ICE
houdt immigranten gevangen onder uitermate barre omstandigheden,
waar isolatiefolter aan de orde van de dag is.
In het
hieronder opgenomen artikel, geschreven door Maryam Saleh, verhaalt
zij over de vreselijke omstandigheden waaronder ICE immigranten uit
Latijns-Amerika gevangen worden gehouden….. (zij gaat verder niet in op de omgang met vluchtelingenkinderen
Onlangs
werd al bekend gemaakt dat kinderen van immigranten nog steeds
gescheiden worden van hun ouders en moeten leven in omstandigheden
die te vergelijken zijn met de concentratiekampen van de nazi’s
tijdens WOII…… Hoorde eergisternacht op de BBC dat men zelfs
tot 100 kinderen in een soort van grote cel gevangen houdt…… Peuters lopen met of vuile luiers of helemaal geen luiers, zodat de kleding ongelofelijk vies wordt…..
Over kleding gesproken: pubers moeten soms wekenlang doen met de kleding die ze aanhebben….. Voedsel dat wordt verstrekt is niet zelden bedorven en de oudere kinderen moeten de kleine kinderen helpen, kinderen die zij niet kennen, noch dat deze pubers ervaring hebben in het zorgen voor kleine kinderen…… Het ontbreekt de kinderen veelal aan gezond voedsel, waar ze vaak zelfs te weinig te eten krijgen…… De sanitaire voorzieningen zijn smerig, zoals je al begrepen had…..
Uit het
artikel van Saleh, gepubliceerd op The Intercept, aandacht voor
het grote aantal gevallen van isolatie in de gevangenissen van ICE, of in door ICE gehuurde faciliteiten voor oudere vluchtelingen……. Voorts zijn ook hier de sanitaire
voorzieningen smerig en is het eten zonder meer slecht te noemen, zoals gezegd niet zelden met bedorven voedsel……
Het meest schunnige is wel, dat ondanks de grote ophef eerder over het scheiden van ouders en kinderen, deze scheiding nog steeds wordt doorgevoerd, om zo nieuwe vluchtelingen af te schrikken zodat ze niet naar de VS vluchten……
Het voorgaande kan dan ook tot geen andere conclusie leiden dan dat we hier (zoals eerder opgemerkt) te maken hebben met concentratiekampen en dat beste bezoeker kan niet vaak genoeg gezegd worden…….
Overbodig te melden dat e.e.a recht ingaat tegen het VN Vluchtelingenverdrag……
Lees en
zie hoe de VS langzaam maar zeker verandert in een fascistische
superstaat, waar geen empathie meer bestaat en men zelfs kinderen
behandelt als waren het criminelen, alleen omdat ze zogenaamd illegaal zijn…….. De VS dat meer en meer de
dienst uitmaakt op de wereld en enorme vluchtelingenstromen opgang
brengt, ook in Latijns-Amerika…… (het gros van de vluchtelingen uit Latijns-Amerika die naar de VS zijn vertrokken, zijn op de vlucht geslagen voor gewelddadige fascistische regimes, die ofwel door de VS in het zadel zijn geholpen, zoals in Honduras, dan wel door de VS worden gesteund in de terreuruitoefening op de eigen bevolking)
AS
PUSH AGAINST ICE EXPLOITATION OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT GAINS MOMENTUM,
CORY BOOKER CALLS FOR HEARINGS
Maryam
Saleh
June
26 2019, 8:34 p.m.
Sen.
Cory Booker participates in the Black Economic Alliance’s
presidential forum in Charleston, S.C., on June 15, 2019. Photo:
Sean Rayford/Getty Images
SEN.
CORY BOOKER, D-N.J., is calling on Senate
Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to hold a hearing
into Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “egregious and
appalling abuses,” including the widespread use of solitary
confinement.
In
a letter to
Graham, Booker, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, referred to
solitary confinement as a “form of torture” and cited a
recent investigation by
the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, The
Intercept, NBC News, and four other reporting partners into ICE’s
use of solitary confinement. Our reporting, which included a review
of more than 8,400 reports describing placement in solitary
confinement from 2012 to early 2017, found that ICE uses isolation as
a go-to tool, rather than a last resort, to punish vulnerable
detained immigrants.
“The
news stories detail numerous examples of individuals placed in
confinement without justification, which prompted a whistleblower to
come forward to shine a light on these abuses,” wrote Booker,
referring to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employee Ellen
Gallagher,
who quietly raised the alarm about ICE’s use of solitary
confinement for four years before going public in interviews with the
reporting consortium.
While
different carceral systems use varying terms to describe solitary
confinement — ICE calls it “segregation” — it is generally
understood to be the practice of holding individuals in isolation
with no human contact for at least 22 hours a day.
“ICE’s
own policy seems to recognize the dangers of solitary confinement,”
Booker continued. “It appears ICE has been consistently violating
its own policy on the use of solitary confinement.”
His
letter to Graham comes on the heels of a letter from
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., to the acting director of
ICE, demanding
answers about
the agency’s use of solitary confinement and extensively citing our
investigation. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., another member of
the Judiciary Committee, also called for
a hearing into ICE’s use of solitary in response to our
investigation last month. The panel’s Democrats do not have
independent authority to schedule a hearing, hence the request to
Graham.
