)

FAMILIES FOR FREEDOM, NATIONAL

)

IMMIGRATION PROJECT OF THE NATIONAL

)

LAWYERS' GUILD, RAFIU ABIMBOLA, and

CAMAL MARCHABEYOGLU,

Plaintiffs,

v.

)

MICHAEL CHERTOFF, Secretary of Homeland Security, )

)

Defendant.

)

)

COMPLAINT 1. This is a suit under the Administrative Procedures Act ("APA"), 5 U.S.C. § 553, et seq., challenging the failure of the Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") to promulgate comprehensive, enforceable regulations governing conditions in all facilities in which DHS detains immigrants. 2. The explosive growth in immigration detention in the last several years has resulted in inconsistent conditions of confinement across the country and widespread incidents of detainee abuse, including physical and sexual mistreatment, denial of adequate health care, denial of access to legal materials and telephones, and problems in environmental health and safety. 3. Federal immigration authorities previously adopted generalized, sub-regulatory detention standards in 1998 and 2000. However, these standards are incomplete, and are not properly implemented in order to ensure humane treatment of detainees. Existing

1

standards do not apply to detained immigrants in all facilities and, moreover, are not fully

enforceable even by those detainees to whom they do apply.

4.

In light of the rapid growth of immigration detention, and the well-documented

ineffectiveness of the agency's existing standards to ensure the humane treatment of this

expanding population, DRS should promulgate comprehensive, enforceable regulations

to ensure the uniform and humane treatment of detained immigrants in all the facilities in

which they are held.

5. Plaintiffs in this action are former detained immigrants and immigrants' rights

organizations whose members include present and former immigration detainees.

6. In January 2007, Plaintiffs filed a rulemaking petition requesting that DRS initiate

a rulemaking proceeding to promulgate regulations governing detention standards for

detained immigrants.

7. Over one year later, DRS has failed to respond to the Petition. DRS' failure to

respond constitutes an effective denial that, in light of the urgency of Plaintiffs' request

and the absence of any explanation by the agency, is arbitrary and capricious.

Consequently, Plaintiffs ask this Court to direct DRS to undertake a rulemaking and to

enact regulations governing conditions of confinement for detained immigrants within a

reasonable period of time or, in the alternative, to direct the Secretary to respond to

Plaintiffs' Petition within thirty (30) days of this Court's order.

JURISDICTION AND VENUE

8. This Court has jurisdiction over this matter under 28 U.S.c. § 1331.

9. Venue lies in the Southern District of New York pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1391(e),

because Plaintiff Families for Freedom resides in this District.

2

PARTIES Plaintiffs 10. Rafiu Abimbola is a Nigerian national who was detained for over six years at a number of detention facilities. While detained, Mr. Abimbola suffered a number of abuses, including physical and verbal assault, denial of access to medical care, infringement on his religious freedom, inadequate food, and inadequate access to the law library. 11. Camal· Marchabeyoglu is a Lawful Permanent Resident living in Corona, California. Mr. Marchabeyoglu was detained multiple times between 1998 and 2004 at a number of detention facilities, including EI Centro and the San Diego Correctional Facility. While detained, Mr. Marchabeyoglu suffered a number of abuses, including lack of adequate medical care and physical and verbal abuse. 12. The National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers' Guild ("National Immigration Project") is a national, member-based, non-profit legal support group headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, which defends the rights of immigrants facing removal and incarceration. Members of the Nationallmmigration Project include current and former detained immigrants who have suffered injury-namely, poor and abusive conditions in their detention facilities and the absence of any adequate means of redress~ue to the lack of legally-binding regulations governing immigration detention. The National Immigration Project is administered by a member-based Board of Directors and is partially funded through membership dues. 13. Defendant's acts and omissions have compelled the National Immigration Project to divert resources from its legal education and legal and public advocacy programs in
3

