Detention Centers Standards experienced agressive Hardships for Immigrants.

Some 300 women held at immigration detention centers in Arizona face dangerous delays in health care and widespread mistreatment, according to a new study by the University of Arizona, the latest report to criticize conditions at such centers throughout the United States.
The study, which federal immigration officials criticized as narrow and unsubstantiated, was conducted from August 2007 to August 2008 by the Southwest Institute of Research on Women and the James E. Rogers College of Law, both at the University of Arizona. It was released Jan. 13.
Researchers examined the conditions facing women in the process of deportation proceedings at three federal immigration centers in Arizona. An estimated 3,000 women are being held nationwide.
The study concluded that immigration authorities were too aggressive in detaining the women, who rarely posed a flight risk, and that as a result, they experienced severe hardships, including a lack of prenatal care, treatment for cancer, ovarian cysts and other serious medical conditions, and, in some cases, being mixed in with federal prisoners.
Katrina S. Kane, who directs Arizona detention and removal operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, dismissed the study as unsubstantiated accounts from a limited number of detainees and their advocates.
“Reports such as this, while alleging to be unbiased, do great harm to the public’s understanding of the complex issues involved in immigration law enforcement,” Ms. Kane said.
The director of border research for the institute on women, Nina Rabin, an immigration lawyer who led the study, countered that interviews with detainees, former detainees and their lawyers corroborated a pattern of endemic mistreatment.
And Ms. Rabin said she had spoken with immigrant advocacy groups around the United States, many of whom stated that mistreatment of women at the centers was not unusual.
“We were pretty shocked to learn about all the ways in which life is made endlessly difficult for these women,” Ms. Rabin said, especially those who were pregnant or had recently given birth.
The immigration department has been under increasing pressure to improve conditions at its detention centers. The federal Government Accountability Office and the inspector general’s office at the Department of Homeland Security have each released reports in the last three years criticizing standards at such centers, many of which are operated by private contractors.
Last September, the immigration department announced plans to improve conditions at its detention centers, but the new rules will not fully take effect until 2010. Meanwhile, Congress has been weighing whether to impose its own requirements on the department after a New York Times article on immigrants who died in federal custody.
The three centers that the study focused on are not run by the immigration department but by the Pinal County Sheriff’s Department and the Corrections Corporation of America.
“We strictly enforce all national ICE standards,” Ms. Kane said, “and if we find those standards are not being met and we feel the deficiencies are not being corrected, we locate our detainees to other facilities.”
In one of several cases documented in the study, a woman being held at the Central Arizona Detention Center in Florence who experienced excruciating abdominal pain for months after she had been forced to undergo female genital mutilation in West Africa was told by the center’s staff to “exercise and watch her diet,” her lawyer at the time, Raha Jorjani, said. After nearly six months, the woman, who had been convicted of a nonviolent crime, was taken to a hospital where an ultrasound revealed a cyst the size of a five-month-old fetus, Ms. Jorjani said.
Immigration officials then suddenly released the woman with no money or health insurance to treat the cyst, Ms. Jorjani said.
“That she had to remain in detention at all during this period is egregious,” Ms. Jorjani said. “She shouldn’t have had to get that sick for immigration to consider her request for release.”
Ms. Kane, the department spokeswoman, said that this was the first the agency had heard of the case and that it took accusations of mistreatment seriously.
In one case the study described, an Undocumented immigrant identified as Ana, who had come to the United States from Mexico as a baby and served a brief stint in jail for using a fake credit card, was being held at the Central Arizona Detention Center.
Although Ana was six months pregnant and had an ovarian cyst, she was ordered to use a top bunk and denied a sonogram and prenatal vitamins during the five weeks she was held, the study said.
Three women also told a local immigrant rights group that they had suffered miscarriages while in detention in the last three years, according to the study.
Ms. Kane said that while her department could not corroborate any of the report’s accusations, it had found that a detainee’s contention that she had not received treatment for cervical cancer had proved false.

Detention Officers sentenced for Civil Rights Violations.

Former Grant County, Kentucky Detention Center Officers Sentenced for Civil Rights Violations in Teenager Rape Case.

Wesley Lanham, 31, and Shawn Freeman, 36, both former deputy jailers at Grant County Detention Center in Kentucky, were sentenced today on federal civil rights, conspiracy, and obstruction charges. Lanham was sentenced to 15 years in prison and 3years of supervised release, and Freeman was sentenced to 14 years in prison and 3 years of supervised release. Both defendants were found guilty of conspiring to violate the civil rights of a teenaged traffic offender by arranging for him to be raped by inmates. The jury convicted the defendants on all charges and specifically found that the defendants were responsible for the aggravated sexual assault carried out by the inmates.

