Tag Archives: immigrant detention

New Lawsuit Targets Another U.S. Deportation Program

  By Maegan La Mala | March 14, 2012 - 12:39 pm |
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Last week a number of immigration advocacy organizations in Washington D.C. filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security seeking information regarding their Criminal Alien Program (CAP).

According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the CAP program provides ICE-wide direction and support in the identification and arrest of those immigrants who are incarcerated within federal, state and local prisons and jails, as well as at-large immigrants with criminal records. This is done through ICE presence in jails and prisons and initiating deportation proceedings against people convicted of criminal offenses. It’s important to note that CAP does not just look at undocumented immigrants but also green-card holders, short-term temporary workers and visitors with proper authorization,

The lawsuit filed by the American Immigration Council (AIC) and the Connecticut chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) alleges that ICE also sweeps up individuals who have been arrested but never convicted of any crime, a violation of due process.
Specifically the two organizations are seeking responsive, non-exempt records regarding CAP under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

While the federal government continues to expand another deportation program, Secure Communities, over the past five years alone, CAP has led to the arrest of more than a million people, and the program was implicated in approximately half of all removal proceedings in FY 2009.

From a press release announcing the lawsuit:

“Although CAP supposedly targets the worst criminal offenders, the limited information we have shows that this is not always the case,” according to Melissa Crow, Director of AIC’s Legal Action Center. “Like Secure Communities, this insidious program seems to target individuals with little or no criminal history for deportation and to incentivize pretextual stops and racial profiling.”

ICE claims that the CAP program saves money and resources but from fiscal years 2005 to 2009 the largest as well as the fastest growing segment of appropriated dollars went to ICE’s Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) office whose budget more than doubled (increasing 104%). While ICE has stated that the focus of the program is high risk violent offenders it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that this investment in criminalizing immigrant communities has increased under Obama as deportation numbers have increased across the board.

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A Year After Closing, Hutto Immigrant Detention Center Still Revealing Horrors

  By Maegan La Mala | August 22, 2010 - 2:02 pm |
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Readers please note that the post contains references to sexual assault. Take care of yourselves and each other for possible triggers.

It was almost exactly a year ago that the T. Don Hutto detention center in Texas stopped incarcerating immigrant families, and there are still horror stories being revealed. Most recently, the ACLU reported that last week a Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) employee at the T. Don Hutto immigration detention facility in Taylor, TX charged with sexually abusing numerous female immigration detainees.

Donald Charles Dunn, a resident supervisor at the Hutto facility, is accused of abusing the detainees as he was transporting them to the airport after they had been released on bond and has allegedly admitted to telling the women that he was going to “frisk” them before touching their breasts and genital areas for his gratification, according to Sheriff’s officials in Williamson County, TX. Dunn is charged with official oppression and unlawful restraint.

I have never heard of “official oppression” as a criminal charge and was struck by it’s use and the absence of the use of any criminal charges for “sexual assault”. So I did a little search. Apparently “Official Oppression” is a Texas only law and it involves a law enforcement officer using their powers inappropriately, including sexually.

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Who is Being Held in Immigrant Detention Centers like the One on Varick Street : The Haitian Connection

  By Maegan la Mamita Mala | February 2, 2010 - 7:54 am |
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With many saying that immigration reform is dead, we have to look at what is the alternative. Unfortunately under the Obama administration so far, the United States has seen a continuation and expansion of policies that criminalize immigrants. The alternative to immigration reform being presented by the actions of the Federal Government is more people being incarcerated, tortured, and killed in detention centers across the country. Recently, Jean Montrivil was released from his three week detention in an ICE jail in Downtown New York City and another detention center in Pennsylvania. His story is representative of too many families.

