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—