Bi-Partisan Task Force Encourages the United States to Uphold the Highest Standards for Due Process and Fair Treatment of Asylum Seekers

In its recently released report, the bi-partisan, Independent Task Force on U.S. Immigration Policy [hereinafter “the Task Force”] co-chaired by Jeb Bush, President, Jeb Bush & Associates LLC, and Thomas F. McLarty III, President, McLarty Associates, and sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) cited U.S. refugee policies as an area in need of immediate and serious review. Given this country’s long-standing tradition of providing refuge to victims of political, religious and other forms of persecution, the United States is the leader in setting standards for refugee protection policies around the world. “When American standards erode,” the Task Force explained, “refugees face greater risks everywhere.”[1]

Richard Land, President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and a member of the Task Force, encouraged Americans to be “more sensitive to the fact that there are people who are genuinely in need of refugee status” and emphasized that this is “one of the central values of our country.” [Click here to read the transcript or watch a video of the special event connected to the release of the Task Force’s report.]

One particular area of concern highlighted by the Task Force is the U.S. practice of detaining asylum seekers while their claims are being adjudicated. This practice, the Task Force noted, has led some asylum seekers to give up on claims for legal status.[2] The report describes the impact of detention on asylum seekers:

“Most of those who arrive in the United States seeking asylum for political or religious persecution are now routinely detained while their claims are being heard, a traumatic experience for individuals who so often are fleeing violence or abuse. In many cases asylum seekers are forced to wear prison uniforms, held in jails and jail-like facilities, and sometimes comingled with criminal inmates. This detention policy has included families with small children. The prisons are frequently in remote locations that make it difficult to gain access to legal counsel, which is often the difference between asylum claims being accepted or rejected. Asylum seekers can be detained for months, and sometimes even years.”[3]

Edward Alden, Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow, CFR, and Task Force Director, expressed his concern that as a matter of course, “[We are] incarcerating most of these people while they're waiting for their determinations. In a lot of cases, that's simply not necessary.” He described U.S. detention practices as “far too aggressive” and encouraged the expansion of alternatives to detention programs, noting the drain of detention on public resources. [Click here to read the transcript or watch a video of the special event connected to the release of the Task Force’s report.]

In Human Rights First’s recent report, “U.S. Detention of Asylum Seekers: Seeking Protection, Finding Prison,” we found that since 2003 the United States has spent an estimated $300 million to detain over 48,000 asylum seekers in jails and jail-like facilities while their claims to asylum are adjudicated. Forty of Human Rights First’s pro bono refugee clients were detained for an average of five to six months before being granted asylum or other protection in the United States. Detaining these forty refugees cost the U.S. taxpayer $1 million.

Of great concern is the system’s lack of critical due process safeguards to ensure that asylum seekers are not subject to prolonged and unnecessary detention. Human Rights First’s report found that many of the asylum seekers who are held in U.S. custody are never given access to an external review– including an immigration court custody hearing – to assess the need for their continued detention after they had been found to have a credible fear of persecution and a significant possibility of establishing asylum eligibility. In these instances, the Department of Homeland Security serves as both jailer and judge, with few meaningful checks on its far-reaching detention authority.

In order to uphold the highest standards for due process and fair treatment of asylum seekers, the Task Force recommended the U.S. government, “limit detention of asylum seekers, wherever it is consistent with security needs, and establish better treatment for those who must be detained,”[4] stressing that “even as the United States enforces its immigration laws vigorously, it is vital that this be done in a way that upholds core American values, humane treatment, and the dignity of the individual.”[5]

--Annie Sovcik


[1] U.S. Immigration Policy, Council on Foreign Relations, Task Force Report No. 63, July 2009, pg 31.
[2] Id. at 29.
[3] Id. at 32.
[4] Id. at 108.
[5] Id. at 106.

