This text is machine-read, and may contain errors. Check the original document to verify accuracy.PRISON BY ANY OTHER NAME A REPORT ON SOUTH FLORIDA DE TENTION FACILITIES ABOUT THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Montgomery, Alabama, is a nonprofit civil rights organization founded in 1971 and dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society. For more information about THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER visit www.splcenter.org ABOUT AMERICANS FOR IMMIGRANT JUSTICE Americans for Immigrant Justice (AI Justice) is an award-winning non-profit law firm that protects and promotes the basic human rights of immigrants. In Florida and on a national level, it champions the rights of unaccompanied immigrant children; advocates for survivors of trafficking and domestic violence; serves as a watchdog on immigration detention practices and policies; and speaks for immigrant groups who have particular and compelling claims to justice. CONTENTS I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 2 II. BACKGROUND OF IMMIGRANT DETENTION 5 OVERVIEW OF IMMIGRANT DETENTION 5 FINANCIAL INCENTIVES IN IMMIGRANT DETENTION 6 IMMIGRANT DETENTION IS PRISON 8 III. CONDITIONS OF CONFINEMENT 9 INADEQUATE MEDICAL CARE 9 INADEQUATE MENTAL HEALTH CARE 11 LACK OF DISABILITY ACCOMMODATIONS 14 SOLITARY CONFINEMENT 15 IV. FACILITY PROFILES 17 KROME SERVICE PROCESSING CENTER, MIAMI, FLA 17 BROWARD TRANSITIONAL CENTER, POMPANO BEACH, FLA 21 MONROE COUNTY DETENTION CENTER, KEY WEST, FLA 25 GLADES COUNTY DETENTION CENTER, MOORE HAVEN, FLA 30 V. ALTERNATIVES TO DETENTION 35 VI. RECOMMENDATIONS36 A. RECOMMENDATIONS TO FLORIDA 36 B. RECOMMENDATIONS TO DHS 36 C. RECOMMENDATIONS TO DOJ 38 VII. METHODOLOGY 39 VIII. APPENDIX 40 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The detention of immigrants has skyrocketed in the United States. On a given day in August 2019, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) held over 55,000 people in detention – a massive increase from five years ago when ICE held fewer than 30,000 people. Unsurprisingly, the United States has the largest immigration incarceration system in the world. What’s more, the federal government spends more on immigration enforcement than for all principal federal law enforcement agencies combined, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General. As of April 2019, Florida had the sixth-largest population of people detained by ICE in the United States, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. On a daily basis, ICE currently detains more than 2,000 noncitizens in the state, mostly in South Florida, which is home to four immigration prisons: Krome Service Processing Center (Krome), owned by ICE; Broward Transitional Center (Broward), operated by GEO Group, a Boca Raton-based for-profit prison corporation; and two county jails, Glades County Detention Center (Glades) and Monroe County Detention Center (Monroe). Despite the fact that immigrants are detained on civil violations, their detention is indistinguishable from the conditions found in jails or prisons where people are serving criminal sentences. The nation’s immigration detention centers are little more than immigrant prisons, where detained people endure harsh – even dangerous – conditions. And reports of recent deaths have only heightened concerns. In 2018, for example, two deaths were reported by ICE at South Florida detention facilities. Luis Marcano, a 59-year-old man, died despite complaining of abdominal pain after a little over a month at Krome. Wilfredo Padron, a 58-year-old man with hypertension and pancreatitis, died after 2 ½ months at Monroe. In an effort to better understand the experiences of detained individuals in South Florida, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Americans for Immigrant Justice examined immigrant detention at these four facilities. The organizations toured the immigrant prisons, requested public records, and interviewed at least 5 percent of the people held at each facility. 2 Our investigation found that the problems in South Florida facilities reflect what is happening in immigrant detention nationally – substandard conditions, such as inadequate medical and mental health care, lack of accommodations for and discrimination against individuals with disabilities, and overuse of solitary confinement. At Krome, a detained person with HIV said he had yet to see a doctor after four months at the facility. The same person was later diagnosed with hepatitis A, which he believes he contracted from eating unwashed food served at the facility. “I’m just trying to stay alive,” he said of his situation. At Monroe, a detained person described checking a friend’s cell, only to discover he was dead. The death occurred after his friend, who used a wheelchair and “ I don’t know what’s worse, this or death.” — DETAINED INDIVIDUAL AT BROWARD TRANSITIONAL CENTER had a history of strokes, was denied