Gay and transsexual immigrants who enter the U.S. detention system face high levels of sexual abuse, new research warns, at times leading them to decide to return to their home countries rather than stay to fight a legal battle.

Activists say instances of LGBT immigrants who prefer being deported rather than endure abuse in U.S. detention facilities are quite common. Credit: Bigstock

Advocates say that, although sexual assault and violence are widespread in all types of prisons, LGBT immigrants are particularly vulnerable.

“One of my clients, a transgender Mexican woman detained in a facility in New Jersey, after months of mistreatment actually ended up accepting her deportation, rather than endure her situation,” Clement Lee, a detention staff attorney at Immigration Equality, an advocacy group representing LGBT immigrants in court, told IPS.

“I told her, ‘I can win your case, but it will take several months,’ but because she was poor she could not pay to get out of detention. In the facility, people were calling her ‘maricon’, Spanish for faggot, and she seriously feared for her physical safety.”

Clement notes that his clients often come from countries that are dangerous for them. He cites instances in which transgender individuals would be raped and assailed “for violating gender norms”, or instances in which some of his gay clients have been subjected to “conversion therapies” under which community and family members attempt to change their sexual orientation.

Jamaica is the country from which most of his clients have fled, “which is surprising,” he says, “given that country’s image as a beach paradise.”

According to other immigration activists closely involved in LGBT cases, instances of LGBT immigrants who prefer being deported rather than endure abuse in U.S. detention facilities are quite common.

Karen Zwick, a managing attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Centre (NIJC), says that the decision to accept deportation may not be a rational one, because these immigrants may be underestimating the risks they would face going back to their home countries.

“They can’t see beyond the terrible situation they’re in,” she told IPS.

According to a new report, released this week by the Centre for American Progress (CAP), a progressive think tank here, as many as 34,000 immigrants are detained each day by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in over 250 detention facilities across the country.

According to the study, which is based on evidence gathered through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, detained LGBT immigrants are far more vulnerable to abuse than other immigrants.

“What we tried to do with this report is to paint a clearer picture of what is going on inside these detention centres,” Sharita Gruberg, a policy analyst at CAP and the author of the report, told IPS. “And what we’ve found is that, in some centres, guards were still using homophobic language against LGBT detainees.”

But LGBT detainees say they face far worse problems than abusive language, reporting instead physical and sexual abuse by both fellow detainees and guards.

15 times more vulnerable

Because of internal regulations, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not keep data on sexual orientation or gender identity of detainees. But the information obtained through the FOIA request suggests that LGBT detainees are “15 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than the general population”.

ICE, the agency in charge of immigration detention facilities across the United States, has also been at the centre of an investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an official watchdog, into the agency’s sexual abuse allegations.

According to a GAO report released Nov. 20, nearly 40 percent of total allegations were never acted upon “because ICE field office officials did not report them to … headquarters.”

“ICE takes the health, safety and welfare of those in our care very seriously,” an ICE official, who commented on the condition of anonymity, told IPS by e-mail. “The agency is continually working to ensure these reforms are consistently implemented at all facilities that house ICE detainees.”

The official also noted that in 2009 the agency initiated “fundamental detention reforms, including the development of new detention standards to protect vulnerable detainees.”

Yet advocates suggest an underlying problem with the way the U.S. immigration system functions.

“We know that the immigration detention system has extended vastly over the last 20 years, as we spend billions of dollars on immigration detention every year,” Harper Jean Tobin, the director of policy at the National Center for Transgender Equality, an advocacy group here, told IPS.

Tobin refers to the congressionally mandated requirement that ICE detain 34,000 immigrants at all times, also known as the “bed mandate”. According to the NIJC, this mandate “prevents ICE officers from exercising discretion and expanding more efficient alternatives to detention … that would allow individuals who pose no risk to public safety to be released back to their families.”

In the past, U.S. legislators have touched upon the issues surrounding mistreatment of detainees in immigration facilities. In 2003, Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which sought to protect individuals against sexual abuse in confinement settings, including in immigrant detention centres.

But according to the new Centre for American Progress findings, PREA may have only partially addressed the issue of sexual abuse in detention facilities. It points out that ICE created its own standards on sexual assault in detention facilities, which are less comprehensive than those mandated by the Department of Justice in 2012.

Last June, Rep. Trey Growdy of South Carolina, the chair of the House Immigration Subcommittee, introduced the Strengthen and Fortify Enforcement Act (SAFE), which was later approved by the Judiciary Committee. Yet critics note that, if approved, this bill would not only do “nothing to resolve the legal status of 11 million undocumented immigrants” but would also “create an environment of rampant racial profiling and unconstitutional detentions.”

