The United States Commission on Civil Rights issued a report this week condemning the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for its treatment of immigrants being kept in detention facilities around the country. The Commission is comprised of eight independent members with a bipartisan agenda. The Commission’s report harshly criticized the prison-like facilities where detainees are being held in a criminal setting, even if these individuals are in the country without having committed a crime and await a hearing for their claim of political asylum.
The chairman of the Commission, Martin R. Castro released a statement that these detainees, many families including women and children, rights are being violated and called for their immediate release. His statement called their treatment inhumane, especially in light of the fact that many of these immigrants are seeking refuge from countries they fled due to human rights violations that took place there.
It was released that some of the federal immigration facilities are not in compliance with updated detention standards that have been put into place in order to safeguard detainee’s basic human rights. In many cases detainees are held longer than allowed by federal law. Their rights to due process are also being ignored once inside these facilities.
Another terrible reality is that these families are not being safeguarded from sexual assault while in federal custody. The federal Prison Rape Elimination Act provides direction on how to protect inmates from the threat of sexual assault. According to Commissioner Castro’s recent report, the directives in this mandate are being ignored.
Immigration activists have been outraged by the treatment of detained immigrants, especially women and children being held in federal immigration custody. The conditions in these facilities have been uncovered to be inhumane and unsafe for its occupants.
In 2014 close to 11 million immigrants, a large number of families, mainly women and children, crossed the border from Mexico into the United States unlawfully in an attempt to flee the horrors they were experiencing in their home country. Many of these refugees were immediately encountered by immigration officials and subsequently detained in facilities around the country. This vast number of immigrants have been languishing in facilities around the country and are being neglected, according to the report.
DHS has been directed by the Commission to immediately act by releasing these families from the facilities where they are being held. It was further recommended that Congress should cease financial support of the family detention facilities as well as reduce funding for general immigration detention facilities. The Commission recommended that alternative actions be put into place rather than continuing to hold immigrants in a detained setting on such a massive scale.
According to the Global Detention Project, the United States has the highest number of immigration detention facilities in the world. In 2007, there were 961 immigration detention facilities located throughout the nation. These facilities range from federal facilities to privately owned structures that contract with the federal government in order to house these federal detainees.
