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NIJC and DWN, Oct. 21, 2015- "A new report, “Lives in Peril: How Ineffective Inspections Make ICE Complicit in Immigration Detention Abuse”released today by the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) and Detention Watch Network (DWN), exposes how the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) inspections process for immigration detention centers obscures and perpetuates widespread abuses of detained immigrants.
VIEW THE REPORT HERE: immigrantjustice.org/livesinperil
The report draws on information from ICE inspections documents for 105 immigration detention facilities and features focused analyses of inspections for detention centers in Arizona, Florida, Alabama, Texas, Georgia and Illinois. NIJC obtained the inspections through a federal court order resulting from three years of litigation under the Freedom of Information Act. NIJC and DWN’s review of the documents reveals fundamental inconsistencies within and between inspection reports for individual detention centers which suggests that the immigration detention inspection process is a sham - designed to perpetuate a broken and abusive system.
“The government fought for years to keep these inspection reports hidden from the public eye, and now we know why: despite its early promises to make the detention system more accountable and humane, the Obama administration has perpetuated a system that ensures detention contractors pass their inspections and continue to receive billions of dollars from taxpayers to detain immigrants, even in jails where there are highly publicized human rights abuses,” said Claudia Valenzuela, director of detention for the National Immigrant Justice Center.
“ICE’s inspection processes is fundamentally broken and fails to adequately assess troubling conditions and human rights violations detained immigrants face. Plain and simple - the Obama Administration’s attempts at reforming the immigration detention system have failed: Detention centers are not safe, abuses are widespread and detention facilities consistently fail to meet basic minimum standards,” explained Mary Small, policy director for the Detention Watch Network.
Toplines from the report include:
NIJC was represented in the Freedom of Information Act litigation by pro bono lawyers from Dentons US LLP.
READ THE FULL REPORT HERE: immigrantjustice.org/livesinperil
VIEW AN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF THE REPORT HERE: immigrantjustice.org/livesinperil#Exec Summary
For interviews with the Detention Watch Network or National Immigration Justice Center, please contact Brett Abrams at 516-841-1105 or by email at brett@fitzgibbonmedia.com."