U.S. officials on Wednesday issued strict new guidelines on the use of solitary confinement for detainees being held on immigration charges, the first federal policy decision following a strengthened public debate on the country’s unprecedented dependence on “segregated housing”.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture says solitary confinement can have detrimental and irreversible effects on individuals’ mental health. Credit: Bigstock

In a stark turnaround, immigration detainees will only be allowed to be held in solitary confinement for two weeks, with extensions requiring the consent of upper-level officials. Detention facilities will also need to engage in regular reporting on instances in which detainees were held in isolation.

“Placement of detainees in segregated housing is a serious step that requires careful consideration of alternatives,” the policy directive, released Wednesday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), states.

“ICE shall take additional steps to ensure appropriate review and oversight of decisions to retain detainees in segregated housing for over 14 days, or placements in segregation for any length of time in the case of detainees for whom heightened concerns exists based on known special vulnerabilities and other factors related to the detainee’s health or the risk of victimization.”

The guidance is being widely applauded by rights groups and appears to offer a strong new – and federally mandated – model.

“This is huge news and sets a wonderful federal precedent,” Rich Killmer, the executive director of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, a Washington advocacy group, told IPS.

“The fact that ICE is saying that immigration detainees can only be held in solitary confinement for 14 days – that underlines such a significant contrast with prisoners in some U.S. states being held in solitary for decades. We will certainly be using this in our advocacy work, as an example of what can be done.”

Still, some are expressing apprehension that ICE did not go far enough.

“We are concerned that the new directive does not eliminate the use of extended solitary confinement,” Mary Meg McCarthy, the executive director of the National Immigrant Justice Centre, said Thursday, “and that the reporting period exceeds the 15 days which the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture has observed can have detrimental and irreversible effects on individuals’ mental health.”

300+ per day

With some 80,000 people in solitary confinement throughout the various U.S. penal systems (as of the last available estimate, in 2005), the United States is a clear global outlier in terms of its active integration of segregated housing into its prison system, particularly since the late 1980s.

Why these numbers have climbed so high is unclear, but many experts feel that isolation is in part being used to deal with the overcrowding that has stretched federal prisons beyond their margins of safety. In such a situation, prison wardens may be choosing to put some vulnerable prisoners – those with mental health problems or even those who are underage – in segregated housing on the view that they will be safer.

While the new guidance is applicable only to those detained on immigration charges, it specifically disallows such use of solitary for a prisoner’s “own good”.

“In particular, placement in administrative segregation due to a special vulnerability should be used only as a last resort and when no other viable housing options exist,” the directive states.

“A detainee’s age, physical disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, race, or religion may not provide the sole basis for a decision to place the detainee in involuntary segregation.”

ICE runs or oversees some 250 detention centres. As part of President Barack Obama’s unprecedented crackdown on immigration-related crimes, last year the agency detained nearly 430,000 people, the highest ever.

Earlier this year, a major U.S. newspaper studied the 50 largest of these centres and concluded that an average of 300 people per day were being kept in solitary confinement just in those prisons. According to official data, half of those detainees were being kept for longer than 15 days, while some were being segregated for longer than 75 days.

Analysts estimated that around two-thirds of these detainees were being segregated due to minor infractions, while the rest were seen as either a threat or vulnerable, including due to sexuality or mental illness.

The subsequent political and public response led Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to order a review of ICE policies on segregated housing, resulting in Wednesday’s revised policies.

An ICE spokesperson told IPS that the review “included collecting quantitative and qualitative data on the use of segregation throughout ICE’s detention facilities; consultation with field office management and detention site managers; extra inspections of segregation facilities; discussions with a variety of stakeholders; and collaboration among many ICE and DHS offices on process improvements.”

Strengthened monitoring

Yet the ICE decision deals with only one part of the United States’ penal system. It does not directly affect the much-larger federal Bureau of Prisons or U.S. Marshals Service (the judicial system’s enforcement arm), both of which run parallel prison systems.

In June, the Government Accountability Office, the U.S. Congress’s independent watchdog, released an excoriating report on the Bureau of Prison’s failure to conduct adequate monitoring of isolation in its jails or its impact on prisoners.

“At the federal level, the Bureau of Prisons really hasn’t done more than begin to look at its use of solitary confinement, while the U.S. Marshals Service has neither been externally reviewed nor conducted an internal assessment,” Carl Takei, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, told IPS.

“The most praiseworthy aspects of the new ICE directive are its monitoring requirements – previously, the agency had very little idea of who was in solitary on a daily basis, how long or why. This move represents a significant step forward, and we’re hoping that these guidelines will be used as an example of the monitoring that the Bureau of Prisons should be doing.”

