Many Americans visualize an immigrant coming into the U.S. illegally as a single Mexican man looking for work. In truth, many crossing our borders are more diverse, and in many cases, more vulnerable.
“Net migration from Mexico is zero right now,” Meghan Rhoad, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, told theGrio. “There aren’t these floods of young single men that are coming to the United States looking just for a short-term job. These are people who call their home the United States. They own homes here. They have family here. They are fleeing persecution and coming here for safety.”
Some advocates for undocumented immigrants also see them as a group that is particularly susceptible to abuse, including sexual abuse, while in government custody.
Sexual abuse of the undocumented: hard to trace
The federal government has documented almost 200 sexual abuse allegations by migrants held in U.S. custody between 2007 and 2011, according to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) elaborated on these figures according to its records in an email to theGrio, stating that of 168 sexual abuse allegations made between 2010 and 2012, only seven were substantiated.
But human rights advocates fear neither account accurately reflects what may be occurring in a system with what they say has little oversight.
“It’s really hidden,” Amy Fettig, senior staff counsel of the ACLU, said of these alleged occurrences of abuse, which she believes are widespread. “And that’s why it’s happened on such a large scale, because nobody’s expected it and nobody’s been watching.”
A large, decentralized system
Captured persons suspected of violating U.S. immigration law are housed within one of hundreds of detention centers across the U.S. The civil liberties advocates we spoke with characterize these facilities as lacking a uniform implementation of sexual abuse prevention policies, and existing policies as inadequate for properly protecting unauthorized immigrants from such abuses.
Some of the difficulties in applying existing policies have been linked by these groups to what they describe as the sprawling nature of the U.S. immigration detention system, and a lack of outside oversight provided by disinterested entities.
ICE detained 429,000 people in 2011, with some individuals being held for months, or even years, awaiting hearings. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) runs short-term holding facilities along America’s 102,514-mile combined Northern, Southern and maritime border, and in all U.S. airports.
Critics accuse the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE and CBP, of failing to adequately protect prisoners from sexual abuse during its decade of running immigration enforcement.
While ICE allows some outside oversight of its facilities, CBP, with its many tiny prisons, does not permit outside inspection of its detention centers.
“When I talk to friends and family who don’t do this kind of work, they are shocked that there is this huge detention system in this country, let alone the kinds of abuses that are going on,” New York City immigration attorney Jennifer Oltarsh, of Oltarsh & Associates, P.C., told theGrio. “I think for the average person there’s just a lot of ignorance that this is happening, and how many people are being detained, and for how long, and how expensive it is for the U.S. government to be doing this.”
Billions spent on immigration enforcement
According to the Migration Policy Institute, the U.S. spends more on immigration enforcement than on all other federal law enforcement agencies combined. Nearly $18 billion was spent on ICE and CBP in fiscal year 2012, compared to $14.4 billion spent altogether on the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the United States Secret Service.
In addition, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) made it mandatory to detain unauthorized immigrants for committing petty crimes, among other circumstances, contributing significantly to both the volume of immigrant detention and its cost.
A subsequent 500 percent growth in the number of facilities housing undocumented foreign nationals occurred between 1996 and 2010, according to the ACLU.
“Unfortunately, it’s a system that exploded without much oversight, and unfortunately the results have been unregulated staff and facilities that have not produced good results,” Fettig said of DHS’s detention apparatus, which includes jails in sub-sets of government-run prisons and privately-owned prison businesses.
TheGrio contacted DHS, which referred all questions to ICE and CBP. CBP acknowledged multiple requests for comment from theGrio on these allegations, but did not release a statement or respond to questions by publication time.
Numerous opportunities for abuse
The ACLU, the Women’s Refugee Commission and other advocacy organizations allege that because of lax oversight at some detention facilities, detained women have reported being sexually accosted, and in some instances even raped, by officers on their way to being deported. Watchdogs warn of other conditions that are ripe for abuse, including the routine segregation of children from their parents or guardians during arrests, a common practice in CBP jails.
Another common scenario that advocates say puts unauthorized immigrants at risk is their transport to and from facilities.
A 2011 ACLU report describes the sexual assault of a woman named Kimberly, who was molested by the officer assigned with releasing her from ICE custody. The fact that she was being transported by him alone was a typical circumstance for which advocates state there are not enough precautions.
“He started yelling for me to look at him, and finally I looked sideways and saw that he was touching himself and he was grabbing me, wanting me to touch him,” Kimberly told the ACLU. “I was leaning away with my seat belt on, pushing into the door and crying. The doors were locked, there were no cars on the road, and there was nothing I could do. I just shut up. I was crying, and he talked to me as if I were nothing. I thought he was going to kill me.”
Kimberly told the ALCU that ICE was able to identify her attacker, because he had confessed to similar crimes, so they believed her allegations. Yet, advocates worry that similar violations could be occurring at or near the many facilities that detain undocumented immigrants, particularly on the borders, where external oversight of the detention system is particularly lacking.
Jennifer Podkul, program officer for the Migrant Rights and Justice Program of the Women’s Refugee Commission, is deeply concerned about potential sexual abuse at CBP border facilities. She says that such abuse regularly occurs based on immigrant self-reporting.