"Although nothing can fully heal the wounds inflicted on this teenager, hopefully the defendants’ sentences today will bring closure to this young man and his family," said Grace Chung Becker, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. "His courage in coming forward helps to ensure that egregious acts such as this one will be appropriately punished, and facilitates the Justice Department’s efforts to ensure the integrity of law enforcement."

The case stemmed from an incident that occurred on Feb. 14, 2003, when the defendants, along with their supervisor, former Sergeant Shawn Sydnor, taunted an 18-year-old high school student who had been brought to the detention center on a speeding charge. The deputies teased the teenager about his physical appearance and told him that he would make a good "girlfriend" for the other inmates. The defendants then solicited a group of convicted felons housed in a general population cell to scare and "mess with" the teenager. After eliciting an agreement from the inmates, the officers left the teenager in the cell where he was sexually assaulted by the other inmates.

When the teenager’s father reported the incident and demanded an investigation, the defendants falsified their official reports relating to the treatment of the teenager.

A third defendant, former Sergeant at the jail, Clint Shawn Sydnor, previously pleaded guilty to civil rights and conspiracy charges and was sentenced earlier today to 90 months in prison.

This case was prosecuted by Special Litigation Counsel Kristy L. Parker and Trial Attorney Forrest Christian of the Criminal Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, with assistance from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Kentucky. The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Trail of Dysfuntional Immigration System ending in Deportation.

Each day, over 30,000 people are housed within detention centers across the United States. The New York-based Detention Watch Network says that last year, over 276,000 immigrants were deported.

Deportations have increased significantly since 1996, when laws became much more punitive. A criminal charge results in jail time and guarantees deportation of non-citizen immigrants, regardless of legal status and family.

There has been many instances where In all the furor over rising immigration rates in the U.S. — often disguised as concern over “Undocumented” immigration — one story in particular demonstrates that contrary to scare stories about the effect of immigration on this country, the reality is that this country is often a scary and oppressive place for immigrants. And immigrant women, having drawn the double whammy card, are especially vulnerable. A 22-year-old immigrant from Colombia exposed her immigration agent using the threat of deportation to rape her, using her cell phone to tape the assault. Unfortunately, as is all too common with these sorts of stories, most reports describe the event as sex, even while making it clear that the sex is question was coerced, and should be more accurately described as rape.”*

Inhumane Detention Centers in America Part II.

One immigrant detained in 2007 was Amina Mudey.
She fled Somalia after her father, brothers and sister were murdered. Amina landed in New York and requested political asylum. "The medical treatment that Amina received was absolutely deplorable. Substandard, sanction-able, and flat out malpractice," says Ann Schofield Baker, Amina's lawyer. Schofield Baker says Amina was detained in the former New Jersey warehouse facility and almost immediately was prescribed a powerful anti-psychotic drug called "Risperdal." "How did she come to be on Risperdal to begin with? I mean, was she psychotic?" Pelley asks. "Not even remotely psychotic," Schofield Baker says. "When Amina first arrived at the detention center she hadn't slept in two or three days. She hadn't eaten. She'd never been on a plane before. She was disoriented. They brought her to the facility shackled. She was absolutely petrified. And she collapsed and had a panic attack. From that, someone concluded that she was psychotic." Schofield Baker says on Risperdal, Amina was dazed, drooling and helpless. A human rights group asked her to represent Amina. She got her own doctors, who took Amina off the drug. And Amina was granted asylum. Now Amina is studying computers and English.

What was it like when you walked out of there?" Pelley asks.

"Outside was beautiful," Amina says, with the help of a translator.

"It was a tough start for you," Pelley remarks.

"America is wonderful place. I like it, New York," Amina answers in English.

Amina's alleged misdiagnosis isn't an isolated case according to an internal memo from last year, written by the head of mental health at the Division of Immigration Health Services.

"The top psychologist worried about mental health,” Priest says, as she quotes from an email he wrote: 'We need to stop looking for Band-Aid solutions for these problems.”

"The little money managed care may save in the short run is going to be dwarfed by the millions that will be paid out by ICE when the lawsuits roll in.There have been just a handful of lawsuits so far. But they know they're sitting on a powder keg."