Other models have also recently arisen within the state prison systems, several of which are already drastically cutting down their use of solitary confinement.

Part of the motivation is financial, with squeezed coffers forcing state governments to figure out how to save money. Building and operating a solitary confinement unit costs 200 to 300 percent more than otherwise, while a 2007 state estimate found that it costs twice as much per year to keep a confined prisoner.

Part of this calculation also has to do with the effect of solitary confinement on the rest of society. Researchers have found, for instance, that prisoners who have been in segregated housing have higher recidivism rates than do other prisoners.

In a sign that the issue is gaining traction, a mass hunger strike in California’s prison system to protest against what inmates describe as the inhumane use of long-term solitary confinement ended Thursday after nearly two months, when two state lawmakers promised to hold hearings on the solitary confinement policy.

Countries in nearly every region of the world are continuing to turn to a U.S.-led model of prison privatisation despite mounting evidence that such systems are often neither cost-efficient nor able to provide adequate services.

The Corrections Corporation of America says it currently houses some 80,000 inmates in 60 facilities, 40 of which are solely company-owned. Credit: Bigstock

New data released Tuesday notes that nearly a dozen countries – in North and South America, Europe, Africa and the Asia-Pacific – are today integrating private, for-profit prisons into their penal systems. Yet the country where that model was pioneered, the United States, is currently beginning a nationwide push to decrease its incarcerated population, leading to a growth industry in exporting corporate prison knowhow.

Increased interest internationally has “helped private U.S. prison companies diversify their investments at a time when America’s prison population growth has stalled,” a new report, released by the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based advocacy group, states.

“For example, 14 percent of the revenue for America’s second largest private prison company, the Geo Group, came from international services in fiscal year 2012.”

The growth in global interest in prison privatisation has also been a boon for British companies, particularly G4S and Serco.

All of these companies “have thrived off of the expanded privatization of prisons, immigration detention systems, and other governmental services,” the report states, “while often failing to deliver on the services that were promised.”

Indeed, critics have long accused for-profit prison companies, with explicit requirements to cut costs, of poorer services and conditions than publically run penal systems (see here and here). An attempt by the Israeli government to open a private prison in 2009 was blocked by that country’s Supreme Court, which warned that such a transfer of responsibility would lead to “harsh and grave damage to the basic human rights of prisoners”.

Private prison companies tend to explain the rationale for their operations in terms of efficiency of service. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a founder of the sector in the early 1980s and still the United States’ largest operator of private prisons, says it “combine[s] the efficiency and effectiveness of business with the standards, regulation and oversight of government … at less than it costs public agencies to operate.”

The CCA says it currently houses some 80,000 inmates in 60 facilities, 40 of which are solely company-owned.

Yet increasingly, watchdog groups and governments have called into question this issue of cost-effectiveness. In 2010, for instance, a government oversight office for the state of Arizona found that for-profit prisons were costing the state some 16 percent more than public facilities.

Last month, an unusual report by the hacker-activist group Anonymous warned that CCA was no longer a good investment.

Success stories

Countries currently using private prisons or in the process of implementing such plans include Brazil, Chile, Greece, Jamaica, Japan, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and Thailand. Yet the sector remains dominated by developed countries, the new Sentencing Project report notes, particularly English-speaking nations.

While the United States continues to hold the largest number of prisoners in private facilities (around 131,000 in 2011), this is largely because the country also detains by far the largest number of people (1.5 million) – some quarter of the world’s incarcerated population.

Still, several other countries have given over a far larger portion of their penal systems to private corporations. According to the most recent data, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom each holds between 10 and 20 percent of their prisoners in private prisons.

These figures are far higher for immigrant detention, an area in which prison corporations have particularly excelled. The United Kingdom, for instance, houses roughly three-quarters of those suspected of immigration-related infractions in privately run detention centres, while Australia has entirely privatised its immigrant-detention system.

Meanwhile, these numbers appear to be having something of a cyclical effect, with greater penetration by private detention companies leading to further interest by other countries.

“Because there are these large, developed countries that have taken this step, that naturally creates interest in other countries,” Cody Mason, author of the new report and a consultant to the Sentencing Project, told IPS.

“These companies, in the United States and in other countries, will regularly travel around and bring members of Congress and Parliament into their facilities, suggesting that their approach will solve their problems. They promote themselves as a great way to deal with overcrowding, substandard services and rising prison costs.”

He continues: “Any country that sees privatisation being adopted by other countries and hears these stories – it’s pretty natural they’ll turn to that approach.”

