In Our Community: Immigration News

You've probably been steeped already in the news coverage of the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street. Tear yourself away for a moment (I know, it's hard to compete with the Cookie Monster) and take the time to read about the news on immigration from Monday, November 2 to Monday, November 9.

People from all over the country continue to speak out in unison, saying that the 287(g) program has got to go. This program, which deputizes local police officers to enforce immigration laws, has caused widespread racial and religious profiling. It terrorizes communities by allowing the police to arrest people they suspect of being undocumented immigrants, with little oversight or training. In Tennessee, Jan Snider has written an excellent op-ed on how the 287(g) program tears apart families. This program is broken beyond repair and must be terminated in order to restore trust between police officers and the communities they are charged to protect.

Five men from New York who were detained, abused, and deported just after the attacks of September 11, 2001 have just settled their case with the U.S. government to the tune of $1.26 million. These men were caught up in post-9/11 sweeps that relied primarily on racial and religious profiling and targeted Arab, Muslim, and South Asian men. They had no terrorist ties. They were then abused while in detention - they were beaten, strip-searched, deprived of sleep, and more - and then deported. We commend the Center for Constitutional Rights for assisting these men with a class action lawsuit to expose the human rights violations that the attacks of September 11, 2001 engendered.

Private prison corporations continue to profit off of detaining immigrants who are in deportation proceedings. More than 57% of the immigrants detained by the Department of Homeland Security are held in private prisons. The GEO Group is adding 1,100 beds to its immigration detention facility in Aurora, CO. CCA is trying to get a contract with ICE to build a new 2,200-bed detention center in Los Angeles. These corporations operate for profit, with little oversight of their prison guards and even less concern about the conditions in their detention centers. Privatizing the immigration detention system is not a workable solution to the immigration dilemma. The Department of Homeland Security should work to improve oversight and develop nationwide alternatives to detention for immigrants. Check out our blog series Stories from Detention for more information.

When I was scanning the blogs this week, I came across a valuable article offering four lessons that should encourage lawmakers to keep immigration reform on the Congressional agenda. As the House passes the health care reform bill and the Senate continues to debate, the political will to work on immigration reform may be dissipating. If comprehensive immigration reform is to become a reality during this Congress, it is important to encourage your Members of Congress to keep immigration reform on the agenda. This is not merely a question of fixing a broken immigration system - it is an issue of life and death for many of the immigrants waiting in long visa backlogs or detained in U.S. prisons.

Inside the Walls: Detention Conditions

Stories from Detention - Week 4

Imagine that you are on your way to pick your son up at school and you run a red light. A police officer pulls you over and arrests you because he suspects that you are an undocumented immigrant. After processing, you are held in a local prison. The prison is overcrowded so, two days later, you are put in leg and belly chains and transferred to an immigration detention facility in a remote location in rural Texas. What do you do?

You don't know whether your son is safe. Your visa proving you are legally permitted to live in the United States is back at home in the drawer. Your blood pressure medication, which you need to take every day, is on the table at home too. You only have the $27 in your pocket when you were arrested. You are afraid that you will be deported.

Many of the 440,000 people who will be detained in the immigration detention system this year face situations similar to this one. They are caught up in a system that has weak guidelines and little oversight. Even their basic needs often go unmet.

The conditions in many immigration detention facilities are terrible. Detainees do not receive adequate health care, have trouble contacting their families, and are frequently transferred - without warning - to detention centers far away from their homes. In today's video clip, we will learn the story of a young immigrant woman who was placed in seven detention centers over three years.



Even though Agatha Joseph's daughter is a green card holder, she was detained for a minor offense on her record for which she had already paid a fine. In the last post in this series, we discussed how mandatory detention policies punish immigrants retroactively and disproportionately for minor crimes they have committed in the past.

This young woman was transferred to seven different facilities in three years. Such transfers are common and make it extremely difficult for immigrant detainees to stay in touch with their families and their lawyers. In addition, guards sometimes threaten to transfer detainees to another facility if they complain about conditions.

Frequent transfers also complicate medical treatment. Immigrant detainees find it very difficult to get any medical care at all, much less timely care for any illnesses or injuries. In addition, immigrant detainees who have experienced torture, abuse, or other trauma often also need mental health care. These detainees may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. They are actually at risk of re-traumatization while in detention, since the conditions in detention may remind them strongly of their past traumatic experiences.

Immigrant detainees face a number of other unreasonable restrictions while in detention, many of which amount to violations of human and civil rights. Just to give you a sense of the range of violations…

• Over 57% of immigrant detainees are held in county or city prisons where they are mixed in with the local prison population. They are not adequately protected against physical, verbal, or sexual abuse. Many of these facilities are overcrowded as well.

• In many facilities, immigrant detainees lack access to fresh air and exercise. Some facilities do not allow detainees to spend any time outside. Some only permit exercise two or four days a week while others schedule exercise at unreasonable hours of the day.

• Many immigrant detainees lack access to religious services, pastoral care, and a diet in keeping with their religious practices. In one detention center, detainees observing Ramadan had fasted during the day and requested hot water in the evening with which to make soup to break their fast. The guards refused and, when the detainees objected, the guards threatened to put them in solitary confinement if they continued to complain.

