By The Human Rights Watch
Describes how Canada’s immigration system undermines the rights of detainees with disabilities through overreliance on appointed representatives.
The Human Rights Watch, December 3, 2024, 40 pp.
By Sridhar, S., Digidiki, V., Kunichoff D., Bhabha, J., Sullivan, M., Gartland, MG.,
Between 2017 and 2021, more than 650,000 children were taken into custody at the border, with more than 220,000 of these children being detained for more than 72 hours (Flagg & Preston, 2022). International norms clearly assert that detention is never in the best interest of the child and should be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest possible period of time (UN General Assembly, CRC, Article 6, 2005). The rights of children in US immigration enforcement have been affirmed in a series of landmark cases resulting in the Flores Settlement Agreement, which acknowledges the unsuitability of child detention as immigration policy, and states that children should not be detained for more than 20 days (Schrag, 2020). Despite this guidance, the US continued to detain children for lengthy and arbitrary periods of time, placing them in detention facilities unsuitable for child health and safety. Furthermore, reporting and oversight from governmental and nongovernmental agencies have documented devastatingly harmful conditions for children in family immigration detention including separation from parents, the use of prison facilities inappropriate for housing children, and limited access to qualified medical professionals leading to grave physical and mental health consequences (U.S. ICE Advisory Committee, 2016; Allen & McPherson, 2023; Women’s Refugee Commission 2014; Human Rights First, 2022). Medical studies have documented long-term consequences of detention on children in the US and around the world (MacLean, et al, 2019; Zwi, et al 2018; Tosif, et al, 2023; Kronick, Rousseau, Cleveland, 2015); however, to our knowledge there are no systematic studies describing the quality of pediatric health care based on primary medical documentation within the US family immigration detention system. In collaboration with the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), the Child Health Immigration Research Team based out of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Asylum Clinic at the MGH Center for Global Health and the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, analyzed the medical records of 165 children, between 6 months and 18 years old, detained at Karnes County Family Residential Center (KCFRC) between June 2018 and October 2020. Medical records were collected with the permission of parents by the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) Family Detention Team to investigate the provision of medical care for detained children, and analyzed in a de-identified form by the Child Health Immigration Research Team. Broadly, we found that existing health issues and care needs relating to physical and mental health were under-identified due to poor screening and minimal documentation of medical care, resulting in fragmentated and inadequate medical care. During prolonged detention the children in the study had limited access to basic healthcare, including key screenings and management of acute medical and mental health issues. KEY FINDINGS 1. The median length of detention was 43 days and 88 percent of children remained in detention for longer than 20 days, in violation of the terms of the Flores Settlement Agreement. 2. A total of 12 languages were documented, among them Haitian Creole, K’iche and Romanian. There was minimal documentation of interpreter use. 3. 4.3 percent of children exhibited moderate or severe wasting, 11.7 percent of children were “at risk of malnutrition,” 22.6 percent exhibited stunting, and 5.5 percent severe stunting. Despite this evidence, none of the children’s medical records documented the risk of malnutrition, nor was there any indication that measures were taken to enhance the children’s diet. 4. Although heights and weights of all children were obtained, there was no analysis or identification of nutritional status by the medical providers in the detention center based on the collected data. 5. The screening tool used to identify mental health needs did not follow a validated tool and did not consider the age of the child. Only 1% of the cohort was identified as at risk for a mental health disorder; a gross underestimation based on existing data. 6. There appeared to be a preponderance of providers practicing outside of their scope. There was a lack of pediatric-specific medical knowledge, evident in many medical records and inadequate documentation of medical reasoning. 7. There was inadequate follow up identified in the documentation of children with chronic illness and a poorly outlined referral process for children after leaving detention. 8. Though 100 percent of the children were screened for tuberculosis upon arrival, they were all screened with the use of chest x-ray, contrary to the 2020 ICE’s Family Residential Standards (FRS) and Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidance. Children with chest x-ray findings suggesting latent tuberculosis were not referred for further testing. 9. Vaccination data was often not recorded or was illegible if recorded, making it difficult to assess influenza vaccination. Furthermore, there was little influenza testing identified in children with fevers, which is concerning for underidentification of a highly contagious condition. 10. There was an overall inadequacy of the documentation of clinical reasoning which can lead to inadequate care in a fragmented health system, such as that in a detention facility. Conclusions Our study documents the mental and physical harm experienced by children in immigration detention at Karnes County Family Residential Center during prolonged detention relating to inadequate and inappropriate medical care. Our findings spanned a broad range of areas including the documentation of interpreter use, supervision, documentation, and delivery of acute medical care, assessment of nutritional and vaccination status, screening protocols for mental distress, and the identification of chronic medical conditions. The evidence of this study supports a conclusion that has been asserted by numerous civil society and medical organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics (Linton, Griffin and Shapiro, 2017): there is no humane way to detain children and no version of family detention that is acceptable. While data in this study are drawn from only one US family immigration detention center and the sample size is limited, this report presents compelling evidence to support calls to end the practice of detaining children and families. Recognizing the decades long history of family detention in the US and the likelihood based on current policy discussion that the detention of children will occur into the foreseeable future, the report includes policy recommendations on the standard of medical care needed to meet the basic human rights of children in detention. These recommendations are anchored in ICE guidelines for medical treatment, the Family Residential Standards, as well as national and global medical organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization. They are also supported by the clinical experience of those caring for child migrants, which are rooted in existing international law and practice. The key actions set out in this report are applicable to all venues for detention or custody of children within the immigration system. It should be noted that these recommendations do not negate the only reasonable conclusion based on our findings, that the detention of migrant children is harmful in any form and must be abolished.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard Global Health Institute, 2024. 64p.
