any private company from allowing any such detention facility from being built within their communities.

It would demonize at a statewide level the very concept that the ideologues want to view as economic development. All because they don’t want to see more prison like facilities being built anywhere in Illinois.

IT DEFINITELY PUTS Illinois further in the camp of those people who don’t want to see ideologues and their hostile views prevail.

Particularly since the thing about these detention facilities that is key to comprehending them is that the proponents of such places think that a key element is that they be owned and operated by private companies.

Meaning a lot of the usual regulations that govern prison operations just wouldn’t apply. Not only do they appease the ideologues on immigration ideals (deport all the foreigners!), they’re also anti-labor.

None of those pesky rules that might require detention to be done with certain ideals of humanity in mind. And that also up the overall cost of operating detention facilities.

IN SHORT, I’M sure the ideologues are now prepared to lambast the Illinois Legislature as being even further out-of-touch with their conservative ideals than they already do so.

CASSIDY: Pushing for statewide ban

Then again, these are the people who got all excited last week when a judge struck down an attempt by suburban Deerfield to ban high-powered assault weapons from being owned by anyone within their community.

Yet another effort to try to impose their views upon all of Illinois – no matter how out-of-line it is with the way the bulk of us view the issue.

Which makes this an issue likely to provoke a brawl across the state in coming months. Because although a majority of us in places like Joliet and Crete headed east to Gary, Ind., have made it clear how much we detest the concept, there are those who will continue to push it until we get a state law. And even then will likely fight it further.

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The further away from Chicago, the better – that is, if it has to happen at all!

It has become the immigration-related issue that just won’t die, and manages to take on a more intense character of pathos with each evolution it makes in the process.

The old Dwight Correctional Center for women ceased to exist in 2013

No, I’m not talking about President Donald Trump’s fantasies of erecting a wall of sorts along the U.S./Mexico border.

THIS IS ABOUT the notion of building detention facilities with which to lock up people awaiting immigration-related offenses that could result in their eventual deportation from this country.

Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have dreams of using facilities scattered across the nation – including one whose intent would be to hold people found living in the Chicago-area while lacking a valid Visa or legitimate citizenship status.

Currently, people facing immigration violations often get sent off to county jails with which the federal government has contracts with. In our case, many people caught here wind up in the McHenry County Jail to wait while their immigration cases are resolved.

A concept that offends many people because it means that people who haven’t committed a criminal offense (no matter how much the ideologues want to think it ought to be regarded as one) are being locked up with people who HAVE committed crimes and are merely awaiting the day they’re sent off to the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections to serve their time.

THE IDEA IS that having these separate detention facilities means we can take the immigration cases out of jail with criminals. But we can still treat the individuals like criminals – which is what the ideologues are really after!

The problem is that people of rationality hate the idea of any kind of facility that is jail-like from being in or near their communities.

Dwight not far enough from Chgo for project

That is why local officials in places like Joliet, Crete and Hopkins Park in Illinois, along with Hobart, Gary and Elkhart County in Indiana, have all turned down the idea – not giving in to the fact that many of these places (particularly Gary, Ind.) could use the economic boost that could be derived from construction of a new facility and the possibility of jobs for people already living there.

This is just not a popular idea, which is why it seems officials are looking for a site further and further away from the heart of Chicago that will say “yes” and accept their plans.

THE BLOOMINGTON PANTAGRAPH is reporting that officials are looking at Dwight (a Livingston County community not far from the interstate connecting Chicago to St. Louis) as a possible site.

Local planning commission officials are considering annexation of a site near down so they can offer it up to federal officials for the plan.

Perhaps people are figuring Dwight is the right kind of place for detention facilities because, for many years, Dwight was the location of the Illinois Corrections Department facility for women found guilty of criminal offenses.

Maybe they also figure that a community with less than 2 percent Latino ethnic composition of its population won’t share the kind of hang-ups that communities up our way have with regards to such facilities.

ALTHOUGH THIS COULD be one of those instances where people surprise us by overcoming whatever hang-ups they may have and wind up doing the right thing.