New markets

Here in the United States, prison overcrowding has become a massive problem over the course of a three-decade “tough on crime” push by legislators. Some U.S. prison systems are currently overbooked by 40 percent, leading to accusations of mass rights infringements.

Last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder made what many are seeing as a historic announcement, directing the federal Department of Justice to begin taking multiple steps to bring down the incarcerated population. Additional moves are afoot in the U.S. Congress to put in place broader, permanent changes to the way the country’s criminal justice system functions.

Such steps may be bringing about a bipartisan end to the “tough on crime” era, but they are undoubtedly rattling the private prison companies based in the United States. While it is not yet clear how these companies’ lobbying efforts may strengthen amidst the new push, Cody Mason writes that for-profit prison companies here have spent millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions.

Those lobbying efforts have focused particularly on a pending overhaul of the country’s immigration system. Mason’s report notes that private prison companies have “a history of contributing to supporters of harsh immigration detention laws”.

According to official estimates, the federal government will detain some 400,000 people on immigration charges this year, at a cost of around two billion dollars. Yet new legislation that has passed the Senate but is currently in limbo in the House of Representatives would almost certainly bring about significant changes to this approach.

“There is sure to be a lobbying response to these issues, especially depending on what happens with the immigration bill – these companies will have a lot of interest in what happens with that,” Mason says.

“Alongside any lobbying, however, they are also looking at new areas of business, and part of that is other countries into which they can expand.”

Rights groups and government officials here have been testifying in a string of hearings, before both bodies of the U.S. Congress, on how to overhaul the United States’ huge immigration detention system, the scope of which has expanded massively in recent years in ways that some suggest impinge on civil and human rights.

According to official estimates, the federal government will detain some 400,000 people on immigration charges this year, at a cost of around two billion dollars. Activists say the size and functioning of the immigration detention system are out of alignment with “U.S. values” – and, increasingly, Washington politicians appear to agree.If these people are not public safety risks … why are they detained at all?

“We are a nation of immigrants, but our immigration law is inconsistent with America’s values,” Senator Chris Coons stated at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday. “Our immigration system exacts a high cost on families, on civil liberties and on human dignity. This cost is unnecessary, unwarranted and unfair.”

Coons said the U.S. government is currently paying more than 160 dollars per day for those kept in some 250 immigration detention centres. He also noted that Congress-stipulated “bed quotas” – around 34,000 at any given time – for these centres appear to be driving policies at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and are responsible for keeping far more people under detention than otherwise would be necessary.  

That’s “enormously expensive”, Coons noted. “It could be cheaper while also better serving both our national security and our national commitment to civil rights.”

Indeed, the hearings come in the aftermath of a surprise announcement, early this month, that the government would be releasing nearly 2,300 people awaiting immigration trials. That number included “many who did not require detention by law”, according to testimony at the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday by John Morton, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

While Morton explained the move as a necessary cost-cutting measure given the massive budget-cutting that came into effect at the beginning of March, the decision has outraged some conservatives. Yet ICE will save tens of millions of dollars on this move alone, simply in allowing immigrants awaiting trial to remain out on their own recognisance.

“It looks to me like maybe there’s an overuse of detention by this administration,” Representative Spencer Bachus, a conservative, told Morton, at Tuesday’s House hearing. “If these people are not public safety risks … why are they detained at all?”

In response, Morton admitted, “For many of the long-term residents, frankly, it doesn’t make any sense either as a matter of policy.”

The hearings are part of a flurry of bipartisan activity, both in Washington and nationally, aimed at reforming the United States’ sprawling, creaky immigration system. On Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi, a key Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, expressed optimism that the Congress would approve a comprehensive immigration reform package “before summer”.

Yet Senator Coons, who chaired Wednesday’s Senate hearing, warned that comprehensive reform “cannot be truly comprehensive if it does not address serious current flaws that deny immigrants minimum due process rights that are consistent with America’s values.”

He warned that today’s detention system “looks in many ways like a criminal proceeding”. Unlike in an actual criminal case, however, U.S. law does not offer those brought up on immigration charges the right to an attorney.

Compromised, punitive process

Over the past two decades, the U.S. government has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into stepping up border security and taken an increasingly hard line on immigration issues. The swollen detention system is one unintended corollary of this focus.

Legislation was significantly tightened in 1996, which among other things vastly expanded the number of immigration-related offences considered felonies and which would require automatic deportation. Some of these laws were again strengthened on terrorism worries in the aftermath of the attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, but President Barack Obama has surprised many by deporting far more people than his predecessors had.