By Taylor Koehler
Throughout the last decade, international human rights experts and monitoring bodies have expressed deep concern over States’ increased use of immigration detention. A primary reason for this concern is that States regularly impose immigration detention arbitrarily, and in so doing, render detained persons more vulnerable to violations of the prohibition on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. As U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer explained in his 2018 report to the U.N. Security Council on migration-related torture and ill-treatment: “While not every case of arbitrary detention will automatically amount to torture or ill-treatment, there is an undeniable link between both prohibitions … experience shows that any form of arbitrary detention exposes migrants to increased risks of torture and ill-treatment.” While considerable analysis of components of the immigration detention system in the U.S. under international law, particularly the prohibition on torture and other ill treatment, have been completed, there have been few attempts to bring all these different analyses together to look at the U.S. immigration system as a complete whole. This backgrounder, and the more in-depth legal analysis on which it is based (linked above), attempt to fill this gap. The report analyzes the U.N. Convention against Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment (Convention against Torture) and other international and regional legal authorities. It draws on CVT’s decades-long clinical experience providing care to survivors of torture, including formerly detained asylum seekers, and highlights reports of wide-ranging abuses at immigration detention centers such as Stewart and Irwin County Detention Centers, located in Georgia where CVT has operated a survivor of torture program for the past five years. The report ultimately concludes both that the system is arbitrary and that U.S. immigration detention systematically exposes detained migrants to violations of the prohibition on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. Indeed, it finds that the current system’s defects are structural and pervasive to a degree that the system must be phased out entirely to bring the United States into compliance with its international legal obligations.
Center for Victims of Torture, 2021. 21p
By Maricela Sanchez
In 2023, we worked with local partners and a brave set of detained leaders to create the California Immigration Detention Database (“Database”). The purpose of the Database was to expose and document the daily conditions of life in California immigration detention by tracking formal grievances sent to us by those inside. “When people try to be heard by staff through their grievances, [they] are ignored. These facilities are not safe, and staff are not held responsible for misconduct.” – Jose Ruben Hernandez Gomez Since the inception of this project, detained immigrants in California have launched widespread labor strikes and hunger strikes and have filed multiple lawsuits and administrative complaints to put a spotlight on the abuse and neglect they suffer. As part of this effort, people in custody have continued to send us copies of the grievances they file through Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (“ICE’s”) internal system. As of July 2024, we have received 485 grievances across six immigration detention facilities in California. Together, these grievances reveal a persistent and disturbing pattern of abuse that pervades ICE’s detention regime in California. • Hazardous Facilities and Inhumane Treatment: Inadequate facility management was the most common reason for a grievance, making clear that ICE’s immigration detention facilities in California are consistently unfit for human habitation. ICE also fails to meet the minimum standards of its own policies, like ensuring people have edible food, clean water, and the opportunity to go outside for fresh air and sunshine • Medical neglect: We have received 94 grievances related to inadequate medical care, lack of COVID-19 protections, and denial of medication. Many people in the detention facilities suffer from chronic conditions. Some develop new health problems, sometimes because of hazardous materials or abusive treatment they experience while detained. But requests to see a doctor are left languishing, and ICE and facility staff regularly leave medication unfilled, or otherwise disregard the prescribed treatment. Likewise, during the pandemic, ICE showed a remarkable indifference to the safety of the people it incarcerates. More recently, ICE has withheld potentially life saving treatments, like Paxlovid, from people who contract COVID. • Retaliation: The most common outcome of filing a grievance isn’t change. It’s retaliation. The grievances we’ve received include 56 complaints of bullying and harassment by detention facility staff, 13 complaints related to sexual assault, 15 complaints related to sleep deprivation, and 59 complaints related to other forms of retaliation, such as punitive and extended use of solitary confinement. As part of its regular practice, ICE does not proactively release information about the grievances it receives from people in detention. Based on our conversations with detained people and with local partners who regularly engage in detention-related work, we believe that our records represent the most consistent issues in the detention facilities. This report is intended to support the advocacy and resistance of the people trapped inside ICE’s detention facilities. It includes data, stories, and background that document the ongoing harms of immigration detention. Taken together, it is unequivocally clear that ICE and the private companies it contracts with cannot be trusted to care for the people they detain. The grievance system, which is supposed to offer an avenue for redress, ends up making things worse for those it’s intended to help. Existing oversight mechanisms are inadequate, and human rights violations are rampant. It is our conclusion that the immigration detention system is irredeemable and infected by greed, racism, and impunity
San Francisco: UCLA of Northern California, 2024. 34p.
