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LOS ANGELES –
The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) joined advocates across the
country today in condemning U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) for placing detainees who had been working as human rights
monitors in solitary confinement. Facing deplorable conditions in the
detention facility, the immigrant detainees acted as human rights
monitors, lodged complaints, and declared a hunger strike. The New
Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice has reported that ICE
retaliated by sentencing seven perceived leaders of human rights
monitoring to solitary confinement for up to 60 days each.
“These brave men
should be praised for having the courage to expose the abuses they have
suffered in Basile. Instead, they have been punished and sentenced to
solitary confinement,” said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of
NILC. “Retaliating against human rights monitors in detention is a
shameful practice that must end. DHS should immediately release the
hunger strikers from solitary confinement and allow a delegation of
national leaders to visit the detainees.”
As one of seven
organizations that sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano decrying conditions at the Basile, LA,
immigration detention center, NILC is dismayed
at the administration’s response. Rather than take the violations of
detainees’ rights seriously, DHS has so far not responded to the
detainees’ demands to improve conditions and increase transparency at
the facility.
The detainees have
also asked that both a leadership delegation and Dora Schriro, special
advisor to ICE, visit the facility.
More than sixty
detainees have participated in hunger strikes over the last month to
protest conditions at the immigration detention center in Basile,
Louisiana, which is operated by the contractor LCS Corrections Services
Inc. and ICE.
To read the report in
which 100 ICE detainees chronicle abuses they suffered while detained in
Basile, Louisiana, visit the website of the New Orleans Workers’ Center
for Racial Justice:
http://www.nowcrj.org/.
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