As much as I like the idea that this ‘detention’ concept for immigration is now solidly outside of the Chicago metropolitan area (most of us only regard Dwight as a train stop between here and Springfield when they’re forced to use Amtrak), it is a concept that would be better off withering away altogether.

This detention center in Tacoma, Wash., could be replicated in Dwight

Because we ought to be trying to figure out ways to make better sense of our federal immigration laws and clean up the bureaucratic mess that we now have.

Instead of building facilities so we can house people with pending cases so we can let them stretch out even longer – before the ideologues try to have their way of deporting everybody from this country who isn’t exactly like themselves.

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Immigration detention center project won’t die; just going further south

It seems the powers that be who want to build a jail-like facility for people awaiting hearings on immigration violations (and possible deportation from the United States) are not about to give up.

Will these types of activists express their objections ...

Their plans to build such a facility somewhere in the Chicago metropolitan area to accommodate immigration violators in the Midwestern U.S. are cropping up again.

ONLY NOW, THEY’VE moved not only across the state line to Indiana, but south to Newton County – a place so far south that I’m sure the locals who live there would seriously resent any claim that they’re part of the Chicago area (Wikipedia says they are).

It’s a fairly isolated place with lots of open space, which means it might be possible to build the desired facility in a place where it would have little interaction with the real world – just like more conventional prison facilities.

Perhaps this is what the project’s backers feel is necessary to get away from the objections that have constantly arisen all the other opportunities that this has come up for discussion.

Personally, I remember back when the powers-that-be wanted to build such a facility just outside of Joliet. When locals objected, talks shifted toward building it just south of Crete (which is roughly the southernmost suburb of Chicago) not far from the now-defunct Balmoral Racecourse.

ALL THE HOSTILITY toward the project caused Crete officials to back away, which caused the project’s supporters to shift over the state line into Indiana and there was some consideration to building it in Gary not far from the Gary/Chicago International Airport.

Concerns about the airport’s flight patterns being a potential security risk for a detention facility, along with the outspoken immigration activists who have followed this project everywhere it has gone, caused Gary municipal officials to give up their support for the idea.

... so far distant from Chicago?

Now, it seems the supporters of a detention center have found a place about 65 miles away from Chicago (about as far south as Kankakee) where they hope there will be a lack of opposition to the idea of locking up people who may only be caught up in the immigration bureaucracy because they got pulled over for a traffic violation – and some eager cop was willing to notify immigration to “take ‘em away.”

As the talks proceed toward whether to build such a facility in Newton County -- a place whose total population (just under 14,000) is less than most suburbs. I’ll be curious to see how many of the activist-types will continue to follow this project.

BECAUSE SOME OF the objectors are people with an interest in our nation’s immigration policy, and they have followed it from municipality to municipality.

From Joliet to Crete to Gary, Ind., will they now show up in Kentland (the county seat) to let their objections be known. Or will they figure they’ve pushed this proposed facility far out enough into the “middle of nowhere” that they can live with its existence “somewhere else.”

I’ve heard the arguments on all sides, with the objectors hating the idea of detaining people while the immigration violations are pending. While supporters either aren’t bothered with their incarceration, or they’ll argue that these facilities aren’t really prisons.

Some may even argue that the current status of these violators would improve if they weren’t held in traditional jail conditions (many are sent to the McHenry County Jail in Woodstock, which has a contract with the federal government to detain such people).

PERSONALLY, I’M MOST concerned with the fact that these detention facilities are run by private companies, rather than by a government entity like the federal Bureau of Prisons. Meaning many of the regulations meant to protect the rights of inmates in the federal system do not apply. This particular facility would be built by GEO Group of Boca Raton, Fla.

I don’t doubt that in this Age of Trump that we’re now in, there are some who aren’t bothered by that thought. But we should be. Our “rights” are only as safe as the most vulnerable in our society.

And it may well be that among the most vulnerable are those people whose immigration status is unclear – particularly since there are those who enjoy being able to harass such individuals to make up for the short-comings in their own lives.

So has this project moved far enough away from Chicago that the locals will be willing to tell its objections to “stuff it!” or will the objectors (a combination of religious folks and Latino activists) continue to push to where it eventually becomes an Indianapolis issue, rather than Chicago?

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