Inhumane Detention Centers in America.

Since 9/11 there have been a lot of changes in how the United States deals with immigrants. One of the biggest is the explosive growth of a system of immigrant detention centers that few Americans know anything about.

Immigrants who come into the country illegally, or refugees who apply for political asylum, often go into detention, some for many months. Before 9/11, about 100,000 detainees went though the system each year. Today, with stricter immigration rules, that number has tripled to more than 300,000.

In 2004, United Nations troops were fighting militant gangs in the streets of Haiti. Eighty-one-year-old Reverend Joseph Dantica, a Baptist minister, saw his church ransacked during the unrest, so he fled to the United States and asked for political asylum. His niece, Edwidge Danticat (her last name is spelled differently than her uncle's) says he was taken straight to a U.S. immigration detention center.

"He was essentially arrested?" Pelley asks.

"Yes. I consider it an arrest," Danticat says. "Because …he had to ask for special relief for him not to be handcuffed. And they did allow him that, but told him that if he ran, they would shoot him."

Rev. Dantica raised Edwidge in Haiti; she moved to the U.S. at the age of 12 and grew up to become a prize-winning author. Danticat's recent book, "Brother, I'm Dying," recounts her uncle's ordeal.

She was waiting for him in Miami.

Asked what she was thinking when she heard her uncle had been detained, Danticat tells Pelley, "Well, I was horrified. Eighty one years old and, after the ordeal that he had been through in Haiti, I worried about his ability to handle that."

Records show that two days later, during an asylum hearing, he became violently ill and collapsed. A detention center physician's assistant failed to recognize that Dantica was in serious trouble.

"Help me understand from the records that you've seen precisely what the medic said about your uncle and his condition," Pelley asks.

"It appears that he said, 'I think he's faking,' or something to that effect," Danticat says.

It took four hours to get Rev. Dantica to an outside hospital. His family wasn't allowed to see him. In a day and a half, Rev. Dantica was dead. The medical examiner said it was pancreatitis.

Asked what she was thinking in that moment, Danticat says, "Just a series of things.”

Crying, she continues, "Of course, you know, a great deal of sadness because he died so alone."
"He died without his family," Pelley remarks.

"Yeah. And after being treated like an animal," Danticat says. "Someone who was just trying to escape horrible things, who was so old and sick. Just had to die that way."

But in one sense, Rev. Dantica was not alone: he's among hundreds of sick or dying detainees inside 22 detention centers, plus some 350 state and local jails. The federal lock-ups range from a former warehouse in New Jersey that houses 325 people, to a desert facility near the Mexican border.

The centers are run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known by its initials "ICE."

Inside the detention centers, medical care is provided by another federal agency, the Division of Immigration Health Services, or DIHS. Reporters Dana Priest and Amy Goldstein of The Washington Post have been investigating DIHS.

"This is not just some deaths or just some sick people anecdotally. If you take them all together, they show poor medical judgments, faulty administrative practices, sloppy paperwork, lost medical records and very dangerous staffing levels," Priest explains.

Priest, who contributes to 60 Minutes, and Goldstein have obtained thousands of internal DIHS documents. They include investigations, e-mails, autopsy reports and complaints.

What sort of a picture did the documents paint of how DIHS is working? "
They show a bureaucracy that offers many immigrants no care or slow care or poor care," Priest says. "And they also show that the employees inside are panicked about this.

For example last year, 21-year-old detainee Juan Guevara was complaining of severe headaches. Soon he had died of a brain aneurysm. A staff member wrote in an e-mail "the detainee was prescribed Tylenol. The detainee was not seen or evaluated by an RN, midlevel (physician's assistant) or physician."

This internal report from 2007 was written after another detainee died of a contagious infection: "the clinical staff at all levels failed to recognize early signs and symptoms of meningitis."

This memo from 2007 sounds an alarm over staffing shortages in Buffalo, written in all caps, "CRITICAL STAFFING SITUATION OCCURRING, SITE IS DOWN TO ONLY 3 FULL TIME NURSES." In Arizona, "CRITICAL STAFFING levels. Site has reached a 48% nursing vacancy rate."

While the number of immigrants in detention has tripled since 9/11, the health services budget has grown only by 65 percent.

Priest reads from an email from the acting director of DIHS to a senior ICE official in August 2007: “We're facing critical staffing shortages at most every site. While we developed, executed and achieved major successes in our recruitment efforts, we've been unable to meet the demand."

