America
Commission urges end to US detention of immigrant families
Washington, Sep 19
The US Commission on
Civil Rights urged the Barack Obama administration to "immediately" end
the detention of undocumented families and minors.
A report
issued by this independent, bipartisan federal agency urges the
administration and Congress to end the detention of minors and women
with children, and to guarantee that those caught crossing the border
will be treated with the most basic standards of respect, EFE reported
on Friday.
The document asks the government to respect court
rulings against detention and the inhumane conditions in which
undocumented minors, whether accompanied by adults or not, are being
held in detention centres by the Department of Homeland Security, or
DHS.
The commission called on the DHS -- in charge of the
immigrant detention centres managed by the office of Immigrations and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) -- to "act immediately to release families
from detention".
The report says that ICE combines tough
treatment in applying the law with a lax attitude toward taking
responsibility for the living conditions in subcontracted detention
facilities.
Most undocumented families are held in detention
centres operated by private subcontractors, as in the case of the Karnes
Immigration Family Detention Center in Karnes, Texas, and the Family
Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, with 2,400 beds.
The GEO Group and the Corrections Corporation of America manage separate facilities with annual revenues that top $1 billion.
The
commission's recommendations, sent in a letter to Obama, Vice-President
Joe Biden and House Speaker John Boehner, go further and request no
more financing for the detention of immigrant families and that the DHS
"release all family detainees, reduce the use of detention, ensure
humane treatment of detainees (and) increase the use of alternatives to
detention".
The report says that children and their families live
in overcrowded prisons, without privacy and contrary to the regulations
and standards of the DHS itself.
The commission also slammed the
position taken by some government attorneys who claim that the policy
of detention for families and children aims to scare off any more
undocumented migrants thinking about crossing the border.
In the
summer of 2014, the US was overwhelmed by the massive arrivals of
families and lone children, above all from Central America, in numbers
far exceeding the capacity of existing detention centres.
Many
with family members in the US were released, but others, including women
with children, have remained behind bars until their deportation
processes are decided upon, a process which can take months.
The
Commission on Civil Rights, chaired by Democrat Martin Castro, also said
that detainees should have access to due process of law, and that those
seeking asylum, because their lives are in danger, be protected.
"Now,
more than ever before, we need to treat fairly and humanely those
persons, especially women and children, who are seeking sanctuary from
violence and instability in their countries," Castro said in a
communique.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said recently, ho