US civil rights report condemns abuses against detained immigrants
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US Commission on Civil Rights calls for immediate release of families held in detention facilities, pointing to violations of constitutional rights
A scathing report from the US Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) has criticized the government’s treatment of immigrants in detention facilities and called on the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) to immediately release families held in such centers.
The 130-page report, released on Thursday, detailed a litany of abuses against immigrants in government and private-contracting facilities, from the denial of proper medical care to
possible violations of legal and constitutional rights.
“While these immigrants migrate to the United States to escape harsh living conditions,” the report’s authors wrote, “once they cross the US border without authorization and
proper documentation, the federal government apprehends and detains these individuals in conditions that are similar, if not worse, than the conditions they faced from their home countries.”
DHS secretary Jeh Johnson released a statement in response to the report, arguing that his department has “implemented significant reforms to how we operate our family
residential centers” and “will continue to make additional improvements when appropriate”.
The report labelled the conditions “inhumane” and “inconsistent with American values”.
In one cited instance, Raúl Ernesto Morales Ramos, a 44-year-old Salvadoran immigrant in a California detention facility run by the GEO Group, one of the nation’s largest private prison operators, experienced ongoing diarrhea and
severe abdominal pain. He was left untreated.
When Morales Ramos asked for a catheter to treat his urinary incontinence, medical officials denied him one. After three weeks, Morales Ramos was transferred to a hospital where he was found to have intestinal cancer, which has
high survival rates when caught early. He died three days later.
In another example detailed in the report, a transgender woman who had Aids, Victoria Arellano, was not given a medication she had been prescribed. She soon developed nausea and began vomiting blood.
Days later, the report noted, Arellano was taken to a hospital. She died there, “shackled to her hospital bed”.
The treatment of immigrants at detention centers has made headlines, particularly after a large wave of migrant children from Central America made their way to the US last summer.
More than 65,000 unaccompanied children, fleeing violence in their native countries and seeking to reunite with family members, were apprehended in 2014, a four-fold increase on the previous three years.
Because being in the US without authorization is considered a civil rather than criminal matter, immigrants caught by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are not supposed to be sent to jail, but rather a detention facility
for administrative purposes.
In reality, the report noted, “immigration detention centers are also operated like criminal penitentiaries” and “detention can last for months or even years”.
Prison officials have often retaliated against immigrants who protest their lengthy stays, the report said.
When the USCCR toured the Karnes Family Detention Center in Texas this May, a number of mothers recounted how after “taking part in a hunger strike over prolonged detention [they] were threatened by detention facility
staff with having their children taken from them if they did not break the hunger strike”.
In one instance, the mothers said, a child was so distraught over the extended detention that he had attempted to kill himself by jumping from a balcony.
The report cited other glaring issues in the immigrant detention system as well, including a lack of access to legal representation for detainees, harassment and improper housing of LGBT immigrants, and authorities not abiding by the
1997 Flores Agreement that mandated children be given more hospitable living environments than currently exist in detention centers.
In July, a federal judge ruled that the government was not complying with Flores and hundreds of immigrants living in “deplorable” conditions should be released.
The USCCR made a number of recommendations, most prominently “that DHS act immediately to release families from detention”.
Other proposals included calling on Congress to “no longer fund family detention”, to “reduce its funding for immigration detention generally, in favor of alternatives to detention”, and to pass legislation “extending the right to
counsel in immigration detention proceedings to all indigent detainees”.
The USCCR is an independent body, with some members appointed by the president and others by Congress. Of the eight sitting members, five voted in favor of the latest report, two voted against it and one member recused herself.
US civil rights report condemns abuses against detained immigrants | US news | The Guardian
