Changes coming to ICE

[The Straight Story]

NJ: Where do you travel?

Schriro: In these first 90, 120 days, I am actively involved in preliminary assessment for the secretary, so I've been hitting a number of facilities... speaking with as much of the detained population as I can, talking with staff.

NJ: So what will come out of these travels?

Schriro: It's a first assessment. That's why I'm calling it preliminary; it's not a one-time kind of a thing. It is to get a really good feel for the many strengths that are here at ICE.

NJ: When will we start seeing new policies from ICE?

Schriro: There have been some small but I think symbolically substantive changes already. For example, the whole of how we detain aliens has attracted considerable public and congressional attention -- as it should. Included in that is the health care that the population receives, and included in that is deaths in detention.

Early in my tenure, at the beginning of March, there was an appropriation hearing... about deaths in detention. Within several weeks of that hearing, there was a death, apparently of natural causes -- we are still pending, of course, the autopsy to make that confirmation. That was an opportunity to make an immediate change... to make immediate notification to Congress, also to release a news advisory and to put that news advisory on our Web site. So it's faster and clearer transparency.

NJ: What sort of shifts in policy should we expect to see soon?

Schriro: There's been quite a bit of discussion about the decision-making when aliens are identified and are in the process of determination of amenability for deportation and going through the removal process. You know, of the first decisions is where to place that individual pending all those processes: Shall they be detained and under what circumstances, or can they be released to the community? There's quite a bit of interest, including myself, in revisiting the processes by which we make those decisions.

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