order to address the lack of legally-binding regulations governing immigration detention. The lack of binding regulations has forced the National Immigration Project to dedicate additional staff time and resources to advocate on behalf of its detainee members facing substandard and abusive detention conditions through activities such as filing detainee complaints, responding to detainee correspondence, and developing materials related to detention standard violations. 14. Families for Freedom ("FFF") is a non-profit, multi-ethnic, member-based organization based in New York, New York for detained immigrants, individuals at risk of removal, and their families. Members of FFF include current and former detained immigrants who have suffered injury-namely, poor and abusive conditions in their detention facilities and the absence of any adequate means of redress-due to the lack of legally-binding regulations governing immigration detention. FFF provides direct support to detainees and their families and conducts public advocacy and education on immigrants' rights. FFF is administered by a majority-member Board of Directors and is partially-funded by grassroots, membership-based fundraising. 15. Defendant's acts and omissions have compelled FFF to divert resources from'its public advocacy and education programs in order to address the lack of legally-binding regulations governing immigration detention. The lack of binding regulations has forced FFF to dedicate additional staff time and resources to advocate on behalf of its detainee members facing substandard and abusive detention conditions through activities such as conducting legal visits, monitoring detention conditions, filing detainee complaints, and performing advocacy with detainee members' consulates. 16. Mr. Abimbola, Mr. Marchabeyoglu, the National Immigration Project, and FFF
4

were all signatories on the rule-making petition that is the subject of this suit. Defendant 17. Defendant Michael Chertoff is the Secretary of Homeland Security. Secretary Chertoff is responsible for the implementation of law and policy related to immigration enforcement, including the treatment of detained immigrants.
STATEMENT OF FACTS The Explosive Growth of Immigration Detention 18. The responsibility to detain non-citizens accused of immigration violations rests with the Office of Detention and Removal Operations ("DRO"), a division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") within the Department of Homeland Security ("DHS"). ICE secures facilities while DRO carries out and monitors the detention process. 19. Currently, ICE operates eight detention facilities, known as Service Processing Centers ("SPCs"), and contracts with eight additional facilities, known as Contract Detention Facilities ("CDFs"). 20. In addition, ICE and its predecessor, the Immigration Naturalization Service ("INS"), have contracted with state, county, and local jails to house detained immigrants via Intergovernmental Service Agreements ("IGSAs"). In recent years, this practice has been expanded to accommodate a dramatic rise in the immigrant detainee population. 21. Detainees are also housed at Bureau of Prisons ("BOP") facilities. 22. Some detainees deemed mentally-ill or mentally disabled are housed specifically in state psychiatric hospitals and state licensed private psychiatric hospitals. 23. Between 1994 and 2006, the average daily population of immigrants in ICE
5

custody rose nearly six-fold, from 5,532 to approximately 27,607. 24. In FY 2006, the number of individuals detained over the course of the year reached 283,000. 25. By 2000, detained immigrants represented the fastest-growing segment of the
u.s. prison population.
26. Over time, ICE has sought additional funding and bed-space for its detention operations. 27. Detention bed· space has increased from approximately 8,300 beds in 1996 to 32,000 beds in 2008. 28. Recently, ICE's budget for custody operations has nearly doubled from $864 million in FY 2005 to $1.65 billion in FY 2008. 29. ICE has received budget enhancements to increase detention bed-space on an annual basis: approximately $104 million in FY 2006; $ 241 million in FY 2007 for an estimated 6,700 additional beds; and $250 million in FY 2008 for 4,150 additional detention beds, with 350 additional beds are funded within the State and local enhancement. For FY 2009, ICE has requested an addition $46 million for 1,000 new
beds~
30. By 2006, ICE operated approximately 330 adult detention facilities nationwide. It housed approximately 60 percent of its detainees in approximately 300 state and local jails. 31. In addition to these adult detention facilities, in 2006, ICE contracted for the operation of 19 juvenile and 3 family detention facilities. 32. Many ofthe recorded detainee abuses occur in state and local jails.
6

