Yesterday, NILC and
partners sued immigration officials for detaining immigrants under
appalling conditions in downtown Los Angeles. The full press release is
below.
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For Immediate Release
April 2, 2009
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Contact:
ACLU/SC:
Gordon Smith or Rachel Uranga
213.977.5252
NILC: Karen Tumlin
213.674.2850
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Immigration Officials Sued for
Holding Detainees in Appalling Conditions at L.A. Detention Facility
LOS ANGELES, Calif. - A team of legal organizations
announced today that it is suing the U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agency in federal district court for detaining immigrants in
egregious, unsanitary conditions in a downtown Los Angeles facility
without soap, drinking water, toothpaste, toothbrushes, sanitary napkins,
changes of clothing or showers. The lawsuit - filed by the American Civil
Liberties Union of Southern California, the National Immigration Law
Center, and the law firm of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky and Walker LLP - also
charges that the unsanitary conditions have led ICE to deprive immigrants
of due-process rights such as access to mail or attorneys while in
detention.
The facility, known as "B-18," was intended to
temporarily house detainees for no more than 12 hours. But in a perverse
distortion of its original purpose, immigration officials have kept
detainees in this basement facility for weeks by shuttling them to local
jails in the evening and on weekends, and returning them to the facility
the next business day.
Under these intolerable conditions,
immigration officials often fail to notify detainees that they have the
right to obtain release on bond while their cases remain pending.
Meanwhile, immigration officials deny detainees any mail correspondence,
writing materials or access to other materials that would enable them to
defend themselves - all of which are required by law.
"It's
shameful that immigration officers are treating detainees like animals,
apparently because the immigration bureaucracy cannot seem to send
detainees to the right place," said Ahilan Arulanantham, ACLU/SC director
of immigrant rights and national security. "Officers routinely crowd
detainees into dirty cells under grossly unsanitary conditions. They then
deny them access to basic constitutional necessities like the use of the
mail, making it impossible for them to defend themselves."
"There
is no good reason why authorities cannot simply send the detainees to the
right place and release those who are eligible for bond, rather than
shuttling them back and forth for days or weeks on end. The B-18 fiasco is
yet another example of how our immigration detention system has completely
broken down," Arulanantham added.
The lawsuit also contends that
the conditions at issue violate an order from a federal court in Los
Angeles in another case which involved similarly egregious
abuses.
"The shell game officials are playing with human
lives has left detainees without the ability to access basic services that
any detention center must provide. Detainees at B-18 have no access to
outdoor recreation and cannot send or receive mail, even for legal
purposes," said Karen Tumlin, a staff attorney with the National
Immigration Law Center. "They cannot make private phone calls to attorneys
and have no ability to learn their rights because officials deny them
access to a law library and create barriers to their access to
counsel."
"The plain fact is that B-18 was never intended to be
used as a detention facility," Tumlin continued. "The facility fails on
every level to house detainees in a way that comports with basic notions
of dignity. B-18 does not provide soap or a change of clothes to detainees
and routinely denies menstruating women sanitary napkins. Detention under
such conditions is not only unlawful, but downright cruel."
While
in B-18, detainees are crowded into a cell with as many as 50 other
people. In the cell, there is a single phone, a bench and one or two
exposed toilets, but no soap or drinking water. Detainees are often forced
to sleep on the floor. Menstruating women who ask for sanitary napkins are
routinely ignored. And there is no access to medical attention. On some
occasions, it has taken ICE officials more than a day to fix a clogged
toilet.
Despite these heinous conditions, there is no mechanism for
detainees to lodge a complaint.
According to Toliver Besson, a
partner at Paul Hastings, the lawsuit gives the new administration of
President Barack Obama a way to demonstrate its commitment to immigrants'
rights. "The Obama administration has indicated that it wants all
immigrant detention facilities to be operated in a clean, safe and
constitutional manner. B-18 fails miserably to meet this standard, but the
administration's response to this lawsuit is an opportunity to rectify
this injustice and show that it is moving in a new direction," Besson
said.
The National ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project also serves as
co-counsel in the case.
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