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NEW YORK
- November 1 - Human Rights Watch today called on the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to do more to provide humane and safe facilities for detainees in its custody.
Representatives of Human Rights Watch visited two Los Angeles-area detention facilities several times over a 16-month period -- the San Pedro Service Processing Center and the INS "Staging Area" in downtown Los Angeles. The group also interviewed detainees and INS officials, and corresponded with detainees over the same period.
In an 8-page letter to INS Commissioner Doris Meissner, Human Rights Watch described the overcrowding, inadequate access to legal materials and assistance, and poor medical services that remain serious problems at San Pedro SPC. Some detainees sleep on the floor in plastic "boats" because there is not sufficient bedspace for all housed at the center. Detainees told Human Rights Watch that visits and law library time are severely curtailed, and medical attention is slow, due in part to the crowding.
"The INS has a long way to go before it can call these detention facilities acceptable," said Allyson Collins, senior researcher with Human Rights Watch.
San Pedro detainees took part in a brief hunger strike in August 2000 to protest their treatment, particularly the lack of air-conditioning in the center during much of the summer. Some detainees reported that they were subsequently sent to administrative segregation as punishment, apparently because they had signed petitions detailing their complaints regarding conditions.
In a positive development, conditions at the INS's facility in downtown Los Angeles improved during the period of Human Rights Watch's examination. The facility is now less crowded and cleaner, and detainees are now provided with telephone calling cards. Unfortunately, those held for most of each day at the downtown staging area are not allowed recreation time and are provided with no activities while sitting in windowless holding tanks day after day.
"INS detainees are not serving criminal sentences," said Collins. "They are administrative detainees awaiting immigration proceedings, and their treatment should reflect their administrative, non-criminal, status."
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