Rolling back some of these automatic penalties are now a central part of the push for reforms. Under the 1996 law, for instance, Congress largely did away with immigration judges’ discretion in ruling on immigration violations – for instance, taking into account how long a migrant had been in the country, the person’s work experience and the hardship that deportation may impose on his or her family.

“This change made for a far more punitive system,” Muzaffar Chishti, director of the New York office of the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank, told IPS. “Since 1996 especially, we’ve had a much more compromised review process, both at the administrative level and at the official level.”

By 2002, an immigration-specific appeals system was experiencing a massive backlog, prompting officials to allow the appeals process to proceed on a simple up-or-down decision by a single judge, with no explanation for verdicts. This led to a huge increase in the amount of cases appealed to the federal court system, Chishti says, to the point where half of the caseloads in some circuits today are immigration cases.

At Wednesday’s Senate hearing, Ahilan T. Arulanantham, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, noted that immigration defendants were being forced to spend months or even years behind bars awaiting trial. He also noted that new technologies are available today that would cheaply and efficiently allow the accused to remain outside of detention but still ensure that they appear at required court dates.

Commitment to refuge

Meanwhile, some within the U.S. immigration detention system probably shouldn’t even be there in the first place. Critics point in particular to refugees and asylum-seekers.

“The United States has a long history of protecting and providing refuge to victims of persecution,” Sarah Ibrahim, with Human Rights First, an advocacy group, told IPS.

“But what we’ve seen recently is the U.S. faltering in this commitment – for instance, by imposing deadlines that require asylum applications to be filed within a year of entry into the United States. We are also failing these people by keeping those under detention in jails and jail-like facilities without prompt judicial review, and at the behest of an underfunded and overstretched court system.”

In February, Human Rights First and more than 160 other organisations sent a letter to President Obama stating that “immigration reform legislation must include key changes to the U.S. asylum system to better ensure that refugees who seek the protection of the United States are afforded meaningful access to a fair, effective and timely asylum adjudication process.”

Immigrants in the Biala Podlaska detention centre say that living conditions, food and medical treatment are inadequate. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

By Claudia Ciobanu
WARSAW, Dec 18 2012 (IPS)

Twenty-two years ago today, on Dec. 18, 1990, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.

Today, “As budgets tighten, we are seeing austerity measures that discriminate against migrant workers, xenophobic rhetoric that encourages violence against irregular migrants, and proposed immigration laws that allow the police to profile migrants with impunity,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a message commemorating international migrant’s day.

As the world attempts to deal with this increasingly common phenomenon – the number of international migrants has gone from an estimated 150 million in 2000 to 214 million today, making migrants “the fifth most populous country in the world”, according to the U.N. – the spotlight is on the European Union, whose migration policies have recently elicited criticism from various corners.

Since joining the bloc in 2004, Poland has had to guard a 1,200-kilometre-long border with non-EU members, Belarus and Ukraine. Given that this stretch has been one of the main land entry points for migrants flocking to the EU, Poland has been forced to play its part in ‘securing’ the Union.

In preparation for becoming an EU member, Poland recanted old ‘free movement’ agreements with former Soviet republics: in 2003, visas for Russians, Ukrainians and Georgians were reintroduced after 24 years of free movement.

Warsaw is also toughening up on the number of asylum requests it accepts. Since the 1990s, the country has seen a gradual increase in asylum seekers, from 3,400 in 1998 to over 10,500 in 2009.

Since 2009, however, numbers of asylum seekers have decreased, with roughly 6,500 applications for international protection being lodged in 2010 and around 6,900 in 2011.

In 2010, the numbers of people receiving international protection dropped as well: according to the the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Poland recognised only 82 people as refugees in 2010, a 38 percent decrease compared to 2009. In 2012, by the middle of November, 83 people had received refugee status and 372 had gotten a secondary form of protection, although application numbers grew again this year.

In 2008, one year after joining the Schengen Area, Europe’s free movement space, Poland modernised or opened the six detention centres for migrants it is now operating.

Despite new barriers, migrants desperate to get out of their countries still find ways to enter Poland, often at high costs. It is estimated that around 150,000 migrants perform illegal construction work in Poland during the prime season, most of them Ukrainians.

Numbers for those working in agriculture or doing domestic work are tougher to estimate. Rights are equally difficult to guarantee for these people.

Georgians and Russians of Chechen nationality currently constitute the largest groups applying for asylum in Poland and 2012 has seen over 4,800 asylum applications from Russian citizens, most of them Chechens, and almost 3,000 applications from Georgians.

Blamed for seeking a better life

Asylum seekers, especially from the East, are met with little sympathy from Polish authorities. No Georgian has to date received refugee status in Poland.

