ImmigrationPrivately run detention center locks up immigrants for months

Broward Transitional Center // Source: browardpalmbeach.com

Hundreds of immigrants who have committed minor offenses have been locked up for weeks or months at a time in a Broward County, Florida facility run by a private company. The majority of the immigrants have been accused of entering the country illegally or staying longer than were allowed to.

The treatment of the prisoner has become a concern since July 2012, when a detainee went on a hunger strike as well as protests by local activists who have demanded that immigrants with no criminal history be allowed to stay in the country.

The SunSentinel reports that two illegal immigrants turned themselves in to the Broward Transitional Center (BTC) in an effort to gain access to the center and see whether the rumors of human rights abuses and policy violations were true. According to the pair, they came across people who have been unjustly arrested and subjected to lengthy and unnecessary stays, as well as evidence of poor medical care.

ICE has denied all  reports of mistreatment. In a recent interview with the Sun-Sentinel, the agency’s Miami Field Office director Marc Moore said the conditions at the facility were excellent and that the “staff here treats people with respect.”

The facility is owned and run by the GEO Group Inc. one of the nation’s leading private prison firms.

In a statement to the Sun Sentinel, when asked to comment on a letter from twenty-six U.S. lawmakers inquiring about conditions at the facility, the company said it “has provided high quality residential, medical and programming services in a safe and secure environment to detainees” at BTC for more than a decade.

The center can house up to 595 men and 150 women on any day under the terms of a federal contract worth more than $20 million a year.

The center is the only immigration detention center in  Florida  run by a private company.

“I think that this place is systematically set up to keep these women here —  and on the men’s side, the men —  because there’s money being made in this place,” detainee Viridiana Martinez told the radio program Democracy Now! in a phone call in July from inside. “This place is owned by a company, GEO. And every time someone is detained, they are given money.” Martinez was one of the people who purposely got themselves detained at BTC last summer.

Congress is now getting involved. In a letter to the nation’s chief immigration official, lawmakers demanded a review of all detainees locked in the Broward Transitional Center and an investigation in the quality of medical care.

“Some of the reports coming out of the center are horrifying,” lawmakers, including South Florida Democrats Ted Deutch, Frederica Wilson, and Alcee Hastings, wrote U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director John Morton.

ICE has yet to respond to the letter, which was written in September 2012. Last week Deutch sent a second letter criticizing ICE for their “excessive delay” and demanded a rapid response.

“It’s certainly time for us to hear back, and it’s well past time that these serious issues be addressed,” Deutch, of Boca Raton, told the Sun Sentinel on Friday.

Deutch said he and his fellow lawmakers will investigate what actions they can take to ensure a review of the center is made and “these human rights abuses are stopped,” if ICE continues to ignore their concerns.

The government holds foreigners accused of violating immigration law to process them before they are deported. Some people are confined for weeks or months while their lawyers work and gather information to prove their clients have the right to stay in the United States, or while they challenge their deportation.