The Guantanamization of Immigrant Detention

Imran Ahmad (a pseudonym), a 29 year-old Pakistani computer scientist who can see the Statue of Liberty from his studio apartment in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood, says he no longer believes in the symbol of freedom cast in copper. "Freedom is relative. It depends on things like where you're from and what you look like," says Ahmad. He reached this conclusion, he says, because of what happened to him as a orange-uniformed detainee held for more than 3 years in numerous federal detention facilities: the denial of habeas corpus (his constitutional right to plead his case before a judge), facing growling dogs, watching friends languish and die while in custody, the "subtle torture" of living for months in a tiny, windowless white room while a nearby TV set blared American Idol or "24."

After a fellow detainee died under mysterious circumstances, which were covered up by detention facility authorities, Ahmad says he was threatened with lines like "We don't want you to tell or speak to anyone about this," and "We have cameras and people [detainees] who are watching you, monitoring you." Though Ahmad was released, he is still in deportation proceedings.

Ahmad's story will not shock anyone familiar with stories of death, violence and other abuse coming out of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and other offshore military detention facilities holding men in orange prison uniforms. But what makes his story noteworthy is that it reflects how many of these same offshore practices are now being perpetrated against detainees held within the borders of the United States: the hundreds of thousands of immigrants held in one of the growing number of detention facilities run by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), the most militarized branch of the U.S. government besides the Pentagon.

To protest what they consider the increasingly cruel and inhuman conditions and practices in the ICE detention facilities, Ahmad and thousands of activists are organizing the Night of 1000 Conversations, a series of vigils, town halls, house meetings and other events which will take place in over 250 towns and cities across the country on June 19th.

Among the principal concerns to be discussed during the nationwide events are what critics say, is nothing less than a "Guantanamization" of migrant detention within the borders of the United States: death, abuse and neglect at the hands of detention facility guards (many of whom are former military personnel who served in Iraq and Afghanistan); the prolonged and indefinite detention of thousands including children and families denied due process and other fundamental rights as they languish in filthy, overcrowded and extremely unhealthy facilities; orange-uniformed detainees sedated with psychotropic drugs, attacked by growling dogs and physically and sexually abused by guards; multi-million government contracts for prison construction and management given to high-powered, military industrial and prison industrial giants like Halliburton and the Utah-based Management and Training Corporation, whose former director set up the infamous Abu Ghraib detention facility.

Jamil Dakwar, director of the Human Rights Division of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), is currently at Guantanamo, outside one of the notorious Military Commission hearings created as a result of the recently rescinded (but still being implemented) law that denied the right to habeas corpus to both military and immigrant facility detainees. Dakwar sees clearly how detention practices on the island have now crept onto detention facilities on the mainland. "The general lack of accountability and oversight, the secrecy, the lack of respect for human dignity for persons held in military and immigration facilities, the lack of legally binding standards regulating treatment of persons in both (military and immigrant) facilities--all of this leads to the abuses we're now seeing in both" said Dakwar, adding, "In cases of people who die while in custody, for example, the government makes it extremely difficult to impossible to find out who is responsible for conditions that lead to the killing or other loss of life."

For her part, Dakwar's ALCU colleague, Amrit Singh, a staff attorney who has worked on different cases involving people detained by the Pentagon in Guantanamo and people held in ICE detention facilities believes that "Noncitizen detainees at home and abroad are part of the same continuum of mistreatment. The dogs used on detainees in the New Jersey [immigrant] detention facilities look very similar to the dogs used on detainees in Abu Ghraib and Iraq."

In the case of both the military and immigrant detention facilities, says Singh, the Bush administration has used national security imperatives to deny many of the Freedom of Information Act requests she and her colleagues have filed in their efforts to find out things like how people are being treated in detention, under what conditions did detainees die and what kind of medical treatment they are receiving. Asked about progress towards answering these and other questions, Singh responded, "The answer to these questions are still not being made available to us."