Early Public Controversy about Detention Conditions 33. From the 1990s to the present, the scattering of detained immigrants between INS/ICE-run facilities, private facilities, and state and local jails has led to inconsistent conditions of confinement, substandard and abusive detention conditions, and widespread detainee mistreatment. 34. Throughout the 1990s, government investigators, the media, and immigrants' rights organizations documented poor, or abusive detention conditions at a number of facilities, and at local jails in particular, including verbal and physical mistreatment by prison guards, environmental health and safety issues, inadequate medical care, and denial of access to telephones and legal materials. The 1998 Detention Standards 35. Faced with these scandals and with the problem of disparate conditions of confinement more generally, INS acknowledged the need for more uniform detention standards that would be consistent with its statutory and constitutional obligations. 36. Accordingly, in 1998, the INS issued twelve detention standards for INS Service Processing Centers and privately contracted for-profit facilities. These standards, however, did not apply to state and local jails subject to IGSAs. 37. Without binding detention standards applied uniformly to immigration detention facilities, inconsistencies continued to exist among various detention sites. 38. In particular, the failure to apply standards for detained immigrants to state and local jails led to poor conditions and more frequent abuse in those facilities than in the federal-run SPCs and the CDFs. The 2000 Detention Operations Manual
7

39. In2000, the INS and the Attorney General, in consultation with the American Bar Association ("ABA"), issued thirty-eight new national detention standards. These standards are contained in the Detention Operations Manual ("DOM"). 40. The DOM standards apply to SPCs, CDFs, and state and local IGSA facilities holding detainees for more than 72 hours.. 41. The DOM standards do not apply to IGSA facilities that house detainees for less than 72 hours (of which there were approximately 150 in July 2007). These facilities are subject only to abbreviated inspection by ICE. 42. Three years later, ICE issued its Detention and Removal Strategic Plan for 20032012, entitled "Endgame." The second listed goal of the plan was to "provide safe, secure, and humane confinement of persons detained in accordance with immigration law." To effectuate that goal, ensuring compliance with the detention standards was emphasized. 43. Nevertheless, a number of deficiencies in the DOM have limited its capacity to address detention standard violations. 44. First, the DOM standards provide merely guidelines, rather than mandatory standards, for IGSA facilities. 45. Second, the agency did not promulgate the) DOM standards as regulations. Facilities that do not comply with the DOM and that lack procedures for identifying and correcting violations of the detention standards have little incentive to come into compliance and develop mechanisms for compliance review. 46. Third, no effective enforcement mechanism exists for detainees to obtain redress of detention standard violations.
8

47. Upon information and belief, ICE ha.s never technically terminated an ISGA for noncompliance with its detention standards. 48. Fourth, according to a December 2006 DHS Office of Inspector General ("OIG")
.
report, many detention staff at facilities inspected by the OIG receive no training in, and have no familiarity with, the standards in the DOM. 49. Fifth, the DOM failed to establish any ombudsman or agency liaison to whom detainees could address grievances in writing. As a result, many abuses go unreported. The Widespread Violation of the DOM Standards 50. As a result of these deficiencies, eight years after the adoption of the DOM and four years after ICE announced its strategic plan, detention facilities across the country continue to fail fully to comply with the standards. 51. Legal service providers, the press, human rights organizations, the U.s. Commission on International Religious Freedom, congressional testimony, and DHS's own Inspector General, have consistently reported violations of the DOM standards. Violations Reported in Government Audits 52. Violations of the DOM standards have been widely reported by DHS's own Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). 53. In December 2006, the DHS OIG produced a report based upon an audit offive detention facilities: Berks County Prison in Leesport, PA; CCA Facility in San Diego, CA; Hudson County Correction Center in Kearney, NJ; Krome Service Processing Center in Miami, FL; and Passaic County Jail in Paterson, NJ. 54. The OIG report, entitled "Treatment of Immigration Detainees Housed at
9

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Facilities," identified multiple instances of noncompliance with the DOM at all five facilities, including inadequate health care, disciplinary procedures, and access to legal materials. 55. For example, the OIG reported that, at three of the five audited facilities, between forty and fifty percent of all detainee non-emergency medical requests received no response within the timeframe required by the DOM standards. 56. The OIG Report further noted that all five of the facilities had been rated as "acceptable" (and not "at risk") in ICE's most recent annual facility reviews, despite their apparent non-compliance. 57. After the ~IG's inspections and before the report was issued, ICE transferred the entire immigration detainee population at Passaic County Jail to other facilities. 58. In July 2007, the GAO reported systematic violations of the DOM standards, including those regarding access to toll-free telephone service. 59. The GAO found pervasive telephone access problems ill detention facilities, including significant difficulties in communications with consulates, pro bono legal service providers, and the DHS Office of the Inspector General complaint hotline. The Orantes Injunction and the Inadequacy ofthe Detention Standards 60. In 1988, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California enjoined routine violations of the rights of Salvadoran asylum-seekers in INS detention, requiring improved access to legal materials, attorneys and telephones, and due process guarantees for the processing and discipline of detainees. 61. In 2005, DHS moved to dissolve the injunction, arguing that the 2000 DOM implemented essentially the same protections for detainees of all nationalities.
10

