|
Amnesty slams US for treatment of
immigrant detainees
 The
detention of hundreds of thousands of immigrants every year in the
United
States
represents a violation of human rights, Amnesty International USA
said in a report on Wednesday .
On an average
day the rights , group said, more than 30,000 immigrants are in
detention facilities. That’s triple the number that were in custody
a decade ago, according to Amnesty’s report “Jailed Without Justice:
Immigration Detention in the
USA.” “America
should be outraged by the scale of human rights abuses occurring
within its own borders,” said Larry Cox, director of Amnesty
International USA.
“The
United States
has long been a country of immigrants, and whether they have been
here five years or five generations, their human rights are to be
respected.” Amnesty said more than 300,000 people are detained by US
immigration officials each year. They include asylum seekers,
torture survivors, victims of human trafficking, longtime legal
permanent residents and parents of US citizen children.
“The use of
detention as a tool to combat unauthorised migration falls short of
international human rights law,” the report said.
According to
Amnesty tens , of thousands of people languish in American
immigration detention facilities every year — including a number of
US citizens — without receiving a hearing to determine whether their
detention is warranted.
| |
US citizens
and lawful permanent residents have been incorrectly subject to
mandatory detention and have spent months or years behind bars
before being able to prove they are not deportable from the
US. |
Amnesty called
on the US
government to ensure that all immigrants and people seeking asylum
in the United States who have been detained receive a hearing to
determine whether their detention is necessary.
Sernata
Reynolds, Amnesty
USA’s policy
director for Refugee and Migrant Rights, said U.S. officials stepped
up detentions after the Sept. 11 attacks.
“Although the
law permitted it, it hadn’t been used in the way that it was,” she
said in an interview. “Then, in the climate of fear, it was
exponentially growing, and continues to grow. This year ... they
expect to detain 400,000 people.” “No one comes close to detaining
the amount of people that the
United States
does,” she said. “I don’t know of another country that detains
hundreds of thousands of people as a normal policy every year.”
According to the report, there were about 12 million illegal
immigrants living in the United States as of January 2007. The top
five countries of origin were Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, the
Philippines and China.
 The
Department of Homeland Security can detain people at the border or
during raids if it suspects them of an immigration violation.
People detained
at the border are not entitled to a review of their detention by an
immigration judge, Amnesty said.
Those
apprehended inside the
United States
have the right to appear before a judge, but the wait can be long.
“US citizens and lawful permanent residents have been incorrectly
subject to mandatory detention and have spent months or years behind
bars before being able to prove they are not deportable from the
US,”
it said.
Under
international law, detention should only be used in exceptional
circumstances, must be justified in each individual case and must be
subject to judicial review.
Amnesty said
many of the immigrants who are arrested are unable to be freed on
bond because the amount is set too high for them to pay .
The report said
US citizens and lawful permanent residents have been incorrectly
subject to mandatory detention with no right to a bond hearing
before a judge and spent months or years behind bars before proving
they are not deportable.
1 April 2009
|
Read Also