Too little, too late – the Department of Homeland Security’s Response to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s Report on Jailing Asylum Seekers

In a January 8, 2009 letter to DHS Assistant Secretary for Policy Stewart Baker, the Chair of the bi-partisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Felice Gaer, told DHS that the actions DHS has taken, in response to the Commission’s report on the treatment of asylum seekers, do not “accurately follow the [Commission’s] recommendations or adequately address the problems identified ….” The Commission’s January 2009 letter was written in response to DHS’s (long overdue) November 28, 2008 response to the Commission’s February 2005 report relating to asylum seekers in the expedited removal and immigration detention systems.

The Commission told DHS, in its January 2009 letter, that “many of the same problems exist in the expedited removal and detention systems today as existed in 2005 when USCIRF issued its report.”

USCIRF flagged several areas for concern – urging DHS to provide greater authority to a Special Advisor on Refugee and Asylum affairs, to stop housing asylum seekers in jail-like facilities, to issue new parole policies to ensure that asylum seekers who pose no risk are not subject to unnecessary detention, and to provide greater oversight in the expedited deportation process.

The new leadership of DHS will inherit these problems but will also assume the authority to help remedy them. Both Congress and DHS will need to ensure that critical reforms are made so that the United States no longer inappropriately jails or improperly deports the victims of persecution who seek refuge and protection from this country. Day in and day out, Human Rights First works with victims of political, religious and other forms of persecution who are shocked to find themselves brought to jails after requesting asylum.

As a Burmese democracy activist who spent more than two years in detention told us: “We reached the American border…and my understanding was that you would be very safe there. Why was I still being treated in a criminal way?”

To read the Commission’s January 2009 letter, click here.

To read DHS’s November 28, 2008 response to the Commission’s March 2005 report, click here.

To read the chart created by Human Rights First analyzing the recommendations made by the Commission in comparison to the steps DHS has taken in an effort to implement those recommendations, click here.

To read the original USCIRF report, click here, and USCIRF’s February 2007 report card, click here.

To read Human Rights First’s blueprint outlining steps for the next administration, click here.

In retrospect, the Department of Homeland Security’s belated “response” to the Commission’s comprehensive 2005 report is most interesting for what it does not say:

-- The response does not acknowledge that instead of adopting, or even taking steps towards adopting, the Commission’s recommendation that it stop jailing asylum seekers in prison-like facilities, DHS has actually increased its use of these types of facilities over the last few years. (The response inaccurately tries to portray ICE’s new “performance based standards” – which like the previous standards continue to be based upon standards for correctional facilities – as some kind of effort to respond to the Commission’s finding that asylum seekers are inappropriately jailed in prison-like facilities.)

-- The response claims credit for creating a Special Advisor for Refugee and Asylum Affairs position, but does not acknowledge that DHS leadership soon gave the person who held that position responsibility for broader immigration policy matters – ensuring that the majority of this person’s time would be devoted to other pressing issues.

-- The response does not reveal that the most significant changes made by DHS to its policies and practices in the wake of the Commission’s report were actually changes that made procedures more restrictive for asylum seekers – such as the new parole policy (that creates additional hurdles for release) and the change in credible fear review procedures by headquarters (which has likely contributed to the dramatic decline in the credible fear pass rate – meaning a much higher percentage of asylum seekers are now being barred from even applying for asylum in this country).

-- The response does not acknowledge that DHS’s nearly four-year delay in issuing its response is actually more evidence of the lack of leadership and coordination within DHS on, and its failure to adequately prioritize, issues relating to the protection of asylum seekers who are subject to detention and deportation – failings that the Commission flagged in its report in 2005 and that unfortunately continue at DHS today.

Human Rights First looks forward to the 111th Congress, the Obama administration, and the new leadership of DHS correcting the flawed DHS policies that have jailed asylum seekers in prison-like facilities, deprived them of a fair process for assessing the potential for release from detention, and put them at risk of deportation back to persecution. Given how harmful these policies continue to be, we hope that under the leadership of DHS Secretary-designate, Janet Napolitano, the Department and Congress will finally prioritize adding long overdue safeguards to the flawed system of detaining asylum seekers.