a request to go to the sick bay. The detained person who made the grim discovery also recounted how most of his days at the facility are spent locked inside a two-man cell. At Glades, a detained woman reported being diagnosed with uterine cancer but said ICE failed to schedule a follow-up appointment for almost a month. The doctor even told her that it was unlikely ICE would pay for her treatment. “I’ll probably be deported before getting any type of [cancer] treatment,” she said. A gay man detained at Broward described enduring vicious and relentless anti-gay harassment that pushed him to attempt suicide. “I don’t know what’s worse, this or death,” he said. It is inexcusable that detained people must endure such conditions, but just as the U.S. criminal justice system witnessed the ascent of for-profit prisons and an FACILITY DEMOGRAPHICS: COUNTRY OF ORIGIN explosion in the prison population that has only begun to diminish with sentencing reforms enacted in many states, immigration prisons are the new cash cow for the incarceration industry. For decades, immigrant detention was a fraction of what it is today. The boom in incarcerating immigrants is driven in part by the private prison companies that detain the majority of noncitizens in the country. Localities contract with ICE to hold noncitizens – currently at an average daily rate of $280 per person. Some facilities, such as Glades, do the job for $81 a day or even less. This has encouraged a sprawling network of immigrant prisons. These facilities are governed by various detention condition standards, and ICE fails to effectively enforce this patchwork of standards. This means that individuals in immigrant detention are often held in dehumanizing conditions that amount to harsh punishment while waiting for their immigration cases to be heard. The Trump administration’s extreme anti-immigrant policies have only bolstered this system – perhaps best exemplified by two major private prison companies seeing their stock prices virtually double four months after Donald Trump’s election. Before the election, the Department of Homeland Security was considering moving away from using private prison companies altogether. The people held in these facilities include an increasingly broad swath of noncitizens, as ICE has adopted a zero-tolerance policy that ignores circumstances such as long-time U.S. residence, serious health issues, and family connections to the United States in deciding who to detain. In ICE’s own words from a 2018 Department of Homeland Security report: INTERVIEW RESPONSES: MODE OF ENTRY TO U.S. BY DETAINED PEOPLE MONROE 16 Entry Without Inspection 6 Legal Permanent Resident 3 The people detained at the facilities examined in this report came from a number of countries, including Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, South Africa and Thailand. Unknown 2 Visa 5 BROWARD 35 “Arriving Alien” * 6 Entry Without Inspection 19 Unknown 4 Visa 6 GLADES 18 “Arriving Alien” 1 Entry Without Inspection 4 Legal Permanent Resident 1 Unknown 2 Visa 10 KROME 35 Adoption 1 “Arriving Alien” 4 Entry Without Inspection 7 Legal Permanent Resident 2 Unknown 17 Visa 4 Grand Total 104 *This term is defined in immigration regulations to mean an individual who presents themselves for admission at a designated port of entry or is interdicted at sea and brought to the United States. 8 C.F.R. §§ 1.2 and 1001.1(q). 3 “There is no category of [unauthorized immigrant] exempt from immigration enforcement.” The policy shift is especially evident in Florida, where arrests of unauthorized immigrants without criminal records are seven times the number of such arrests in the previous administration and more than twice the national average, according to a 2019 review by the Tampa Bay Times. Despite treatment that is inarguably punitive, people held in immigrant prisons are considered to be in civil proceedings and do not receive a lawyer at government expense. This means many detained people don’t have an advocate when they encounter these conditions. South Florida, which is home to a large immigrant population that has enriched the region’s culture, is a significant state within our nation’s immigrant prison network. The failures at the four facilities examined in this report highlight more than a local problem. South Florida is indicative of failures throughout the nation’s bloated immigrant prison system – failures that can only be corrected by turning to more cost-effective and humane alternatives to incarceration, shrinking the number of people detained, and strictly enforcing constitutional standards to protect the lives of the people locked away within this system. More detailed recommendations are offered at the end of this report. AVERAGE DAILY POPULATION OF IMMIGRANT DETAINEES 50,000 47,000 37,500 25,000 12,500 6,785 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 4 Source: Center for Migration Studies IMMIGRANT DETENTION OVERVIEW The United