Is this America? Photos Of Overcrowded Immigrant Detention Facilities Released
Men cloaked in Mylar sheets at a Tucson facility. (Credit: National Immigration Law Center)
Law 360 reports that immigration advocacy groups yesterday released pictures showing people crowded into immigration detention facilities in the Tucson area, after a judge overseeing a class action challenging “harsh and degrading” conditions in such facilities partly rejected the government’s bid to seal key case documents.
The National Immigration Law Center and other groups, which are helping to litigate the case, posted a series of still images from surveillance video that show people packed into border patrol facilities, often wrapped in sheets of Mylar. “These photos show the harm people suffer in these facilities, from having to sleep on the floor for days to needing to huddle together just to stay warm,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Travis Silva of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights in a statement. “These conditions should not exist in a facility operated by the United States government.”
The border patrol holding facilities, which sometimes are called “hieleras” or “ice boxes,” are the subject of a class action suit launched by the advocacy groups last June. Detention facilities operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in the Tucson region are rife with inhumane conditions, including cold, crowded holding cells in which the lights are kept on, according to the complaint.
Here is the NILC statement about the released photos.
KJ