The roots of a hostage crisis

In response to pleas from inmates across the country, Human Rights Watch spent 18 months investigating the INS detention system. Monitors visited 14 jails in seven states and received letters from and interviewed more than 200 INS detainees, including detainees in St. Martin Parish Correctional Center. (Human Rights Watch investigators were not allowed to tour the jail, however.)

What the group discovered was troubling. Detainees cited the denial of appropriate medical care, lack of outdoor exercise, correctional officers without language or other skills necessary to deal with INS prisoners. They also mentioned a shortage of law materials and reading materials in foreign languages, excessive or inappropriate discipline, commingling with accused or criminal inmates, and isolation from family and friends through restrictive telephone, correspondence and visitation policies.

Immigration detainees, whether held in INS detention facilities or in local jails, have a right to legal counsel, but holding them in local jails makes it more difficult for them to obtain legal assistance. And since INS prisoners can be frequently and unexpectedly shuffled from one local jail to another, depending on available bed space, maintaining consistent legal representation can be nearly impossible.

Because the INS doesn't have space for its burgeoning inmate population, it has farmed them out. Its jails of choice are often in small towns and counties in Louisiana and Texas, where rents range between $30 and $55 a day, per prisoner. That's cheaper than elsewhere -- the INS pays an average of $58 per day, per detainee, with rates running as high as $100 a day in some places. The agency pays $45 per day to the St. Martin Parish Sheriffs Office to house each of its approximately 60 prisoners.

This system of farming out detainees to area jails creates a harsh environment for non-removables, Human Rights Watch concluded. While INS enforces minimum standards in its own detention centers and privately contracted facilities, there are few standards for local jails. The result has been inconsistent, inadequate treatment for some detainees. The only laws or regulations regarding detention conditions for INS detainees are four minimal requirements contained in federal regulations: 24-hour supervision, compliance with safety and emergency codes, food service and emergency medical care. No other laws or regulations are in place for facilities holding INS detainees. The loose regulatory environment has fostered an active market for counties eager to make money off of federal prisoners.

A survey of Texas counties with INS contracts conducted last year for the Austin Chronicle found communities making as much as $6 million per year by housing INS prisoners. It's a windfall that has helped stabilize or lower taxes in some areas and enabled several counties, including Comal County and Denton County, to embark on major capital building projects. These projects include prison expansions, which local officials say are planned at least partly with future INS detainees in mind.

And Texas is not alone. St. Martin Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Capt. Audrey Thibodeaux told reporters recently that the reason the county is holding INS inmates is that, "It's a source of revenue." Before the hostage crisis began, 60 of the 160 prisoners being held in the St. Martin jail were non-removable Cubans.

The hostage situation in St. Martinville is the latest incident in which frustrated INS prisoners have lashed out at the system. In March of last year, INS detainees in El Centro, Calif., assaulted security officers, barricaded themselves in their barracks and burned mattresses. In June of 1998, 34 INS detainees were moved out of a Florida jail after they alleged that they had been mistreated by officers at the Jackson County jail. In 1987, Cuban inmates being held by the INS rioted at facilities in Oakdale, La., and in Atlanta.

INS officials contend that the non-removable population is a relatively small part of the 170,000 prisoners who will pass through INS custody this year. "The average length of detention in INS custody for a criminal alien is about 45 days. Our population turns over rather quickly," said INS spokesman Russ Bergeron. In addition, Bergeron said his agency is trying to move as many non-removable inmates into more secure federal facilities. But it is being constrained by the federal budget. At present, about a quarter of the INS's non-removable prisoners are being held by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

The federal prison system is "better able to handle them and better able to meet the needs of people in long-term custody," said Bergeron, who added that the INS plans to transfer an additional 1,000 non-removable prisoners to the Federal Bureau of Prisons during the current fiscal year.

But even this INS project won't do much to quiet critics. In its report last year, Human Rights Watch specifically condemned the U.S.'s indeterminate sentencing policy, saying it is "clearly prohibited by international law." It also said that "detention becomes arbitrary when detainees, who are not serving a criminal sentence, do not know when they will be released and have no genuine mechanism to challenge the indefinite nature of their detention."

Two international human rights documents prohibit the use of indefinite detention, including the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which was ratified by the members of the United Nations in 1948. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by the United States in 1992, also prohibits the practice.

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