The New York Times’ Nina Bernstein had a shocking report this weekend that Immigrations and Customs and Enforcement misled the public about the deaths of a number of detained illegal immigrants. The moral outrage that Bernstein evokes makes it more difficult to figure out what is to be done about immigration detainee centers. The officials Bernstein describes — many who still work at ICE — can’t be trusted even if the Dept. of Homeland Security devised a flawless detention system.

Zooming out, though, I think that correctable flaws — not just rogue bureaucrats — contributed to these deaths. In October, DHS released — via the newly created Office of Detention Policy and Planning — an overview of immigration detention. Among the findings were that the system has rapidly expanded: there were 7,500 immigration detention beds across the country in 1995 and today there are 30,000. Yet ICE detention has not institutionally responded to ICE law enforcement rounding up more illegal aliens. Detainees move from one crowded detention center to the next, a disorienting process that pulls them away from family and legal counsel. And there is no central database with the medical records of these detainees.

Maybe the biggest flaw is that ICE lacks “policy and procedure or technical manual specific to detention.” Arriving in the U.S. illegally is a misdemeanor and removal hearings are handled in a civil court. Yet detainees are often treated like criminal prisoners or, in the cases Bernstein reports on, even worse. A growing immigration detention system with  no policies governing detention likely encourages human rights abuses.

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