By Jon Levine
9 June 2005
WSWS
A network of prison facilities in which detainees are held indefinitely without charges, denied access to attorneys and family, terrorized by dogs, and subjected to abuse tantamount to torture, as well as sexual humiliation. This description applies not just to Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Base, but also to another “gulag” of jails and detention facilities strung across the United States in which tens of thousands of immigrant workers are being held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
While the “global war on terrorism” is used to justify unlawful detention and torture abroad, it has likewise served to sanction the brutal treatment of immigrants at home.ICE, a branch of the Homeland Security Department, deported a record 198,000 detainees in 2004. On any given day last year, an average of 22,814 immigrants languished in jails across the country, nearly four times the number held in 1994. The ICE contracts out the detentions to county jails. Often housed alongside violent criminals, these detainees face verbal abuse, overcrowding, and denial of medical attention, as well as physical beatings, solitary confinement and the psychological torture of not knowing if they will ever be released.
Some of these immigrants have been in jail for years without any ruling on when they might be either freed or deported. A June 4 article in the New York Times highlighted the case of Keyse G. Jama, a Somali refugee arrested in 1999 on a minor assault charge. He was sentenced to a year in jail, but almost six years later, he is still imprisoned. After his sentence was completed, he was ordered deported to war-torn Somalia, but was turned away by local officials there.
According to the Times, data from the Department of Homeland Security shows “1,225 immigrants from more than 100 countries in long-term detention, like Mr. Jama, as of March.” Many of the immigrants facing long-term detention have committed no crime at all. Madani Ba, a Mali immigrant denied political asylum, was recently released from Passaic County jail in Paterson, New Jersey, after having been detained for more than a year.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jun2005/immi-j09.shtml