Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights, North America, Population

RIGHTS-U.S.: Child Immigrants Treated Like Offenders – Report

Katrin Dauenhauer

WASHINGTON, Jun 18 2003 (IPS) - About one-third of all children in the custody of U.S. immigration authorities spend time in jail-like facilities designed to hold young offenders, says a report released Wednesday by Amnesty International.

The document describes cases where unaccompanied children were subjected to strip searches, held in solitary confinement as a disciplinary measure, or not provided with a lawyer or a guardian ‘ad litem’, a “friend of the child”, to help guide them through the complex U.S. immigration system.

According to the 83-page report, ‘Why Am I Here? Children in Immigration Detention’, the children are sometimes shackled during transportation to detention centres or court hearings, and more than one-half of unaccompanied children that AI interviewed reported being restrained while under the care of immigration authorities.

“It is appalling that many officials don’t understand the difference between a juvenile offender and an unaccompanied child, and that they deny these fragile young asylum seekers respect and rights,” said William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA (AIUSA).

“This is grossly unfair to children whose only ‘offence’ is seeking safe haven in the US. Many have fled dangerous situations, including child trafficking, abusive families and armed rebel forces. When we treat these children harshly, they are further traumatised, and our country’s credibility as a protector of rights is eroded,” he told journalists.

U.S. immigration authorities had no immediate response to the report.

Amnesty says it gathered the information from different sources, including a survey of 115 facilities nationwide used by immigration authorities to house unaccompanied children. Thirty-three of those facilities returned a completed survey.

The report says that 48 percent of the facilities that took part in the survey said they house unaccompanied minors in the same cells as juvenile offenders. More than one-half reported that they use solitary confinement as punishment.

In only 13 percent of facilities did children receive weekly psychological counselling, and only 35 percent of the centres reported that they explain to children why they have been detained and that they have the right to a judicial review of the decision to put them there, adds the report.

“We continually have to fight for the children to be treated with basic respect and dignity,” said Charu Newhouse Al-Sahli, advocacy coordinator for detention at the Immigrant Advocacy Center in Miami.

More than 5,000 unaccompanied children are detained by U.S. immigration authorities a year. Some are placed in adult jails because of what the report calls questionable techniques used to determine their age.

In the case of Fantis S., a former child detainee born and raised in West Africa, even after she provided proper documentation, the INS ordered a dental exam (to determine her age) and decided that – instead of 16 – she was 18 or 19.

“The next morning they told me I was going to a better place, but they were lying. They chained and handcuffed me and drove me to the adult prison in York, Pennsylvania. There they strip-searched me, made me put on an orange jumpsuit and cut off all my hair, just like a criminal,” she told reporters at the report’s release.

Guidelines from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees caution that x-rays of dental or wrist bones only provide a person’s estimated age.

The report also criticises the difficulty that many children face in staying in contact with the outside world and accessing various forms of assistance, including translation. Nine out of 33 facilities reported that they do not provide children with a written handbook explaining their rules.

AI said it is sceptical the situation will improve now that responsibility for unaccompanied non-citizen children has been placed in the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).

It says the office, which took over the function Mar. 1, faces serious financial restraints. The Bush administration has proposed a budget of 37 million dollars for the resettlement office’s division of unaccompanied children’s services – far short of the 53 million dollars that AI believes is necessary to operate properly.

“The INS failed dismally in its mission to care for the children under its watch,” Schulz said. “It will be extremely difficult of the ORR, no matter how well-intentioned, to now pick up the pieces with its meagre budget. Unless the U.S. government wants to set the ORR up to fail, Congress must approve the proposed increase that would allow it to make desperately-needed changes, particularly with regard to contracted facilities.”

AI also urged Congress to pass the Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act. The bill, introduced by U.S. senators Dianne Feinstein and Sam Brownback, would establish safeguards for unaccompanied children. (END/IPS/NA/HD/IP/PR/KD/ML/03)