The connections between abuse and death in military and immigration facilities has also caught the eye of the international community. Singh, Darwit and some of the groups and individuals participating in the Night of 1000 Conversations, will be submitting testimony to a United Nations Special Rapporteur who, in the next two weeks, will visit several U.S. cities as he investigates deaths in both overseas detention facilities and in U.S. prisons and immigration detention facilities.

And, as he prepares to take part in the Night of 1000 Conversations, former detainee Ahmad says he will raise his voice to educate people about what he sees as the primary cause of the abuses he saw while in detention, "Creating guilty people and detention are all about war. I will tell people about how all those arrests, all that abuse are all about war, a war on immigrants."

For more on immigrant detention, go to Of América.

Follow Roberto Lovato on Twitter: www.twitter.com/robvato

Comments

[DexGor]

For those of us who have been working on immigration issues since 9/11, this comes as no surprise. Even people without charges against them have been shackled and abused. It's horrific that people who have only committed a violation of civil law are treated worse than murderers and rapists. By definition, these people are NOT criminals! Why should we consistently treat them as something less than human?

For me, the worst part is meeting the people who commit these abuses. They think of themselves as the most patriotic people on the planet, doing their duty to protect their country. Protect it from what? A 12 year old? An old woman who washes floors to make a living? A middle aged man who is trying to buy food for his family and pay rent?

We need to seriously reevaluate our priorities as a nation.

[DexGor]

Allow me to correct myself. These are people who have only been ACCUSED of committing violations of civil law.

I've actually known kids with valid visas held in detention for years for no reason.

[mostlyharmless]

i once attended a new citizen swearing-in ceremony presided over by josé cabranes, a federal judge, and he told the room full of very anxious looking immigrants that they should not feel inferior to other americans, for they were, in fact, the quintessential americans . . . to be a stranger in this land (and, perhaps, a stranger to the english language), enduring many hardships to make a new life for oneself and one's family is the ultimate, american dream

this struck me as very true, thinking of how families talk with pride about the grandfather or great-grandmother who arrived in this country with little more than the shirts on their backs . . . and thinking, too, about how the children of immigrants are the most productive members of our society

yes, some wannabe americans are here illegally . . . since the beginning of the republic, long before the first mexican waded across the rio grande to work in a sweatshop, this has been the case . . . but should their punishment be death? i think not . . . and it seem a very unamerican turn of events when we not only torture and kill the strangers who hate america, but the strangers who love it, too

[clr2]

Don't detain these ILLEGAL ALIENS deport them. Of course Lovato won't call them ILLEGAL ALIENS, which is what they are. We spend BILLIONS on ILLEGALS we need to use this money on our own poor. Deport all ILLEGAL ALIENS and heavily fine and jail those who hire them. In other words enforce our laws!

[mostlyharmless]

actually, their status is yet to be determined (otherwise, they would be instantly deported), and some are eventually released and allowed to stay in the united states

[Soule23]

People like you are the reason this country is falling apart.

[clr2]

Soul23 - I think people like you who put their heads in the sand are the reason this country is falling apart. We are spend BILLIONS on people who don't belong here. We can't take on the world's poor and our own. All they need to do is come here legally. Is that too much to ask? We need to take care of our own.

[egal]

I still don't understand what they were thinking to do this kind of thing. It violates American and International laws and treaties, the Constitution, United States principles and morality, and did all this while stripping Americans and many others of their basic human rights and dignity.

Yet every illegal, inhumane, and even torturous act they knew in advance (or should have; we told them, the experts warned them, and every study ever done confirmed that their actions) would diminish American security, freedoms, influence, power, military, and economy.

So when they went behind the backs of soldiers, laws, and humanity, they did so fully aware that their coffers and corporations were the only things that could possibly benefit by atrocious actions that go against everything America should stand for and are war crimes and treason on a level that boggles the mind.