I.N.S.
Acts to Halt Abuse (excerpt)
After scores of complaints
and lawsuits concerning the physical and mental abuse of immigrants
detained in county jails and other detention centers, the Immigration
and Naturalization Service has issued national standards for the
treatment of its detainees. The new standards,
covering everything from visiting policies to grievance procedures,
will be phased in this month at all detention centers administered by
the immigration service. They will be phased in over the next
two years at state and local jails that house immigration service
detainees.
Doris Meissner, the
immigration commissioner until she resigned in November, said the
standards would help ensure that all immigration service detainees
received consistent and fair treatment. "Our continued goal
is to provide safe, secure and humane conditions of detention for all
aliens in INS custody," Ms. Meissner said, "and these new standards
will help us achieve that."
But critics say the agency
has fallen far short of that goal, especially in county jails in states
like Louisiana, Texas, New Jersey and Florida, where detainees and
their lawyers say inmates are beaten, solitary confinement is imposed
for trivial offenses, and water and food are often inadequate.
Hedges, Chris,
"Policy To Protect Jailed Immigrants Is Adopted By U.S."
New York Times, 02 Jan. 2001, Late Ed.: A1
Full story available at New York Times.
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Suit
Details the Beatings of Detainees in Louisiana
NEW ORLEANS
- As the Immigration and Naturalization Service locks up more
immigrants, already doubling the number the agency detained five years
ago, cries by the immigrants and their advocates about miserable prison
conditions are mounting.
The immigration service
uses more than a third of the $800 million budgeted to house detainees
on about 225 jails, many in rural areas, where there is space and per
diem costs are low.
Of the jails, immigrant
advocates often cited the Orleans Parish Prison in New Orleans as one
of the worst. Detainees there have detailed frequent beatings
by guards to numerous advocacy groups, including the Catholic
Legal Immigration Network.
One detainee, Shi Cheng
Qin, told the Catholic group that on May 12, 1999, he was beaten by
five guards. He said other detainees watched the beating,
which lasted about 20 minutes. It ended, he said, when he
began coughing blood.
Shi Cheng Qin said that
during the beating, he shouted that he would call a lawyer or the
Federal Bureau of Investigation. He said a guard replied:
"How are you going to contact them if you are in segregation without a
phone, envelope, writing pad or writing pen?"
Freeman R. Matthews, the
lawyer for Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff's Office, denied that the
beating took place. Mr. Matthews said Shi Cheng Qin had
attacked a guard after he complained that items he had ordered from the
prison store were not delivered. He said Shi Cheng Qin
received 60 days in solitary confinement for the incident.
A lawsuit by 13 Asian
detainees in 1999 against the Orleans prison cited consistent abuse
there. The lawsuit, filed by Salvador G. Longoria and Michele
Gaudin on behalf of the group, accused the guards of beating
the detainees and of conspiring with inmates who were not immigrants to
beat the detainees in October, 1998, in what Ms. Gaudin described as a "staged
gladiatorial contest inside the prison."
The Asian detainees said
the inmates beat them until they were bloody.
Tin
Huu Pham, a detainee, gave an account of the beating of Chau Van Cong
in a deposition on Sept. 21, 1999: "I saw Mr. Van Cong was
unconscious on the ground. He got blood where his mouth and
nose at, and the rest of the Asians, they just sit down. And
it was a horrible sight. And I was weak, real weak.
And Sergeant Verrett asked me to slip Mr. Van over on his side so he
wouldn't choke on his own blood, but I was so weak, I was bleeding
myself, and I couldn't do it."
Last September, after the
case was tried but before the judge rendered a decision, the Orleans
Parish Criminal Sheriff's Office settled the lawsuit, agreeing to pay
an undisclosed amount to the 13 detainees. All 13 were later
released under what Russell A. Bergeron Jr., director of media
relations for the immigration service, said were "routine release
procedures."
Mr. Matthews said that the
accusations of civil rights violations made against the sheriff's
office were false, conceding only that the guards should not have
allowed the two groups to mingle. He noted that a federal
magistrate was appointed 20 years ago to oversee prison conditions
after inmates filed a lawsuit, and that the magistrate continued to
make sure the jail did not violate the rights of inmates.
Mr. Matthews described the
October 1998 incident as a fight between the inmates and detainees.
But two inmates filed a
claim saying the guards forced them to beat the Asian
detainees. The inmates were given monetary awards from the
judge, who ruled that the incident was not a violation of their civil
rights.
Other detainees have also
complained of the parish prison.
Majid Cholak, 40, an Iraqi
who came to the United States in 1972, was picked up by the immigration
service on July 16, 1996, the day he was released from federal prison
after six years for possession of marijuana and a handgun. He
was eventually deported and after his appeal was denied, Mr. Cholak was
transferred to the Orleans Parish Prison. Because Iraq
refused to accept him, he was eventually released on November 4, 1999.
"In the winter I slept with
two sweatpants, two sweatshirts and a hat in my bunk because there is
no heat," Mr. Cholak said. "We never had fresh fruits or
vegetables. And there would be a beating of a detainee at
least once a week."
Mr. Matthews said prison
records showed the Mr. Cholak limited his grievances to minor issues
such as cold food, late mail and problems with a cellmate."
But when it comes to jail
conditions, Mr. Cholak is able to speak from experience. "I
have been in 11 different state prisons, 8 federal prisons and 14
country jails," he said, and the House of Detention in O.P.P. was by
far the worst."
Hedges, Chris,
"Suit Details the Beatings of Detainees in Louisiana." New
York Times , 02 Jan. 2001, Late Ed.: A12
