A/HRC/7/12/Add.2 page 19 77. Mandatory detention and deportation policy, therefore, has significant effects on United States citizens and the children of permanent residents, and other family members. Families consistently bear many of the psychological, geographic, economic, and emotional costs of detention and deportation. 78. Immigration laws are known for being particularly complex. It may take a non-citizen subject to mandatory detention months and sometimes years to ultimately prove that he or she was not deportable. 79. In one case a lawful permanent resident of the United States was detained for approximately three and a half years, subject to mandatory detention, for offences that the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ultimately found not to constitute deportable offences. Three and a half years after being placed in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security and charged as having been convicted of an aggravated felony, this person was released by the Department, as it was clear that nothing in his case made him removable and that removal proceedings would therefore be terminated. 80. The Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy Act of 2007 (the STRIVE Act),11 introduced by Congress on 22 March 2007, is an example of recently proposed legislation that would further expand mandatory detention and indefinite immigration detention, and was an attempt to create comprehensive immigration reform through policy. It required that the Department of Homeland Security significantly increase the number of facilities for the detention of non-citizens, adding a minimum of 20 detention facilities with the capacity to detain an additional 20,000 non-citizens. 81. The STRIVE Act would have essentially overruled the limitations on indefinite detention outlined by the United States Supreme Court in Zadvydas v. Davis12 by specifically authorizing the Department of Homeland Security to indefinitely detain certain non-citizens who have been ordered removed, even when their removal is not reasonably foreseeable. The STRIVE Act would also have increased the number of people subject to mandatory detention by further expanding the kinds of crimes that constitute an aggravated felony and providing the basis for such detention. During the Special Rapporteur’s mission to the United States the bill died in the Congressional Subcommittee on 5 May 2007 as it did not come to a vote. 82. Despite efforts by activists, community members, lawyers, and other advocates to repair the significant damage resulting from the legislation introduced in 1996, the legislation and its effects have not been reversed nor mitigated. Moreover, at both state and federal levels, the anti-immigrant climate has resulted in legislation that leads to increased mandatory detention of non-citizens even before they are in Department of Homeland Security custody. 83. For example, in November 2006, Arizona voters approved Proposition 100, which became effective on 7 December 2006 upon its codification in Arizona Revised Statutes §13-3961. That 11 H.R. 1645. 12 See paragraph 40 above.