Miguel Rodriguez Gonzales was in poor health in February 2006 when he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). A legal resident of the U.S., Gonzales had diabetes, chronic heart failure, and kidney disease requiring dialysis three times a week. After being taken into ICE custody in California, he complained about “intense pain all over” and was held in isolation.

In April 2006, a laughing ICE officer repeatedly forced Gonzales to stand up from his wheelchair, and then let him fall each time. Another agent kicked and shoved him. By the time ICE authorities learned of this abuse, Gonzales was in a coma. On April 21, he died at age 43 and an inquiry into his death was closed due to lack of witnesses.

Gonzales is among the 107 detainees who have died in immigrant detention since 2003. The details of Gonzales’ death only came to light as the result of a lengthy investigation by The New York Times.

ICE currently operates a sprawling system of state and local jails, private facilities, and federal detention centers. In September 2009, they had 31,000 detainees in custody. Besides undocumented workers, these numbers include asylum seekers, trafficking victims, and refugees. Nearly all detainees are held in prison-like conditions, although only 11% have committed violent crimes. The great majority were administrative arrests – people slated for deportation because of their illegal status, not a criminal act.

Studies by the General Accounting Office, the Department of Homeland Security and Human Rights Watch have all documented poor conditions in the detention system, ranging from a lack of due process to detainee abuses and deaths. Detainees are regularly denied their rights to healthcare, telephones, and legal advice. Many are transferred across the country, without family notification, often to rural areas. In fact, the states that accept the most detainee transfers are Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. These states constitute the 5^th circuit court, known for its general hostility to non-citizens as well as having the lowest ratio of immigration lawyers relative to the detainee population.

Hispanics should be concerned with the immigration detention system – not only because many of us know someone who is undocumented – but also because Latinos are the most likely group to be swept into the system in error. If ICE believes you are in the country illegally, you can be arrested without a warrant and deported without a hearing. Rennison Castillo of Washington spent eight months in ICE custody despite the fact that he was a citizen and a U.S. Army veteran.

Last fall, the Obama administration announced an overhaul of ICE. The agency plans to focus on removing detainees from the country instead of imprisoning them, with detention ideally being for those who are a flight risk or a threat to their communities. While this is a step in the right direction, it is not enough. There is still no publicly accessible database of detainees, and the Department of Homeland Security has decided against detention standards with penalties for noncompliance. Without such penalties, ICE regulations will continue to carry little weight and detainees will suffer.

It is unacceptable that people are dying terrible deaths in detention. The system needs more openness, outside oversight and true accountability. After all, the Constitution’s 14^th Amendment expressly guarantees equal protection under the law to “all persons” – not just citizens. More than an immigration issue, reforming our dysfunctional detention system is a matter of basic human rights.

RAUL A. REYES has written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today.