62. Judge Margaret M. Morrow denied the agency's motion in nearly every respect. Reviewing voluminous evidence, the court found that there have been widespread violations in detention facilities nationwide, including lack of access to legal materials, telephones, and attorneys, and improper food and hygiene in temporary holding areasthe very concerns that necessitated the court's preliminary injunction almost two decades ago. 63. The court observed that the DOM provides detainees with no form of redress when violations occur. 64. Judge Morrow also rejected ICE's argument that its own internal agency audits demonstrated reasonable treatment of immigration detainees. Instead, the court gave "considerable weight to [the] evidence that the facility reviews have underestimatedperhaps severely-violations of the standards at the various detention centers. The ABA and UNHCR reports, for example, routinely identify deficiencies not captured by ICE facility reviewers in their annual inspections." Orantes-Hernandez v. Gonzales, 504 F.Supp.2d 825,874 (C.D.Cal. 2007). 65. Based on this extensive record, Judge Morrow found "substantial evidence. that detention center conditions are not so changed as to warrant dissolution" of most provisions of the original order. Id. at 875. The court did dissolve two provisions of the injunction, relating to legal presentations and administrative segregation. Congressional Oversight Hearing 66. Continuing substandard and abusive detention conditions have drawn the attention of Congress as well. 67. In particular, on October 4,2007, the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee
11

on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law heard testimony of advocates, experts, victims of deficient medical care in ICE detention, and relatives of people who died in ICE custody regarding the medical care of immigration detainees. The hearing testimony described the widespread delay or denial of medical care in immigration detention due to denied because of procedural barriers and medically unjustifiable health care policies. 68. Similarly, NGOs report that detainees held at state psychiatric hospitals or private, state-licensed psychiatric hospitals are denied visits-'including legal visits-telephone, and access to legal materials, and also subject to the inappropriate use of restraints and improper administration of psychotropic medications. Plaintiffs' Petition for Rulemaking 69. On January 25, 2007, in response to pervasive abuses in detention facilities across the country, Plaintiffs petitioned DRS to promulgate comprehensive, binding regulations governing detention standards for detained immigrants. Plaintiffs National Immigration Project and FFF petitioned on behalf of themselves and their individual members. 70. The Petition requested that the agency initiate a rule-making procedure, publish proposed regulations for notice and comment, and promulgate detention standards as comprehensive, enforceable regulations applicable to all facilities in DRS detains immigrants. 71. Plaintiffs explained that DRS was authorized and required to ensure proper detention conditions for immigration detainees. 72. Plaintiffs' Petition also noted the precedent set by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons ("BOP") in promulgating binding regulations over thirty years ago. BOP's experience
12

managing a national system of detention, and its decision to promulgate binding regulations, serve as an instructive model to younger agencies, like DHS, that now house tens of thousand of detainees every day in facilities across the country. 73. Plaintiffs' Petition concluded that in light of DHS's statutory, constitutional, and international law obligations to ensure adequate detention conditions for civil detainees; the extreme variation in detention conditions across the nation; the well-documented inadequacy of the existing Detention Standards to ensure humane and safe conditions for detainees; and the foreign policy implications of widespread mistreatment of detained foreign nationals, DHS's refusal to initiate a rule-making or to promulgate regulations would be arbitrary and capricious. DHS's Failure to Respond 74. Over one year later, despite the urgency of Plaintiffs' Petition, and despite DHS's awareness of persisting substandard conditions and the failure to implement DaM standards at many of its detention facilities, neither Defendant Secretary Chertoff nor any other representative ofDHS has responded to. Plaintiffs' Petition for rulemaking. 75. On August 16, 2007, Plaintiff National Immigration Project wrote to Julie L. Myers, Assistant Secretary of ICE, to inform her of DHS's failure to respond to Plaintiffs' Petition and to request a meeting. to discuss DHS's position regarding the Petition. 76. Neither Assistant Secretary Myers nor any other DHS official has responded. The Harm to Immigration Detainees Caused by DHS's Ongoing Inaction 77. As a result of DHS's unresponsiveness to Plaintiffs' Petition, immigration detainees, including members of National Immigration Project and FFF, continue to face
13

