January 20, 2009, 3:32 p.m.
NINA RABIN

I am the lead researcher of "Unseen Prisoners: A Report on Women in Immigration Detention Facilities in Arizona," recently released by the Southwest Institute for Research on Women.

In a Thursday editorial ("More robust study would aid women detainees"), the Tucson Citizen criticized the report as insufficiently robust, unprofessional and discourteous.

First, the editorial dismisses the research because of the limited number of detainees interviewed and suggests that reports on immigration detention facilities should not be issued unless they are based on hundreds of interviews.

The editorial's position, practically speaking, would condemn detainees to continue to live invisibly. Such research is impossible given the constraints Immigration and Customs Enforcement places on access to immigration detainees.

Our limited sample size was due in large measure to restrictions ICE placed on our ability to interview women detainees.

We negotiated for months with ICE, only to be finally granted five days of limited access to two of the three facilities. We used every minute of that time on in-depth interviews of women who were willing to speak with us.

The stakes of getting information about immigration detention facilities into the open could not be higher. On the same day the Citizen published its editorial, The New York Times reported that ICE was closing a facility in Rhode Island where a 34-year-old man died as a result of cancer that went undiagnosed and untreated for months.

This is just one of several cases that have recently come to light in which the lack of oversight over detention facilities and powerlessness of the population detained has resulted in tragedy.

Second, the editorial calls the report "shallow" and accuses it of "merely scratching the surface."

The findings are not solely based on the experiences of 21 detainees. On the contrary, the report draws on interviews with attorneys and social service providers, many of whom work in the facilities daily and could attest to patterns of conduct they have observed.

Furthermore, all the individuals profiled, including the accounts of inadequate medical care, were chosen because they highlighted concerns that came through repeatedly in our interviews. This is a well-established approach to qualitative social science research.

In addition, the report contains copious references to other reports on detention facilities that have found similar concerns, including by the Department of Homeland Security's own inspector general.

Finally, the editorial accused the Southwest Institute for Research on Women of conducting its research in an unprofessional and discourteous manner.

There is nothing unprofessional or discourteous about bringing to the public's attention the experiences of a vulnerable population whose voices would otherwise go unheard.

Moreover, we reached out to ICE repeatedly, both during the research process and after the report's completion, to attempt to engage in a constructive dialogue about conditions in the facilities.

I find it disappointing that the Tucson Citizen chose to post an editorial that would silence a report based on more than a year of research that sought to shed light on an otherwise invisible world.

As a newspaper committed to the goals of transparency and public information, this should be the type of research the editors of the Citizen support.

The real question the Citizen should be asking is why, if ICE is so confident that the other 99.9997 percent of detainees in Arizona are well-treated, it places such restrictions on the public's ability to access information about its facilities.


Nina Rabin is director of border research for the Southwest Institute for Research on Women and co-director of the Immigration Clinic at the James E. Rogers College of Law.


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