Alternatives to detention such as reporting requirements or an affordable bond should always be explicitly considered before resorting to detention. Alternatives to detention programs have been shown to be effective and significantly less expensive than holding people in immigration detention in the United States. While the average cost of detaining an immigrant is $95 per person/per day, a study of supervised release conducted by the Vera Institute in New York yielded a 91 per cent appearance rate at an estimated cost of just $12 per person per day. Despite the effectiveness of these alternatives to detention programs in ensuring compliance with immigration procedures, the use of immigration detention continues to rise at the expense of the United States’ human rights obligations.

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Thursday, June 4th, 2009