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| Battling Prison Rape: Immigration Detainees Deserve Protection, Too |
| By aclu.org - Joanne Lin |
| Published: 10/31/2011 |
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The Department of Homeland Security assumes that mass detention is the key to immigration enforcement. But in fact, our detention system locks up thousands of immigrants unnecessarily every year, exposing detainees to brutal and inhumane conditions of confinement at massive costs to American taxpayers. Throughout the next two weeks, check back daily for posts about the costs of immigration detention, both human and fiscal, and what needs to be done to ensure fair and humane policy. Mayra Soto, a woman who suffered persecution for her sexual orientation in Mexico, was once raped in a Mexican jail. She later fled to the United States and was incarcerated in an immigration detention facility, where she was once again raped – this time, by an immigration detention officer. "To this day, the thought of what that immigration officer did to me makes me nauseous and fills me with fear, disgust and anger," she said in testimony before the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission in 2006, noting that she could not believe a guard who was supposed to protect her ended up causing her the most harm. Immigration detainees, like everyone in custody, are extremely vulnerable to abuse. Language and cultural barriers, histories of state-sanctioned abuse in their home countries, and a fear that reporting abuse will result in deportation all increase the likelihood that detainees will not feel safe reporting sexual abuse and that perpetrators will not be held accountable. Immigration detainees are civil detainees, and unlike criminal detainees, have no right to an attorney. As a result, immigration detainees may neither be aware of their right to be free from sexual abuse, nor what recourse is available if they are sexually assaulted. Read More. |
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