CubaMinrex. Sitio del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba

The Disappeared in the United States

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a detention system with 350 installations run mainly by private companies and local prisons.

Reports on the fate of detainees have demonstrated the systematic abuse and abandonment of immigrants to the custody of the federal government. There are raped women who have been denied the services of abortion during their detention. Pregnant women have remained chained while giving birth, and babies that were still being breastfed have been snatched out of their mothers’ arms.

In the space of five years, more than 100 detained immigrants have died in ICE custody. These deaths came to light in investigations made by journalists and the organization American Civil Liberties Union. An Ecuadorean who was the victim of negligence died after being transferred from a prison on Rikers Island in New York to immigration authorities.

Too often, detainees disappear into some of the ICE’s surreptitious divisions that do not appear in public registers and that are not clearly identified, according to revelations made by a study carried out by La Nación. "The capacity of having access to the outside world is an essential safeguard against arbitrary detention", affirms Amnesty International.

Detained immigrants don’t have the right to legal representation. They have to defend their cases by way of a tangled web of obstacles, like depending on non-profit organizations that can’t accept collect calls, poor translations or interpretations, and ignorance of their rights.

The system undermines their limited possibilities of an impartial trial. The Warren Institute describes the defects in the federal process of immigrant detention, like, for example, judges overburdened with work and mass trials.

The shameful conditions of detention go against human rights, including the right of detainees to access the services of physicians and lawyers, and the right of not being detained longer that the time the government can justify.

Under the Obama administration, the federal government passed the motion of reviewing policies around medical treatment and supervision. Last year, the ICE announced changes to improve detention conditions and next a very much needed internal inspection of detention practices was made.

But what remains the same is that these policies on health services and supervision are not legally binding and therefore not attributable.

But, who are the people responsible for this criminal and negligent behavior? A private company contracted to take charge of detained immigrants and in the installations of which there have been deaths due to negligence, continues to run detention centers.

The fact that nobody takes responsibility is unacceptable. Standards should include humanitarian policies of detention, adequate legal representation and severe punishment for those who don’t respect the rights of immigrants.

However, the nation should go even further. We can’t allow the ICE to turn detention into a business. (Taken from New York’s Diario La Prensa). (Cubaminrex – Granma Daily)

 

 

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