Posted by
Playful Walrus on Thursday, April 02, 2009 4:16:23 PM
The ACLU of SoCal and the National
Immigration Law Center have filed a lawsuit against federal authorities
over the use of a detention facility in downtown L.A. I found this LATimes.com blog entry from Anna Gorman.
According to the lawsuit...
The center is
"regularly overcrowded, causing violence, safety hazards, and
humiliation," while detainees are denied access to attorneys and courts
and are rarely provided drinking water or a change of clothing...
Maybe the feds are just trying to make them feel at home?
Detainees are held at
the center during the day and then shuttled to local jails at night and
on weekends, which the suit said "effectively cuts detainees off from
contact with the outside world" and deprives them of their basic needs.
"They are detaining people in
inhumane conditions, grossly unsanitary and disgusting conditions,"
said Marisol Orihuela, a staff attorney at the ACLU.
The places most of these people are from are just like that.
During a tour of the
processing center several months ago, Los Angeles assistant field
office director Eric Saldana said the agency was doing its best to keep
detainees there for just 12 hours at a time and quickly move them into
facilities designed to hold them for longer periods. Sometimes,
however, he said, detainees are kept longer or brought back for several
days because of delays in accessing travel documents for deportation or
because of limited space at local jails.
Nowhere in the text of the blog
entry will you find anything about these people being illegal aliens or
otherwise being criminals. That is why they are
there. The piece makes it look like they are "immigrants" – not even
"illegal" ones. Immigrants are people who come here legally, with the
intention of staying. These people are illegal aliens. That is the
legal term, at least until Obama changes it. We can solve our problems
by simply relabeling them, you see. Just like with terrorists, wars,
and genocidal maniacs.
The processing center
holds up to 250 detainees. There are six large holding cells
surrounding a central area with desks, where the detainees are
photographed, fingerprinted and interviewed. Each cell has a phone, a
bathroom and a bench around the edge. There are also smaller cells for
families or juveniles.
Detainees have access to medical staff and can ask to see a judge, Saldana said.
In all seriousness, we do have a
responsibility to those we take into custody. Of course, if the ACLU
was not already so meddlesome, these people could probably have been
processed faster in the first place and sent back home more quickly.