Jean’s story represents so many of the problems that exist in the current broken system. Here is a man who had his U.S. legal residence but because of a crime in his past, that he served jail time for, was kept under close watch. Here is a man who established a life in the United States with citizen children, separated from his family. In Obama’s infamous few words uttered on immigration during the State of the Union address, the President said that those who respected the laws should be able to stay in this country. Does respecting the law not include paying for any crimes already committed? How long is an old criminal record a valid reason for deporting someone? When is the arbitrary cut off? Just who do these rules regarding deportation serve to protect? How is it possible to use the criminal justice system as a constant threat over someone’s life, playing with someone’s life the way they essentially have done with Jean Montrivil?
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Advocates Call for Release of Immigrant Detainees Held in NYC

  By Maegan la Mamita Mala | February 1, 2010 - 12:13 pm |
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If NYC is truly a city that values it’s immigrant residents, then why is there a federal immigration detention center in downtown Manhattan? The Varick Federal Detention Facility is actually about to be closed, perhaps in part to protests focused on the release of Jean Montrevil, which drew attention to the horrible conditions inside the detention center, but also problems with the very idea of criminalizing immigrants for just being immigrants.

A broad coalition of 16 national and community groups, legal service providers, and advocacy organizations urged the Department of Homeland Security to release immigrant detainees currently held at the Varick Federal Detention Facility and to provide reasonable alternatives to detention. The call for release comes in response to the recent announcement that the downtown Manhattan detention center would be closed and its roughly 300 detainees moved to a New Jersey county jail.

“The first question that the federal government should ask is not where people are being detained, but why people are being detained,” the organizations said in a statement to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Varick has been the subject of numerous complaints over the years concerning inhumane living conditions, indefinite detention, and detainees’ restricted access to legal services. The groups insisted that all detainees at Varick receive a prompt case-by-case review of their detention, particularly since many are legally eligible for release. They also argued that transferring detainees to facilities where they will encounter similarly unacceptable conditions and restricted access to their families and lawyers is not a solution to Varick’s problems.

“Transferring detainees from Varick to other facilities does nothing to address the well-documented problems associated with detention,” said Alina Das, supervising attorney of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at NYU School of Law and one of the signatories to the advocates’ statement. “It’s no secret that the detention system is broken, ineffective, and inhumane.”

Detention, advocates further claim, is prohibitively expensive: it costs the federal government approximately $1.7 billion a year, while alternatives to detention cost as little as $12 a day. Meanwhile, both immigrant families and the government take on additional financial burdens as noncitizens who remain in detention are unable to provide for their loved ones and contribute to the economy.

“Especially given the current budgetary crisis in our country, DHS is acting irresponsibly and recklessly by detaining people when they can be released,” said Manisha Vaze of Families for Freedom, another signatory to the statement. “Community-based alternatives are effective, significantly less expensive, and enable families to maintain stability while they pursue viable options to get or maintain status.”

Noncitizens who could be released from immigration custody and placed into alternatives to detention programs include those who qualify for Temporary Protected Status (including Haitians due to the recent earthquake), those who are entitled to bond determinations or lower bond amounts, and those who have faced prolonged detention.

These and other immigrants, Das said, should be released immediately. “Our community members should not bear the burden of DHS’ failure to overhaul the detention system.”

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Immigrant Detention in the U.S.

  By la Macha | January 14, 2010 - 1:50 pm |
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I’m sorry for linking so many times to Democracy Now! in just one day–but this section is incredibly important as well. It centers on the state of immigrant detention and how deaths of people in detention are being covered up and otherwise handled very poorly (aka without morals or any sense of humanity).

The Obama administration has promised to overhaul immigration detention. But a scathing report in the New York Times last weekend reveals that federal officials used their role as overseers to prevent media from reporting deaths and abuses inside the nation’s immigration prisons. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, now admits 107 immigrants died in ICE custody since October 2003, but for years the deaths went uncounted in the public record.

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CLERGY AND GRAMMY-AWARD WINNING ARTIST RALLY TO FREE JEAN Supporters Demand Release of Detained Immigrant Rights Leader on Hunger Strike

  By Maegan la Mamita Mala | January 5, 2010 - 9:56 am |
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I know it’s cold outside people, pero if you are in the NYC area and are able to, please represent.

WHAT: On December 30th, ICE detained for deportation to Haiti Jean Montrevil, a green card-holding immigrant since 1986, father of four U.S. citizen children and renowned immigrant rights activist. Two days later, Montrevil, now held in Pennsylvania’s York County Prison, has begun a hunger fast to protest the deportation and detention system that tears families apart. At the rally, Montrevil’s children will demand from ICE that their father be released and clergy will join youth in vows of fasting and other forms of resistance until the government releases Montrevil and the immigration system is reformed.