• Finally, and perhaps most importantly, 84% of immigrant detainees are not represented by a lawyer. As they prepare to argue their own cases, they lack access to necessary resources and materials. Detainees rely on the facility's telephones in order to contact family members, law offices, and consulates. However, they may be required to wait as 40 or 50 detainees share 2 or 3 phones. In addition, they are unable to make free calls to pro bono legal services. The detention facilities' law libraries do not often have immigration-related legal materials in appropriate languages and translation and interpretation services are nearly non-existent. Legal orientation programs are rare. In sum, immigrant detainees are often reliant on ICE officers for information about their case - a clear conflict of interests.

The conditions in immigration detention centers are abysmal by nearly any standard. By expressing your concerns on the conditions in these facilities, you can urge Congress and the Obama administration to take three steps to fix this broken system.

First, you can urge ICE to provide detainees with adequate medical treatment including initial medical screenings, primary care and emergency care. This step would avoid needless and preventable detainee deaths.

Second, you can urge Congress to pass legislation on detention standards. In the House, there are two bills on this subject: the Immigration Oversight and Fairness Act and the HELP for Separated Children Act. In the Senate, there are two bills as well: the Strong STANDARDS Act and the Protect Citizens and Residents from Unlawful Detention Act. These bills would create binding, clear, enforceable standards to ensure that the conditions in detention facilities are improved.

Third, you can urge the Department of Homeland Security to create independent oversight of detention facilities. This step would promote accountability and ensure that all immigrant detainees are treated fairly and humanely.

Improving the conditions in detention centers is an important step in fixing the immigration detention system. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately, ICE must no longer detain as many people as it does currently. Stay tuned for more posts in this series that will discuss how to safely and humanely reduce the number of immigrants in detention.

Other posts in this series:

Stories from Detention: Introduction
Rights and Dignity Denied: One Woman's Story
No Human Being is Illegal: Civil Offenses
Searching for Justice: Mandatory Detention
In Need of Protection: Vulnerable Populations
There's a Better Way: Alternatives to Detention

Senate Rejects Amendment on Second-Class System of Justice

Great news! Yesterday at 6:24 PM the Senate voted against an amendment that would have compelled all Guantanamo detainees suspected of participating in the attacks of September 11, 2001 to be tried by military commission. If this amendment had passed, it would have delayed the closing of the Guantanamo prison and would have prevented Guantanamo detainees from being prosecuted fairly in U.S. civilian courts. With a 54-45 vote, the Senate voted against the amendment.

Thank you to those of you who called your Senators yesterday and the day before, for speaking out against military commissions as a second-class system of justice. Thanks to your efforts, Congress and the Obama administration still have the opportunity to shut down the Guantanamo prison, which has become an international symbol of torture and human rights abuses.

Looking for more information? For a news release by the ACLU on this amendment, please click here.

Take Action: Tell Your Senators to Vote No on Graham Amendment!

Your Senators need to hear from you! They will vote tomorrow (Thursday) on an amendment that, if passed, would block access to the most effective and humane courts for criminal prosecutions of Guantanamo detainees.

This amendment favors military commissions, which do not achieve the same standard of justice as federal civilian courts. The amendment, introduced by Senator Graham (SC), would prohibit funding for Guantanamo detainees to be prosecuted in U.S. civilian courts. Detainees would instead be tried by military commissions. However, military commissions are fundamentally flawed. The ACLU has released a press statement calling military commissions a "second class system of justice."

This amendment would needlessly tie the President's hands in determining how to process Guantanamo detainees' cases. President Obama signed an executive order in January 2009 stating that the U.S. government would close the Guantanamo prison within one year. The Graham amendment would likely delay the closing of Guantanamo.

Call your Senators today and tell them to vote NO on the Graham amendment (S.A. 2669) to the Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Act of 2009 (H.R. 2847). By telling your Senators that Guantanamo detainees should be tried in federal civilian courts, not military commissions, you can help to repair the standing of the U.S. as a country committed to human rights and the rule of law. Call your Senators today at (202) 224-3121.

Looking for more information? Click here for a news article on the Graham amendment. Click here for a coalition letter against this amendment signed by prominent human rights organizations.

Congress Considers Restricting Health Care Coverage for Legal Immigrants

Members of Congress in both the House and the Senate continue to debate over how much health care coverage to provide to legal immigrants. It is time for Congress to recognize that health care coverage for legal immigrants would benefit not only immigrants but the entire U.S. population.

Don't believe me? Read Roger Cohen's op-ed from October 4th in the New York Times. Cohen writes, "When it comes to health, we're all in this together. Pooling the risk between everybody is the most efficient way to forge a healthier society."

Take swine flu, for instance. If my neighbor gets vaccinated, I'm a little bit healthier. If half of my neighbors get vaccinated, I'm in even better shape. If all of my neighbors get vaccinated, our whole community benefits.

Fundamentally, by ensuring that our neighbors are able to access health care, we keep ourselves healthier as well. Healthy communities are productive communities.

Legal immigrants cannot wait 5 years (as some lawmakers are recommending) before receiving health care coverage. The U.S. public as a whole cannot afford to wait that long to allow legal immigrants to integrate into the health care system. Preventative care now will pay off tremendously in the long run. In today's New York Times article, Prof. Steven P. Wallace (UCLA) says, "You can either keep those immigrants healthy now, or exclude them and wait until they get really sick, then pay for it down the line."

The United States needs workable solutions for health care reform. It should be common sense to allow legal immigrants in participate in the health insurance exchange and receive subsidized care if they qualify. It's time to choose solutions that allow an inclusive health care reform bill to move forward now.