-Eleanor Acer, Jessica Chicco and Annie Sovcik

On the Road with Human Rights First:

Thoughts from our visit to assess the treatment of asylum-seekers being imprisoned by ICE in local Virginia jails


Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Tomorrow, three staff members from Human Rights First and a representative from Physicians for Human Rights, will be traveling to central Virginia to visit two local jails where asylum-seekers and immigrants are being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Some of them have fled brutal torture, arbitrary imprisonment, and threats on their lives in their home countries. They came to the United States, seeking a safe-haven from oppression and violence. They came full of hope, having heard of the United States’ long tradition of welcoming those escaping torture and abuse. Instead, these vulnerable people find themselves imprisoned again. They have no idea when they will be released and sit waiting in jail for months and even years on end while their cases wind their way through the system.

The detention of asylum seekers – especially in the absence of appropriate review of the necessity of the detention – runs contrary to international standards. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ guidelines on the detention of asylum seekers state that “as a general principle, asylum-seekers should not be detained.” Furthermore, mandatory detention – without an individualized determination that continued detention is necessary – is arbitrary. Pursuant to the International Convention for Civil and Political Rights, detention may be considered arbitrary when it is “not necessary in all the circumstances of the case.”

Numerous reports – including by the DHS Office of Inspector General, the Government Accountability Office, and non-profit organizations – have documented the prison-like detention conditions and often serious violations of detention standards. A 2005 study by the bi-partisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom documented the flaws in the asylum and detention system and set forth detailed recommendations, including that asylum seekers should not be detained in jails or jail-like facilities.


Wednesday, November 19, 2008:
Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Portsmouth, Virginia

My colleagues and I meet bright and early at 6:30 a.m. for the long drive from Washington D.C. to Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Portsmouth, Virginia. Drive time is nearly four hours, and the jail’s distance from an urban hub is one of the reasons that the asylum-seekers and immigrant detainees have trouble finding lawyers to handle their cases.

As we leave the hustle of the capital, massive federal buildings give way to suburban sprawl. After an hour of driving we are in full countryside – trees bursting with autumn colors. We eventually find the jail complex, and as we pull in we remark on how innocuous the concrete buildings look from the outside – no barbed wire, high fencing, or gun-towers surrounding the jail complex. Only the absence of real windows, and a moat surrounding the buildings, betray the fact that we are about to enter a jail.

We pass through the front doors and are greeted by an ICE official, who then takes us through a security checkpoint and metal detectors. After a thorough briefing by the Captain of the local jail, we pass through a series of massive steel doors. Hampton Roads Regional Jail is structured like a grand labyrinth – corridors jutting out from empty spaces through double steel doors and heavy-paneled, shatter-proof glass. The light is artificial and the lack of fresh air suffocating. The guards talk in jail-speak, loosely throwing around terms like “the hole”, “the seg unit”, and “lock-down.” Though ICE likes to use sterile terms like “detainee” and “detention facility,” there is no mistaking where we are – we are in a jail.

As we progress on our tour through the facility, jail officials tell us that out of a total of 1,347 beds, there is a current ICE inmate population of 259. While many of the ICE detainees are held in a separate “housing unit,” several are mixed in with the general jail population, contrary to both ICE detention standards and international standards.

As we move through the various “pods”, we are given the opportunity to speak to some of the immigrant detainees. Several of them are arriving asylum seekers, who were placed in immigration detention when they arrived at the airport and remain in detention while they await an immigration court hearing. They are wearing orange jumpsuits like criminals, and tell us that their own clothing was taken away when they arrived. We have an opportunity to look at the cells in which they sleep – standard jail cells with narrow bunk beds, an open toilet, and a metal sink.

