News and Events Relating to Immigrant Detention
NIJC's Defending Human Rights and Due Process Policy Brief
Fall 2009: Asylum Seekers Need Protection, Not Detention
UN Investigator Urges Protection of Detainees
October 21 - UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The U.N.'s top investigator on torture and punishment called Tuesday for a new U.N. convention to protect the rights of detainees, saying many are held for years and sometimes for a lifetime in inhuman and degrading conditions.
Salvaging Immigration Detention
Editorial, Oct. 5- The Obama administration is unveiling on Tuesday an ambitious plan to repair the immigration detention system, a scandal-plagued mix of federal, state and local lockups that grew vastly and rotted under the enforcement crusade led by former President George W. Bush.
Immigration Raids and Detention
After September 11, 2001, the United States began to extend existing immigration policing, focusing on its border but also on the interior of the country. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2002, the largest federal agency to date, put all immigration enforcement and services under its purview.[1] Since then, the enforcement arm of DHS, the U.S.
The Impact of Raids on Children
Children of undocumented parents suffer from the raids that take place either at workplaces or sometimes at homes. In the past several years, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has conducted raids in rural Midwestern meatpacking plants, arrested undocumented workers, and taken them to detention centers. ICE officers conduct raids forcefully, and obviously they do not give advance notice of the raid to immigrant parents.
Bill Proposes Immigration Rights for Gay Couples
WASHINGTON, June 3 - Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Democrat from Vermont who is the powerful chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is adding another controversial ingredient to the volatile mix of an immigration debate that President Obama has said he hopes to spur in Congress before the end of the year.
Mr. Leahy has offered a bill that would allow American citizens and legal immigrants to seek residency in the United States for their same-sex partners, just as spouses now petition for foreign-born husbands and wives.
Detained Asylum-Seekers Find It Harder to Win Release
NEW YORK, June 1 - As a human rights advocate in West Africa, Jean-Pierre was jailed four times, repeatedly tortured and forced to pay a $15,000 ransom to his captors in exchange for his freedom. He faked his own death and even staged a funeral to escape his native Guinea, and in 2007 sought asylum in the United States.
But instead of refuge, he found a new form of captivity: He was handcuffed at Kennedy International Airport and locked up for five months in an immigration jail in Elizabeth, N.J.