Booker,
in his letter, said that a Judiciary Committee hearing about ICE
would give the panel a chance to interrogate “grossly unsanitary
conditions at detention facilities,” as well as to gather more
information about forthcoming immigration raids that President Donald
Trump “flippantly alluded to” on Twitter last week. The
president, after announcing that the agency would begin to round up
“millions” of immigrants this week — a
logistically impossible endeavor —
on Saturday put the ICE operation on hold.
Graham,
an anti-immigrant hard-liner and apologist for the Trump
administration’s harsh policies, convened a committee hearing —
at Democrats’ request — in March to investigate Customs and
Border Protection for its actions at the southern border. Graham used
the hearing as an opportunity for fearmongering about
migrants seeking asylum in the United States. The CBP, like ICE,
falls under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security.
The
oversight hearing on CBP was not enough, Booker wrote. “In order to
fully address the scope of ICE’s serious and egregious violations,
the Committee must convene an oversight hearing. It’s becoming
increasingly clear that ICE has become nothing more than a lethal
weapon in the Trump administration’s war on immigrants and
communities of color, and we cannot be silent.”
BOOKER’S
HARSH STANCE against
ICE in the letter to Graham is in line with the tack he’s taken on
the presidential campaign trail, where he’s been a staunch critic
of the agency’s policies. In February, he, along with other 2020
hopefuls Warren, Sen. Kamala Harris, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand,
voted against a spending bill, citing ICE. At the time,
Booker said that
bill would give ICE and CBP “hundreds of millions of additional
dollars with little oversight or appropriate guardrails.” In April,
he reintroduced
legislation to
enact protections for detained immigrants.
Booker has
also been an outspoken advocate of the rights of prisoners throughout
his federal career. At the same time, he’s remained close to a
party boss in his home state who oversees a jail that serves as an
immigration detention center and is rife with abuses, drawing
the ire of local progressives.
As
Politico reported on
Tuesday, Booker will be in New Jersey on Friday for a
$2,800-per-person fundraiser co-hosted by Essex County Executive
Joseph DiVincenzo. In that role, DiVincenzo oversees the Essex County
Correctional Facility in Newark, which has a $40 million per year
contract with ICE — and was called out for poor conditions in two
DHS Inspector General reports just this year.
Twenty-one
progressive organizations last week sent a letter to Booker calling
on him to cancel the fundraiser, Politico reported. “I believe that
Booker wants to make sure that the funnel of money keeps coming
through, and that’s why he’s supporting Joe [DiVincenzo] right
now,” Carrine Murphy, a paralegal who is critical of county jails’
contracts with ICE, told
Politico.
In
February, the Office of Inspector General identified a
number of issues at the jail, including food safety issues, with
“potentially contaminated food being served to detainees.” One
example noted “a detainee in segregation said the food
was so bad that he had started a liquid only diet and was considering
a full hunger strike.”
Earlier
this month, the Inspector General issued a follow-up reportbuilding
on the same inspection and said that “detainees are placed in
disciplinary segregation before the disciplinary hearing panel finds
the detainee guilty of the charged offense.”
The
facility has reported making improvements in its solitary confinement
practices, “including documenting why detainee strip searches
were conducted and revising recreation schedules to add additional
recreation time,” the Inspector General wrote.
The
ICIJ and Intercept investigation found 100 records of placement in
solitary confinement at the Essex County jail from 2013 to early
2017. Twenty-seven of those placements were due to disciplinary
reasons, while three of them were the result of a suicide risk.
Overall, we found at least 373 instances of detained immigrants being
placed in isolation because they were potentially suicidal — and
another 200-plus cases of people already in solitary confinement
moved to “suicide watch” or another form of observation, in many
cases in another solitary cell.
Immigration
is expected to be a hot-button issue throughout the presidential
campaign. Booker and Warren will both participate in the first 2020
Democratic presidential debate in Miami, Florida, on Wednesday night.
==================================
Zie ook:
‘Putin misbruikt vluchtelingen om een hele grote witte voet bij Trump te halen‘
‘ELIZABETHWARREN CONDEMNS ICE’S “CRUEL AND UNNECESSARY” USE OF SOLITARYCONFINEMENT, DEMANDS ANSWERS‘
‘AHOMELAND SECURITY WHISTLEBLOWER GOES PUBLIC ABOUT ICE ABUSE OFSOLITARY CONFINEMENT‘
‘Thousands
of Immigrants Suffer in Solitary Confinement in ICE Detention‘
‘Humanitaire hulp aan vluchtelingen in woestijn: gevangenisstraf tot 20 jaar‘
‘Vrijwilligers die vluchtelingen in de woestijn van de VS proberen te redden worden gevangengezet……‘
‘De VS geeft miljarden uit om verkiezingen elders te beïnvloeden en daar blijft het niet bij…….‘
‘Obama steekt zichzelf volkomen onterecht een grote veer in de vieze bips‘
‘VS gebruikt chemische wapens tegen ongewapende vluchtelingen waaronder kinderen‘ (zie ook de links in dat bericht)
Mijn excuus voor de vormgeving, krijg het niet op orde.