We speak at length with several asylum seekers. One female asylum seeker tells us that upon arrival at Hampton Roads, she was placed in the same pod with women with violent criminal histories. This frightened her, and caused her to become even more depressed. She complains about the food, the isolation of the facility, and the lack of proper medical care. But most of all, she complains about the lack of communication with ICE officials. She tells us she has no information on the status of her case, and feels as if she is stuck in a kind of limbo.

We also speak with an ICE detainee who reports that he had been imprisoned and tortured in his home country, and is now seeking relief under the Convention Against Torture. He tells us that he has been shuffled around to various detention centers over the course of the past seven months. ICE and jail officials never give him advance notice that he is going to be moved. He also tells us that the video hearings – during which he appears in court by video and speaks to a judge on a television screen - are terrible. He can never hear the judge or government attorney, and has difficulty understanding what is happening with his case. Being in jail again, only here in the U.S., has deepened his feelings of depression he says. He has at times contemplated suicide, but still has a glimmer of hope that he will get out of jail and find freedom.

After speaking with many asylum seekers and detainees, we are led out of the secure area and into the jail’s administrative area. The jail administrators answer all our questions, but in the end, we’re told: “You know, they just don’t want to be in jail. And this is a jail….We were designed to be a jail.”


November 20, 2008 - Piedmont County Jail

After a long drive from Hampton Roads and a quiet evening in Farmville, Virginia, we wake early for our visit to the Piedmont County Jail. At breakfast in the hotel lobby, we chat with a woman who tell us that a private company is breaking ground on a new, massive detention center in Farmville, in anticipation of a lucrative contract with ICE. As the Washington Post reported in “The Profit of Detention” on October 5, 2008, the new facility will have 1,040 beds, and will yield millions of dollars in profits for a small group of Richmond investors.

Approaching the Piedmont County Jail, which sits on the outskirts of Farmville, we quickly become aware that – unlike Hampton Roads – this facility looks like a jail from the outside. Piedmont is surrounded by barbed wire and fences. The housing pods are really large warehouses, and detainees sleep and eat in one open space filled with double and triple bunk beds. There are virtually no windows, or access to fresh air. Though this facility – unlike Hampton Roads – has true outdoor recreation areas, detainees we spoke with reported that they are allowed out only about once a week.

Upon our arrival, a jail staff member leads us straight into the “pods” housing ICE detainees. In the first pod, we are surrounded by detainees, and peppered with a litany of complaints. We learn that a group of ICE detainees has decided to go on a hunger strike to protest abusive treatment by one of the guards. They started their hunger strike early that morning, and say they are planning on continuing until they are treated with respect. Many detainees also voice complaints about medical care, and delays in receiving medical attention. Several detainees tell us they have to wait days or weeks to be seen by the medical staff. One tells us that he has filled out numerous sick call requests but has yet to be attended to by the medical unit. Another tells us how his friend needed urgent medical attention, and it took nearly half an hour to get a guard to come to the pod. His friend was then dragged out of the pod and put into “the hole”, or the isolation unit, while he waited for a doctor to come. “We’re treated like animals,” one asylum seeker tells us.

Despite the numerous complaints on living conditions, as was the case at Hampton Roads, one of the biggest complaints is about poor communication with ICE. One detainee tells me that he is “lost in the system.” He says that his name and alien registration number seem to have disappeared from the computer, and as a result he is in a kind of immigration black hole. In the meantime he sits in detention – with little or no answers – waiting for a court date.

We leave the jail exhausted from the conversations, sights, sounds, and smells. During the long drive back to Washington, we reflect on the asylum seekers we have met, and the thousands of others who each year spend months and sometimes even years in jails or jail-like detention centers. We are left with a striking impression – being in immigration detention in a remote county jail feels like being sucked into a black hole.

Please read our Blueprint for the Next Administration: How to Repair the U.S. Asylum System for more information and policy recommendations for the Obama administration.