According to Podkul, “we hear about a lot of abuses that are happening in these CBP facilities, and we can’t go in them and conduct any monitoring or regular oversight. So they are a real black hole.”
CBP has declined requests to meet with the Women’s Refugee Commission about this issue, the Women’s Refugee Commission states.
“[U]nfortunately, we’ve heard horrible stories about what happens to people when they’re in these facilities,” Podkul said.
CBP has not responded to theGrio’s requests for response to these allegations.
ICE responds to abuse allegations
In response to similar allegations, ICE said in a statement that it “maintains a strict zero tolerance policy for any kind of abusive or inappropriate behavior and requires all contractors working with the agency to adhere to this policy.”
The agency added that many procedures have been implemented between 2008 and 2012 to protect immigrant detainees from sexual abuse, including the appointment of a Prevention of Sexual Assault Coordinator in May 2012.
The agency plans to provide addition oversight through “announced and unannounced inspections” and “regular facility visits from ICE staff,” its statement reads.
More than 40 Detention Services Managers have also been hired to try to ensure that the updated processes are properly implemented, ICE states.
ICE also plans to release “mandatory training for all employees who may come into contact with individuals in ICE custody” this month. It said this training will address the “dynamics of sexual abuse in confinement” among other teaching points.
These efforts, ICE said, will ensure an effective response to all sexual abuse allegations made by immigrants in detention. “The agency is absolutely committed to ensuring all detainees in our custody are held and treated in a safe, secure, and humane manner,” its statement affirms.
Read the full statement ICE released to theGrio about its sexual abuse prevention measures here.
Michelle Brané, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice Program of the Women’s Refugee Commission, acknowledges these efforts, but believes they are insufficient.
“I go to facilities all the time, and always one of the questions we ask is what their procedures are with respect to sexual assault,” she told theGrio. “I can tell you that over the years the responses are shocking in the sense that they are inconsistent and not very detailed. It’s clear when we ask the question that people are not familiar with the procedures, or that they are uncomfortable with them.”
For Brané, an essential flaw in the ICE methodology that has not been addressed is the means by which a complaint is validated.
“Our big concern,” Brané said, regarding what happens when her group quizzes ICE workers, and the wording of the agency’s regulations for reporting abuse, “is that in many cases there is an initial kind of determination made about whether a claim or complaint is valid or legitimate.”
Brané is concerned that even with the level of oversight ICE provides, immigrant detainees are susceptible to potential biases within the organization.
“What they say to us when they are explaining this is, ‘people will very often just claim assault or harassment as a way of retaliating against the guards they are mad at,'” she said. “And I get that that might be the case, but it is of great concern to us that it could be the guards or the guards’ colleagues who are making that initial determination about whether this is valid. It really, in my view, has to be someone at a higher level who is removed from a personal connection.”
Immigrant sexual abuse victims often left unprotected
Under current law, there is no provision requiring outside agencies to evaluate sexual abuse allegations made by detainees at U.S. immigration facilities. Immigrant detainees have been denied this and other necessary protections against sexual abuse due to a failure in policy, their advocates say.
By contrast, American citizens who are incarcerated in U.S. facilities are protected by a 2003 law called the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which guarantees outside prison observers. PREA was developed in part to cover facilities run by what was once called the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), under the Department of Justice (DOJ).
In 2003 INS was dissolved. The Department of Homeland Security, through its new ICE and CBP branches, was tasked in 2003 with patrolling the American interior and borders respectively to control the influx of undocumented workers.
Due to this transition, PREA does not contain language pertaining to DHS, only DOJ; this leaves hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants less protected from sexual abuse than they would be under a federally-enforced policy that is similar to PREA.
The Violence Against Women Act brings change
The recently re-authorized Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) passed in March contains provisions requiring DHS to promulgate its own set of regulations that will emulate PREA and protect unauthorized immigrants. These rules will apply to both ICE and CBP, offering undocumented immigrants uniform protection from sexual abuse across these agencies.
In December 2012, DHS proposed its version of PREA rules, and solicited comments for improvement from various organizations, including the ACLU and Amnesty International.
There is a legislative requirement to complete this task through VAWA, along with pressure from the Obama administration. The final DHS rules regarding PREA “will be published in the Federal Register later this year,” according to ICE.
Until then, immigrant advocacy groups await the outcome.
“What we want DHS to do is at minimum accept the standard that is now the rule for prisons and jails around the country, and that is an outside audit every three years by an independent, qualified auditor,” Fettig said.
Protecting immigrants and American ideals
To critics who might argue that protecting undocumented immigrants should not be a high priority compared to ensuring American citizens’ needs and safety, Fettig of the ACLU counters that protecting immigrants’ rights is an essential part of upholding American ideals. To Fettig and other civil liberties advocates, the Constitution applies everywhere, even to unauthorized immigrants behind bars, she told theGrio.
“I would say that any immigration reform, any immigration policy that reflects American values has to take into account what happens to people when we detain them,” Fettig said. “We have a responsibility to our laws, our people and our values to ensure that even if people cross our borders illegally, they are treated with the dignity and respect that we expect all people to be treated with. And that includes ensuring that they are not subject to sexual abuse at our hands.”
Follow Alexis Garrett Stodghill on Twitter at @lexisb.