By Global Detention Project
Immigration detention is an important tool of immigration control in Taiwan (also “Taiwan Province of China”), where detainee numbers have steadily risen in recent years. Although conditions in Taiwan’s detention centres have frequently been criticised, they have received little international scrutiny because of China’s opposition to Taiwan’s UN membership. Taiwan also lacks an asylum system, though the need to establish asylum procedures has grown increasingly urgent as the numbers of Hong Kong residents seeking protection have grown.
Geneva, SWIT: Global Detention Project, 2024. 30p.
By Melanie Griffiths and
Peter William Walsh
This briefing examines immigration detention in the UK. It discusses who is detained, for how long, with what effects, and the financial costs of operating the system.
Key Points Immigration detention is used worldwide by governments to facilitate immigration enforcement, but has negative impacts on detainees’ mental health. The use of immigration detention in the UK hit a high of around 32,000 in 2015. Numbers have been falling since then, with around 16,000 people entering detention in 2023. Around 1,800 people were in immigration detention on 30 June 2024. In mid-2024, the UK had an estimated detention capacity of around 2,200 beds, of which around 77% were occupied. In 2023, the Home Office detained 18 children for immigration-related purposes, down from around 1,100 in 2009. In 2023, 39% of immigration detainees were held for more than 28 days. Release on immigration bail – an alternative to detention where detainees are released into the community – increased from 2010 to 2021 but fell by 2023. In Q2 2024, the average daily cost to hold an individual in immigration detention was £122. In the financial year 2023-24, the Home Office issued 838 compensation payments for unlawful detention, totalling around £12 million.
Oxford, UK: Migration Observatory, University of Oxford, 2024. 18p.
By Anne Marie Munene, Christine Harris, Deborah Rest, Etracy Rukwava, Goldie Joseph, Hadnet Tesfom Habtemariam and Kaffy Kazep.
Over the past decade, Women for Refugee Women’s (WRW) groundbreaking research on women in immigration detention has shown that the majority of asylum-seeking women detained are survivors of rape and other forms of gender-based violence, including domestic violence, forced marriage and sexual exploitation. Locking up women who have already survived serious violence and abuse retraumatises them, causing profound and long lasting damage to their mental health. Since WRW started campaigning on this issue there have been important changes to women’s detention, including a huge reduction in the numbers detained: from over 300 women at any one time in 2014, to around 100 women now. Yet despite this progress, for women who continue to be locked up, the harms of detention remain. New research we have carried out has found that despite the Home Office banning practices through which male detention centre staff see women in intimate situations, these practices nonetheless continue. In mid-2016 the Home Executive Summary Office banned male staff from carrying out ‘constant supervision’ of women deemed at risk of suicide – yet in our survey of 40 women, 71% of respondents subject to ‘constant supervision’ since the ban came in told us they us had been watched by male staff. This means they will have been watched by men in situations including while in bed, on the toilet, in the shower or getting dressed. Survey respondents who told us they had been subject to constant supervision by male staff included women detained as recently as 2024. Since coming to power in July 2024 the Labour Government has made welcome commitments to prioritise survivors of gender-based violence and make sure they receive the support they need. We urge the Government to ensure that asylum seeking survivors are included in these commitments by taking the practical and achievable step of ending women’s immigration detention, and setting up a new
London: Women for Refugee Women, 2025. 23p.
By Australian Human Rights Commission
In April and May 2024, the Commission visited the Broadmeadows Residential Precinct (BRP) and parts of the Melbourne Immigration Detention Centre (MIDC), the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre (VIDC), and the Perth Immigration Detention Centre (PIDC), all facilities where women are held. This Report documents the key observations arising from the Commission’s inspection of these facilities. Some of the issues that the Commission identifies are specific to individual facilities and others are systemic in nature. The Report finds that in an overwhelmingly male system, women in immigration detention are often an afterthought when it comes to detention infrastructure, the provision of programs and activities, equitable access to services and the delivery of staff training. Women’s experiences of detention differ substantially from men’s, not only because they are minorities, but because they have particular needs and vulnerabilities that are often unrecognised and unmet. For many of the women, the negative impacts of detention are compounded by histories of abuse and trauma and heightened risk of exposure to violence and sexual harassment. The Report finds that these impacts are exacerbated by the continued use of operational quarantine (separation from the main population without medical symptoms) and the probable separation from family supports owing to the limited accommodation available for women close to their families and the inadequacy of visiting facilities for those with children. The Report finds that women have fewer opportunities for meaningful self-development, and the programs and activities offered are often unresponsive to their needs or not age appropriate. Staff working in these facilities often have no specific training on the vulnerabilities and needs of women in their care, which can result in routine activities being undertaken insensitively or exposing women to further trauma. The Report emphasises concern about women being routinely exposed to the possibility of harassment and violence because many of the services that are available to them are located in male compounds or adjacent to them. In particular, the Report highlights concern about the co-location of men and women in the Broadmeadows Residential Precinct and, the safety of women at Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, who are housed next to a compound with registered sexual offenders. The recommendations made in this Report are designed to assist the Department to improve the situation for women in immigration detention, ensuring they are managed safely, while also protecting their human rights.