-- Asa Piyaka

To Breathe Free: Living Up to our Promise

A few weeks ago, I visited two of the largest immigration detention centers in the country, both in Texas, both essentially prisons. The 2000-bed Willacy Detention Center, in Raymondville, Texas, is a surreal place, resembling a massive detention camp, with its ten huge, tent-like structures, “pods” to hold detainees, barbed wire, uniformed guards, and detainees in prison garb. From Willacy, asylum seekers are generally transferred to the South Texas Detention Complex, in the tiny town of Pearsall. With one hall alone running a quarter mile long, the 1900-bed facility is yet another massive prison-like facility.

The U.S. immigration detention system is, by all accounts, in an appalling state; the good news is that the Secure and Safe Detention and Asylum Bill, a bi-partisan bill introduced by Senators Joseph Lieberman (I–CT), Sam Brownback (R-KS) Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), and Chuck Hagel, (R-Neb.) should address many of the issues.

After arriving at a U.S. airport or border seeking asylum from persecution, a refugee should expect to find a fair system for assessing his or her request for protection. Too often, however, those who seek refuge are greeted with handcuffs, prison uniforms, barbed wire, and interminable detention that is lacking in independent checks. This kind of system is inconsistent with this country’s commitments under international human rights standards, as well as its principles of justice and compassion for the victims of persecution who flee to this country, in the words of Emma Lazarus, “yearning to breathe free.”

It shouldn’t be this way. In February 2005, the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom issued a comprehensive report documenting many of the flaws in the U.S. system for detaining asylum seekers, and made recommendations to rectify these problems. Unfortunately, over three years later, some of the Commission’s most critical recommendations have still not been implemented.

The Commission concluded that detention in prison-like facilities was inappropriate for asylum seekers, and yet the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has dramatically increased its use of this type of facility. The Commission recommended improvements to the expedited removal process, and yet DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff has repeatedly expanded its use, without first implementing the Commission’s reforms. The Commission recommended setting regulations providing for the release (under parole) of asylum seekers who satisfy specific criteria, and yet immigration authorities narrowed the criteria and issued guidelines (rather than enforceable regulations) that leave local immigration officers substantial leeway to continue to detain asylum seekers, even when they present no risk.

More than three years later, far too many asylum seekers continue to be held in prison-like facilities without adequate safeguards; recent investigative reports by The Washington Post and 60 Minutes have revealed serious deficiencies in the medical care provided to all immigrants in detention.

Detention takes a real toll on those who flee from repression and violence. In Texas, I met with the pro bono attorneys who are representing one woman who is seeking refuge from political persecution at the hands of Burma’s military regime. When she requested asylum at the U.S. border, she was detained, handcuffed, and given prison clothes to wear. Her request for parole was denied by local immigration officials who found no “urgent humanitarian interest” or “significant public benefit” to warrant her release, and current procedures don’t give her access to an immigration court custody hearing to review her continued detention. She has been detained in these two Texas detention facilities for over six months, first in Willacy and then in Pearsall. Sadly, asylum seekers are sometimes detained for even longer while they pursue their requests for protection. Another Burmese refugee we assisted was detained at yet another Texas immigration jail for two years before finally being released from that facility.

What kind of justice and compassion are we showing to those who come to this country seeking refuge? For all those detained at such facilities across the country, reform is long overdue.

The Secure and Safe Detention and Asylum Bill would implement some important recommendations of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and add much-needed safeguards to the immigration detention system. It would improve standards relating to the conditions of detention and medical care, allow immigration courts to review continuing detention for asylum seekers like this Burmese woman, and create an office of detention oversight. These reforms are critical steps towards ensuring that this country lives up to its deeply held values of justice, fairness and welcoming the persecuted.

by Eleanor Acer

Willacy Detention Center: A Tent City

Today’s count: 1,700 detainees

On Wednesday, we visited the Willacy Detention Center in Raymondville, TX, accompanied by representatives of community groups, churches and faith-based groups, as well as pro bono legal service organizations. The Willacy Detention Center – dubbed “Ritmo” by local attorney Jodi Goodwin in an interview with The Washington Post – opened in August of 2006 and consists of 10 large tent-like structures with the capacity to hold 2,000 immigration detainees (1,500 men and 500 women). At the time of our visit, the detention center housed a little over 1,700 detainees. Since October 1, 2007, over 15,000 asylum seekers and immigrants have been detained at the facility.

