News Update - July 29, 2009
By Alan Lee, Esq.†‡
An Expose on Human Rights Violations in Immigration Detention
Centers
A new publication entitled “A Broken System: Confidential Reports
Reveal Failures in U.S. Detention Centers,” released by the
National Immigration Law Center (NILC), the ACLU of South California
and the international law firm of Holland & Knight exposes the
unsatisfactory conditions of United States immigrant detention centers.
According to the publication, immigrant detainee rights are routinely
and systematically violated each day. Co-author of the report, Karen
Tumlin states “These centers, where people are detained for
months and often years at a time, often fail to provide people with
their fundamental rights: access to loved ones, the basic materials
needed to research and prepare their cases, or even a simple explanation
of their rights while within the immigrant detention center.”
Immigration detainees were found to be punished more severely than
allowed for some rule infractions. Furthermore, gender equality is
not enforced. It was found that while men were allowed two hours of
recreation per day, women were denied rights to recreation. Ranjana
Natarajan, co-author of this expose blames the rights violations on
the system the detention centers have in place. He states that while
jails and prisons at all levels have legal and binding rules they
must abide by, the government refuses to approve binding rules for
immigrant detention centers. Without written rules in place, rights
to satisfactory conditions are never a guarantee in the first place.
The link to “A Broken System” is listed: www.nilc.org/immlawpolicy/arrestdet/A-Broken-System-2009-07.pdf.
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