New report finds immigrant detainee rights are routinely violated

LOS ANGELES, Calif. - Denied access to loved ones, lawyers and basic necessities, men and women within the nation's immigration detention system find their fundamental rights routinely and systematically violated, according to a report released on July 28, 2009 by the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), the ACLU of Southern California and the international law firm of Holland & Knight, LLP.

The first nationwide comprehensive report of its kind, "A Broken System: Confidential Reports Reveal Failures in U.S. Detention Centers," sheds new light on the conditions suffered by hundreds of thousands around the country and offers policymakers specific recommendations."Though the detainees are accused of civil immigration charges, there is nothing 'civil' about our detention centers," said Karen Tumlin, co-author of the report and a staff attorney at NILC. Linton Joaquin, co-author and general counsel at NILC, added, "The government's own standards for immigration detention are routinely violated. Such a flagrant disregard for this country's values for fairness and justice on behalf of the United States government is appalling."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) claims to conduct a formal review of each detention facility annually, but the report shows that such reviews carry little enforcement weight, as many of the detention facilities fail to rectify problems identified by ICE's own inspectors. Even more troubling, is that independent reviews by the American Bar Association (ABA) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) of the same facilities often found a greater number and more severe violations in detention centers than was reported by ICE.

For instance, the ABA and UNHCR reviewers found detainees were retaliated against or punished more severely than permitted for minor infractions. ICE reviewers had overlooked these serious violations.Ranjana Natarajan, report co-author and former ACLU/ SC attorney said, "At every level, federal, state and local jails and prisons have legal and binding rules they must abide. But in immigration detention, the government refuses to adopt binding rules. The result is utter disregard for basic humane conditions. Because we don't have rules, we don't have accountability."In the Kenosha County Detention Center, for example, a UNHCR report found that while men were allowed two daily hours of recreation, women in the same facility received none. ICE inspectors rated that same facility "acceptable" the following year, even though women were still being denied access to recreation facilities.

"A Broken System" is based on an analysis of hundreds of ICE, ABA and UNHCR detention facility review reports from 2001 through 2005, which had been withheld from the public and only obtained through discovery in litigation. It is the most comprehensive analysis of its kind, in spite of the fact that the government withheld a significant number of documents it was ordered to produce. As a result, the violations outlined in the report represent only a fraction of violations that actually occurred, but could not be documented. Christopher Nugent, pro bono senior counsel at Holland & Knight, said, "Though this report provides the most complete picture the public has of this massive system, it is still a sketch, adding "[W]e have [however] made specific policy recommendations to encourage those with the power to change the system to do so."

Key among them is the proposal that ICE revise its standards for immigration detention to make them judicially enforceable. The report also determines that, given the gross abuses, further expansion of the immigrant detention system should be stopped, and more use should be made of humane alternatives to detention.

The findings from "A Broken System" are particularly timely, as they are released in the wake of a DHS decision to reject the long-standing request of NGOs and the ABA for regulations that would require immigration detention facilities to adhere to basic standards of care.

This agency statement responds to a petition for rulemaking submitted in January 2007 by dozens of immigrant detainees and advocacy groups in the wake of public reports detailing the humanitarian crisis in the facilities. The name of the case involved in the petition is Families for Freedom v. Napolitano, No. 08-CIV-4056 (DC).