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Immigration detention reforms urgently needed in light of “all hell breaking loose” at Varick facility in New York

Picture 1Immigration detention is once again revealing fatal flaws, reaffirming the need to not only superficially reform the system as has been promised by the Obama administration, but completely overhaul it by reducing reliance on a penal system of punishment. As a New York Times opinion piece stated,

Americans have long known that the government has been running secretive immigration prisons into which detainees have frequently disappeared…..what we did not know, until a recent article in The Times by Nina Bernstein, was how strenuously the government has tried to cover up those failings.

Yesterday, reports came in of an ongoing hunger strike at Varick Federal Detention Facility in downtown New York, counteracted by immigration agents in riot gear who used pepper sprays and beat detainees.

A Jamaican detainee in one dorm said “all hell broke loose” after about 100 inmates refused to go to the mess hall on Tuesday morning and gave guards a flier declaring they were on a hunger strike to protest detention policies and practices. The detainee, who asked that his name not be published for fear of retaliation, said a SWAT team used pepper spray and “beat up” some detainees, took many to segregation cells as punishment and transferred about 17 to immigration jails in other states.

A detention center that sees 11,000 undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers, and legal permanent residents with convictions pass through every year, Varick has been in the news recently as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced they will be shutting it down and transferring detainees to a county jail in Hudson County, Jersey. An ICE press release stated,

As part of its major overhaul of the detention system, ICE will suspend operations at the Varick Facility….a commitment to prioritizing health, safety, and uniformity among facilites.

No doubt Varick has had its share of problems. A petition sent by a 100 men from Varick talking of constant transfers to remote locations and lack of access to lawyers spurred an investigation by the New York City Bar Association which eventually led them to start a volunteer lawyers program for the facility. But many advocates and detainees alike feel that ICE has decided to shift responsibilities to other facilities rather than fix conditions at Varick, especially given the focus on misconduct in the facility in recent times. Many are worried that closing Varick would negatively impact detainees’ due process rights, including lack of access to both attorneys and families in Hudson because of the long distance from New York City and issues around visitation hours. Still others feel that the move comes to avoid all of those protests that have been happening outside of Varick lately. Activists have been protesting the deportation of Jean Montrevil, housed in Varick, that has led to traffic stops and multiple arrests outside the center. The New York Times reports,

Nancy Morawetz, a professor at the New York University School of Law and director of its Immigrant Rights Clinic, said, “There is probably no detainee at Varick Street who, despite the problems at Varick, wouldn’t prefer to be at Varick. This is really just moving away the problems where they’re not going to be seen.”

Senator Charles Schumer has written a letter urging that Varick stay open.

“They didn’t have a concept of New York — most people New York don’t have cars, whether they be lawyers or immigrant families, ” he said, noting that the agency had not consulted with him or any immigrant groups.

ICE has countered that at Hudson, detainees will have access to outdoor recreation space. But the jail is just a step up from Varick and is required to to treat immigration detainees the same as its criminal inmates, even though they have committed no crime.

The general mess around Varick is showing not only the challenges around reforming the detention system, but also the crucial need for legally enforceable standards for immigration detention, so that agencies can be held accountable, and the need for humane alternatives to immigration detention that ensures moving away from a reliance on a penal, punishment oriented system, neither of which are being addressed by the reforms. Take action now.

Update: The transfer of detainees from Varick to Hudson County has happened as planned but its consequences, as many advocates and detainees have predicted, have made conditions worse for detainees. From the New York Times.

Detainees have sent appeals for help to the American Bar Association and have threatened a hunger strike. They cite exorbitant telephone costs as their central grievance, but also complain of poor health care, confiscation of legal documents and mistreatment by guards at the jail, the Hudson County Correctional Center in Kearny….Officials of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency that pays jails to house detainees, have said improvements are in the works. But for detainees shifted from the New York jail, the Varick Federal Detention Facility, the possibilities for communication with the outside world have shrunk.

Photo courtesy of ICE.

Posted by madhuri on January 21st, 2010 in Blog, Detention, Due Process, Enforcement, Family, Human Rights, Immigration | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Nation reporter unmasks extraordinary rendition-like subfields run by ICE

BlogCaryA couple months ago, Jacqueline Stevens, a reporter for the Nation, went on a road trip with Mark Lyttle, a U.S. citizen, born in North Carolina, who had been kidnapped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), stripped of his rightful identity documents, rendered stateless, and deported to Mexico, to re-locate the government offices that had temporarily held him.