Sydney: Australian Human Rights Commission, 2024. 93p.
By The American Immigration Council
The Torrance County Detention Facility (Torrance) is one of approximately 200 facilities across the United States where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains immigrants with pending removal proceedings. Located in the rural New Mexico desert, this detention facility holds a notorious reputation for its inhumane living conditions and for the speed at which individuals detained there go through their removal proceedings, often without adequate legal counsel. Despite these noted abuses, in September 2021, ICE placed over 100 Haitian migrants into Torrance while they awaited removal proceedings. For months thereafter, the media continued to report on a variety of obstacles Haitians endured in detention including inadequate access to legal counsel.
Due to the increase in complaints from individuals being held at Torrance, the American Immigration Council (The Council) sought to ascertain whether particular barriers to due process exist for Haitian nationals, as well as to investigate the overall treatment of Haitian nationals at Torrance. The request sought data related to individuals detained at Torrance from January 1, 2021, including arrest/apprehension information, immigration status, biographic information, detention history, and release information. ICE responded by providing data between January 1, 2021 and November 17, 2022, and this is what we found when we analyzed it:
ICE's Use of Racial Classifications Are Unreliable, Labeling Most Detained Individuals “White:” Individuals in detention at Torrance represented 54 different countries spanning five different continents. However, 86 percent of individuals detained at Torrance were categorized as racially “white.” The data suggests that ICE failed to systematically document the race of detained individuals.
Africans Had the Highest Lengths of Detention at Torrance: Because ICE’s race categorizations proved unreliable, researchers grouped detained individuals by continent to measure the impact geographic location has on detention lengths. The data showed that African migrants had the highest lengths of detention.
ICE Officers Continued to Populate Torrance Despite Multiple Warnings: During the reviewed time period, ICE had substantial warning signs that Torrance was not equipped to house detained migrants through failed inspections, COVID surges, staffing shortages, and even
government oversight agency reports recommending shutting the facility down. Despite these warning signs, the data showed that ICE continued to detain migrants at Torrance, putting them at risk.
Oversight Efforts Seemingly Reduced the Detained Population at Torrance—But Only Temporarily: The data shows that between August and November 2022, a period that included the suicide of Kesley Vial at Torrance and a government report calling for the closing of Torrance, the population of Torrance consistently decreased. However, in December 2022, ICE began repopulating the facility.
Washington, DC: The American Immigration Council, 2024. Published: October 24, 2024
By Jonathan Booth
Privately managed detention centers hold the majority of detained immigrants in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) custody. Coerced detainee labor in these for-profit facilities is commonplace. The practice contributes significantly to the financial viability of CoreCivic and GEO Group, the two corporations which manage most ICE detention centers, but it violates the prohibition on forced labor contained in the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act (“TVPA”).
Despite a growing field of scholarship on “crimmigration” and proposals to abolish immigration detention, or on its extraterritorial application. Because practitioners, rather than scholars, were the first to recognize that the TVPA’s prohibition of forced labor applies to private detention centers, there has been little scholarly analysis of the application of the TVPA to forced labor within detention facilities.
This Article provides the first scholarly assessment of a wave of pending class action lawsuits challenging forced labor in privately managed ICE facilities under the TVPA. It concludes that such lawsuits are likely to succeed, given the facts known about conditions in for-profit immigrant detention facilities and the broad text and favorable legislative history of the TVPA. If the plaintiffs win a favorable jury verdict or a far-reaching settlement, the cases may cause fundamental changes to the current system of mass immigration detention.
Part I of this Article examines the rise of for-profit detention in the United States and shows that detaining immigrants is now a central business of forprofit detention corporations. Next, Part II describes the labor policies within ICE detention that plaintiffs in these lawsuits allege amount to forced labor and thus violate the TVPA. Part III turns to the TVPA itself and analyzes its text, legislative history, and applicability to class actions. Part IV argues that its text and legislative history demonstrate that the TVPA covers forced labor claims within for-profit immigrant detention facilities and that such claims, if successful, could transform the business of detaining immigrants. Finally, Part V argues that publicly available information, including that revealed through discovery in these lawsuits, makes it likely that plaintiffs will prevail at trial.