According to officials, migrants are often ”guilty of lying” when they ask for political asylum, because in fact they are pursuing jobs in Western Europe.

“If the migrants come here for purely economic reasons, it is better to provide as best as possible for them in our centres and then return them to their home countries, otherwise they can put their lives and health at risk trying to move further to the West,” Colonel Andrzej Jakubaszek, director of the Department for Aliens at the Polish Border Guards Headquarters, told IPS.

“We always get them back in days, a week, a month. And then we are asked by the EU what we do to protect the Union’s external borders.”

The EU Dublin II Regulation – which requires migrants to be fingerprinted as soon as they enter the EU, and returned to the first country of access if caught in another place – is on the minds of all Polish authorities dealing with migration.

Detention before alternatives?

But immigrants’ rights activists have criticised the government’s use of a sweeping detention policy before exploring alternatives.

According to Aleksandra Chrzanowska from the Association for Legal Intervention, a non-governmental organisation working with migrants, detention should only be used as a last resort.

She believes that for populations entering Poland in search of work, as seems to be the case with most Georgians, the Polish state ought to consider issuing work permits.

The hype about migrants coming to ‘steal Polish jobs’ is largely a result of scaremongering, activists say. In a country with a population of 40 million, the thousands of migrants entering the country annually could hardly make a significant difference to employment rates.

Detention, meanwhile, takes a huge toll on migrants’ lives. Migrants detained in various Polish centers told IPS that food is of inadequate nutritional value, basic medicines are missing, and they also lack much needed psychological care.

In addition, they say they have no access to information about their rights in languages they understand, and that the one or two hours of time allowed for walking outside are insufficient.

“One of the most important things for us would be to receive proper medical treatment,” says Osman Rafik, a Pakistani who has been detained at the Bialystok detention center since March.

“I receive calcium tablets for both the flu and my stomach ulcer. But perhaps even bigger than this is the need to change the border guards’ behaviour and to put an end to detention, at least to very long detention.”

The management at camps like Biala Podlaska, located close to the border with Belarus, and Lesznowola, 15 kilometres south of Warsaw, deny most claims.

Major Wojciech Rogowski, director at Biala Podlaska, told IPS, “We are aware that the people (detained) here have committed only administrative offences and are not criminals and we do our best to improve the conditions, but we must take into account security concerns.”

Yet these so-called ‘security concerns’ can be invoked too often, especially when detention is the primary means to address migration: they are used to deny migrants the right to use mobile phones or the internet; to justify a policy of round-the-clock monitoring of all corridors; to restrict outside visits; and to reduce time spent outside the rooms.

Rights groups warn that the economic crisis in Europe is leading to a backlash against migrants.

In Central and Eastern European countries like Poland, which are keen to follow EU trends but lack the capacity to implement more complex migration policies, there is a risk of increased use of detention.

“More and more asylum-seekers are being detained (in Central and Eastern Europe), whether through tougher policies at national levels or through the inadequacy of open accommodation facilities through which asylum-seekers are sent to detention centers,” the UNHCR noted in a 2011 report.

“This is, after all, European politics,” Chrzanowska said. “Detention centres are built with EU money and there is huge pressure to (secure) European borders. But all of this should not prevent us from seeing that these people are not criminals and from continuing to look for alternatives for them.”

*This story is the second of a two-part series on immigration in the European Union.

The immigration detention centre of Lesznowola, situated in a forest about 15 kilometers south of the Polish capital Warsaw in a former military compound, is notorious for its poor conditions. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

By Claudia Ciobanu
WARSAW, Dec 16 2012 (IPS)

A recent hunger strike, involving over 70 migrants detained in heavily guarded centers across Poland, is forcing the country to face its new responsibilities as a migration hub within the European Union.

Poland currently has six detention centres, which host ‘irregular migrants’, or foreigners caught living illegally in Poland, awaiting deportation after their asylum claims have been rejected or after getting caught trying to cross the Polish border that leads deeper into the EU.

At the end of October, an estimated 375 migrants were being held in these centres. Among them were 33 children, including at least one year-old baby; three of the children were unaccompanied.

Georgians and Russians of Chechen nationality currently make up the bulk of migrants in Poland, though more recently Syrians, too, have had a significant presence in detention centers.

The hunger strikers, mostly Georgians and Chechens, were demanding better conditions in the camps, but also disputed the use of detention as a means of addressing the thorny issue of migration.

The protest was coordinated across four camps: Lesznowola, Bialystok, Biala Podlaska, and Przemysl. It lasted only a few days, ending when humanitarian organisations visited the camps and promised to work with the institutions’ management on improving living conditions.

