Law Commons^™

Arbitrary Detention? The Immigration Detention Bed Quota, Anita Sinha

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

When President Obama took office in 2009, Congress through appropriations linked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) funding to “maintaining” 33,400 immigration detention beds a day. This provision, what this Article refers to as the bed quota, remains in effect, except now the mandate is 34,000 beds a day. Since 2009, DHS detentions of non-citizens have gone up by nearly 25 percent. To accommodate for this significant spike over a relatively short period of time, the federal government has relied considerably on private prison corporations to build and operate immigration detention facilities.

This Article takes a comprehensive look at …

Reimagining The Wheel: Detention And Release Of Non-State Actors Under The Geneva Conventions, Chris Jenks

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

After more than a decade of sustained armed conflict, the international community continues to struggle with the issues posed by non-State actors participating in hostilities. Issues range from the micro, of if and when individuals may be targeted and detained, to the macro if not meta level of which legal regime to apply. This chapter considers detention from a pragmatic approach and proposes that the 1949 Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols I and II, outmoded and seemingly inapplicable though they are in some respects, offer the most thorough, humane, realistic and readily available option for determining how to treat and …

Detention Under The Law Of Armed Conflict, Chris Jenks

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Despite recent hard-earned experience during international and non-international armed conflicts in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, and in peacekeeping missions around the world, the international community continues to struggle practically and conceptually with detention of belligerents. The struggle includes questions ranging from when individuals may be detained and for how long, to determining the applicable legal regime. While this myriad of issues is vexing, they are neither as new, nor the applicable law as lacking, as has been argued.

This chapter takes a pragmatic approach to detention and suggests that the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1977 Additional Protocols, outmoded …