Federal immigration officials will review operations at a privately owned detention center in Eloy after two immigrants committed suicide in a span of three days earlier this week.
Hundreds of immigrants are placed in solitary confinement each week in the detention centers where they are facing deportation, federal records show.
Police say inmate Glaston Smith was stabbed multiple times in the back and the head.
Solitary confinement in immigration detention centers across the nation is often overused and arbitrarily applied. According to data obtained by the National Immigrant Justice Center, as many as 300 immigrants, or about 1% of all detainees in the 50 largest facilities in the country, are confined to small cells on any given day, even though many pose no security risk. In many cases, they’re held there for 23 hours each day without a break, often for weeks.
Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, said she would examine policies on solitary confinement after new data showed that some people were held for lengthy periods.
New federal data shows that on any given day, about 300 immigrants are held in solitary confinement at Immigration and Customs Enforcement centers, a practice psychiatrists worry is overly punitive.
Immigrant advocates have for years called Etowah one of the worst facilities in ICE’s sprawling detention system.
In late July, conditions in the isolated facility, which also serves as the county jail, prompted some immigration detainees to refuse food in an act of protest to demand better treatment. A hundred detainees signed a letter to ICE and operators of the jail.
“It’s hard, you know? What do I really tell these people in detention?” Corado said through tears during a recent conversation at Casa Ruby, her soon-to-open Latino LGBT community center near Howard University. “Segregation is inhuman. And how they’re treated, how they’re abused? It’s inexcusable. Even if they’ve done something wrong, you want the best for these people. But I’ve never seen a case of a transgender detainee who was actually treated like a human being.”
“The Justice Department letter specifically criticized the treatment of inmates who speak limited English — often the case with ICE detainees — saying there are few bilingual staffers at the jail. None of the staff at the Templeman V building, where ICE detainees were housed, spoke another language. The jail also fails to translate important documents into Spanish, including forms requesting medical attention and grievance forms, the Justice Department noted”
