March 26, 2009

Immigration Detention: 'Jailed Without Justice'

I encourage villagers to join with Amnesty International to call on the Department of Homeland Security to make U.S. immigration detention standards enforceable, and to use alternatives to detention in a meaningful way.

Over 30,000 immigrants are detained EVERY DAY. This is triple the number detained just ten years ago. Immigrants can be detained for months or years without any meaningful judicial review - this despite international human rights standards requiring judicial review.

Amnesty International has a 56-page report, entitled Jailed Without Justice that shares horrific stories of detention abuse and mismanagement here in the United States. For example, Mr. N, a Buddhist monk, fled to the U.S. after he was tortured in Tibet for his religious beliefs. When he arrived in New York, he was immediately detained and never had a chance to argue for his case before a judge. After 10 months in detention, he was finally granted asylum.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could issue new regulations that would quickly solve many of these problems. But instead, just three weeks ago, the office in charge of these policies testified before Congress that it plans to detain almost a hundred thousand more immigrants this year than last.

Villagers, please tell Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that this is wrong and that she should take steps to fix this flawed system.

What say u?

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