conditions of confinement that remain effectively unregulated. 78. Detention facilities nationwide continue to fail to comply with the DOM, and conditions across different detention facilities continue to vary tremendously. 79. Moreover, no effective enforcement mechanism exists for detainees to obtain redress of detention standard violations. 80. DHS is now a mature detention agency, housing thousands of immigration detainees, directly or in contract facilities. DHS has experimented with noncomprehensive, non-binding detention standards for years, but those standards have failed to ensure uniformity in detention conditions nationwide, to protect detainee rights, or to bring facilities into compliance with statutory and constitutional law. 81. Like the BOP, DHS should therefore take the next evolutionary stepin its efforts to manage its detention operations and assure that those in the agency's custody are confined in a secure, humane, and lawful manner. It should initiate a rule-making process and promulgate comprehensive, enforceable regulations that will achieve basic uniformity in the treatment of immigration detainees in all the facilities in which they are held, and guarantee that minimum standards for humane treatment are honored.
CLAIMS FOR RELIEF FIRST CLAIM FOR RELIEF (Administrative Procedures Act,S U.S.c. § 706(1)) 82. Plaintiffs repeat and incorporate by reference each and every allegation contained in the preceding paragraphs as if fully set forth herein. 83. The Administrative Procedures Act ("APA") provides a right to petition for rulemaking. 5 US.c. § 553(e). 84. At a minimum, the right to petition for rulemaking entitles a party to a reasoned
14

response on the merits of the petition. 5 U.S.c. § 555(e). 85. Such a response must occur "within a reasonable time;" Id. at § 555(b). 86. The APA also authorizes reviewing courts t6 "compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed." Id. at § 706(1). 87. Defendant Chertoffs ongoing failure to respond to Plaintiffs' Petition constitutes unlawful withholding andlor unreasonable delay within the meaning of § 706(1).
SECOND CLAIM FOR RELIEF (Administrative Procedures Act,S U.S.C. § 706(2» 88. Plaintiffs repeat and incorporate by reference each and every allegation contained in the preceding paragraphs as if fully set forth herein. 89. Defendant Chertoff, as Secretary of Homeland Security, has ultimate authority over the administration of the care and treatment of detained immigrants, pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act ("INA"). See 8 U.S.C. § 1101 et seq. 90. Defendant Chertoffs failure to respond to Plaintiffs' Petition amounts to a denial that Petition and thus a final agency action under the APA. 91. This Court may review and remedy a final agency action if "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law." 5 U.S.C. § 706(2). 92. DHS's denial of Plaintiffs' Petition is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law within the meaning of 5 U.S.C. § 706(2).
PRAYER FOR RELIEF WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs respectfully request that this Court: 93. Declare that Secretary Chertoff is in violation of the APA; 94. Direct the Secretary to initiate a rulemaking procedure and to enact' regulations
15

covering conditions of confinement for detained immigrants within a reasonable period of time; 95. In the alternative, direct the Secretary to respond to Plaintiffs' Petition, including an explanation of his decision and the reasons supporting it within thirty (30) days of the Court's order; 96. Award Plaintiffs their costs and attorneys' fees incurred in bringing this action; and 97. Grant such other relief as this Court deems just and proper.
Respectfully submitted,
91-~~ Mic1 Wishnie, Supervising Attorney (MW1952)
Prithika Balakrishnan, Law Student Intern Katherine Desormeau, Law Student Intern Lindsay Nash, Law Student Intern Marisol Orihuela, Law Student Intern Michael Tan, Law Student Intern JEROME N. FRANK LEGAL SERVICES ORGANIZATION Yale Law School P.O. Box 209090 New Haven, CT 06520-9090 Tel: (203) 432-4800 Fax: (203) 432-1426 Attorneys for Plaintiffs April 30, 2008
16

