|
LOS ANGELES – Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) today
announced it will enact several changes
in order to better protect the rights of the more than 400,000 men and
women kept in the nation’s immigrant detention centers annually.
These changes — which include creating an
Office of Detention Oversight, allowing independent medical officers to
examine detention centers’ medical complaints and denials of requests
for services, sending federal employees to monitor the largest
facilities, and augmenting field operations — are indicative of movement
toward better protecting due process rights of detainees. However, ICE
announced last week that it would not make any of its own detention
standards legally enforceable, and its latest announcement did not alter
that position or include any clear statement on how detention facilities
found to be in violation of the standards would be penalized.
“We recognize the difficulty in changing a
system that has shown blatant disregard for rights over the past eight
years,” said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National
Immigration Law Center (NILC). “Nonetheless, many of the changes
announced today closely resemble policies already in place, and are
insufficient. This system has grown exponentially and shows no sign of
abatement. Rather than increase costs to taxpayers, the administration
should look for fiscally prudent and humane alternatives, such as the
release of people who show no flight risk and implementation of more
alternatives to detention for those who need closer monitoring.”
To ensure that immigration detention
facilities meet the most basic standards of human decency, legislation
is necessary. Sen. Menendez (D-NJ) and Sen. Gillibrand (D-NY) have
introduced such legislation to codify core components of the detention
center rules and penalize facilities that are found in violation of
these rules. Rep. Roybal-Allard (D-CA) has introduced similar
legislation in the House of Representatives. This legislation would
supersede the current Department of Homeland Security practice that
relies primarily on the agency’s self-reviews of detention centers to
identify violations.
These previously confidential reviews were
analyzed by NILC, the ACLU of Southern California, and the international
law firm of Holland and Knight, LLC, and found to show pervasive
violations of rights throughout the detention center system and a
failure by ICE to remedy violations identified in a timely fashion.
These findings were released in “A
Broken System,” which also offers a series of policy
recommendations to improve the current system.
Karen Tumlin,
co-author of the report and staff attorney for NILC, said, “Our analysis
of ICE’s own reviews shows that, without legislation to enforce
standards and punish centers found to be in violation of them, our
immigration detention system will continue to be a mockery of the
justice system. We encourage Congress to swiftly adopt legislation to
protect the rights of these men and women detained in the United
States.”
# # #
|
