Detainee Death

The New York Times has created an excellent video relating the story of Boubacar Bah who died in the at an Immigration Detention Center:

Word spread quickly inside the windowless walls of the Elizabeth Detention Center, an immigration jail in New Jersey: A detainee had fallen, injured his head and become incoherent. Guards had put him in solitary confinement, and late that night, an ambulance had taken him away more dead than alive.

But outside, for five days, no official notified the family of the detainee, Boubacar Bah, a 52-year-old tailor from Guinea who had overstayed a tourist visa. When frantic relatives located him at University Hospital in Newark on Feb. 5, 2007, he was in a coma after emergency surgery for a skull fracture and multiple brain hemorrhages. He died there four months later without ever waking up, leaving family members on two continents trying to find out why.

Mr. Bah’s name is one of 66 on a government list of deaths that occurred in immigration custody from January 2004 to November 2007, when nearly a million people passed through.

Watch the video.

American Purgatory

A new project has been launched to take a detailed look at the political asylum system since 9/11. This website offers commentary from all sides, an audio of interviews, and a list of credible resources:

American Purgatory is a rare look into the asylum process from start to finish through the eyes of an asylum applicant. The documentary takes listeners into the process of applying for asylum through the eyes of "H", an asylum seeker from a former Soviet country who came to New York in 2005.

H was represented by lawyers from a large New York law firm that took on his case pro bono (free of charge). Very few asylum seekers are lucky enough to have lawyers. H goes through the process with their help, but throughout, he struggles to pay his rent and support himself without financial assistance or the legal right to work.

H's journey is surrounded by stories from others who have been through the asylum process—some without lawyers, some who were in detention—along with people involved in the system, including asylum officers, lawyers, advocates and critics, as well as the US immigration service and Homeland Security.

Through the voices of asylum seekers, asylum advocates and those responsible for enforcing U.S. asylum laws, American Purgatory explores the contradictions of a process that is there to protect people in distress, but also has to vet fraudulent applications and infiltration by terrorists.

Visit the website.

Op-ed in San Diego Union Tribune

Detaining asylum-seekers and torture victims

By William J. Aceves
June 18, 2008

For a country founded by immigrants fleeing religious persecution, the United States is now implementing a policy on political asylum that mocks our noble history. This policy has incarcerated thousands of innocent individuals whose only offense was to suffer persecution abroad and then seek refuge in the United States. It is a policy that few Americans see but many innocents suffer.

Under U.S. law, individuals who have been persecuted because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group may apply for political asylum. To be eligible for asylum, individuals must submit an application and supporting documentation to the Department of Homeland Security. These applications are then reviewed by immigration officials. If the application is granted, asylum-seekers are allowed to remain in the United States, apply for work authorization and eventually seek citizenship. For decades, this policy has offered comfort and protection to countless refugees, from political dissidents in Africa to religious minorities in Asia.

In the 1990s, U.S. immigration policies became increasingly restrictive toward asylum-seekers. Since 2001, these policies have become even more Draconian. In a tragic turn, individuals fleeing persecution are now regularly imprisoned in county jails, federal detention centers and private facilities while U.S. immigration officials process their applications.

Our treatment of these immigrants is not an American narrative our country should seek to write. Individuals who have neither violated the law nor been charged with a crime have languished in detention centers for months or even years. Families are often torn apart, and children have been separated from their parents.

Asylum-seekers are routinely transferred to detention centers far from relatives. In some facilities, visitors are not even allowed to touch detainees, and they are separated by Plexiglas and forced to communicate by telephone.

The conditions of detention are equally troubling. Asylum-seekers are regularly detained in facilities with convicted criminals. They are forced to undergo invasive searches and daily head counts. Even children are subjected to these security measures. Living conditions often fall well below U.S. and international standards. Medical treatment is spotty, and injuries may go untreated. Psychological care is seldom provided.

The plight of torture victims is particularly troubling. It is no surprise that many asylum-seekers are also victims of torture. But these victims are not receiving needed counseling while in detention. Studies have found high rates of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder among detained asylum-seekers. And the psychological harm worsens as the length of detention increases. Even the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has criticized this policy and the conditions of detention, arguing that they create a serious risk of psychological harm to asylum-seekers.

Detention of asylum-seekers should only be used as a last resort, particularly since alternative programs exist. Individuals whose asylum applications are pending can be monitored in numerous ways, each of which is more humane and less costly than current detention policies. Individuals can be required to post bond or make regular visits to immigration officials. If there are unique concerns, electronic monitoring is a less invasive method.

Earlier this year, the U.N. special rapporteur on migrants, who visited San Diego in 2007, expressed concerns about the overuse of immigration detention in the United States. Indeed, he argued that the “availability of effective alternatives renders the increasing reliance on detention as an immigration enforcement mechanism unnecessary.”

