Immigrants
In Detention
By William Fisher
09 February, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Suspected
illegal immigrants held in detention by the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security are failing to receive timely medical treatment and adequate
food, being subjected to frequent sexual harassment, and having their
access to lawyers, relatives and immigration authorities improperly
limited.
These are among the findings
of the department’s inspector general, based on an audit of the
U.S.-owned and operated Krome Service Processing Center in Miami, a
contract Corrections Corporation of America facility in San Diego, and
local jails and prisons in Berks County, Pa., and Hudson and Passaic
counties, N.J.
But critics of the agency
called the report disappointing, contending that it watered down recommendations
and ignored the most serious allegations of abuse collected since June
2004, which they said included physical beatings, medical neglect, food
shortages and mixing of illegal immigrants in administrative custody
with criminals.
Mark Dow, author of “American
Gulag,” a scathing expose of immigrant detention facilities, goes
further. He told us that the Inspector General’s report “has
helped ensure that, for now, the mistreatment will continue.”
He contends the reason is
that the IG recommends that the DHS agency responsible for the detention
of immigrants, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE)
police itself.
“That is telling the
agency responsible for the mistreatment of its prisoners, and whose
own inspections are deficient, ‘ensure that periodic oversight
and inspection procedures are in place to address compliance with the
Detention Standards’. The (IG’s) report neglects to mention
that ICE has refused to promulgate its detention standards as regulations
because they would then be, at least theoretically, legally enforceable”,
he says.
He adds: “The bottom
line is that ‘auditing’ without truly independent enforcement
is meaningless.”
His view is echoed by Mary
Shaw of Amnesty International, USA. She told us, “While the U.S.
immigration system has always had its faults, it has become much worse
since the attacks of 9/11. Many of the people who enter this country
are fleeing persecution in other countries. They come here to seek asylum.
We must not confuse these victims seeking refuge with those who would
enter this country to do us harm. The U.S. has every right to protect
its borders. However, immigration policies must not make it harder for
victims of human rights violations to find protection in the United
States. We need to honor our country’s commitment to protecting
the persecuted.”
In response to the IG’s
report, more than a dozen national organizations have filed a petition
with the DHS to create enforceable regulations governing detention standards.
If the federal government agrees to the request, DHS will promulgate
binding standards for the safety, health, and conditions for thousands
of detainees around the country.
These advocates believe DHS
regulations governing detention standards will ensure effective protection
of detainees’ human rights. “Today’s petition highlights
our unconscionable detention system. The reality is that county governments
vie for lucrative contracts with the federal government to warehouse
non-citizens without any binding standards of care.”
The signatories included
the American Friends Service Committee Immigrant Rights Program, the
American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, the Center for Constitutional
Rights, and the Seton Hall University Law Center for Social Justice.
Among the most significant
issues raised in the IG’s report was that detainees face significant
hurdles when attempting to make complaints about their conditions of
confinement. It further points to the current ineffectiveness of ICE’s
own annual inspections of detention facilities. “The report exposes
gaping holes in the protection of detainee rights. We cannot trust the
jail officials to address detainees’ concerns, and we cannot trust
ICE to effectively review the jails’ practices.
Many of the detention centers
for immigrants have been privatized and are being run by such companies
as the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut. In 1999,
the feds farmed out less than three percent of beds; but seven years
later, the number had reached almost one in five.
The boom in privatized prisons
began shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when
the Department of Justice rounded up thousands of “Middle Eastern-looking”
immigrants and detained many of them for months, abusing many, treating
them as criminals, and denying them access to lawyers.
A 2003 report by the DHS
Inspector General forcefully condemned the treatment of immigrants inside
various jails in its report, “The September 11 Detainees: A Review
of the Treatment of Aliens Held on Immigration Charges in Connection
with the Investigation of the September 11 Attacks.” Infractions
included routine abuse of basic prisoner rights, mental and physical
abuse, denial of health care and medical treatment, prison overcrowding,
and a lack of working showers, and toilets.
None of those held were ever
charged with a terror-related crime. Some were deported for immigration
violations.
