The New York Times has an editorial today that builds off its reporting about unreported deaths in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention system. The Times advocates for legally binding standards for the treatment of immigrant detainees and going forward with “top-to-bottom reform” the Obama administration promised of the detention.

These changes could happen absent debate over a comprehensive immigration reform bill. But they are much more likely to happen, I think, if detention conditions are linked to, say, capricious immigration prosecutions and exploitation of undocumented workers. To deal with detention centers in isolation is akin to confronting a health care injustice — like being denied treatment for a pre-existing condition — in isolation. It might be more useful to declare immigration policy “broken.” However, there are few signs that the Obama administration and Congress will give the attention to immigration that they did to health care.

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