States has the largest immigration incarceration system in the world. Immigrant incarceration, known euphemistically as “immigrant detention,” is a system in which noncitizens are detained in prison-like settings while they wait for deportation or for the immigration court to decide their cases. Despite the United States having the world’s largest immigrant incarceration system, it remains largely invisible to the public. The nature and scale of immigrant detention today is a relatively new phenomenon. The first detention center in the United States, Ellis Island Immigration Station, opened in 1892 and held new immigrants between a few days and several weeks.1 In 1893, Congress passed the first law requiring the detention of anyone not entitled to admission into the United States.2 Three years later, the Supreme Court concluded in Wong Wing v. United States that immigrants could be detained for the purpose of forcible removal from the country.3 While it may seem inconceivable now, the United States largely did not detain immigrants in the past. In 1954, the attorney general announced that in “all but a few cases,” those whose removal was pending would no longer be detained.4 That same year, Ellis Island closed.5 From 1952 to 1983, only about 30 people nationwide were in immigrant detention on any given day.6 In the 1980s, the Reagan administration embraced concepts of enforcement, detention, and deportation, which set the tone for every administration thereafter.7 Immigrant incarceration as we know it today really began in 1996. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act enacted that year fundamentally reshaped immigration policy. They established mandatory detention, created programs entangling police with deportation efforts, and expanded categories of crimes for which noncitizens can be detained and removed. As a result, the average daily population (ADP) of noncitizen detained individuals nearly tripled from 1995 to 2001.8 It has only grown since. IMMIGRANT INCARCERATION TODAY Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is the branch of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) charged with enforcement and the operation of immigrant detention facilities that are, in effect, punitive. Most detention facilities are repurposed prisons, and many are situated in actual jails and operated by local sheriffs; others may be operated by private prison corporations. This is antithetical to the idea of “civil” detention, which should not be punitive. By choosing to detain immigrants, ICE has the legal obligation to adequately care for them by providing necessities like food, shelter, “ The longer I am here, the more money they make. We know we are being deliberately delayed so they can make more money.” —JAVIER S., DETAINED INDIVIDUAL AT BROWARD TRANSITIONAL CENTER clothing, toiletries, recreation, access to information to fight their immigration cases, contact with loved ones and attorneys, and medical and mental health care. Immigrants in detention, however, are routinely denied many of these basic rights. Immigrant incarceration is, in many ways, indistinguishable from prison. This includes wearing prison uniforms, going outside only if and when the facility permits, and enduring up to four “counts” per day, when all movement in the facility is frozen so authorities can count the detained individuals. Those detained report feeling stripped of any sense of personhood or agency, having to follow strict 5 protocols. “There is no freedom here,” says Joseph H. who expresses frustration about being locked away in segregation for nearly 24 hours a day.9 For those in active removal proceedings, court takes place inside the detention facility, either in person or via video-teleconferencing. The Department of Justice’s Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) operates an administrative court system under the authority of the Office of the Attorney General. Unlike criminal courts, those in immigration court have no right to an attorney provided by the government and can have one only if they can afford to pay for one on their own.10 The length of time spent in detention varies widely. Currently, the average length of stay for detained immigrants is a little over 54.7 days.11 IMMIGRATION DETENTION STANDARDS ICE has a patchwork of standards governing the conditions of confinement in immigrant detention, which are based on jail and prison standards. They govern matters such as the provision of medical care, use of force, and protection against sexual assaults. It is often difficult to determine what standards apply to any particular facility. Currently, ICE has three different sets of standards: the 2000 National Detention Standards and the 2008 and 2011 Performance Based National Detention Standards. ICE’s standards are not codified in law. Instead, the facilities are contractually obligated to follow whichever ICE detention standards are listed in their contracts.