Imagine your child in a Immigration Detention Center?

The truth about immigrants and children in prisons across the U.S. What if it was your loved one?

Another death at Detention center

I am totally disgusted and ashamed that people dying everyday in the Desert, in Detention Centers, in Jails, in ICE hands without reservation of their Human and Civil Righst just for the Dysfunctional Immigration system. Hopefully Human rights will take hands on this case.

The 17-year-old's lifeless body was frozen in a sitting position in solitary-confinement at the Galveston County Jail.

Arturo Chavez's back was flush against a 7-foot partition for the cell's shower. A blue blanket was twisted into a noose, with one end wrapped around his neck, the other tied to a shower head.

He apparently hanged himself about 48 hours after being arrested for what started as an illegal left turn.

It may never be known what swept over Chavez, who illegally emigrated from Guatemala four years ago and spent much of his time trying to improve his English and working to send money home.

"If he did it, it was because he was so beaten down he couldn't take the pain," his older brother Adolfo Chavez said of the suicide.

What is certain is that his life was similar to those of countless people who live in the shadows of society due to their immigration status, and that things hurtled out of control after police pulled him over the night of Aug. 1.

Officials are still investigating his death, ruled a suicide.

A federal lawsuit was filed by Chavez's parents against the League City Police Department, Galveston County and Sheriff Gean Leonard. The lawsuit contends not enough was done to keep Chavez from killing himself.

Those who knew Chavez said, like many undocumented immigrants, he feared any run-in with authorities as it would likely mean he would be deported.

He left Central America when he was 13 and wanted more out of life than he could get with tips loading baggage at a bus station.

Relatives say it took him nearly 15 days to get to Houston, including sneaking into Mexico and riding a passenger bus north.

He crossed the Rio Grande and hiked through South Texas.

Human smugglers demanded $3,500 to guide him, a hefty sum met with help from family and friends.

In Houston, he was known for his hustle and held out hope his improving English skills would get him promoted from busboy to waiter.

Chavez's death was a mystery as much as a shock, said Mario Garcia, who owns the restaurant where Chavez worked.

"I don't understand how you can go from making a mistake to losing your life, I'm dumbfounded by it," Garcia said. "There are two sides to every story, and the truth is probably somewhere right in the middle."

The kid known by his family as niño, Spanish for boy, had come a long way since leaving his indigenous village. He was sending home at least $100 a week to help his mother, father and sister.

He was not only working full time, but attending Clear Creek High School's program to help newly arrived international students.

He wore woven bracelets made of blue and white yarn — the colors of Guatemala's flag — as well as an anklet with the U.S.A.'s red, white and blue.

"He was very proud of his Mayan heritage," said Elizabeth Laurence, one of his teachers. "He was a feisty young fellow, popular and wanted to learn English very much. He wasn't timid; he tried to use it."

Things were going well with his girlfriend, Jhoseline Martell, whom he met at school.

As the police cruiser's lights flashed behind him near Louisiana Street and League City Parkway, Chavez dialed Martell on his cell phone and stuffed it in his pocket.

"He said the police have stopped me, just listen," recalled Martell, 15.

He normally rode a bicycle to avoid such trouble, but he had recently bought a used green Honda sedan.

He had no driver's license, no insurance and what turned out later to be a fake identification card.

He was arrested and taken to jail. His mugshot was taken while he wore the red shirt from his job as a busboy.

Excessive force alleged

All he had made for himself in the U.S. seemed to hang in the balance as Chavez was locked up at the police station and awaiting transfer to county jail.

At one point, when the holding-cell door was opened, Chavez bolted for freedom, according to a police report.

With officers running behind, the 5-foot-3-inch Chavez made it outside and scrambled up a chain-link fence, but was grabbed by the feet.

The wire atop the fence ripped into his hands.

In the scramble, he was shocked twice with a taser and hit multiple times with a baton, according to police.

Houston attorney Randall Kallinen said the officers used excessive force to apprehend Chavez.
"He had been severely beaten," said Kallinen, who added that a head injury could bring on suicidal thoughts — a mix worsened by solitary confinement. Results of an autopsy are pending.
Gary Ratliff, assistant chief of the League City Police Department, said officers used the minimum of force to catch the fleeing prisoner.

"None of us know what this kid was thinking; no one knows what pushed him to that regard," he said of suicide.

"I really seriously feel for that family. That is a void you just can't fill," he said.