Privatized detention facilities
have grown apace amid the clamor for a crackdown on alleged undocumented
immigrants. Contracts for these new jails flowed to the private prison
industry despite many previous allegations of mismanagement and scandal.
Detainee advocates accuse
prison companies of cutting corners in training guards and in providing
basic services. The government has done little to regulate prison administration,
but has sanctioned exploitive labor practices and rip-off telephone
costs for inmates.
For example, a former detainee
in a CCA facility in San Diego testified that “The guards would
scream and shout at us as if we were little kids. If we would ask them
to stop, they would threaten to lock us down for a few days, which would
happen constantly. Three people being locked in a two-man cell, in a
12 x 7 room. This happened a lot; sometimes as punishment for the actions
of one or two inmates, the other 105–115 detainees would suffer.”
“Other times”
he said, “It seemed ‘just because.’ A lot of the detainees
would be missing money on their accounts, which I was recently told
by a detainee who keeps in contact with me was being stolen by the staff,
according to [an] OIG investigation. We would get underserved during
meal times. When we complained to the unit manager she would say that
we were given the right amounts, which in my opinion is the appropriate
portion for a ten or eleven year old. Some of the guards and staff would
curse at us. They would purposely lower the televisions so we couldn’t
hear them, just to mess with us. During our free time they would take
their time turning on the phones so we wouldn’t be able to call
our families. Just to be cruel.”
For the second quarter of
2005, CCA announced that its revenue had increased three percent over
the previous year, for a total of almost $300 million. CCA calculates
that it expenditure of $28.89 per inmate, per day allows it to make
a daily profit of $50.26 per inmate.
Meanwhile, on July 1, 2005,
the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement awarded CCA contracts
to continue running the 300-bed Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey
and the 1,216-bed San Diego Correctional Facility. Both of these contracts
are for three years with five three-year renewal options. In 2005 CCA
also secured new prison contracts with the Kentucky Department of Corrections,
the state of Kansas, and the Florida Department of Management Services.
Wackenhut has also shared
in the private prison boom. Before 2001, Wackenhut, like CCA, had been
at the center of all manner of inmate-abuse scandals: Guards were caught
having sex with underage inmates, there were routine reports of extreme
mistreatment of inmates, and there was even a disproportionately high
level of deaths in their facilities.
After a CBS Television report exposed the repeated rape of a 14-year-old
girl at a Wackenhut juvenile jail and two guards were found guilty,
its CEO said, “It’s a tough business. The people in prison
are not Sunday-school children.” Still more worrying was Wackenhut’s
record with inmate-on-inmate killings. In 1998–99 alone, Wackenhut’s
New Mexico facilities had a death rate of one murder for every 400 prisoners.
For the same period in all U.S. prisons, the rate was about one in 22,000.
Wackenhut's most public response
was to change its name to the GEO Group. It continues to win lucrative
government contracts.
The corrections industry
has routinely argued that privatizing prisons dramatically lowers costs.
A 1996 U.S. General Accounting Office report concluded, however, that
there was no clear evidence supporting this contention. Prison companies
do have clear advantages over other corporations: They are able to save
large amounts of money on labor practices that would illegal under any
other circumstances. Inmate jobs in all prisons pay a pittance, but
immigrant prisons are even worse. Because DHS guidelines mandate that
non-citizen prisoners cannot earn more than $1 per day, the company
gets janitors, maintenance workers, cleaners, launderers, kitchen staff,
sewers and grounds keepers at almost no cost.
Author Mark Dow says, “It
isn't politically popular to speak up for alien inmates, but Congress
has a responsibility to establish independent oversight of the ICE detention
system. Congress should hold hearings on ICE detention - with meaningful
follow-up.” It should “Create a statutory-based ombudsman's
office or independent oversight body outside the Department of Homeland
Security. It must have subpoena power as well as authorization to make
unannounced inspections of all facilities holding ICE detainees.”
“Eventually, the very
nature of our immigration detention system must be
reexamined. We take it as
a given that a visa violator, or an asylum seeker, or a thirty-year
lawful resident who has paid taxes but committed a non-violent misdemeanor
decades ago, should be strip-searched, dressed in a prison jumpsuit,
and denied contact with her children.”
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