35 Georgetown Immigration Law Journal 573 (2020)
By Jesuit Refugee Service Europe
By definition, things that occur in detention occur behind walls, and in a context where those detained have been disempowered. Scrutiny and transparency are therefore often elusive, and access to justice to which people are legally entitled may be denied altogether or made more difficult. This situation is compounded because people are often detained under immigration powers at borders, or when facing removal—in contexts of limbo, where normal justice procedures are easier to circumvent.
Against this background, this report looks into if and how detained migrants can effectively access justice in Europe today. This is a particularly relevant topic, as this work comes at a moment in which the use of detention upon arrival at external borders is likely to increase, as a result of the adoption of the EU Pact on Asylum and Migration. Because of the complexity of immigration procedures in Europe, effective access to justice cannot be properly assessed without considering if migrants—in this case detainees—have effective access to legal assistance. For this reason, a chapter of this report is dedicated to access to legal aid. We further looked into how effectively detainees can access remedies against their detention and return orders. Another chapter explores the existence and effectiveness of complaint mechanisms for detainees to address violations of rights that happen in detention. Finally, we looked into the possibility for migrants to apply for international protection while in detention.
This work is based on the experience of JRS visiting people in detention centres across Europe. JRS opposes the use of administrative detention as a practice that is inherently harmful to human dignity and has a negative impact on both physical and mental health. As long as detention is a reality, however, JRS staff and volunteers work to accompany detained migrants and advocate for the respect of their rights and for humane detention conditions.
Brussels, Belfium, JRSEurope, 2024. 69p.
By Sarah Decker and Anthony Enrique, et al.
“When they took us from the border, we were shackled, head to toe. Then they told us we were going to Louisiana. We all started shaking with fear. We knew we were about to lose our freedom, our rights, even our humanity. We knew we were going to the Black Hole.”
The United States maintains the world’s largest immigrant incarceration regime, imprisoning an average of over 35,000 people a day undergoing administrative proceedings to determine if they will be deported.2 Over 6,000 of those people, a mix of recently-arrived asylum seekers and long-term U.S. residents, are detained in Louisiana, the second-largest state for immigrant detention behind Texas.3 The explosion of immigrant incarceration in Louisiana occurred in the late 2010s and largely benefitted private prison companies, which run eight of the nine immigration jails in the state, profiting off of the abuses described in this report.4
This report documents systemic human rights abuses carried out by or under the supervision of the New Orleans Immigration and Customs Enforcement Field Office (“NOLA ICE”), the federal office that oversees immigration detention in Louisiana. NOLA ICE contracts with two private prison companies and a local sheriff’s office to operate Louisiana’s nine immigration jails.5 Inside those jails, officials rampantly violate detained peoples’ human and civil rights, locking them away in punitive conditions indistinguishable from those in criminal jails and prisons, in some cases for prolonged periods lasting years.6 In some instances, the abuses that detained people describe firsthand in this report meet the definitions of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment under international human rights treaties to which the United States is a party.7
The information contained in this report comes from two years of visits to nine immigration jails in Louisiana beginning in April 2022, all told comprising interviews with 6,384 people from 59 jail visits and information from seven jail tours conducted by NOLA ICE officials. During these visits, attorneys and legal workers gave Know Your Rights presentations and conducted legal interviews with detained people. Their testimony reveals that NOLA ICE officials routinely violate ICE’s own minimum standards of care and state, federal, and international law and legal standards. Abuses inflicted include:
DENIAL OF LANGUAGE ACCESS: including interpretation and translation access, resulting in language-related denials of medical and mental health care; due process in preparation of legal materials; and protection against abusive treatment and coercion.
DEPRIVATION OF HUMAN NECESSITIES: including minimally nutritious food and potable drinking water; sanitary conditions of confinement; access to basic hygiene supplies; protection from extreme temperatures; and access to sunlight and outdoor time.
ABUSIVE & DISCRIMINATORY TREATMENT: including physical abuse; sexual abuse; torturous solitary confinement; humiliating and degrading speech; and retaliation against and suppression of speech and religious worship protected by the First Amendment.
MEDICAL ABUSE & NEGLECT: including denial of medical care for chronic, urgent, and emergency conditions; provision of ineffective or non-responsive care for serious health conditions; denial of the right to informed consent to treatment; disruption of ongoing care due to sudden transfers in custody; denial of dental care; denial of reproductive health care; mental health neglect; medical neglect of people with disabilities; and fatal deficiencies in medical care.
