Hotels eyed as immigrant detention centers

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 (UPI) -- U.S. homeland security officials say they are considering converting hotels and nursing homes into immigrant detention centers.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in an interview published in Tuesday's New York Times that the Obama administration is weighing such moves as part of an effort to reinvent the oft-criticized detention system that sends most people accused of entering the country illegally to local jails or private prisons.

"The paradigm was wrong," Napolitano told the newspaper, noting the patchwork system of rented jail space -- which has more than tripled in size since 1995 -- is more restrictive and expensive than necessary to house the largely non-violent offenders. "Serious felons deserve to be in the prison model, but there are others. There are women. There are children."

Napolitano told the Times that the goal is "to make immigration detention more cohesive, accountable and relevant to the entire spectrum of detainees we are dealing with."

The secretary's comments came as DHS was preparing to release a long-delayed report on immigration detention by Dora Schriro, who quit the department last month to become the corrections commissioner in New York City.