As we drove up to the facility, the view of 10 large white tents made us wonder how exactly the facility accommodated 2,000 detainees. We were told the tents were “sprung structures,” made of steel beams covered by a synthetic-type fabric. The inside of each tent is separated into 4 “pods,” each holding 50 people. Detainees eat, sleep, and use the bathroom and showers in the same open area within the pod. The toilet and showers are separated from the eating area by only a low wall. In a new building, currently under construction, the bathroom is set up so that a sink and mirror are positioned, making it so that one detainee could be brushing his or her teeth next to someone using the toilet. The bunk beds are lined up in rows close to each other and the beds are so narrow that one local attorney reported that two of her clients had fallen off their beds. As you might imagine, the sloping ceiling of the tent and lack of natural light (there is only one window in each pod) make the space feel incredibly cramped. The Willacy facility, however, does have a real outside area where detainees can be truly out of doors for their “recreation” period – unlike some other detention facilities, including the one in Pearsall.

While the materials used to erect the detention center may seem to be temporary, Willacy Detention Center isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. In June 2008, the facility will complete its expansion of another 1,000 beds. The additional detainees will be housed in a brick building, as opposed to a tent. It will be comprised of 20 pods, each with 50 beds. The set-up of these pods is very similar to the existing ones. The expansion also includes the introduction of 43 isolation rooms to be used for administrative and disciplinary segregation. This expansion will secure Willacy’s position as the largest immigration detention center in the country.

As with the Pearsall facility, the space made available for attorney-client visitation was inadequate. Attorney meeting rooms are tiny closets in which an attorney can sit on a small stool and talk to their client only through a small grate in a heavy plexiglass-type window. Reviewing an affidavit or discussing a document under these circumstances is virtually impossible, and discussing an asylum seeker’s history of persecution or torture in this setting is difficult to imagine. Moreover, while there are 4 courtrooms on site, there were no judges in the courtrooms. The judges are present for asylum and other hearings on a television screen and never see the detainee in person. In fact, all hearings at Willacy are held via televideo conference from San Antonio. The remote nature of the justice system at both Willacy and Pearsall left us with more concerns about these facilities. Stay posted for more from us about these facilities and the impact of detention on those who seek asylum in this country.

Challenges to Legal Representation at Pearsall Detention Center

Today’s count: 1,490 detainees (1,113 males and 277 females)

Today we visited the South Texas Detention Complex (Pearsall Immigration Detention Center), accompanied by representatives of major law firms and faith-based and community groups that are concerned about the asylum seekers and immigrants held at the facility. U.S. immigration officials for ICE (the immigration enforcement branch of the Department of Homeland Security) conducted our tour, met with us, and spent several hours with our groups.

As we mentioned previously, there are many problems with detainee access to legal representation at Pearsall. To begin with, there are only three attorney visitation rooms in the entire facility – a facility with a capacity for 1,904 detainees. That comes to 1 attorney visitation room for about 600 detainees! Lack of sufficient attorney visitation rooms seriously hinders an effective representation process for detainees, since their attorneys must compete for limited time slots and space with other legal service providers. Not providing sufficient attorney visitation rooms can create delays, in some cases forcing attorneys to wait for hours before gaining access to the facility to meet with their clients. When we asked Jay Sparks, Pearsall Detention Center’s Assistant Field Office Director, why there weren’t more attorney visitation rooms, he explained that Pearsall was originally built to house only 1,020 detainees, so the three rooms satisfied the original construction plan. While three attorney visitation rooms for over 1,000 detainees would still be inadequate, we inquired whether there had been a plan to add new attorney visitation rooms when the facility was expanded to1,904 beds or if there were plans to add such rooms in the future. Mr. Sparks said the facility as built could not physically accommodate more attorney visitation rooms.

