New York, NY —
Another lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security was filed in Federal court today, this one is over prison conditions for detained immigrants. The plaintiffs are former detainees and several advocacy groups who say conditions in immigration prisons are wildly variable and too often inhumane. So, with help from Yale Law School, they’re asking a federal judge to force the government to create new regulations and hold itself accountable. WNYC’s Marianne McCune has more.
REPORTER: The harshest treatment of immigrants in detention has made big news in recent years: harassment by dogs at Passaic County jail in New Jersey; the death of an immigrant who went untreated for more than 20 minutes after suffering a hard attack in Louisiana; or the physical abuse of some immigrants held in Brooklyn after the September 11th attacks. But the lawsuit being filed today is more focused on the everyday. Paromita Shah of the National Lawyer’s Guild’s National Immigration Project says complaints range from inflexible visiting hours to inadequate medical care.
SHAH: Even today I had two calls from friends and family members who said this person had fallen down and he’d been taken to the hospital. But when he came back he said his back was swollen his leg was swollen. It’s been a week now and they haven’t checked up on him. He wasn’t sure what was happening, he was very agitated and he didn’t know what to do.
REPORTER: Over the past decade, the number of immigrants detained by the Department of Homeland Security has increased 6-fold – to nearly 30,000. They’ve been ordered deported either because they’re in the country illegally or they’ve committed deportable crimes. Those who challenge the government often spend months or years in jails and prisons across the country – some are run by Homeland Security, others are private, county, or state prisons on contract. An immigration spokesman says all are required to follow a detailed set of standards and the agency has created a compliance unit, but Shah says it’s not enough.
SHAH: There’s just no mechanism to enforce the standards. They’re guidelines -- which means they’re voluntary. And when they’re voluntary, there’s really no incentive for any local jail or for any facility to comply with them.
REPORTER: Homeland Security’s own Inspector General has reported consistent violations of the standards. Jamaican immigrant Prince Brown was ordered deported because of a misdemeanor conviction for possession of Marijuana – and he fought it for half a decade in four different detention facilities, mostly in Louisiana.
BROWN: First of all, you so far from resources!
REPORTER: Brown has a life threatening disease for which he takes daily medication, and he says his biggest worry each time he was moved was whether his meds would be moved with him. Once, he says, his medical records were lost and he had to choose pills from a display.
PRINCE BROWN: They got certain medication on the wall, like advertisement, and I show them which one I was taking from the wall.
REPORTER: Brown ultimately succeeded in getting his deportation order cancelled – but at least once, he had to go without medication for a week.
BROWN: They make it so hard and difficult for you, even if you have a chance of fighting you sign out. You understand what I’m saying? You get so frustrated.
REPORTER: Signing out means agreeing to be deported, rather than staying in detention to fight. A South Asian immigrant who goes by Darth says some of the facilities he was imprisoned in made it almost impossible for immigrants to keep their cases afloat – by limiting access to attorneys, the law library, or just telephones. At a federal prison in Louisiana, he says the counselor in charge of his case was just moody.
DARTH: One time when I went to him for a call, he said man I don’t have time. I’m not a two dollar whore that I’m here for everybody. And he said, don’t bother me and I don’t want to be bothered, I’m too busy.
REPORTER: Immigrants do not have the right to free legal representation, as American criminals do. But if Darth had remained in the tri-state area, he could have accessed an array of immigrant rights groups. In Louisiana, he says, he’s convinced he was handed a bogus list of free attorneys.
DARTH: I think maybe they meant the list was free because we contacted those attorneys, they all charge money.
REPORTER: Darth had the good fortune to work in the prison’s law library and he represented himself until he was able to get an attorney. In the end he won his case – but he still requested WNYC not use his real name because he fears retribution for speaking out. The group he volunteers for – Families for Freedom and the National Immigration Project are both plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Their aim: to force the Department of Homeland Security to issue a new set of enforceable regulations for all its detention facilities. A spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement says he can’t comment on pending litigation.
For WNYC, I’m Marianne McCune