What is federal immigration detention?
Immigrants who have been placed in removal proceedings (also called deportation hearings) are frequently held in federal immigration detention while their deportation hearings continue. Their detention is not a sentence for a crime, but a means of insuring that they attend deportation hearings and, if they are ordered deported, that they can be physically removed from the country. Detention ends when an immigrant either wins his or her case and is released, or when the immigrant is deported. There are some individuals whose detention is longer, including those who have been ordered deported but whose country of origin will not accept people deported from the United States (for example, generally speaking, Iran and Cuba), and also including people whose cases have been administratively closed by a Judge but who Immigration declines to release (usually people with mental health problems). For more information about long-term detention, see: U.S. Supreme Court Decision re Indefinite Deten
