HOMELAND DEPT. INSPECTORS FIND WIDESPREAD ABUSE OF JAILED IMMIGRANTS

by William Fisher

(IPS) -- Suspected illegal immigrants held in detention by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security are failing to receive timely medical treatment and adequate food, are subjected to frequent sexual harassment, and have their access to lawyers, relatives and immigration authorities improperly limited.

These are among the findings of the department's inspector general, based on an audit of the U.S.-owned and operated Krome Service Processing Center in Miami, a contract with the Corrections Corporation of America's facility in San Diego, and local jails and prisons in Berks County, Pennsylvania, and Hudson and Passaic Counties, New Jersey, from June 2004 to January 2007.

Critics of the agency still called the report disappointing, contending that it watered down recommendations and ignored the most serious allegations of abuse, which they said included physical beatings, medical neglect, food shortages and mixing of illegal immigrants in administrative custody with criminals.

Mark Dow, author of "American Gulag," a scathing expose of immigrant detention facilities, goes further. He told IPS that the Inspector General's report "has helped ensure that, for now, the mistreatment will continue."

He contends the reason is that the IG recommends that the Homeland Security agency is responsible for the detention of immigrants, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), police itself.

"That is telling the agency responsible for the mistreatment of its prisoners, and whose own inspections are deficient, 'ensure that periodic oversight and inspection procedures are in place to address compliance with the detention standards.' The (IG's) report neglects to mention that ICE has refused to promulgate its detention standards as regulations because they would then be, at least theoretically, legally enforceable," he said.

He adds: "The bottom line is that 'auditing' without truly independent enforcement is meaningless."

His view is echoed by Mary Shaw of Amnesty International, USA. She told IPS, "While the U.S. immigration system has always had its faults, it has become much worse since the attacks of 9/11. Many of the people who enter this country are fleeing persecution in other countries. They come here to seek asylum."

"We must not confuse these victims seeking refuge with those who would enter this country to do us harm," she said. "The U.S. has every right to protect its borders. However, immigration policies must not make it harder for victims of human rights violations to find protection in the United States. We need to honour our country's commitment to protecting the persecuted."

In response to the IG's report, more than a dozen national organizations filed a petition with the DHS to create enforceable regulations governing detention standards. If the federal government agrees to the request, DHS will promulgate binding standards for the safety, health and conditions for thousands of detainees around the country.

The signatories included the American Friends Service Committee Immigrant Rights Program, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the Seton Hall University Law Center for Social Justice.

Many of the detention centers for immigrants have been privatized and are being run by such companies as the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut. In 1999, the federal government farmed out less than three percent of beds. Seven years later, the number had reached almost one in five.

The corrections industry has routinely argued that privatising prisons dramatically lowers costs. A 1996 U.S. General Accounting Office report concluded, however, that there was no clear evidence supporting this contention. Prison companies do have clear advantages over other corporations: They are able to save large amounts of money on labor practices that would be illegal under any other circumstances.

Inmate jobs in all prisons pay a pittance, but immigrant prisons are even worse. Because DHS guidelines mandate that non-citizen prisoners cannot earn more than a dollar per day, the company gets janitors, maintenance workers, cleaners, launderers, kitchen staff, sewers and grounds keepers at almost no cost.

Asked for comment on the IG's report, CCA requested that IPS put its questions in writing. In response to IPS's e-mail, a CCA spokesperson wrote, "Per the expectation of our customer, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), media inquiries concerning the operations of the San Diego facility should be directed to the appropriate spokesperson for ICE."

The GEO Group, formerly known as Wackenhut, declined to comment on the debate over the costs and benefits of privatized prisons, but referred IPS to the Association of Private Correctional and Treatment Organizations, a trade group that represents some of the leading operators of private prisons.

Its position is that "taxpayers can enjoy significant savings by utilising public-private correctional partnerships to design, finance, build, and operate prisons, jails, community corrections facilities, and juvenile justice programs." It denies that its members "cut corners" in the interests of shareholder value.

The boom in privatized prisons began shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when the Department of Justice rounded up thousands of "Middle Eastern-looking" immigrants and detained many of them for months, treating them as criminals and denying them access to lawyers.

A 2003 report by the DHS Inspector General forcefully condemned the treatment of immigrants inside various jails. Infractions included routine violations of basic prisoner rights, mental and physical abuse, denial of health care and medical treatment, prison overcrowding, and a lack of working showers and toilets.

None of those held were ever charged with a terror-related crime. Some were deported for immigration violations.

Privatized detention facilities have grown apace amid the clamour for a crackdown on undocumented immigrants. Contracts for these new jails flowed to the private prison industry despite many previous allegations of mismanagement and scandal.

For example, a former detainee in a CCA facility in San Diego testified that "the guards would scream and shout at us as if we were little kids. If we would ask them to stop, they would threaten to lock us down for a few days, which would happen constantly. Three people being locked in a two-man cell, in a 12 x 7 [foot] room. This happened a lot; sometimes as punishment for the actions of one or two inmates, the other detainees would suffer."

For the second quarter of 2005, CCA announced that its revenues had increased three percent over the previous year, for a total of almost 300 million dollars. CCA calculates that it expenditure of 28.89 dollars per inmate, per day allows it to make a daily profit of 50.26 dollars per inmate.

In July 2005, ICE awarded CCA contracts to continue running the 300-bed Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey and the 1,216-bed San Diego Correctional Facility. Both of these contracts are for three years with five three-year renewal options. The same year, CCA also secured new prison contracts with the Kentucky Department of Corrections, the state of Kansas, and the Florida Department of Management Services.

Wackenhut has also shared in the private prison boom. Before 2001, Wackenhut, like CCA, had been at the center of all manner of inmate-abuse scandals: Guards were caught having sex with underage inmates, there were routine reports of extreme mistreatment of inmates, and there was even a disproportionately high level of deaths in their facilities.

After a CBS news report exposed the repeated rape of a 14-year-old girl at a Wackenhut juvenile jail and two guards were found guilty, its CEO said, "It's a tough business. The people in prison are not Sunday-school children."

Wackenhut's most public response to all this was to change its name to the GEO Group. It continues to win lucrative government contracts.