FIRST NATIONAL SURVEY OF CHILDREN IN IMMIGRATION DETENTION EXPOSES
MISTREATMENT, LENGTHY DETENTIONS, LEGAL BARRIERS

Amnesty International Warns Lack of Funding Will Severely Curtail Changes

(AFRICAN AMERICAN NEWSWIRE)(Washington, DC) Children who flee their home countries and arrive unaccompanied in the United States are often denied access to attorneys, detained for prolonged periods, jailed alongside children with criminal convictions, and subjected to frequent shackling and strip-searches -- with little hope for change unless Congress passes pending legislation and allocates more funds to reform an ailing system, Amnesty International (AI) charged today in its new report, "'Why Am I Here?' Children in Immigration Detention."

The report, the first in Amnesty International USA's (AIUSA) two-year Campaign Against Discrimination, is also the first that includes a nationwide survey of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service's (INS) contracted facilities and their practices and procedures with regard to unaccompanied children. The survey results, combined with interviews with 31 detained children and numerous attorneys and children's advocates, show that US officials, in contravention of both international and domestic standards, often treat unaccompanied children like young criminals? sometimes without even acknowledging the distinction.

"It is appalling that many officials don't understand the difference between a juvenile offender and an unaccompanied child and that they deny these fragile young asylum seekers respect and rights," said Dr. William F. Schulz, Executive Director of AIUSA. "This is grossly unfair to children whose only 'offense' is seeking safe haven in the US. Many have fled dangerous situations, including child trafficking, abusive families and armed rebel forces. When we treat these children harshly, they are further traumatized, and our country's credibility as a protector of rights is eroded."

AI sent a detailed questionnaire on the policies, procedures and conditions of detention to 115 facilities nationwide that reportedly have housed unaccompanied children. The responses from the 33 facilities that returned a completed survey document the many problems endemic to a system that locks up children who are not convicted of crimes? particularly in so-called secure facilities:

· Forty-eight percent of secure facilities reported that they house unaccompanied minors in the same cells as juvenile offenders;
· More than half (57%) said they use solitary confinement as punishment;
· Eighty-three percent said they routinely restrain children when taking them outside the facility;
· Only 13 percent provide the children with the required weekly psychological counseling;
· Only 35 percent reported that they explain to children why they have been detained in such a facility and that they have the right to judicial review of the decision to put them there.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which was given responsibility for unaccompanied non-citizen children when the INS was dismantled on March 1st, has begun making improvements, but will inevitably run into financial roadblocks due to the sheer number of children currently housed in inappropriate and dangerous settings. The new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is now responsible for apprehending children and then transferring them to ORR shelters or secure facilities, a period during which the INS often denied children's rights and mistreated them.

"The INS failed dismally in its mission to care for the children under its watch," Dr. Schulz said. "It will be extremely difficult for the ORR, no matter how well-intentioned, to now pick up the pieces with its meager budget. Unless the US government wants to set the ORR up to fail, Congress must approve the proposed increase that would allow it to make desperately-needed changes, particularly with regard to contracted facilities." Schulz also urged Congress to pass the Unaccompanied Alien hild Protection Act, which would establish the most comprehensive domestic safeguards for childr n, whether under the domain of the DHS or ORR.

'Why Am I Here?' includes interviews with children and their attorneys that reveal the fear, confusion, frustration, and shame the children experience in the US with regard to the legal process, their treatment and the conditions in which they are detained:

· Children and advocates told AI that at one facility, physical abuse is sometimes used as punishment.
Staff reportedly kick children, throw them to the floor and knock their heads into walls for infractions such as
looking the wrong way or saying "can I use the bathroom" instead of "may I."

· JD told AI delegates that he had been strip-searched about 25 times in the five weeks he spent in secure detention. One search occurred after he lost a pen. Guards threatened to send him back to the country of his birth because he couldn't find the pen.

· RT reported that he was handcuffed, restrained with leg-irons and chained to two other children during transport to the dentist. He said he remained handcuffed to the other children in the waiting room, and that the "regular people" in the room were staring at him.

· AI researchers observed a 16-year-old asylum-seeker who had been held in solitary confinement for five days. The researchers later saw him in the throes of an apparent anxiety attack. He had been housed in a shelter facility nearby, but reportedly was transferred without explanation to a secure facility in handcuffs and leg irons. His attorney was not informed of the transfer until a guard reported this "nervous breakdown." When the attorney finally saw him, he repeatedly begged "Help me!" and began to cry when she explained he would be strip-searched after her visit.

· Fega, who was seven when she arrived in the US, curled up in a fetal position and wept when she heard Yoruba, her native language, for the first time in more than a year of detention. The primary languages at Boystown, a Florida shelter where Fega spent a total of 15 months, are Spanish, Creole and Mandarin. Fega asked the Yoruba interpreter if she was her mother, something she often had asked the women she encountered.

"The cruel irony is that these children wouldn't have suffered in this way if the INS had handled their cases properly," said Rachel Ward, Director of Research for Amnesty International USA and author of the report. "Those operating within the previous system chose to incarcerate unaccompanied children, despite US policy mandating their prompt release to relatives or other viable caretakers. The US government must back the ORR as it tries to make a clean break from the INS's dubious past."

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