Using google maps, they punched in 140 Centrewest Court, an address that appeared on a number of the documents issued to Lyttle by ICE in Cary, North Carolina.  But when they arrived, Stevens was surprised that the government site was an unmarked building, no sign, no flag, with 15 equally unmarked vans next to an Oxford University Press production plant and a few gated communities.

Wondering how many other clandestine locations existed like this across the country, upon returning to Berkeley, Stevens picked up the phone and began a rigorous investigation of “America’s Secret ICE Castles,” the findings of which will appear in the January 4th edition of the Nation.  First off, she read through, a recent report by Dora Shriro,”Immigration Detention Overview and Recommendations,” and discovered that there were 186 “subfields” which were used to primarily hold people for up to 12-16 hours for 84% of all book-ins.  But because these secret sites are below the legal radar, it’s hard to say how long people are actually held and under what conditions.

When Stevens called ICE  to request a list of the 186 subfields, she was initially told by Temple Black, an ICE public affairs officer, that these locations were “not releasable” and that the list was “law enforcement sensitive.”  However, Mr. Black had a family emergency, and put Stevens in touch with another ICE official, who released a partial list, which she then shared with immigrant rights advocates in major human and civil rights organizations, whose reactions ranged from astonishment to total outrage.

Alison Parker, Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch, who wrote a comprehensive report on ICE transit policies,  “Locked Up, Far Away,” for example, had not even heard of the subfield offices and believed that the failure of the U.S. to disclose these locations is a violation of the UN’s Convenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which we are a signatory.  A senior attorney at a civil rights organization, on the other hand angrily proclaimed, “You cannot have secret detention!  The public has the right to know where detention is happening.”

Such lack of transparency frighteningly resonates with extraordinary rendition, and undermines the core principles of a functioning democracy.  Unmarked networks make it near impossible for family and lawyers to track down and access detainees, ultimately stripping immigrants of due process rights afforded to “all persons” under the constitution.  Because these sites are off the grid, and therefore, out of mind, there’s no oversight or standards in place, and detainees are often subjected to the inhumane whims of ICE agents who act in ways that are unconscionable and unlawful.  As Stevens rightly observed, “it’s also not surprising that if you’re putting people in a warehouse, the occupants become inventory. Inventory does not need showers, beds, drinking water, soap, toothbrushes, sanitary napkins, mail, attorneys or legal information, and can withstand the constant blast of cold air.”

According to Ahilan Arulanantham, Director of Immigrant Rights for the ACLU of Southern California, the Los Angeles subfield office called B-18 is a barely converted storage space. “You actually walk down the sidewalk and into an underground parking lot. Then you turn right, open a big door and voilà, you’re in a detention center…It’s not clear to me how anyone would find it. What this breeds, not surprisingly, is a whole host of problems concerning access to phones, relatives and counsel,” he explained.

While the President Obama may have released a memorandum in January requiring transparency for the heads of all executive departments and agencies, including DHS and ICE, the reality is it’s not happening. Instead we have agents, like Tommy Kilbride, an ICE detention and removal officer and star of A&E’s reality show Manhunters: Fugitive Task Force, operating out of a hidden office in a hip building in Chelsea Market alongside Rachel Ray and the Food Network, sporting a jacket that says POLICE, while rounding up criminal aliens, thereby glamorizing secret operations as the trappings of pop culture.

If indeed “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants,” as Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote, I say let the sun shine on these ICE castles, so we can restore fairness in America.  A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency.

Photo courtesy of State without Borders

Posted by heidi on December 23rd, 2009 in Blog, Detention, Due Process, Enforcement, Human Rights, Immigration | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Esmeralda: A transgender asylum seeker speaks out against immigration detention

Courage comes in many different forms. For Esmeralda a transgender asylum seeker from Mexico who faced horrific circumstances in immigration detention, it came in the form of seeking justice. Kept in a segregated cell with other transgender detainees, Esmeralda never realized that her experience in detention would match the trauma of discrimination she had faced back home. But her story is also one of hope for change.

While the Obama administration has pledged to reform the detention system, its promises do not go far enough. Spread over a patchwork of more than 500 county jails, privately run prisons and federal facilities, immigration detention is a $1.8 billion business estimated to hold 442,941 detainees in custody in 2009 alone.

Transferred far away from their homes and families, stories are rife of how detainees are denied visitation, access to lawyers, medical care, and are subject to physical and verbal abuse. Many vulnerable people, including asylum seekers, pregnant women, children, lawful permanent residents and even U.S. citizens are among those detained.

Listen to Esmeralda’s voice of courage and take action now to fix a broken detention system.

Posted by guest on November 11th, 2009 in Blog, Deportation, Detention, Due Process, Immigration, LGBTQI | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »