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Apr 6, 2010

CQ - Behind the Lines for Tuesday, April 6, 2010

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By David C. Morrison, Special to Congressional Quarterly

Stockholm syndrome: "Maybe she's forgotten who she is -- or was," Arizona columnist muses of ex-governor Napolitano's reluctance to reinforce border . . . What's in a name: "The irony of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's acronym has never been lost on anyone, including the agency itself" . . . Bad CEO, no doughnut: "Despite growing awareness of how devastating a cyber-attack could be, many businesses still haven't implemented security measures." These and other stories lead today's homeland security coverage.

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“Drug traffickers fighting to control northern Mexico have turned their guns and grenades on the Mexican army, in an apparent escalation of warfare that played out across multiple cities,” The Los Angeles Times’ Tracy Wilkinson updates — and see The Washington Post’s William Booth on the rise of a prison-spawned, cross-border paramilitary killing machine. “Maybe she’s just taking orders from her boss, Barack Obama. Or maybe she’s forgotten who she is — or was,” Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts hazards as to why DHS’s Janet Napolitano hasn’t yet dispatched troops to the border. “How to account for this refusal to appreciate a primary security problem escalating along our 1,500-mile southern border?” Sol Sanders muses in The Washington Times.

Feds: Since the Southwest Border Security Initiative began a year ago, DHS has increased tactical support to border area law enforcers, The Brownsville (Texas) Herald’s Laura Tillman relatedly surveys. The Pakistani Taliban takes credit for yesterday’s multipronged suicide attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar, in which two non-U.S. defenders were killed, Al Jazeera reports — as the Post’s Joshua Partlow finds U.S. officials troubled by Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s threat to join the Taliban before bowing to foreign interference. A year on, the FBI’s eGuardian system “has proven a robust tool for aggregating terrorist threat information,” reaping 3,400 suspicious activity reports generating 56 investigations, a bureau official tells Security Management’s Joseph Straw.

Thin ICE: A federal program that partners local police agencies with ICE has grown rapidly without ensuring that police follow federal priorities or respect civil rights, The Arizona Republic’s Daniel Gonzalez has a DHS IG report finding. “The irony of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s acronym has never been lost on anyone, including the agency itself,” Mary Giovagnoli spotlights on AlterNet. “Setting quotas to deport more illegal immigrants would mean diverting resources from getting rid of some of the nation’s worst criminals,” a Post reader writes. From 1997 to 2007, ICE and its predecessor deported the lawful immigrant parents of nearly 88,000 citizen children, Homeland Security Newswire learns from a report — and see Tanya Golash-Boza in CounterPunch: “ICE on the Border: The Politics of Deportation.”

State and Local: At an April 17 event in Albany, military and federal experts will brief responders and the public on coping with natural disasters and terrorist attacks, the Times Union tells — while The Pueblo Chieftain has Gov. Bill Ritter naming four area law enforcers to the homeland-security-bolstering Colorado Interoperability Executive Council, and The Sioux Falls Argus Leader sees a Highway Patrol vet appointed director of South Dakota’s Office of Homeland Security. New CDC numbers show tiny Rhode Island boasting the highest rate of swine flu vaccinations, about 39 percent, three times higher than Mississippi, which has the weakest participation, The Jackson Clarion-Ledger relays — as The Austin American-Statesman sees Texas officials monitoring a rise in swine flu cases in the Southeast United States and encouraging inoculation.

Bid-ness: The reason DHS and other agencies struggle to hire expert cyberwarriors “is simple: The pool of truly skilled security professionals is a small one, and the government is only the latest suitor vying for their talents,” The San Francisco Chronicle spotlights. “Despite growing awareness of how devastating a cyber-attack could be, many businesses still haven’t implemented security measures,” The New New Internet has a recent report highlighting. A former Chicago Police superintendent and a retired Secret Service chief helm a fast-growing security consulting firm, the Sun-Times profiles. The deadliest terrorist attacks on Moscow since 2004 didn’t stop Russian stocks from climbing more than every market worldwide last week, Bloomberg relates.

Bugs ‘n Bombs: A “certified cleaning expert” briefs The Lansdale (Pa.) Reporter on sanitizing measures for situations ranging up to “weapons-grade pathogens and bioterrorism.” Speaking of the Keystone State, the Biosecurity and Vaccine Development Improvement Act would keep money moving to one of recently deceased Rep. Jack Murtha’s pet recipients of taxpayer dollars, BioPrepWatch relates. Years after a six-month deadline passed, dozens of nations, including uranium producers, ignore a U.N. mandate on controls to foil nuclear terrorism, The Associated Press reports — while the Post reports that in the nuclear posture statement due today, Obama appears to be backing off promises to take the nation’s nuclear weapons off “hair-trigger alert.”

Close Air Support: Four newspaper companies are progressing with a suit to force Raleigh-Durham International to allow post-security newspaper racks, which airport authorities describe as a terror risk, USA Today updates. The newly announced screening regime for incoming non-citizens “will treat all passengers flying into the United States in the same way, regardless of their faith or nationality,” Arab News applauds — while a North Star National op-ed claims the measures “will weaken our ability to screen out terrorists.” The suspected terrorist who drove a car onto a Nigerian airport’s tarmac and into a parked aircraft “may have targeted the five Americans and top politicians on board the aircraft,” The Sunday Punch reports — as The Toronto Star terms a cadre of Mounties serving as in-flight security officers “one of Canada’s secret weapons in the war on terror.”

Coming and Going: “The key to unbinding the Gordian knot of mass transit rail security is to accept risk,” an Antiwar.com op-ed asserts. “Like much of TSA’s efforts on aviation security, its mass transit and passenger rail efforts remain a work in progress,” Homeland Security Watch adds. “Perhaps the most overlooked mode of transportation is our nation’s system of pipelines. With few resources, the TSA must protect this mode, in addition to more obvious ones like aviation and rail,” The Boston Herald leads. “There’s also the possibility of Seaport Canaveral being an enticing target for terrorists,” Florida Today observes, referencing the port’s new 118 million gallon tank farm. “A security expert warns the technology is far from perfect as Canada prepares to join 60 other countries next year and begin issuing electronic passports,” Calgary’s 660 News notes.

Home Front: Senate homelander Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., warned Sunday that extreme partisan anger is increasing the risk of domestic terrorism in the United States, Voice of America’s Paula Wolfson relates. If the Hutaree militia “are scapegoats of the Obama Homeland Security machine, well, we may never know it. One thing I do know for certain is these people are the perfect target for Napolitano and her gang,” Gina Miller conspiracizes for Dakota Voice. The Michigan militia arrests “should serve as a wake-up call to those in political leadership roles who are inciting rage against the government,” James Zogby exhorts in The Huffington Post. “Violence with the stated goal of changing the internal workings of our democracy is terrorism, not patriotism,” The Marion (Ohio) Star adjures. “Words can be weapons, too. So after nearly every new report of political violence . . . there is a vocabulary debate: Should it be labeled ‘terrorism’?” The New York Times’ Scott Shane explores.

Talking Terror: Some leaders “call for an offshore strategy of counterterrorism to retaliate after an attack rather than an in-country strategy of counterinsurgency to prevent such attacks,” Henry R. Nau notes in Policy Review. “Terrorism is like jazz; it’s all about improvisation and variation. That’s why conventional forces are dead in the water against it; they’re all ‘by the book,’ with top-down command and control,” Doug Casey tells HoweStreet.com. “We are safer because, despite his rhetoric, Obama became Bush in matters of anti-terrorism,” Victor Davis Hanson asserts in The National Review. Female suicide bombers are more driven by abusive histories than nationalist yearnings, Haaretz has a new book published in Israel positing — and check IPT News on “The Growing Threat from Female Suicide Bombers.”

Courts and rights: A pregnant American charged in a global terror plot will plead not guilty at a hearing tomorrow in Pennsylvania, AP learns — as The Chicago Sun-Times relays word of a Chicago cabbie also pleading innocent yesterday to attempting to aid al Qaeda. Unlawful immigration status is insufficient cause to permit lawsuit plaintiffs to hide behind anonymity, The Arkansas News Bureau has that state’s Supreme Court ruling — while The St. Louis Post-Dispatch covers the conclusion of a case that at one time promised to involve international terror finance. “It’s not that we aren’t going to have the rule of law. It’s which rule of law,” The Huffington Post quotes Lieberman, again, promoting military trials for accused terrorists.

Over There: A stepped-up campaign of American drone strikes in the Af-Pak border region this year has cast a pall of fear over an area that was once a free zone for al Qaeda and the Taliban, the Times leads. The leader of an Islamist terror group widely considered to be a nationalist insurgent organization has invited Osama bin Laden to Somalia, The Long War Journal relates. Salafi-Jihadi activities in Mauritania have increased significantly in the last couple of years, indicating that al-Qaeda-affiliated groups are becoming more effective in that country, Terrorism Monitor mentions.

Do You Solemnly Swear: “Things are slowly returning to normal today at the White House in the wake of the recent F-Bomb scare,” Unconfirmed Sources confirms. “All offices of the White House are back in operation after a tense afternoon following the evacuation of the entire facility during the signing ceremony for the bill to reform the American health care system. The evacuation was ordered when a Secret Service agent who was monitoring the bill signing determined that an F-Bomb had been dropped near the president. He was spirited away to a secure facility and the White House staff was also evacuated. The White House F-Bomb squad was called in and secured the building. The team of F-Bomb experts searched the building and recovered the remains of the F-Bomb, nobody was injured during the operation . . . Lawmakers, fresh from their success in passing Health Care Reform, have already vowed to address the F-Bomb crisis.”

Source: CQ Homeland Security

Apr 2, 2010

Locked Up Far Away | Human Rights Watch

The Transfer of Immigrants to Remote Detention Centers in the United States

December 2, 2009

This 88-page report presents new data analyzed for Human Rights Watch by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) of Syracuse University. The data show that 53 percent of the 1.4 million transfers have taken place since 2006, and most occur between state and local jails that contract with the agency, known as ICE, to provide detention bed space. The report's findings are based on the new data and interviews with officials, immigration lawyers, detainees, and their family members.

Read the Press Release

Read the Report
ISBN: 1-56432-570-9

Dec 22, 2009

America's Secret ICE Castles

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"If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he's illegal, we can make him disappear." Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police and sheriffs in August 2008. Also present was Amnesty International's Sarnata Reynolds, who wrote about the incident in the 2009 report "Jailed Without Justice" and said in an interview, "It was almost surreal being there, particularly being someone from an organization that has worked on disappearances for decades in other countries. I couldn't believe he would say it so boldly, as though it weren't anything wrong."

ICE agents regularly impersonate civilians--OSHA inspectors, insurance agents, religious workers--in order to arrest longtime US residents who have no criminal history. Jacqueline Stevens has reported a web-exclusive companion piece on ICE agents' ruse operations.

Pendergraph knew that ICE could disappear people, because he knew that in addition to the publicly listed field offices and detention sites, ICE is also confining people in 186 unlisted and unmarked subfield offices, many in suburban office parks or commercial spaces revealing no information about their ICE tenants--nary a sign, a marked car or even a US flag. (Presumably there is a flag at the Veterans Affairs Complex in Castle Point, New York, but no one would associate it with the Criminal Alien Program ICE is running out of Building 7.) Designed for confining individuals in transit, with no beds or showers, subfield offices are not subject to ICE Detention Standards. The subfield office network was mentioned in an October report by Dora Schriro, then special adviser to Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security, but no locations were provided.

I obtained a partial list of the subfield offices from an ICE officer and shared it with immigrant advocates in major human and civil rights organizations, whose reactions ranged from perplexity to outrage. Andrea Black, director of Detention Watch Network (DWN), said she was aware of some of the subfield offices but not that people were held there. ICE never provided DWN a list of their locations. "This points to an overall lack of transparency and even organization on the part of ICE," said Black. ICE says temporary facilities in field or subfield offices are used for 84 percent of all book-ins. There are twenty-four listed field offices. The 186 unlisted subfield offices tend to be where local police and sheriffs have formally or informally reached out to ICE. For instance, in 2007 North Carolina had 629,947 immigrants and at least six subfield offices, compared with Massachusetts, with 913,957 immigrants and one listed field office. Not surprisingly, before joining ICE Pendergraph, a sheriff, was the Joe Arpaio of North Carolina, his official bio stating that he "spearheaded the use of the 287(g) program," legislation that empowers local police to perform immigration law enforcement functions.

A senior attorney at a civil rights organization, speaking on background, saw the list and exclaimed, "You cannot have secret detention! The public has the right to know where detention is happening."

Alison Parker, deputy director of Human Rights Watch, wrote a December comprehensive report on ICE transit policies, "Locked Up Far Away." Even she had never heard of the subfield offices and was concerned that the failure to disclose their locations violates the UN's Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States is a signatory. She explained that the government must provide "an impartial authority to review the lawfulness of custody. Part and parcel is the ability of somebody to find the person and to make their presence known to a court."

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The challenge of being unable to find people in detention centers, documented in the Human Rights Watch report, is worsened when one does not even know where to look. The absence of a real-time database tracking people in ICE custody means ICE has created a network of secret jails. Subfield offices enter the time and date of custody after the fact, a situation ripe for errors, hinted at in the Schriro report, as well as cover-ups.

ICE refused a request for an interview, selectively responded to questions sent by e-mail and refused to identify the person authorizing the reply--another symptom of ICE thwarting transparency and hence accountability. The anonymous official provided no explanation for ICE not posting a list of subfield office locations and phone numbers or for its lack of a real-time locator database.

It is not surprising to find that, with no detention rules and being off the map spatially and otherwise, ICE agents at these locations are acting in ways that are unconscionable and unlawful. According to Ahilan Arulanantham, director of Immigrant Rights for the ACLU of Southern California, the Los Angeles subfield office called B-18 is a barely converted storage space tucked away in a large downtown federal building. "You actually walk down the sidewalk and into an underground parking lot. Then you turn right, open a big door and voilà, you're in a detention center," Arulanantham explained. Without knowing where you were going, he said, "it's not clear to me how anyone would find it. What this breeds, not surprisingly, is a whole host of problems concerning access to phones, relatives and counsel."

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.

Alla Suvorova, 26, a Mission Hills, California, resident for almost six years, ended up in B-18 after she was snared in an ICE raid targeting others at a Sherman Oaks apartment building. For her, the worst part was not the dirt, the bugs flying everywhere or the clogged, stinking toilet in their common cell but the panic when ICE agents laughed at her requests to understand how long she would be held. "No one could visit; they couldn't find me. I was thinking these people are going to put me and the other people in a grinder and make sausages and sell them in the local market."

Sleep deprivation and extreme cold were among the "enhanced interrogation" techniques promoted by the Bush White House and later set aside by the Justice Department because of concerns that they amounted to torture. Although without the intent to elicit information, ICE under the Obama administration was holding people charged with a civil infraction in conditions approaching those no longer authorized for accused terrorists.

According to Aaron Tarin, an immigration attorney in Salt Lake City, "Whenever I have a client in a subfield office, it makes me nervous. Their procedures are lax. You've got these senior agents who have all the authority in the world because they're out in the middle of nowhere. You've got rogue agents doing whatever they want. Most of the buildings are unmarked; the vehicles they drive are unmarked." Like other attorneys, Tarin was extremely frustrated by ICE not releasing its phone numbers. He gave as an example a US citizen in Salt Lake City who hired him because her husband, in the process of applying for a green card, was being held at a subfield office in Colorado. By the time Tarin tracked down the location of the facility that was holding the husband when he had called his wife, the man had been moved to another subfield office. "I had to become a little sleuth," Tarin said, describing the hours he and a paralegal spent on the phone, the numerous false leads, unanswered phones and unreturned messages until the husband, who had been picked up for driving without a license or insurance, was found in Grand Junction, Colorado, held on a $20,000 bond, $10,000 for each infraction. "I argued with the guy, 'This is absurd! Whose policy is this?'" Tarin said the agent's response was, "That's just our policy here."

Rafael Galvez, an attorney in Maine, explained why he would like ICE to release its entire list of subfield office addresses and phone numbers. "If they're detaining someone, I will need to contact the people on the list. If I can advocate on a person's behalf and provide documents, a lot of complications could be avoided."

Cary, a suburb of Raleigh, North Carolina, has a typical subfield office at the rear of CentreWest Commons, an office park adjacent to gated communities, large artificial ponds and an Oxford University Press production plant. ICE's low-lying brick building with a bright blue awning has darkened windows, no sign and no US flag. People in shackles and handcuffs are shuffled in from the rear. The office complex has perhaps twenty other businesses, all of which do have signs. The agents, who are armed, might not wear uniforms and drive their passengers in unmarked, often windowless white vans. Even Dani Martinez-Moore, who lives nearby and coordinates the North Carolina Network of Immigrant Advocates, did not know people were being held there until she read about it on my blog.

In late October 2008, Mark Lyttle, then 31, was held in the Cary office for several hours. Lyttle was born in North Carolina, and the FBI file ICE had obtained on him indicated he was a US citizen. Lyttle used his time in the holding tank attempting to persuade the agents who had plucked him out of the medical misdemeanor section of a nearby prison, where he had been held for seventy-three days, not to follow through on the Cary office's earlier decision to ship him to Mexico. Lyttle is cognitively disabled, has bipolar disorder, speaks no Spanish and has no Mexican relatives. In response to his entreaties, a Cary agent "told me to tell it to the judge," Lyttle said. But Lyttle's charging document from the Cary office includes a box checked next to the boilerplate prohibition: "You may not request a review of this determination by an immigration judge."

Lyttle made enough of a fuss at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, that the agents there arranged for him to appear before a judge. But the checked box in the Cary paperwork meant he never heard from the nonprofit Legal Orientation Program attorneys who might have picked up on his situation. William Cassidy, a former ICE prosecutor working for the Executive Office of Immigration Review, ignored Lyttle's pleas and in his capacity as immigration judge signed Lyttle's removal order. According to Lyttle, Cassidy said he had to go by the sworn statements of the ICE officers.

Meanwhile, Lyttle's mother, Jeanne, and his brothers, including two in the Army, were frantically searching for him, even checking the obituaries. They were trying to find Lyttle in the North Carolina prison system, but the trail went cold after he was transferred to ICE custody. Jeanne said, "David showed me the Manila envelope [he sent to the prison]--'Refused'--and we thought Mark had refused it." Jeanne was crying. "We kept trying to find out where he was." It never crossed their minds that Mark might be spending Christmas in a shelter for los deportados on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande.

ICE spokesman Temple Black first told me the list was "not releasable" and that it was "law enforcement sensitive," but coordinator for community outreach Andrew Lorenzen-Strait e-mailed me a partial list of addresses and no phone numbers. I then obtained a more complete list, including telephone numbers, in response to a FOIA request. That list, received in November and dated September 2009, is about forty locations shy of the 186 subfield offices mentioned in the Schriro report and omits thirty-nine locations listed in an August ICE job announcement seeking applicants for immigration enforcement agents. These include ICE postings in Champlain, New York; Alamosa, Colorado; Pembroke Pines, Florida; and Livermore, California. The anonymous ICE official neither answered questions about why I was sent an incomplete list nor accounted for the disparity in official explanations of the list's confidentiality.

ICE obscures its presence in other ways as well. Everyone knows that detention centers are in sparsely populated areas, but according to Amnesty International's Reynolds, policy director of migrant and refugee rights, "Quite a lot of communities don't know they're detaining thousands of people, because the signs say Service Processing Center," not Detention Center, although the latter designation is used for privately contracted facilities. The ICE e-mail stated that the "service processing" term was first used when the centers were run by the predecessor agency Immigration and Naturalization Service, "because these facilities were used to process aliens for deportation," ignoring the fact that these structures were and are distinctive for confining people and not the Orwellian "processing."

Even the largest complexes, which are usually off side roads from small highways, are visible only if you drive right up to the entrance. Unlike federal prisons, detention centers post no road signs to guide travelers. The anonymous ICE official would not provide a reason for this disparity.

ICE agents are also working in hidden offices in one of the grooviest buildings in one of the hottest neighborhoods in Manhattan. Tommy Kilbride, an ICE detention and removal officer and a star of A&E's reality show Manhunters: Fugitive Task Force, is part of the US Marshals Fugitive Task Force, housed on the third floor of the Chelsea Market, above Fat Witch Bakery and alongside Rachael Ray and the Food Network. Across the street are Craftsteak and Del Posto, both fancy venues for two other Food Network stars, Tom Colicchio and Mario Batali. Above their restaurants are agents working for the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Someone who had been working in that building for about a year said he had heard rumors of FBI agents, though he didn't see one until nine months later when a guy was openly carrying a gun through the lobby. In November, at midday, he saw two men in plain clothes walk a third man in handcuffs through a side-street door behind Craftsteak. "It was weird, creepy," he said, adding that the whole arrangement made him uncomfortable. "I don't like it. It makes you wonder, what are they hiding? Is it for good reasons or bad reasons?"

Natalie Jeremijenko, who lives nearby and is a professor of visual arts at New York University, pointed out the "twisted genius" of hiding federal agents in the "worldwide center of visuality and public space," referring to the galleries and High Line park among these buildings. Jeremijenko was incensed. "For a participatory democracy to work, you need to have real-time visual evidence of what is going on" and not just knowledge by professors who file a FOIA request or even readers of a Nation article.

In response to a question about the absence of signs at subfield offices, the ICE e-mail stated, "ICE attempts to place signs wherever possible, however there are many variables to consider such as shared buildings, law enforcement activities, zoning laws, etc." Except for "law enforcement activities," the reasons did not apply to the facilities listed here, as evidenced by signs on adjacent businesses.

The Obama administration continued to ignore complaints about the LA subfield office known as B-18 until April 1, when Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder, as well as ICE officials, were named as defendants in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and the National Immigration Law Center. In September, the parties reached a settlement. The ACLU's Arulanantham said, "I never understood what [ICE] had to gain. The fact that after we filed the suit they completely fixed it makes it more mysterious" as to why their months of earlier negotiation brought few results. At the time of the lawsuit, he said, the nearby Mira Loma Detention Center had space. When I asked if ICE was trying to punish people by bringing them to B-18, Arulanantham said, "No, no one was targeted," adding, "If it were punitive, it would be less disturbing."

Arulanantham's response is, alas, more than fodder for a law school hypothetical about whether intentional or unintentional rights violations are more egregious. In 2006 ICE punished several Iraqi hunger strikers in Virginia--they were protesting being unlawfully held for more than six months after agreeing to deportation--by shuffling them between a variety of different facilities, ensuring that they would not encounter lawyers or be found by loved ones. This went on from weeks to months, according to Brittney Nystrom, senior legal adviser for the National Immigration Forum. "The message was, We're going to make you disappear."

As an alternative to the system of unmarked subfield offices and unaccountable agents, consider the approach of neighborhood police precincts, where dangerous criminals are held every day and police carry out their work in full view of their neighbors. Not only can citizens watch out for strange police actions, and know where to look if a family member is missing; local accountability helps discourage misconduct. ICE agents' persistent flouting of rules and laws is abetted by their ability to scurry back to secret dens, avoiding the scrutiny and resulting inhibitions that arise when law enforcement officers develop relationships with the communities they serve.

Indeed, the jacket Kilbride wears during arrests says POLICE in large letters. Working out of a heretofore secret location--Manhunters has no exterior shots--one that his supervisor had requested I not reveal, gives their operation the trappings of a secret police. An attorney who had a client held in a subfield office said on background, "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."

About Jacqueline Stevens

Jacqueline Stevens, a political theorist, is the author of the recently published States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals (Columbia)

Dec 6, 2009

US: Remote Detainee Lockups Hinder Justice

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Transfers of Detained Immigrants Interfere with Lawyer Access and Right to Challenge Deportation

December 2, 2009

(Washington, DC) - The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency's increasing practice of transferring immigrants facing deportation to detention centers far away from their homes severely curtails their ability to challenge their deportation, Human Rights Watch says in a report released today. The agency made 1.4 million detainee transfers in the decade from 1999 through 2008, the report says.

The 88-page report, "Locked Up Far Away: The Transfer of Immigrants to Remote Detention Centers in the United States," presents new data analyzed for Human Rights Watch by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) of Syracuse University. The data show that 53 percent of the 1.4 million transfers have taken place since 2006, and most occur between state and local jails that contract with the agency, known as ICE, to provide detention bed space. The report's findings are based on the new data and interviews with officials, immigration lawyers, detainees, and their family members.

"ICE is increasingly subjecting detainees to a chaotic game of musical chairs," said Alison Parker, deputy US director for Human Rights Watch and author of the report. "And it's a game with dire consequences since it may keep them from finding an attorney or presenting evidence in their defense."

Many immigrants are first arrested and detained in major cities like Los Angeles or Philadelphia, places where immigrants have lived for decades and where their family members, employers, and attorneys also live. Days or months later, with no notice, many of these immigrants are loaded onto planes for transport to detention centers in remote corners of states such as Texas, California, and Louisiana (the three states most likely to receive transfers), the report found.

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.

"Immigrant detainees should not be treated like so many boxes of goods - shipped to the most convenient place for ICE to store them," Parker said. "We are especially concerned that the transferred detainees may find that their chances of successfully fighting deportation or gaining asylum from persecution have just evaporated."

The federal Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (which covers Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas) has jurisdiction over the largest number of the transferred detainees. Those transfers are of particular concern, Human Rights Watch said, because that court is widely known for decisions that are hostile to non-citizens and because the states within its jurisdiction collectively have the lowest ratio of immigration attorneys to immigration detainees in the country.

Human Rights Watch acknowledged that some detainee transfers are inevitable, but said that ICE and Congress should use reasonable and rights-protective checks on detainee transfers as the best state criminal justice systems do. The report recommends concrete steps to help create such a system.

Although ICE has recently announced plans to revamp its detention system, which may provide an opening for reforms, the agency previously has rejected recommendations to place enforceable constraints on its transfer power.

Human Rights Watch's report is being released on the same day (December 2) as the Constitution Project's "Recommendations for Reforming our Immigration Detention System and Promoting Access to Counsel in Immigration Proceedings," finding that immigration detention is overused and immigrant detainees experience problems in accessing counsel and providing recommendations for reform. Also on December 2, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse will release detailed facility level data on detainee transfers.

***

Testimony from detainees, family members, and attorneys about transfers:

"The transfers are devastating, absolutely devastating. [Detainees] are loaded onto a plane in the middle of the night. They have no idea where they are, no idea what [US] state they are in. I cannot overemphasize the psychological trauma to these people. What it does to their family members cannot be fully captured either. I have taken calls from seriously hysterical family members - incredibly traumatized people - sobbing on the phone, crying out, ‘I don't know where my son or husband is!'" - Rebecca Schreve, immigration attorney, El Paso, Texas, January 29, 2009.

"In New York when I was detained, I was about to get an attorney through one of the churches, but that went away once they sent me here to New Mexico.... All my evidence and stuff that I need is right there in New York. I've been trying to get all my case information from New York ... writing to ICE to get my records. But they won't give me my records; they haven't given me nothing. I'm just representing myself with no evidence to present." - Kevin H. (pseudonym), Otero County Processing Center, Chaparral, New Mexico, February 11, 2009.

"I have never represented someone who has not been in more than three detention facilities. Could be El Paso, Texas, a facility in Arizona, or they send people to Hawaii .... I have been practicing immigration law for more than a decade. Never once have I been notified of [my client's] transfer. Never." - Holly Cooper, immigration attorney and clinical professor of law, University of California Davis School of Law, Davis, California, January 27, 2009.

"Ever since they sent him there [to New Mexico], it's been a nightmare. My mother has blood pressure problems, and her pressure goes up and down like crazy now because of worrying about him and stuff. [His wife] has been terrified. She cries every night. And his baby asks for him, asks for "Papa." He kisses his photo. He starts crying as soon as he hears his father's voice on the phone even though he is only one.... Last week [my brother] called to say he can't do it anymore. He's going to sign the paper agreeing to his deportation." - Georgina V. (pseudonym), sister of detainee, Brooklyn, New York, January 23, 2008.

A detainee who was transferred 1,400 miles away to a detention facility in Texas after a few weeks in a detention center in southern California said that the difference for him was "like the difference between heaven and earth. At least in California I had a better chance. I could hire a[n] attorney to represent me. Now, here, I have no chance other than what the grace of God gives me." - Michael M. (pseudonym), Pearsall Detention Center, Pearsall, Texas, April 25, 2008.

A legal permanent resident originally from the Dominican Republic, who had been living in Philadelphia but was transferred to Texas said, "I had to call to try to get the police records myself. It took a lot of time. The judge got mad that I kept asking for more time. But eventually they arrived. I tried to put on the case myself. I lost." - Miguel A. (pseudonym), Port Isabel Service Processing Center, Los Fresnos, Texas, April 23, 2008.

Aug 14, 2009

U.S. Detains Voice of America Journalist Fleeing Threats at Home in Pakistan

By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 14, 2009

U.S. immigration officials have detained a Pakistani journalist employed by the U.S.-sponsored Voice of America news service who was hoping to find refuge in the United States after Islamic militants in Pakistan destroyed his house and threatened his life.

Rahman Bunairee, 33, was taken into custody Sunday afternoon upon arriving at Dulles International Airport, according to VOA officials.

It is not clear why Bunairee was detained.

Joan Mower, a spokeswoman for VOA, declined to comment on the particulars of Bunairee's detention other than to say: "VOA is obviously extremely concerned. We're really upset about what's happened to this guy."

Cori Bassett, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, confirmed that Bunairee is in the agency's custody but said she could not release further details because of privacy reasons.

Bunairee, in addition to filing reports for VOA's Pashto-language radio service, is a popular reporter with the privately owned Pakistani broadcaster Khyber TV. He is usually based in the southern port city of Karachi, but he is originally from the Buner district of Pakistan's embattled North-West Frontier Province near the Afghanistan border, where the Taliban and other Islamic militant groups are active. He recently returned to that region to cover a series of major offensives against the militants by the Pakistani military.

In the past, the militants enjoyed a measure of support, or at least tolerance, among many Pakistanis. But the public mood shifted markedly against the militants this spring, partly because of local media reports about their cruel practices in Buner and other districts then under their control.

On July 7, Bunairee participated in a VOA call-in radio show in which he discussed the Taliban's continued presence in Buner despite a major campaign by the Pakistani military to oust them last May, Mower said.

Two nights later, several dozen armed militants went to Bunairee's family compound in Buner.

Bunairee was not there. The militants told his father that because Bunairee was "speaking against them," they had orders to destroy the house. The men allowed Bunairee's family, including his wife and four children, to leave, then ransacked the house and leveled it with explosives.

That night in the Buner district, militants bombed the home of another journalist, Behroz Khan, a reporter for Pakistan's English daily, the News.

Most recently, Taliban militants flattened the houses of at least six journalists in the neighboring district of Swat before fleeing advancing Pakistani forces, according to Bob Dietz, Asia program coordinator for the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Soon after Bunairee's home was destroyed, gunmen scaled the wall surrounding Khyber TV's bureau in Karachi, several hundred miles south of Buner, and announced that they were looking for him, Dietz said.

Alarmed, officials at VOA arranged to bring Bunairee to the United States on a J-1 visa, often used by research institutions to bring in scholars and experts on temporary visits.

"We're expanding our Pashto broadcasting, and he was going to be working on that," Mower said.

Dietz stressed that Bunairee was not seeking to relocate to the United States but wanted to spend some time outside Pakistan until matters cooled.

He added that he was particularly concerned about the message that Bunairee's detention sends.

"It's mortifying," he said. "Here's a journalist who has performed a valuable service by reporting from an area critical to U.S. security. And our country is slamming the door in his face."

Jul 25, 2009

Holding the Line

by Meghan Rhoad

July 20, 2009

As a feminist and as an American working on immigration policy, I have a clear line in the sand when it comes to the treatment of women who immigrate to this country: "defending our borders" should not be at the expense of defending our values. But when I interviewed women in immigration detention facilities all over the country last year and heard their stories of neglect and abuse, it became clear to me that this line has been crossed.

Immigration detention is the fastest-growing form of incarceration in the United States, and women represent roughly 10 percent of the burgeoning detention population. In 2008, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal law enforcement agency with jurisdiction over immigration detention, held over 300,000 people in its custody for various lengths of time, and the total may surpass 400,000 this year. The daily immigration detention population now tops 30,000, an increase of roughly 50 percent over 2005. As long as Congress continues to dish out funding to step up Border Patrol operations and to expand immigration detention space, that growth is likely to continue.

The explosion of immigration detention has undermined two core principles of justice: deny liberty only when necessary, and treat those in custody with dignity. But in the politics of immigration, these core principles have become easily exchanged bargaining chips. The U.S. government has enthusiastically embraced a system that deprives more and more people of their liberty while their immigration cases are being processed -- administrative, not criminal, proceedings. Let me be clear: the majority of women imprisoned in detention centers have committed no crime. They include asylum seekers, victims of trafficking, survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, pregnant women, nursing mothers, children, the elderly and the seriously ill.

Immigration detention has increased even though alternatives such as allowing people to remain in the community while checking in regularly have proven cost-efficient and effective in ensuring that people show up for their hearings.

Not only does our government detain people unnecessarily, but it does so with cruelty and neglect. The conditions in many detention facilities violate the core principle of respect for the dignity of the men and women detained. The glaring failure to provide adequate medical care is of particular concern. International standards hold that detained persons are entitled to at least the same standard of health care they would receive if they were living free in the community. But in interviews for a Human Rights Watch report released in March 2009 on medical care for women in immigration detention, I heard dozens of horror stories of substandard care due to poor policies, implementation and oversight.

As I heard these women speak, the line in the sand between sound public policy and human rights violations became crystal clear: the point where those involved in designing or carrying out these policies knew or should have known that what they were doing is wrong. Transgressions were apparent everywhere:

Women shackled during pregnancy.
Breasts pumps denied to nursing mothers, resulting in fever and mastitis, and leaving them unable to continue breast-feeding.
Critical screenings for breast and cervical cancer withheld.
Contraception and abortion made inaccessible.
Women humiliated and demoralized because they could not obtain sanitary pads.
Confidentiality of medical information breached.
Medical records lost in transfer.
Requests for medical help ignored while dangerous conditions went untreated.

These policies do not just endanger women immigration detainees' lives. They also threaten their emotional health.

The impact of these policies is felt not only by those detained, but by their families and communities. One woman interviewed for our report described to me how her inability to get medical care when there were signs that she might have breast cancer was devastating her family:

"I worry about my breast a lot. I told my family, 'Don't ask me to [appeal my immigration case].' I'm not well and I would have to stay without medical care. I don't know from month to month ... things can get worse in my breast. It's hurting me. What was I supposed to do, die of cancer here? With adequate care, yes, I would stay until the end. Because 22 years of my life [have been in the US]. My kids are 12 and the United States is all they know. Depression, inadequate food, detention? Yes, still I would have fought it indefinitely."

There is some hope. The Obama administration is in the process of examining the detention system, including the system's health care record, and its role in our immigration policy. Congress will also be taking on these issues when they debate comprehensive immigration reform. As these reviews are under way, policymakers would do well to bring the same commitment to defending our principles that they have brought to defending our borders. And women who care can tell them so.

