NPR Story on Death of Detainee

NPR ran its story on the death on Richard Rust, a Jamaican immigrant held in Oakdale, Louisiana.  See http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5022866  Although deaths in detention do not appear to be common, less extreme abuses of immigrant detainees are not.  See, e.g., Mark Dow, American Gulag (2004).  Margaret Taylor, Jim Smith, and others have written thoughtful articles on the lawfulness of immigrant detention, which has become much more common after the 1996 reforms.  Detention in Oakdale brings back memories.  I worked on a class action in the 1980s (Committee of Central American Refugees v. INS) in which the INS transferred Salvadoran and Guatemalan asylum seekers from the Bay Area where they were arrested (and could get pro bono counsel), to remote locations, such as El Centro, California, Florence, Arizona, and Oakdale, Louisiana, where the detainees generally could not obtain counsel and often grudgingly accepted immediate deportation.  This was one of a series of cases, including Orantes-Hernandez v. Thornburgh, challenging INS detention policies.  The more things change, . .  .

KJ