 
 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
-x
FAMILIES FOR FREEDOM et al.,

USDCSDNY

DOCU!v1ENT ELECI'RONiC-\LLY FILED

DOC #:

t:

DxrEF~ED:k~5~~

Plaintiffs,
- against -
JANET NAPOLITANO, Secretary of Homeland Security,

MEMORANDUM DECISION 08 Civ. 4056 (DC)

Defendant. :

- -x

APPEARANCES:

JEROME N. FRANK LEGAL SERVICES ORGANIZATION
By: Michael Wishnie, Esq. Anand Balakrishnan Jeffrey Kahn Lindsay Nash Law Student Interns
Attorneys for Plaintiffs Yale Law School P.O. Box 209090 New Haven, Connecticut 06520-9090

LEV L. DASSIN, Esq. Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Attorney for Defendant Janet Napolitano
By: David Bober, Esq. Assistant United States Attorney
One St. Andrew's Plaza New York, New York 10007

CHIN, District Judge

In this case, plaintiffs -- two immigrant advocacy organizations and two former immigration detainees -- contend that substandard and abusive conditions exist in facilities that

This lawsuit was commenced against Michael Chertoff, the former Secretary of Homeland Security. Pursuant to Rule 25(d) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, current Secretary Janet Napolitano has been substituted for Chertoff as the defendant in this action.

house detained immigrants. Consequently, on January 25, 2007, plaintiffs petitioned the Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 551 et ~ (the "APA"), to promulgate regulations to govern the conditions in immigration detention facilities. When DHS still had not responded more than a year later, plaintiffs sued in this Court under the APA, seeking an order requiring DHS to decide their petition, or, in the alternative, declaring that DHS's failure to respond constituted a constructive denial of their petition in violation of the APA.
DHS still has not, as of this date, granted or denied plaintiffs' petition.
DHS moves to dismiss the complaint pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b) (1) and (6) for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and standing, and for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. For the reasons set forth below, DHS's motion is denied. Moreover, I conclude that DHS's delay of almost two-and-one-half years is unreasonable as a matter of law, and order DHS to decide plaintiffs' petition within thirty days.
BACKGROUND
A. Facts The underlying facts alleged in the complaint are
assumed to be true for purposes of this motion. The procedural
facts are not in dispute.
-2-

1. Parties
Plaintiff Families for Freedom is a non-profit organization based in New York that serves immigrants and their families. (Compl. ~ 14). Plaintiff National Immigration Proj ect of the National Lawyer's Guild is a non-profit organization based in Boston that defends immigrants facing removal and incarceration. (Id. ~ 12). Plaintiff Rafiu Abimbola lS a Nigerian national who was held in DHS detention facilities for more than six years. (Id. ~ 10). Plaintiff Camal Marchabeyoglu lS a lawful permanent resident who was detained by DHS several times between 1998 and 2004. (Id. ~ 11) .
DHS is an agency of the United States responsible for, inter alia, federal immigration policy. (Id. ~ 17). Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") is a division within DHS responsible for, inter alia, detaining non-citizens accused of immigration violations. (Id. ~ 18)
2. DHS's Detention Standards
ICE operates numerous detention facilities, either itself or through private contractors. It also contracts with state, county, and local jails to house detained immigrants. (Id. ~~ 19-20) The detention of immigrants in facilities controlled by different entities "has led to inconsistent conditions of confinement, substandard and abusive detention conditions, and widespread detainee mistreatment." (rd. ~ 33) Immigrant detainees have been subjected to verbal and physical abuse and denied adequate medical care. (Id. ~ 34) .
-3-