Jul 3, 2009

U.S. Shifts Strategy on Illicit Work by Immigrants

By JULIA PRESTON

Immigration authorities had bad news this week for American Apparel, the T-shirt maker based in downtown Los Angeles: About 1,800 of its employees appeared to be illegal immigrants not authorized to work in the United States.

But in contrast to the high-profile raids that marked the enforcement approach of the Bush administration, no federal agents with criminal warrants stormed the company’s factories and rounded up employees. Instead, the federal immigration agency sent American Apparel a written notice that it faced civil fines and would have to fire any workers confirmed to be unauthorized.

The treatment of American Apparel, which has more than 5,600 factory employees in Los Angeles alone, is the most prominent demonstration of a new strategy by the Obama administration to curb the employment of illegal immigrants by focusing on employers who hire them — and doing so in a less confrontational manner than in years past.

Unlike the approach of the Bush administration, which brought criminal charges in its final two years against many illegal immigrant workers, the new effort makes broader use of fines and other civil sanctions, federal officials said Thursday.

Federal agents will concentrate on businesses employing large numbers of workers suspected of being illegal immigrants, the officials said, and will reserve tough criminal charges mostly for employers who serially hire illegal immigrants and engage in wage and labor violations.

“These actions underscore our commitment to targeting employers that cultivate illegal work forces by knowingly hiring and exploiting illegal workers,” said Matt Chandler, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.

On Wednesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency known as ICE, said it had sent notices announcing audits of hiring records, like the one it conducted at American Apparel, to 652 other companies across the country. Officials said they were picking up the pace of such audits, after performing 503 of them in 2008.

The names of other companies that received notices have not been made public. American Apparel became a window into the new enforcement tactics because, as a publicly traded company, it issued a required notice on Wednesday about the hiring audit.

The Obama administration’s new approach, unveiled in April, seems to be moving away from the raids that advocates for immigrants said had split families, disrupted businesses and traumatized communities. But the outcome will still be difficult for illegal workers, who will lose their jobs and could face deportation, the advocates said.

Immigration officials have not made clear how they intend to deal with workers who are unable to prove their legal immigration status in the course of inspections, but they said there was no moratorium on deportations.

Executives at American Apparel were both relieved and dismayed after receiving the warning from the immigration agency of discrepancies in the hiring documents of about one-third of its Los Angeles work force. The company has 30 days to dispute the agency’s claims and give immigrant employees time to prove that they are authorized to work in the United States, immigration officials said. If they cannot, the company must fire them, probably within two months.

But no criminal charges were lodged against the company and no workers have been arrested, American Apparel executives and immigration officials said.

The fines followed discussions over 18 months between federal officials and American Apparel, after immigration agents first inspected the company’s files in January 2008, said Peter Schey, an immigration lawyer representing the company. Mr. Schey said a raid had been averted because the company cooperated with the audit and because immigration agents had not found any labor abuses.

“There is no evidence of any exploitation of workers or violation of labor laws,” he said. “And there is not a single allegation that the company knowingly hired an undocumented worker.”

American Apparel and its outspoken chief executive, Dov Charney, have waged a campaign, emblazoned on T-shirts sold across the country, criticizing the immigration crackdown of recent years and calling on Congress to “Legalize L.A.” by granting legal status to illegal immigrants.

Most garment workers in American Apparel’s huge shop in Los Angeles work directly for the company, not for subcontractors, its records show. They earn at least $10 to $12 an hour, well above minimum wage, and receive health benefits.

At a news conference last year, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles publicly lauded Mr. Charney for helping the city with its faltering economy by providing “the dream of a steady paycheck and good benefits for countless workers.”

While it has been no secret that American Apparel’s largely Latino work force probably included many illegal immigrants, Mr. Schey said the company had been careful to meet legal hiring requirements. Many illegal immigrants use convincingly forged Social Security cards or other fake documents when seeking work.

In a statement, Mr. Charney said that many of his workers cited by the immigration agency were “responsible, hard-working employees” who had been with the company for more than a decade. Mr. Charney, an immigrant from Canada, said he hoped they would be able to prove their legal status. But because of the recession, the company said, it will not be hurt financially if it has to replace them.

Mr. Schey said the hiring audit at American Apparel had been “professionally done.” By contrast, Mr. Schey has brought more than 100 damage claims against the immigration agency on behalf of American citizens who said they were illegally arrested last year in Los Angeles in an immigration raid at a different company, Micro Solutions Enterprises.

Immigration officials, who asked not to be identified because the case is continuing, said the fines to American Apparel so far were about $150,000.

Kelly A. Nantel, a spokeswoman for the immigration agency, said it had taken steps to limit negotiations with employers that in the past had resulted in steep reductions in fines the employers ultimately paid.

Representative Brian P. Bilbray, a California Republican who heads an immigration caucus in the House, said the amount of the fines was crucial.

“If this is a truly conscientious effort to get tough with employers to say the days are over of profiteering with illegal immigrants, that’s fine,” said Mr. Bilbray, who opposes any effort to give legal status to illegal immigrants. “But if the fine will be so low that it’s just part of doing business, there’s no deterrent.”

Angelica Salas, the executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, an advocacy group, said she welcomed the end to “showboat enforcement raids.” But in the end, Ms. Salas said, “there is still enforcement of laws that are broken,” adding, “The workers will still lose their jobs.”