Taken together, the abuses inflicted by NOLA ICE officials deprive detained people of due process in their immigration proceedings. In NOLA ICE detention, officials isolate people with viable defenses to deportation from the legal and language resources needed to fairly present their claims. And they use abusive treatment in punitive conditions to coerce people into renouncing those claims and accepting deportation to escape the misery of detention.
The record of documented abuses in NOLA ICE jails predating this report is so extensive that in December 2021, the Department of Homeland Security’s oversight agency, the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, opened an investigation into the entire network of NOLA ICE jails, the first-ever field-office wide investigation.8 But as the findings of this report show, oversight bodies have failed to hold NOLA ICE accountable, permitting the continued abuse of detained people with impunity
New Orleans: ACLU of Louisiana, 2024. 108p.
By Elizabeth Hannah
Immigration detention is a central feature of the United States’ immigration system. Noncitizens facing removal are detained in staggering numbers throughout the removal process, from the initiation of legal proceedings to the issuance of a final removal order. Moreover, as the U.S. government’s reliance upon immigration detention has grown, the Supreme Court has systematically stripped noncitizens of important substantive and procedural protections. This is especially true in the post-removal-order context, where a series of recent decisions have placed more people than ever at risk of prolonged detention without a bond hearing. Three cases in particular—Johnson v. Guzman Chavez (2021), Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez (2022), and Garland v. Aleman Gonzalez (2022)—have increased the likelihood that noncitizens subject to post-removal-order detention will remain incarcerated for months or years, even if they have pending claims for relief. This Note describes each of these three cases and explains how, together, they severely undermine the rights of noncitizens with final removal orders. This Note further argues that people facing post-removal-order detention should be entitled to rigorous due process protections. Even though detention constitutes a clear deprivation of liberty, the Supreme Court has held that six months of post-removal-order detention is “presumptively reasonable.” This Note criticizes that premise and asserts that no period of immigration detention is presumptively reasonable. In other words, even if the Court had decided Guzman Chavez, Arteaga-Martinez, and Aleman Gonzalez in favor of the noncitizen plaintiffs, the existing framework would still be insufficient to protect immigrants in post-removal-order detention from experiencing protracted and unnecessary trauma. This Note therefore posits that, at minimum, immigrants with final removal orders should receive a bond hearing before an immigration judge at the close of the 90-day mandatory detention period. While more radical solutions like detention abolition are ultimately in order, a 90-day bond hearing requirement would at least provide noncitizens facing post-removal-order detention a meaningful opportunity to secure release from custody.
Arizona Law Review, 2023. 36p.
By Melanie Gower, Georgina Sturge
The Home Secretary has a duty to make a deportation order in respect of nonBritish or Irish citizens who have been convicted of an offence in the UK and sentenced to at least 12 months’ imprisonment, unless certain exceptions apply. He also has discretionary powers to deport non-British citizens if he considers it to be “conducive to the public good”. Deportation of foreign national offenders is a longstanding government priority. The Home Office considers for deportation all foreign nationals convicted of a crime in the UK and given a prison sentence. Foreign national offenders can be removed from the country before the end of their prison sentence by way of a prisoner transfer agreement, or through the Early Removal Scheme or Tariff-Expired Removal Scheme. They can receive money to help them to resettle in their home country through the Facilitated Return Scheme. As of the end of June 2023, there were at least 10,321 foreign nationals in prison in England and Wales, out of a total prison population of 85,851. Over half of foreign prisoners were European and, overall, the most common nationalities were Albanian, Polish, Romanian, Irish, and Jamaican. There were 11,769 foreign national offenders subject to deportation action living in the community, as of 30 September 2022.
A report of an inspection by the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration published in June 2023 was critical of the Home Office’s handling of foreign national offender cases. It found that the Early Removal Scheme and the Facilitated Return Scheme were not being administered effectively. The Government says it has made good progress removing foreign national offenders from prisons and the community, pointing to a 19% increase in overall foreign national offender returns in the 12-month period to September 2023 (3,577 people). Up until that point, the number of foreign national offenders returned on an annual basis had been falling since 2016, when 6,437 individuals were returned.
London: UK Parliament, The House of Commons Library , 2024. 11p
By United Nations Task Force on Children Deprived of Liberty
IMMIGRATION DETENTION, IS NEVER IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE CHILD AND CONSTITUTES A CHILD RIGHTS VIOLATION.
It is a form of violence that impacts a country’s capacity to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, especially targets 10.7 and 16.2.4,5 All children, regardless of their legal or migratory status or that of their families, have the right to be cared for and protected from violence, abuse and exploitation. At least 77 countries have laws and policies that allow children to be detained based on their legal or migratory status, and at least 330,000 children globally per year are deprived of their liberty based on their (or their parents’) legal or migratory status.6 Lack of accurate data means this is likely to be a significant under-estimate. While many countries have committed to end child immigration detention, the reality is that even in some countries where legislation does not support immigration detention, it continues to remain in use.7 In 2022, the United Nations Task Force on Children Deprived of Liberty8,9 under the leadership of the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children, made a joint pledge10 at the International Migration Review Forum (IMRF):
To conduct evidence-based advocacy and to mobilize all key stakeholders at all levels to scale up child rights-based protective solutions to end the detention of children in the context of migration.