WHO: Janiah Montrevil, Jean Montrevil’s 11-year-old daughter
Janay Montrevil, Jean Montrevil’s wife
Additional children of immigrants facing deportation or already deported
Rev. Robert B. Coleman, Chief Program Minister at The Riverside Church
Dan Zanes , Grammy Award winning Family Music Artist
Over 100 community supporters

WHEN: Tuesday, January 5th, at 12:30pm

WHERE: Varick Street Detention Center
201 Varick Street (at Houston Street)
New York NY 10014

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No Room at the Inn for Detained Immigrant Families

  By Maegan la Mamita Mala | August 10, 2009 - 7:53 am |
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Article_6326405Seems like there are problems with the closing of T. Don Hutto as an immigrant family detention center. Under the announced restructuring of oversight of immigrant detention centers, the controversial Hutto center will no longer be used for families with children and will only be used to house women immigrants. Families were to be transferred to another immigrant detention center, Berks Family Shelter Care Facility in Leesburg, Pennsylvania. Except no one checked with Berks, which apparently has no room for more immigrant families.

County Commissioner Kevin S. Barnhardt, who is chairman of the county prison board, said he was unaware of the move by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Kenneth A. Borkey Jr., executive director of the Bern Township facility, which houses families awaiting immigration hearings, said the center is at capacity.

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Immigrant Hunger Strikes in Greece

  By Maegan la Mamita Mala | August 8, 2009 - 8:53 am |
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Immigrant hunger strikes inside detention centers protesting human rights abuses aren’t limited to the U.S. In Greece, nearly 600 immigrant detainees are on a hunger strike protesting the Greek policy of transporting migrants from the cities to remote places before deportation.

The recent government policy of moving illegal immigrants to reception centers in northern Greece before expelling them from the country ran into more trouble yesterday, as 580 migrants being held on Samos went on hunger strike to protest the measure…

Yesterday’s protest came as sources revealed to Kathimerini that one in three applications made this year to remain here by the families of migrants living legally in Greece will be rejected.

Via / Devious Diva

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Department of Homeland Security to Monitor Immigrant Detainee Treatment

  By Maegan La Mala | August 6, 2009 - 6:37 am |
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06detain02-600The Department of Homeland Security is known far and wide for their excellent human rights record, especially ICE. So it makes perfect sense that President Obama would put 23 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials inside large immigrant detention centers to monitor management in light of growing complaints of abuse in the privately run institutions.

ICE, which is part of Homeland Security, intends to hire a medical expert to review the health care protocols for the detention centers and give an independent review of medical complaints, according to the people briefed on the plan. They spoke only on condition of anonymity ahead of an announcement expected Thursday [today].

Immigration and Customs Enforcement gave details of its plan to immigration advocates in a conference call Wednesday evening. One person on the call, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because ICE had not made a formal announcement, said the plan includes turning a detention center in Texas for parents and their children into a women’s facility and no longer placing families there. However, a separate facility in Pennsylvania will continue housing families.

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Immigrant Detainees in Louisiana on Hunger Strike

  By Maegan la Mamita Mala | August 4, 2009 - 7:36 am |
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jail-thumb-250x166When your cuerpo is used as fodder to feed the prison industrial complex, how do you transform that body into a weapon of protest? For immigrants caught up in detention, using their bodies to protest the horrible and inhumane conditions inside is nothing new. What is new is the context that the current administration has made it clear that prison “reform” is not a priority, much less if the prisons we are talking about “reforming” are for those labeled alien/foreign/unwanted/brown.

Now, another group of immigrants inside a detention center are on hunger strike, their fifth one, in protest of the deplorable conditions at the South Louisiana Correctional Facility in Basile. This detention center is run by the private contractor LCS Corrections Services Inc. and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

According to the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, more than 100 detainees acted as human rights monitors inside the jail throughout July. “Over the course of a month, detainee human rights monitors recorded complaints, attempted to lodge hundreds of grievances, and communicated with advocates about jail conditions,” said NOWCRJ, which released a report of their findings and the accounts of the several detainees.

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