San Diego County currently maintains one private detention facility that houses about 700 immigration detainees, many of them asylum-seekers. The San Diego Correctional Facility in Otay Mesa has been denounced by human rights organizations for its treatment of detainees. Lawyers and health care professionals have complained that placing their clients in these facilities undermines their efforts to provide quality and effective assistance. The San Diego facility has been criticized by the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security. It also has been the subject of a federal lawsuit alleging degrading conditions. This lawsuit seeks to ensure that the conditions of confinement are humane and comply with all appropriate constitutional and statutory safeguards. It is troubling, therefore, to consider that a second detention facility, which would house nearly 3,000 immigrants, is now in the planning stages in San Diego.

The cost of detaining one asylum-seeker at the San Diego Correctional Facility is estimated to be $89.50 per day, though total costs are undoubtedly higher. But the cost to these detainees, who have done nothing wrong, is immeasurable. When individuals seek refuge in our country, we should offer them protection, not prison bars.

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Aceves is a professor of law and associate dean for academic affairs at California Western School of Law in San Diego.

Careless Detention Series

The Washington Post's Dana Priest and Amy Goldstein presented an in-depth look at immigration detention in the U.S. The report is thorough and the information is presented through pictures, stories, and video.

I highly encourage you to take a look at the 4 part series. Because of our location, at an international land crossing, many of our clients go through the process of detentions. This report confirms their stories of their time in U.S. detention facilities.

The last part of the series focused on deportation:

The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.

The government's forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the "pre-flight cocktail," as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane.

Read the whole story here.

60 Minutes Looks at Immigration Detention

Immigration Detention Challenged

The New York Times reports that immigrants held in detention while fighting deportation filed a federal suit against the Department of Homeland Security demanding regulations be applied to the facilities, here is the whole story:

Immigrants who spent time in detention while fighting deportation filed a federal suit on Wednesday against Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, demanding that the agency issue legally enforceable regulations for its detention centers.

No enforceable standards now exist for the immigrant detention system, a rapidly growing conglomeration of county jails, federal centers and privately run prisons across the country.

The lawsuit, filed by the immigrants and their advocates in United States District Court in Manhattan, contends that the lack of such regulations puts hundreds of thousands of people a year in substandard and inconsistent conditions while the government decides whether to deport them, leaving them subject to inadequate medical care and abuse.

The suit is based on the Administrative Procedures Act, which allows courts to force agencies to respond to rulemaking petitions. In January 2007, the plaintiffs filed a petition requesting that Homeland Security make its detention standards enforceable, but have received no response.

Homeland Security is one of the largest jailers in the world, “but it behaves like a lawless local sheriff,” said Paromita Shah, associate director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, one of the plaintiffs in the suit.

Other plaintiffs include Families for Freedom, a New York-based advocacy group for immigrant detainees; Rafiu Abimbola, a Nigerian who was detained for more than six years while seeking asylum; and Camal Marchabeyoglu, now a legal permanent resident living in Corona, Calif.

“The refusal to adopt comprehensive, binding regulations has contributed to a system in which thousands of immigration detainees are routinely denied necessary medical care, visitation, legal materials or functioning telephones,” Ms. Shah said.

Charles S. Miller, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, said the agency had not yet seen the lawsuit and could not comment.

In the past, officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which oversees immigration detention within Homeland Security, said the system was held to general detention standards adopted in 1998 and 2000, through provisions in contracts with counties, private companies and other detention providers, and through annual inspections.

The agency “is fully committed to providing safe, secure and human conditions for individuals in our custody,” said Michael Keegan, a spokesman.

The lawsuit contends that those standards are incomplete, do not apply to detained immigrants in all facilities and are not enforceable when they do apply. It cites the findings of Homeland Security’s own inspector general after an audit of five detention centers in 2006, including one in San Diego run by Corrections Corporation of America; the Passaic County and Hudson County jails in New Jersey; the federal government’s Krome center in Miami; and the Berks County Prison in Leesport, Pa.

The audit found all five out of compliance with general standards on health care, disciplinary procedures and access to legal materials. But all five had been rated “acceptable” in the immigration enforcement agency’s annual reviews.

"The Visitor"

Last night we had the privilege of attending an advanced screening of "The Visitor", a new movie written and directed by Tom McCarthy ("The Station Agent").

The film focuses on Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins), a 60's something widower professor, who seemed to be totally unconnected with life and others. That is until he takes a trip to New York City to find two undocumented immigrants living in his apartment, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), a drummer from Syria, and Zainab (Danai Gurira), his Senegalese girlfriend.

It is in this meeting that Walter's life is changed. Tarek begins to teach him the drum and Walter seems to have found joy again. That is until Tarek is arrested in the subway and taken to a detention center.

And this begins the sad story of detention centers in the U.S. "The Visitor" does an excellent job of showing the realities of our immigration system and the long and painful process many asylum seekers endure to come to America.

This film does an incredible job of revealing to us the importance of the global community. The lyrical beauty of the films script and character development make it a pleasure to watch.
If I have not convinced you to see this excellent movie, here are some people that agree with me.
The New York Times Review

The Salon Review

Watch the Preview

To find out more about immigrant detention centers in America, please visit our friends the Detention Watch Network.