To support Member States to harmonize their national legal frameworks with international human rights standards to explicitly prohibit detention of children based on their migration status or that of their families.
To involve and amplify the voices of migrant children in determining their best interests in all issues concerning children in legislation, policies, practices, including those related to integration, return and family reunification; as well as access to services, to justice and to remedies for violations of their rights.
To support data collection and the dissemination of promising practices on child rights-based protective solutions as alternative measures to end the detention of children in the context of migration.
This advocacy brief provides an overview of promising practices and lessons learned to end child immigration detention and sets out a range of policy actions needed to scale up efforts to end this form of violence
New York: UNICEF, 2024. 15p.
By Eleonora Celoria, and Marta Gionco
This briefing presents noteworthy practices at the national and European Union (EU) level related to safeguarding the rights of people in immigration detention and ultimately ending detention for migration purposes, by focusing on a wide range of actors spanning from civil society to national governments. It focuses on three advocacy objectives: 1. raising the visibility of detention and its harms, 2. ending the detention of children in the context of migration, and 3. implementing community-based solutions that can ultimately prevent and contribute to ending detention. The first chapter of the briefing explores civil society efforts aimed at unveiling what happens in immigration detention centres as well as the harmful impact of immigration detention itself. Ensuring that people in detention speak to the outside world and giving NGOs access to detention centres have been identified as the most important tools in this regard. It is also contended that further research, as well as litigation and advocacy, related to the right to communicate is needed. NGOs in the Netherlands and the UK have set up hotline systems to establish contact with individuals in detention, most of whom do not have access to their mobile phones. In Italy, strategic litigation has challenged the state’s denial to grant NGOs access to detention facilities. Both activities – phone communication and civil society visits - can be seen as part of a wider advocacy strategy to end immigrant detention, as exemplified by the work of civil society coalitions and organisations in Belgium, Italy and the United Kingdom, among others. The second chapter focuses on immigration detention of children, a practice which is never in the child’s best interests and should always be forbidden. While EU law still allows for immigration detention of children, there have been developments at the political and legislative levels in Germany, Belgium, France and Greece aiming at restricting the situations in which children could be detained for immigration purposes. The cases of Ireland, Italy and Spain are also explored, as these states do not generally detain children (whether they are unaccompanied or with their families). Overall, to comply with international standards and to put an end to child detention in the migration context, further efforts are needed at both the EU and national levels. The final chapter focuses on community-based solutions to prevent or end immigration detention. This section focuses in particular on the advantages of providing support through case management, which is a structured social work approach which empowers individuals to work towards case resolution (i.e., any temporary or permanent migration outcome, such as a visa, regularization scheme, re-migration or voluntary return). This section explores case studies from Belgium, Bulgaria, Poland, the UK and Italy, where case management projects are run by civil society originations, in cooperation with local (Belgium) or national (Bulgaria, Poland, UK) governments. Although each national experience is unique, the independent evaluation of these projects showed that they have some features in common: high levels of compliance of the people involved with the project, the limited numbers of migrants who have access to case management in comparison to the number of undocumented migrants, and the fact that these projects need to be accompanied by a general policy shift towards the implementation of non-coercive solutions in migration management. To conclude, this briefing analyses the practices of two countries, Ecuador and Uruguay, which are among the few states in the world that never applied or no longer resort to immigration detention.
Brussels, Belgium : PICUM – Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants, 2024. 28p.
By Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program
The United States maintains the world’s largest immigration detention system, detaining tens of thousands of people in a network of facilities, including those managed by private prison corporations, county jails, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). At the time of writing, ICE is detaining over 35,000 people, including long-term residents of the United States, people seeking asylum, and survivors of trafficking or torture. Instead of finding refuge, these people are held in ICE custody for extended periods, enduring inhuman conditions such as solitary confinement (dubbed “segregation” by ICE), where they are isolated in small cells with minimal contact with others for days, weeks, or even years. In many instances, such conditions would meet the definition of torture, or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment under international human rights law. Solitary confinement causes a range of adverse health effects, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), self-harm, and suicide risks. Prolonged confinement can lead to lasting brain damage, hallucinations, confusion, disrupted sleep, and reduced cognitive function. These effects persist beyond the confinement period, often resulting in enduring psychological and physical disabilities, especially for people with preexisting medical and mental health conditions or other vulnerabilities. In recognition of this well-documented harm, ICE issued a directive in 2013 to limit the use of solitary confinement in its facilities, especially for people with vulnerabilities. A 2015 memorandum further protected transgender people, emphasizing solitary confinement as a last resort. In 2022, ICE reinforced reporting requirements for people with mental health conditions in solitary confinement, highlighting the need for strict oversight. Despite these directives, however, government audits and whistleblowers alike have repeatedly revealed stark failures in oversight. This report – a joint effort by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), Harvard Law School’s Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program (HIRCP), and researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS) – provides a detailed overview of how solitary confinement is being used by ICE across detention facilities in the United States, and its failure to adhere to its own policies, guidance, and directives. It is based on a comprehensive examination of data gathered from ICE and other agencies, including through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, first filed in 2017, and partly acquired after subsequent litigation. It is further enriched by interviews with 26 people who were formerly held in immigration facilities and experienced solitary confinement over the last 10 years. Executive Summary The study reveals that immigration detention facilities fail to comply with ICE guidelines and directives regarding solitary confinement. Despite significant documented issues, including whistleblower alarms and supposed monitoring and oversight measures, there has been negligible progress. The report highlights a significant discrepancy between the 2020 campaign promise of U.S. President Joseph Biden to end solitary confinement and the ongoing practices observed in ICE detention. Over the last decade, the use of solitary confinement has persisted, and worse, the recent trend under the current administration reflects an increase in frequency and duration. Data from solitary confinement use in 2023 – though likely an underestimation as this report explains – demonstrates a marked increase in the instances of solitary confinement. This report exposes a continuing trend of ICE using solitary confinement for punitive purposes rather than as a last resort – in violation of its own directives. Many of the people interviewed were placed in solitary confinement for minor disciplinary infractions or as a form of retaliation for participating in hunger strikes or for submitting complaints. Many reported inadequate access to medical care, including mental health care, during their solitary confinement, which they said led to the exacerbation of existing conditions or the development of new ones, including symptoms consistent with depression, anxiety, and PTSD. The conditions in solitary confinement were described as dehumanizing, with people experiencing harsh living conditions, limited access to communication and recreation, and verbal abuse or harassment from facility staff. etc.....
New York: Physicians for Human Rights, 2024. 50p.
By Mary Bosworth
On any given day nearly 3000 foreign national citizens are detained under immigration powers in UK detention centers alone. Around the world immigrants are routinely detained in similar conditions. The institutions charged with immigrant detention are volatile and contested sites. They are also places about which we know very little. What is their goal? How do they operate? How are they justified
Inside Immigration Detention lifts the lid on the hidden world of migrant detention, presenting the first national study of life in British immigration removal centers. Offering more than just a description of life behind bars of those men and women awaiting deportation, it uses staff and detainee testimonies to revisit key assumptions about state power and the legacies of colonialism under conditions of globalization.
Based on fieldwork conducted in six immigration removal centers (IRCs) between 2009 and 2012, it draws together a large amount of empirical data including: detainee surveys and interviews, staff interviews, observation, and detailed field notes. From this, the book explores how immigration removal centers identify their inhabitants as strangers, constructing them as unfamiliar, ambiguous and uncertain. In this endeavor, the establishments are greatly assisted by their resemblance to prisons and by familiar racialized narratives about foreigners and nationality.
However, as staff and detainee testimonies reveal, in their interactions and day-to-day life women and men find many points of commonality. Such recognition of one another reveals the goal and effect of detention to be incomplete. Denial requires effort. In order to minimize the effort it must expend, the state 'governs at distance', via the contract. It also splits itself in two, deploying some immigration staff onsite, while keeping the actual decision-makers (the caseworkers) elsewhere, sequestered from the potentially destabilizing effects of facing up to those whom they wish to remove. Such distancing, while bureaucratically effective, contributes to the uncertainty of daily life in detention, and is often the source of considerable criticism and unease. Denial and familiarity are embodied and localized activities, whose pains and contradictions are inherent in concrete relationships.
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014. 283p.
By Galina Cornelisse
Practices of immigration detention in Europe are largely resistant to conventional forms of legal correction. By rethinking the notion of territorial sovereignty in modern constitutionalism, this book puts forward a solution to the problem of legally permissive immigration detention.
Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2010. 403p.
Edited by Maria João Guia, Robert Koulish, Valsamis Mitsilegas
This book offers a brand new point of view on immigration detention, pursuing a multidisciplinary approach and presenting new reflections by internationally respected experts from academic and institutional backgrounds. It offers an in-depth perspective on the immigration framework, together with the evolution of European and international political decisions on the management of immigration. Readers will be introduced to new international decisions on the protection of human rights, together with international measures concerning the detention of immigrants.
In recent years, International Law and European Law have converged to develop measures for combatting irregular immigration. Some of them include the criminalization of illegally entering a member state or illegally remaining there after legally entering. Though migration has become a great challenge for policymakers, legislators and society as a whole, we must never forget that migrants should enjoy the same human rights and legal protection as everyone else.
Cham: Springer, 2016. 293p.