The Immigration Naturalization Service ("INS"), the predecessor to ICE, acknowledged the problems with the immigrant detention system, and in 1998 adopted detention standards. (Id. ~ 35). These standards were inadequate, however, because they did not apply to detainees in state and local jails -- where most of the problems occur -- and so, in 2000, INS adopted new standards. (Id. ~~ 36, 39). The new standards applied to state and local jails holding immigration detainees, but only those that held detainees for more than 72 hours. (Id. ~ 40) .
In 2003, ICE issued a "Detention and Removal Strategic Plan for 2003-2012" to address continuing problems with detention facilities. (Id. ~ 42). Plaintiffs allege that the 2003 plan is inadequate, however, because it only provides guidelines -- as opposed to mandatory standards -- for detention facilities, and did not establish any enforcement mechanism. (Id. ~~ 44-46) . Moreover, ICE does not even train its employees based on the guidelines. (Id. ~ 48). The 2003 plan is the most recent set of guidelines immigration authorities have issued regarding standards in detention facilities.
Since 2003, problems in detention facilities have been persistent and widespread. In a 2006 report, the DHS Office of Inspector General issued a report detailing significant problems in ICE detention facilities. (Id. ~~ 53-57) The report found, for example, that at a number of facilities, officials did not respond to non-emergency medical requests by detainees within the time required by DHS guidelines. (Id. ~ 55). Problems with
-4 -

detainee medical care have also been chronicled by the news media, which have reported a number of instances in which immigration detainees have been seriously injured or died while in the custody of immigration authorities. See, e. g ., Dana Priest & Amy Goldstein, Suicide Points to Gaps in Treatment: Errors in Psychiatric Diagnoses and Drugs Plague Strained Immigration System, Wash. Post, May 13, 2008, at Ali Nina Bernstein, III and In Pain, Detainee Dies in u.S. Hands, N.Y. Times, Aug. 13, 2008, at Ali Nina Bernstein, Another Jail Death, and Mounting Questions, N.Y. Times, Jan. 28, 2009, at A14.
3. Plaintiffs' Petition for Rulemaking
In light of these persistent problems in detention facilities, on January 25, 2007, plaintiffs petitioned DHS, pursuant to 5 U. S. C. § 553 (e) ,;> to promulgate binding regulations governing detention conditions and standards for detained immigrants. (Compl. ~ 69) . On January 31, 2007, the American Bar Association (the "ABA") sent DHS a letter "in strong support" of plaintiffs' petition. (Bober Decl. Ex. B).
On March 19, 2007, DHS responded to the ABA's letter, stating that it would "consider" the petition, and went on to discuss in general terms DHS's efforts to ensure adequate conditions in detention facilities. (Bober Decl. Ex. C). DHS did not, however, respond directly to plaintiffs.
Section 553 (e) provides that" [e]ach agency shall give an interested person the right to petition for the issuance, amendment, or repeal of a rule."
-5-

B. Procedural History
Plaintiffs filed the complaint in this action on April 30, 2008, invoking the Court's jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331, and asserting two claims. First, they claim that DHS's delay in responding to their petition was unreasonable and asked the Court, pursuant to Section 706(1) of the APA, to compel DHS to respond. (Comp l . ~~ 82-87). Second, they claim that DHS's failure to respond constituted a constructive denial that was "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not In accordance with law." (Id. ~~ 88-92).
On July 15, 2008, two-and-one-half months after plaintiffs filed this lawsuit, and almost eighteen months after plaintiffs submitted their petition, DHS finally communicated with plaintiffs. (Bober Decl. Ex. D). DHS wrote a letter to plaintiffs stating that "DHS and ICE continue to study the possibility of commencing a rulemaking action" and discussing, In general terms, DHS's efforts to improve conditions in detention facilities. (Id.). While the letter is a "response" within the literal meaning of the word, the letter does not grant or deny plaintiffs' petition.
DHS moved to dismiss on October 15, 2008. I held oral argument on December 18, 2008, and reserved decision, as I urged the parties to try to resolve the matter.
On December 30, 2008, DHS informed the Court that it would issue a final decision on plaintiffs' petition by January 16, 2009, and requested that the Court refrain from ruling on
-6-

