American Civil Liberties Union targets ICE detention center for closure
CALEXICO – The American Civil Liberties Union has targeted the Imperial Regional Detention Center as one of 39 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities across the United States it wants to see closed.
In a letter Wednesday to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkis, ACLU National Political Director Ronald Newman noted ICE is wasting hundreds of millions of dollars to maintain thousands of empty beds at ICE facilities. He argued that money would be better spent on alternatives to detention and other priorities.
“As a matter of good governance, and particularly in light of the historically low number of people in ICE detention, it is time for ICE to dramatically downscale its network of more than 200 facilities,” Newman wrote.
ACLU is calling on the Biden administration to close ICE detention facilities that it said meet one or more criteria: They opened without adequate justification — in violation of ICE’s own process for obtaining new detention space — as found by the Government Accountability Office; they are located remote locations with compromised access to legal counsel and external medical care, and/or they have documented patterns of inhumane treatment of people.
The advocacy group marked Imperial Regional Detention Facility, operated by Management and Training Corp., on the latter two criteria. It cited a December 2020 report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General that found several standards violations at IRDF.
“Although IRDF generally complied with the ICE detention standards regarding classification of detainees according to risk,” OIG said in its synopsis, “it did not meet the standards for segregation, facility condition, medical grievances and detainee communication.”
The report concluded: “Until ICE takes corrective action to address these violations of detention standards, the facility will be unable to guarantee an environment that protects the health, safety and rights of detainees.”
ACLU said IRDF’s remote geographic location results in a lack of meaningful access to counsel and causes impediments to due process. Furthermore, COVID-19 pandemic limitations caused a legal outreach project that used to operate at the facility every month to be put on hold. Also, ACLU noted, language barriers limit some detained persons’ ability to benefit from the limited resources that are available to help them litigate their immigration court cases
The Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego is also on the ACLU’s target list.
“Time and time again, the immigration detention facilities in San Diego and Imperial counties have proven to be unsafe, abusive and unable to uphold the due process rights of the people trapped inside, said Monika Langarica, the immigrants’ rights staff attorney for the ACLU Foundation of San Diego & Imperial Counties.
“It is past time to bring an end to the shameful practice of detaining immigrants in our region and across the country and embrace a policy of humane and fair processing.”