Beyond Walls and Cages: Immigration detention centers fail government's own standards

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Immigration detention centers fail government's own standards

7/27/09
LA Times blog

The federal government routinely failed to follow its own standards
regulating immigration detention centers across the country, denying detainees
sufficient recreation time and adequate access to attorneys, legal materials and
telephones, according to a new report issued today.

As a result of the widespread violations, hundreds of thousands of
detainees faced tremendous challenges in making their case to stay in the U.S.
and were frequently denied basic due process rights, according to the report.

“The findings in our report raise serious of doubts as to whether the
hundreds of thousands of immigrant detained each year get a fair shot at
justice,” said one of the authors, Karen Tumlin of the National Immigration Law
Center.

The report is based primarily on thousands of pages of reviews conducted by
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from 2001 to 2005, turned over by court
order in a legal case. The authors also studied reviews of detention centers by
the American Bar Assn. and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

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Beyond Walls and Cages

Bridging Prison Abolition and Immigrant Justice Movements

Description and Purpose:
In the US, some 2.4 million people are imprisoned while 1.6 million migrants have been deported since 1996. On a world scale, while most people’s movement is constrained by a system of global apartheid, policing strategies are shared across national borders that are commonly used to crack down on political organizing and dissent. What are the connections between the prison industrial complex and migration policies that are symbolized by deadly cages and walls? How do these different state policies both divide and connect different groups of people across nationality, citizenship, race, class, gender, and sexuality? What work do these sturdy tools of division, isolation, and control do at this moment of economic crisis? What are the ideologies that make walls and cages seem so durable, and what cracks in these edifices can movements for social justice and liberation open up?

Making links between prison policies and migration policies is important for being able to understand and challenge white supremacy, US imperialism, capitalism, and militarization. We want to understand the ways in which the prison abolition and immigrant justice movements are opposing state violence and the creative ways in which they are working to build a world without walls and cages. How might organizing around the “right to stay” be a way of bridging communities who face economic dislocation – whether through free trade policies or gentrification – and repressive state policies alike?

How did we put this book together?
We called for papers and solicited contributions for a book that brings materials from people who are directly affected by these systems together with work from organizers, activists, advocates, artists, poets, and researchers. We edited these contributions and found a press that was interested in publishing them.

In September and October, 2009, we also took to the road to get a closer look at the ways in which immigrant detention is building on the system of mass incarceration in the South and Southwest. How are these systems shaping the livelihoods and organizing of communities who are most affected by hyper-policing? And what changes, if any, is the current economic crisis having on these systems?

About the editors:
Jenna Loyd is a writer and researcher who is based in Syracuse, NY. Matt Mitchelson is a geographer researching imprisonment and working with former prisoners. Andrew Burridge is a geographer and activist working towards freedom of movement within the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and beyond.

If you are interested in learning more about or contributing to this project, please contact us at nowallsnocages@gmail.com.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Immigration detention centers fail government's own standards

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