| Published Date: Friday 12th, March 2010 |
A Model For The Nation
Based on the
presentation last week by Mark Flowers, the Farmville immigration detention
facility will indeed be a model for the nation, setting the blueprint standard
for more humane treatment of non-criminal immigrant detainees.
Achieving such a standard would be good for everyone involved, from
the detainees, to the employees, to the citizens of the community. And the
nation, itself, which is an immigrant nation and has always been one.
Flowers, Director of Detention for the Immigration Centers of
America-Farmville’s facility scheduled to open May 3, told Town Council members
that a facility solely for non-criminals would be “one-of-a-kind” in the nation.
But not, he believes, the last of its kind.
“I’m a medium and maximum custody guy,” said Flowers, whose 23
years in the Army were focused on military correctional facilities. The
Farmville facility will be his fourth as director of detention, but the first
low security facility, which he said he completely embraces.
“This is something I so in the heart believe that it’s needed in
the United States,” he said, striking his chest several times to emphasize the
point, “and I think this is the first of many to come down the road, I really
do. I think this solves a lot of Homeland Security’s problems that in my
previous position I dealt with for four years.” For the last four years, Flowers
has been Director of National Prison and Jail Standards for the American
Correctional Association.
A major problem has been the mixing of non-criminal immigrant
detainees with criminals in jails and prisons across the nation. That is a
situation which demands a humane solution and Farmville, it appears, will be the
hub of that wheeling remedy of progress.
Town Manager Gerald Spates has been saying for three years, since
he first announced the project, that it would be a model facility and those
words do appear to be taking shape as reality.
The facility, which will open with the ability to house 650 adult
male detainees, will offer visitation at any time, night or day, and, notably,
contact will be allowed and visitation will not be limited, a far cry from the
20-minute restriction in jails and prisons across the nation. “This is another
area that we changed. There used to be no contact visitation. We would not allow
the family members to have contact with the detainees and we changed that
because visitation, hugging and all that, is good for the families,” Flowers
told Town Council during its March work session. “We’re not trying to break them
apart.”
The facility, which will create approximately 240 jobs, is
described by Flowers as “a society within a perimeter fence. We’re trying to
limit their movements and restrictions as little as we possibly have to, based
on their behaviors.”
There will be an outdoor running/walking track and a soccer field,
a total of seven outdoor recreation areas, with another four
recreation/multi-use areas inside the facility.
Flowers said, “It’s going to be a relaxed environment as long as
everything works the way it’s supposed to.” And, he adds, “a management
challenge for me is being able to offer the different activities that they would
have in their free life, so to speak.”
If successful, the Farmville immigration detention facility should
be expected to raise the standard of immigration detention across the country
for people whose only crime is being in America without proper documentation. We
certainly applaud that objective and hope the ripples which seem to be building
into a wave in Farmville will create a high tide of more humane treatment of all
such people.
The fears some had of the detainees becoming a burden on the local
health care system and judicial system seem unlikely to emerge because the
facility intends to provide a high level of 24-medical care, with only the most
extreme cases requiring treatment elsewhere. And legal proceedings can be held
on site connecting, via video, with courts in Washington, for example, or
Richmond.
The detainees, according to Flowers, would be held in Farmville, on
average, for two weeks to a month as their cases are processed, after which they
will be released as US citizens or transported by ICE back to their home
countries. They won’t be released in Farmville, according to Flowers, who
replied when a council member asked that question, “No…that’s driven by ICE. ICE
will determine their destination…”
The facility’s security, meanwhile, is state-of-the-art, with 99
cameras in place and armed officers in a vehicle outside the perimeter fence 24
hours a day. Not that Flowers expects trouble to be a problem at the facility.
Troublemakers will be removed and taken to a maximum security facility
elsewhere, he noted.
Last year, we wrote in an editorial: “A promise has been made by
this community—by its leaders—to make the Farmville immigration detention
facility a model in humane detention for the nation. The nation now seems headed
in the same direction. May that crossroads be an intersection that sees all
people doing unto others as they would have others do unto them.”
So far, it certainly appears that promise is being kept.
—JKW—
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Published in the Farmville Herald. |
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