Most of the women who will be moved from the Krome Detention Center to a county jail are not foreign nationals with a criminal past, but women seeking political asylum and refuge from their home countries.
As many as 60 of the estimated 90 women about to be transferred to
Miami-Dade's Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center (TGK) are waiting for the Immigration and Naturalization Service to review their petitions for asylum, said Bill Cleary, acting officer in charge at Krome.
Cleary's disclosure recently outraged immigration activists who believe INS is making a serious mistake in relocating asylum seekers to a jail instead of releasing them while their cases are pending.
In fact, they say, transferring the women to a facility designed to house criminal suspects and convicts amounts to further punishment for people who are seeking to escape retribution and persecution in their native countries.
The reason for the transfer is to protect the women from intimidation and threats in the face of an ongoing federal investigation of widespread abuse at Krome. Several women have alleged they were repeatedly sexually abused, harassed and assaulted by Krome officers while detained there.
Concerned about the women's safety, INS announced recently it had agreed to move the female detainees. Cleary and Robert Wallis, INS Florida District director, said the women would have more protection and privacy at the county jail than at Krome.
“This is not a punitive action against these detainees,'' Wallis said, adding the move was designed ``to ensure those detainees the most safe and humane detention conditions possible.''
The women will be placed in separate ``living pods'' where each would have an individual room or share it with one or two other detainees, Wallis said. At Krome, he noted, the women lived in dormitories with little privacy.
They also will be segregated from the general population of criminal suspects and convicts. And those seeking asylum also will be separated from aliens with criminal backgrounds. All will have access to attorneys 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Wallis said.
Under federal laws approved by Congress in 1996, foreign nationals convicted of aggravated felonies are required to be detained by the INS for deportation upon completion of their sentences. The law also requires the detention of asylum seekers until their claim is decided. If it's deemed valid, the asylum seeker is released. If not, he or she is ordered deported.