| | |  Editorials | Issues | December 2009 
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has Network of Secret Detention Centers
 Sari Gelzer - Truthout
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December 24, 2009
A chilling report from The Nation reveals that in addition to immigration detention centers, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is confining immigrants in 186 unlisted and unmarked subfield offices.
Jacqueline Stevens from The Nation describes a Los Angeles subfield office called B-18:
It's also not surprising that if you're putting people in a warehouse, the occupants become inventory. Inventory does not need showers, beds, drinking water, soap, toothbrushes, sanitary napkins, mail, attorneys or legal information, and can withstand the constant blast of cold air. The US residents held in B-18, as many as 100 on any given day, were treated likewise. B-18, it turned out, was not a transfer area from point A to point B but rather an irrationally revolving stockroom that would shuttle the same people briefly to the local jails, sometimes from 1 to 5 am, and then bring them back, shackled to one another, stooped and crouching in overpacked vans. These transfers made it impossible for anyone to know their location, as there would be no notice to attorneys or relatives when people moved. At times the B-18 occupants were left overnight, the frigid onslaught of forced air and lack of mattresses or bedding defeating sleep. The hours of sitting in packed cells on benches or the concrete floor meant further physical and mental duress.
The subfield office network that Stevens highlights in her report worsens the challenge of providing detainees their right to challenge their deportation. This situation is further highlighted in a December Human Rights Watch report, "Locked Up Far Away":
The detained immigrants have the right, under both US and international human rights law, to be represented in deportation hearings by an attorney of their choice and to present evidence in their defense. But once they are transferred, immigrants are often so far away from their lawyers, evidence, and witnesses that their ability to defend themselves in deportation proceedings is severely curtailed, the report found.
The Nation report quotes an attorney who had a client held in a subfield office and likens the detention centers to "extraordinary renditions within the United States":
The president released in January a memorandum about transparency, but that's not happening. He says one thing, but we have these clandestine operations, akin to extraordinary renditions within the United States. They're misguided as to what their true mission is, and they are doing things contrary to the best interests of the country. |
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