The report released Tuesday, called “A Broken System,” was a collaboration between the National Immigration Law Center, the ACLU of Southern California and law firm Holland & Knight. Attorneys and advocates scoured confidential reports on detention center site visits from the ABA, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The report concludes that the government has not complied with the immigrant detention standards adopted in 2000 on issues ranging from visitation rights and telephone access to detainee transfers and attorneys. It also concludes that the lack of compliance with stated standards carry no penalties.
“There is no question that the nation’s immigrant detention system is broken to its core,” the report reads. “The findings in this report, as well as those recently documented by various government and independent agencies, reveal pervasive and extreme violations of the government’s own detention standards as well as fundamental violations of basic human rights and notions of dignity.”