Furthermore, the remoteness of the detention facility from a major city center deserves to be stressed. Pearsall Detention Center is located in an isolated area, in the middle of cow pasture. Literally. As we mentioned yesterday, the facility is over two hours from the nearest hub of non-profit and legal organizations (Austin), and one hour from San Antonio. While we anticipated that the issue of distance creates a problem for accessing legal representation, it turns out it also makes it more difficult to recruit and retain full-time employees to work at the facility, including medical personnel – who are undoubtedly necessary for the safe and effective running of the facility. Prospective employees must contend with the cost of commuting from San Antonio or elsewhere to Pearsall. Attorneys face the same time and monetary expenses, making it especially hard for pro bono representatives to provide legal counsel to detainees at Pearsall.

The facility is so remote, in fact, that it has become common practice to use televideo conferencing for court hearings and screenings of arriving asylum seekers for credible fear interviews. But the use of televideo conferencing for asylum seekers hinders the judges’ and asylum officers’ ability to make an informed finding as to the applicant’s credibility, a key finding at the credible fear interview stage and the merits hearing.

In addition, given that the availability of pro bono attorneys is so limited at Pearsall, we tried to assess the prospects facing detainees who decide to press their cases without counsel, or pro se. A visit to the law library during the tour revealed an absolute lack of legal materials in any language other than English. How then would an asylum seeker, from say, Burma prepare an asylum application if unable to find pro bono legal representation? When many of detainees, particularly asylum seekers, are non-English speaking, the law library offers little assistance in preparing complex petitions for relief.

Everything we mentioned just skims the surface of the legal, medical, and other challenges facing asylum seekers and others in detention at Pearsall. We hope that becoming informed – and informing others – about these circumstances will be the first step in working to address the situation.

Asylum Seekers Detained in Isolated Pearsall Facility

We pulled into Pearsall, Texas – population just over 7,000 – at dusk after a long and productive day of meetings in San Antonio. We met with representatives from community groups and legal service organizations, some of whom will be joining us on our tour of the detention center tomorrow. Our objective in holding these meetings was to learn what the greatest challenges and concerns are for those assisting asylum seekers and others detained at Pearsall.

Tomorrow at 9:00am we will begin our visit of the detention center. Pearsall Detention Center, a facility run by a private contractor, The GEO Group, Inc., was created in 2005 and has capacity for 1,904 detainees. There are 66 beds for children to be held in detention as well. Local advocates estimate that there are 250 asylum seekers in the facility at any given time. Refugees at Pearsall Detention Center come from a wide range of countries, including Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Burma, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Colombia.

Our concerns for Pearsall Detention Center are numerous. To offer just one of many recurring themes in our conversations with local groups, detainees at Pearsall receive very limited access to legal representation. This problem is created most fundamentally by the great distance between major cities and the town of Pearsall; Pearsall Detention Center is 55 miles (1 hour) from San Antonio and 134 miles (2 hours) from Austin. The distance alone makes it incredibly cumbersome for private and public attorneys to take on cases of detained asylum seekers and others.

Despite the remoteness of the facility, just this past week some groups mobilized to bring attention to recent allegations of sexual abuse at Pearsall. Moreover, as highlighted by a local reporter, several civil rights groups, including LULAC, now plan to visit the facility and have stated that they will stage a protest if they are not able to meet with the warden.

Clearly, attention recent media attention has shown a light on the needs of detainees held at Pearsall. We expect that our visit tomorrow will help us better understand the challenges faced by this vulnerable and neglected population.