Private prisons for immigrants lack accountability, oversight
By Azadeh Shahshahani ~For the AJC
Thursday, June 11, 2009
On March 11, a 39-year-old man held in detention at the Stewart Detention Center, a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in southwest Georgia, died at a hospital in Columbus.
To this day, the immediate cause of Roberto Martinez Medina's death remains unclear (a press release pronounced the cause of death as "apparent natural causes").
Last month, Leonard Odom, 37, died at the Wheeler County Correctional Facility in south-central Georgia.
Both facilities are operated by Corrections Corp. of America, which has a contract with the Department of Homeland Security to operate the Stewart center and one with the Georgia Department of Corrections to operate the one in Wheeler County.
The DOC has not released additional information about the death of Odom, due to an ongoing investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
What sets apart the deaths of these two men held at CCA-operated facilities is the difference in official responses.
In the case of the death at the immigration detention facility, there have been no further explanations regarding what may have prompted the death —- much less an official investigation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which was created as a part of Homeland Security in 2003 to consolidate immigration enforcement.
Medina's tragic death marks the latest in the mounting number of immigrant deaths in the custody of CCA, the largest corporation in the business of for-profit detention.
From October 2003 through Feb. 7, 2009, 18 people died in immigration detention custody in facilities operated by CCA alone, according to information from The New York Times.
Yet ICE has failed repeatedly to hold CCA accountable. Instead, the federal agency continues to reward CCA with additional contracts, most recently for operation of the North Georgia Detention Center in Hall County.
The CCA's track record should come as no surprise to those who read the report issued in April by Georgia Detention Watch, a coalition of several organizations and individuals advocating an end to unjust and inhumane immigration detention and local enforcement practices.
The report was based on interviews with 16 detainees during a humanitarian visitation coordinated by Georgia Detention Watch in December 2008. The report uses ICE's own Performance Based National Detention Standards to evaluate conditions at Stewart.
Even compared to ICE's own nonbinding standards, conditions at the CCA-operated facility can best be described as grossly inadequate.
Members of Georgia Detention Watch and partner organizations have requested on several occasions to meet with ICE to discuss the findings of the report, but have gotten no response.
Georgia Detention Watch is not alone in demanding answers and accountability for immigrant deaths in U.S. detention.
The United Nations Expert on Extrajudicial Killings, Philip Alston, who toured the United States on a fact-finding mission in June 2008 on a mandate to investigate killings in violation of international human rights and humanitarian law, recently released a report demanding greater transparency and swift and public investigations for deaths in immigration detention.
Today marks three months since the death of Medina. ICE has yet to provide any answers regarding why this man died in detention.
Neither have Georgia Detention Watch members been provided with an opportunity to meet with ICE representatives to discuss the mounting concerns regarding the treatment of immigrants at the CCA-run Stewart.
With the prospect for yet another CCA-run immigrant detention facility in Hall County, these concerns become especially urgent.
If ICE's oversight of the CCA operation of Stewart is any guide, we can expect yet another facility funded by taxpayers held to no standards at all.
I will join others in front of the ICE office in downtown Atlanta today to honor the memory of Medina and other immigrants who have died in CCA custody.
Georgia Detention Watch members will wear black T-shirts reading: "Why Did Roberto Martinez Medina Die in Detention?" Our message is clear: The era for impunity is over. ICE must hold CCA to account.
Azadeh Shahshahani is the National Security/Immigrants' Rights Project director for the ACLU of Georgia and chairs Georgia Detention Watch.
Click:http://acluga.org/azadeh.html
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Comment: Be sure that various forms of a mature fascism are
alive and well inside the United States. The honeymoon with the
Obama Regime is over and we are still faced with a subtle yet active
totalitarian system 'in power and secure', no matter the educated
eloquence of its head official spokesman in the White House.
I really think that Obama is stumped when it comes to how to handle
the whole immigration issue and it cannot control its own 'migra'
in the form of ICE.
The immigration issue overlaps into elements of international law
and remember Obama was a constitutional law professor.
Related Link:
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/was_barack_obama_really_a_constitutional_law.html
This naturally mind-sets his mentality and impacts on all his
legal-political viewpoints. What is legal? What is really illegal?
What may seem correct legally can actually be dead wrong
morally or ethically, especially when it comes to the natural
humane rights of people!
What is involved in the whole immigration debate inside the
United States is the right of a given nation to control its borders,
its incoming immigration and how to control freak a porous border.
Beyond the legality, there is the whole question of the U.S. southwest
still being Aztlan or the natural land-of-origin of Mexican-indigenous
people. Chicanos/Mexicanos do not suffer from amnesia.
The whole U.S. southwest was stolen for 15 million dollars when the
U.S. government had the Mexican government under the threat of
further military excursions or invasion into what was then Mexican
land, that is, the U.S. southwest ~ Aztlan!
We may not be able to do anything about it now as over the centuries
many non-indigenous peoples have helped to build up what we now
know as Amerika ~though our whole concept of America should include
Central America and South America.
Nevertheless, the historical ownership of these lands should be a key
factor in handling the whole immigration issue. If we look closer we
can see some striking similarities and synchronicity between the land
question of Chicanos and the Palestinian people!
More will be revealed as times goes by and circumstances evolve.
Join the Alliance! Education for Liberation!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka: Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Yahoo Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com
http://anhglobal.ning.com/group/humanerightsagenda
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_News/
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