The detention camps in Poland have functioned under the authority of the National Border Guards since 2008 and conditions inside vary widely.

Lesznowola, situated in a forest about 15 kilometers south of Warsaw in a former military compound, is notorious for its poor conditions. Biala Podlaska, located in the eastern town by the same name, close to the border with Belarus, is a modern facility constructed in 2008 and funded almost entirely by the European Union.

At first glance, the two camps could not differ more. The narrow corridors at Lesznowola are replaced by shiny, freshly painted spaces in Biala Podlaska.

The non-English, non-Russian-speaking management staff at Lesznowola stand in stark contrast to a highly communicative management team – equipped with translators – at Biala Podlaska, where staff in perfectly pressed uniforms roam around the corridors wearing professional smiles.

Biala Podlaska is equipped with a green football field, while Lesznowola only has plans to eventually build one on part of its cemented courtyard surrounded by barbed-wire-topped walls.

But upon entering the halls of either institution, it quickly becomes clear that, for those living behind bars almost round the clock – with the exception of mealtimes, exercises and the occasional educational activity – the situation is exactly the same.

At the first sound of visitors approaching, adults and children stick their heads out of the cells that line the hallway, their hands and faces pushed against the bars, curious, waiting. Even a mundane visit becomes a noteworthy event in a place where nothing happens.

Kicked around “like a ball”

Thirty-six-year-old Iranian Leila Naeimi, who was released in early October after spending two months in Lesznowola, has harsh words about the conditions there.

“Everywhere you see only walls, everywhere the guards are with us, they treat us like animals,” she told IPS, adding that guards make daily inspections at 6 a.m., entering the rooms without even knocking on the door.

Naeimi, who she fled Iran fearing prosecution for her work as a women’s rights activist, says that she has often been the target of sexually abusive comments from border guards, both when entering Poland and also in the detention centre.

She claims basic hygiene products were never sufficient and that the food served in the centre was of poor quality.

Her greatest grievance, however, has to do with the EU’s attitude towards migrants in general.

“They can send you from country to country whenever they want, they think they can play with people’s lives…as if I was a ball they can just kick around.

“We need normal lives, we wouldn’t have left our countries if things had been good there. I’ve had too many problems just because I’m Iranian, just because of my nationality,” Naeimi lamented.

Osman Rafik, a 33-year-old Pakistani man who was detained in Bialystok at the time of this interview, has already spent eight months in the camp, but decided against joining the migrants’ hunger strike, claiming its goals were too “ambitious” and “diverse”.

While he did complain about conditions in the camp and even asked IPS for help with securing medicines, his primary concern was not with everyday life in the camp but with the arbitrary nature of migration policies.

“We keep being asked why we came to this country if we are from Pakistan, but they must understand that we are not criminals just because we crossed the borders into Europe.

“I would like to stay here in Poland if I (am) released,” he continued. “After all, it has been almost one year since I have been in this country and life is not so long, people live about 50 years on average. They (the immigration authorities) have already taken away one year of my life.

“We cannot go back to Pakistan, we have problems there, but authorities here do not understand that, they treat us all the same, whether we have problems back home or not,” he concluded.

*This story is the first of a two-part series on immigration in the European Union.

From left to right, Ali Mohammadi (17) from Afghanistan, Hussain Akhlaqi (17) from Indonesia and Mujtaba Ahmadi (18) from Iran. Credit: Neena Bhandari/IPS

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Jun 8 2012 (IPS)

When Hussain Akhlaqi (17) arrived on Australian shores 11 months ago from Indonesia, on a boat carrying over 100 other asylum seekers, he was immediately placed in the Christmas Island immigration detention centre. Ali Mohammadi (17) from Afghanistan, and Mujtaba Ahmadi (18) from Iran, also endured a risky journey by sea only to meet the same fate.

Australia’s systematic use of remote, indefinite and mandatory detention of refugees or asylum seekers, even children, who arrive here without the proper documentation, set it apart from most other signatories to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR)’s Refugee Conventionand the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees.

While many countries detain illegal immigrants for varying periods of time, Australia is probably the only country where detention is mandatory for adults and children while their case is being reviewed by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship – a process that can take up to months or sometimes years.

To mark the 20th anniversary of this unjustifiable policy, the International Detention Coalition(IDC), comprised of 250 members in 50 countries, has launched a global campaign to endimmigration detention of children.

