December 29, 2008	Monday	Zilhaj 30, 1429

ELIZABETH (USA): Dec 28: US Immigration and Customs enforcement defends its sprawling system of detention centres as a necessary part of its homeland security mission “to ensure a safer, more secure America.”

“We are a country that cares about people but first we care about our own people and that they know who is here and why,” said ICE spokeswoman Pat Reilly.

But a broad coalition of human rights groups criticise a system that indefinitely incarcerates people who have committed no crimes, and the groups argue, inflicts lasting psychological damage on top of traumas many have already experienced. They also raise questions about the legality of some ICE policies and the accountability of programs that cost billions of taxpayer dollars and affect millions of lives.

“It really is the dark side of American justice,” said David Leopold of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “We have managed to dehumanise our non-citizens in a way that reminds me of how the Nuremberg laws demonised Jews.”

Nonetheless, there are many who support the system. “Detention is not for the convenience of the detainee, so it’s too bad if it’s not what they had in mind,” said Steven Camarota of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “Most in detention are not legitimately in this country and have no right, under our rules and laws, to remain here.”

According to ICE, the average length of detention is five or six weeks, but many immigrants spend months or years in detention centres and county jails, with few of the resources — or safeguards — of regular inmates. They are not entitled to a lawyer or a jury trial, there is no date set for release and many are not entitled to bond.

“We are supposed to be the beacon of freedom for the world,” said Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren. “And yet the first thing that happens to people fleeing persecution is that we further traumatize them by shackling them and putting them in jail. It’s shameful and wrong.”

Lofgren, an immigration lawyer, chairs the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law. Last summer she chaired congressional hearings on the medical care of detainees and said she was horrified at what she heard.

“There are some instances in which I think ICE is acting in violation of the law,” Lofgren said, “not to mention in violation of basic humanity, commonsense and common decency.”

Lofgren cited some highly publicised cases of detainees dying in custody and the difficulties of their families in obtaining information. Just this month, immigration officials removed 153 detainees from a Rhode Island detention centre following the late-stage cancer death of a 34-year-old Chinese computer engineer who was being held for overstaying a visa.

Lofgren also criticised the sudden transfer of detainees from one facility to another — often to other states — without notifying families or attorneys. “I have had lawyers wringing their hands in my office because they couldn’t find their clients,” she said.

“People just disappear in the system all the time,” said Andrea Black of Detention Watch Network, a coalition of about 100 organizations that focus on immigration detention and deportation issues. “And they are the ones we know about, with lawyers.”

At the 300-bed detention centre in Elizabeth, New Jersey, ICE Field Office Director Scott Weber said transfers are purely a matter of available bed space and are not done for punitive reasons. He pointed out that detainees themselves can call family and friends to tell them of their whereabouts.

Weber refused to directly answer questions about other policies at Elizabeth — such as why spouses are allowed no physical contact, why detainees must wear prison uniforms and why they receive no access to fresh air other than an hour a day in a room with an open skylight.

Instead, like other ICE officials in Washington and New Jersey, Weber consistently referred to a series of national detention “standards” adopted in 2000 in response to widespread criticism and legal challenges concerning conditions. Those standards are not legally binding or enforceable.

On a recent tour of Elizabeth, members of the media saw some women detainees at a handful of computer terminals and some men reading in a small room marked “library.” But ICE refused permission to talk with the detainees. Some former detainees say access to books and computers was haphazard, and is not offered on a daily basis, as ICE stated.

ICE has an annual budget of nearly $5 billion a year. ICE officials in Washington and New Jersey refused repeated requests to say how much goes to Corrections Corporation of America, the private prison contractor that runs many detention centres, including Elizabeth.

All Weber would disclose was that it costs $175 a day per detainee at Elizabeth. In contrast, it costs about $12 a day to monitor a detainee on parole.

CCA spokeswoman Louise Grant referred all queries back to ICE, saying “We follow ICE standards. They are our customer.”

In March 2008 Jorge Bustamante, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Human Rights of Migrants, issued a stinging report on US immigration policies, saying they violated human rights and international law. The report — written after Bustamante was turned away from two of the three detention facilities he attempted to visit — called for an end to mandatory detention, greater detainee access to legal counsel and codifying detention standards into law. Bustamante also deplored what he called the worsening xenophobia and racism toward immigrants since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Those attacks ushered in the most recent crackdown on immigrants by giving immigration authorities new powers to detain people indefinitely, and by encouraging an aggressive new enforcement strategy — Operation Endgame — which calls for the removal of all deportable aliens by 2012. The program targets, among others, people who have been living in the US for years, often with jobs, families and community ties. Swept up in raids for visa violations and other administrative wrongdoings, they wind up in detention before being deported.

In Elizabeth, ICE Field Director Weber said his agency didn’t have a lot of options. “We are not heartless or without compassion,” he said. “We are enforcing the laws on the books.”—AP