The Department of Homeland Security announced today that it will be revising the way federal agents detain undocumented immigrants by creating alternatives to incarceration and reclassifying immigrants into “non-criminal” and “non-violent” populations.

According to a recent press statement sent out this afternoon by the agency, the changes are intended to curtail a variety of civil rights abuses and deaths that have been reported by nonprofit groups and Congressional investigators:

To advance the effective use of alternatives to detention (ATD), ICE will develop an assessment tool to identify aliens suitable for ATD and will submit a plan to Congress this fall to implement an ATD program nationwide. ICE will continue to work with the Department of Justice to expedite the adjudication of ATD cases to reduce costs.   

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To better manage special populations and improve program management, ICE will house non-criminal, non-violent populations, such as newly arriving asylum seekers, at facilities commensurate with risk and expand programs available including legal support services.

On average, 30,000 immigrants are in custody each day according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, and an unknown number of those detainees are under the age of 18.

In 2008, the House Appropriations Committee published concerns about “reports that vulnerable unaccompanied alien children are not being transferred in a timely fashion…and are being held by DHS in unacceptable conditions either in Border Patrol stations or jail-like facilities, often for many days.”


The news comes after the Obama administration announced in August that it would reexamine detention standards for immigrants and audit government contracts with private prison firms. However, the administration has denied a petition to create legally binding standards for immigrant prisons, citing a variety of legal concerns.

Immigration officials acknowledge that least 104 people have died in immigration detention since 2003.