“There is a growing recognition that immigration detention damages people as well as Australia’s reputation. There is no evidence that detention stops, reduces or deters boats (carrying asylum seekers) arriving on our shores. Detention, as in Europe, should only ever be used as a last resort because it is financially and (humanly) costly and not in the best interest of children and the vulnerable (refugees or the infirm),” IDC Director, Grant Mitchell, told IPS.

Last financial year, the Australian government spent over 772 million Australian dollars (757 million U.S. dollars) on running detention facilities. Meanwhile the Immigration Department has confirmed that its contract with Serco Australia Pty Ltd, a private company that operates detention centres, is now worth more than one billion Australian dollars, to be paid over a period of four years.

Devastating mental impacts

Hussain, who was fortunate to be released from detention after three months, told IPS, “I felt like a prisoner in the detention centre and I’ve been very depressed since.”

Having lost his parents and all of his siblings – except a younger brother and an older sister – at the age of five, in the 2000 Taliban attack on his village in Bamiyan province, Hussain lived with his uncle who compelled him to leave school and work.

He finally paid a smuggler 15,000 dollars, raised by selling his sister’s jewellery, to get him out of the country. He endured a harrowing 40-day journey from Afghanistan to Dubai, Malaysia and Indonesia before finally reaching Australia.

Hussain now shares a small flat in Sydney with Ali and Mujtaba, whom he met in the Christmas Island detention centre. They find comfort in each other’s company.

“We have survived living in cramped spaces with little sleep and sometimes no food, undertaking dangerous voyages on old boats alone and (withstanding) the ‘disgrace’ of being in detention. It has been absolutely frightening,” Ali, who came to Australia 10 months ago, told IPS.

The boys say they can’t stop thinking about their families and praying for the day they will be reunited with their surviving family members. Mujtaba, who was born a refugee in Iran to Afghan parents, said, “I keep asking why I was put in detention? I have done nothing wrong in fleeing from a bad situation, risking my life on a boat to seek refuge here.

“Though I am physically free after spending a year in detention, I am mentally still a prisoner. Each night, I take a sleeping pill otherwise I have nightmares.”

Even after being released from detention, these children are often withdrawn, frightened, distraught with separation anxiety, and depressed. Many suffer from a high risk of mental illness and post- traumatic symptoms including distress, sleep and behavioural disturbances, suicidal thoughts and self- destructive behaviour.

Chief Executive Officer of the Refugee Council of Australia, Paul Power, told IPS, “A detention facility is no place for a child, let alone a vulnerable child whose life experiences have been shaped by conflict, war or persecution. We would like to see the Australian Government continue to move children out of detention facilities and into a community setting.”

In violation of international law

There is now a large body of evidence to suggest that prolonged detention can have severely detrimental effects, especially on children who have experienced torture or trauma in their homeland.

The IDC campaign has drawn national and international pressure on this issue and forced the Australian Government to speed up the process of releasing more children from detention. According to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, there were 4,329 people, including 463 youth under the age of 18 in various immigration detention facilities as of April 30 this year.

Since the campaign kicked off, the number of children in detention has dropped from 463 to 281. As Amnesty International Australia’s Refugee Coordinator and spokesperson, Graham Thom, told IPS, “In practice Australia does try and release children quickly from detention, normally into some form of community detention. However, release remains at the discretion of the minister; if she/he chooses not to intervene they will be held in detention indefinitely”.

Thom added, “This policy has consistently been found, both by the United Nations and domestic human rights agencies, to be in breach of Australia’s obligations under the Convention of the Rights of the Child in a number of respects. Article 3 clearly states that governments should act in the best interests of the child. This includes appropriate access to health care (Article 24), education (Article 28) and the right to play (Article 31). Each of these rights is seriously undermined for children in detention in Australia. Importantly, Article 37 highlights that children should not be arbitrarily deprived of their liberty and if they are deprived of their liberty, they should be able to effectively challenge this in court.”

The mandatory detention policy also breaches Australia’s other international legal obligations. Article nine of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Australia is a party, prohibits arbitrary detention and provides that a detained person must be able to take proceedings before a court that can determine the lawfulness of detention and order release where detention is unlawful. The rights to liberty and freedom from arbitrary detention are also protected in Articles three (Right to Liberty) and nine (Prohibition on Arbitrary Detention) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

A Joint Select Committee report on Australia’s immigration detention network released in March has recommended that, as a matter of policy, detainees be accommodated in metropolitan areas wherever possible, particularly children, families and those with special needs or complex medical conditions and that a uniform child protection code be implemented across the immigration system for children seeking asylum.

The IDC global campaign will focus on Greece this month and will then move to Poland, Mexico and the United States, Malaysia, South Africa and will wind up in Israel, where children in immigration detention is becoming a big issue.

(END)