By Casey, guest contributor.

I don’t know how I slept on this one. Last month, the Obama administration announced plans to begin housing some non-criminal immigrant detainees in converted motels and nursing homes. Housing detainees in motels instead of jails as they await deportation isn’t exactly what immigration reform advocates had in mind when they voted for “change.”

Nonetheless, this planned change is a flashlight in the dark for immigrants facing deportation. Since 2003, 104 immigrants have died in federal detention centers. Since September 11, unauthorized immigrants awaiting deportation have been placed in detention, straining a system that was unequipped to handle what now stands at 32,000 immigrant detainees. What has been ICE’s response to the facility deaths? In a press statement, the agency said, “The number of deaths per 100,000 people is dramatically lower in ICE facilities than in U.S. prisons and jails.” However a reporter at the Washington Post says this is misleading because, “detainees tend to be younger and in custody for less time than prisoners.” The paper also created an interactive map of thirty questionable deaths by immigrant detainees, many of whom were men in their 20s and 30s.

Housing immigrant detainees in hotels is part of a larger package of reforms that includes improved medical care and an online locater system for lawyers and relatives to find detainees. Still, it does nothing to address the fact that detaining non-criminal immigrants breaks up families and puts a breadwinner out of work.

For that task, immigrant advocates are still working on Obama to make good on his policy promise to enact a “system that allows undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens.” But the back of the line is awful long. Even well-connected immigrants with college degrees and money to spend on lawyers face a wait of 11 to 16 years to become citizens, to say nothing of the fate that awaits those with even less resources.

Casey  is a freelance writer in Alabama and contributor to Cockroach People.

photos: LA Times, Vivir Latino