Body sent to Guatemala

Adolfo Chavez, who wears a Rosary identical to the one his brother was buried with, spoke quietly as he described how Arturo came to America to chase a dream.

He also recalled their last phone conversation from jail.

The kid always fighting for a better life sounded broken.

He was now looking at escape charges, resisting arrest, and his body ached.

Adolfo said Arturo asked him to call his parents.

"He said, 'Tell them I love them, and I've always tried to be a good son. I can't take it anymore.' "

Arturo Chavez's body was back in Guatemala last week for a funeral at his parents' home. Family and friends had to raise $6,000 to send his remains back home.

Relatives in the U.S. couldn't afford to attend.

His father, Juan Chavez, said he could hardly believe the condition of his son's body. His face, skull and back were bruised.

His legs were swollen. One hand was torn up.

"He's at peace now," the father said.

Detention Center officer pleade guilty of Civil Rights Violations.

FORMER GRANT COUNTY, KENTUCKY DETENTION CENTER OFFICERS FOUND GUILTY OF CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN TEENAGER RAPE CASE.

A Kentucky jury convicted Wesley Lanham and Shawn Freeman, both former deputy jailers, on federal civil rights, conspiracy and obstruction charges, the Justice Department announced today. The defendants, former deputies at the Grant County Detention Center, were found guilty of conspiring to violate the civil rights of a teenage traffic offender when they arranged for him to be raped by inmates. The jury convicted the defendants on all charges and specifically found that the defendants were responsible for the aggravated sexual assault carried out by the inmates.

The defendants face up to life in prison when they are sentenced on Dec. 8, 2008.

The case stemmed from an incident that occurred on Valentine’s Day in 2003, when the defendants, along with their supervisor, former Sergeant Shawn Sydnor, taunted an 18-year-old high school student who had been brought to the detention center on a speeding charge. The deputies teased the teenager about his physical appearance and told him that he would make a good “girlfriend” for the other inmates. The defendants then solicited a group of convicted felons housed in a general population cell to scare the teenager. After eliciting an agreement from the inmates, the officers left the teenager in the cell where he was sexually assaulted by the other inmates.

When the teenager’s father reported the incident and demanded an investigation, the defendants falsified their official reports relating to the treatment of the teenager.

Sydnor, previously pleaded guilty to civil rights and conspiracy charges and faces up to 15 years in prison.

This case was prosecuted by Special Litigation Counsel Kristy L. Parker and Trial Attorney Forrest Christian of the Criminal Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, with assistance from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Kentucky. The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation

Detention Center Supervisor pleads guilty to Civil Rights Crime.

Clinton Shawn Sydnor, a former sergeant at the Grant County, Ky., Detention Center, pleaded guilty in federal court today to conspiring with deputy jailers and with inmates to violate the civil rights of a man who was in his custody at the jail. Today’s plea was jointly announced by Grace Chung Becker, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, together with James A. Zerhusen, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, and Tracy Reinhold, Special Agent in Charge of the Louisville Division of the FBI. Sydnor faces a possible sentence of 15 years in prison when he is sentenced on Dec. 8, 2008.

Sydnor was initially charged in a federal indictment that also charged deputy jailers Wesley Lanham and Shawn Freeman. The indictment charged all three defendants with conspiring to violate the civil rights of the man in their custody; with violating the man’s rights; and with obstructing justice in connection with the investigation of those crimes. Sydnor was also charged with additional counts of obstruction for falsifying records in a federal investigation and for tampering with a witness.

According to the original indictment, on Feb. 14, 2003, Sydnor, Lanham and Freeman, along with other deputies not named in the indictment, while on official duty, taunted an 18-year-old high school student who had been brought to the detention center on a speeding charge. The deputies teased the teenager about his physical appearance. The indictment alleges that the defendants then solicited a group of convicted felons housed in a general population cell to intimidate the teenager. The indictment further alleges that the officers then left the teenager in the cell with the inmates, who proceeded to sexually assault the teen.

Sydnor admitted in court today that he conspired with the other officers and with the inmates to violate the teenager’s civil rights, that he knew the teen faced a threat from the other inmates, and that he deliberately ignored that danger. Sydnor also admitted that he had other officers falsify reports relating to the incident.

Lanham and Freeman have pleaded not guilty to the charges against them and will face trial beginning on Aug. 11, 2008.

The case is being prosecuted by Special Litigation Counsel Kristy L. Parker and Trial Attorney Forrest Christian of the Criminal Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Kentucky