DHS's motion in the interim. On January 16, 2009, DHS requested an additional five days to issue its decision. On January 21, 2009, DHS informed the Court that, while its previous letters were accurate representations of DHS's position "at the time," it could neither meet the January 21, 2009 deadline nor "commit to a specific date by which it will render a final decision on plaintiffs' petition." (1/21/09 Ltr. at 1)
DISCUSSION
DHS moves to dismiss on three grounds. First, it argues that plaintiffs' complaint amounts to a "broad programmatic attack" of agency action that is precluded from judicial review under the APA. Second, it argues that there is no "final action" for the Court to review because DHS has not yet responded to plaintiffs' petition. Finally, DHS argues that plaintiffs lack standing to pursue their claims.
DHS's arguments are all directed at plaintiffs' second cause of action. Plaintiffs, in opposition to DHS's motion to dismiss, argue principally that the relief they seek is on their first cause of action -- that DHS either grant or deny their petition. They argue that, under 5 U.S.C. § 555(b), an agency presented with a petition for rulemaking must, at a minimum, respond to that petition, and that the petitioning party has standing to compel a response unreasonably withheld.
For the reasons that follow, DHS's motion to dismiss is denied. Moreover, I conclude that plaintiffs are entitled to judgment in their favor as to the first count of their complaint.
-7-

Specifically, I conclude that DHS is required to grant or deny plaintiffs' petition, and that its delay in doing so is unreasonable as a matter of law.
Because I find for plaintiffs on the first count of their complaint, I dismiss as moot, and without prejudice, the second count. A. DHS's Motion to Dismiss

Courts differ as to whether a motion to dismiss an

action brought under 5 U.S.C. § 706(1) lS based on lack of

standing, subject matter jurisdiction, or failure to state a

claim. See Norton v. S. Utah Wilderness Alliance, 542 U.S. 55,

73 (2004) (upholding district court's dismissal for lack of

subject matter jurisdiction) i Ctr. for Biological Diversity v.

Veneman, 394 F.3d 1108, 1113 (9th Cir. 2005) (affirming dismissal

for lack of standing) i Friends of the Earth v. U.S. Deplt of

Interior, 478 F. Supp. 2d 11, 23 (D.D.C. 2007) (IIA dismissal for

failure to satisfy the APA's requirements for judicial review of

agency action is thus a dismissal for failure to state a claim

under Rule 12(b) (6), not a dismissal for want of subject matter

juri sdict ion under Rule 12 (b) (1)

. II) .

Here, DHS cites all three grounds as the basis of its

motion to dismiss. In essence, however, DHS is moving to dismiss

for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.

At oral argument, DHS conceded

correctly

that plaintiffs,

as the parties who submitted a petition for rulemaking to DHS,

have standing as to their first cause of action. (See 12/18/08

-8-

Tr. at 22) . As to subject matter jurisdiction, it is conferred

by 28 U.S.C. § 1331, as this case arises under a federal statute

namely, the APA. See 28 U.S.C. § 1331 ("The district courts

shall have original jurisdiction of all civil actions arising

under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United

States. ") . Moreover, the Court also has subject matter

jurisdiction over this case because the United States is a

defendant. See 28 U.S.C. § 1346(a) (2) ("The district courts

shall have original jurisdiction .

of

[a]ny other civil

action or claim against the United States, not exceeding $10,000

in amount, founded either upon the Constitution, or any Act of

Congress.") . Accordingly, the Court treats DHS's motion as one

to dismiss under 12 (b) (6) .

I now turn to the two claims in plaintiffs' complaint.

B. Plaintiffs' First Claim

Not only do I conclude that plaintiffs have stated a claim as to their first cause of action, I conclude that they are entitled to judgment in their favor as a matter of law.'
1. Is DHS Reguired to Respond to a Petition for Rulemaking?

The APA expressly grants any "interested person" the right to petition a federal agency "for the issuance, amendment, or repeal of a rule." See 5 U. S.C. § 553 (e) . A federal agency

A district court has the inherent authority to undertake an independent review of the record before it and enter judgment in favor of either party. See First Fin. Ins. Co. v. Allstate Interior Demolition Corp., 193 F.3d 109, 115 (2d Cir. 1999) (holding, in context of summary judgment, that court may enter judgment for either moving or non-moving party) .
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presented with such a petition lS required to decide the petition, "within a reasonable time. II See 5 U.S.C. § 555(b) ("With due regard for the convenience and necessity of the parties or their representatives and within a reasonable time, each agency shall proceed to conclude a matter presented to it.") (emphasis added); In re Am. Rivers & Idaho Rivers United, 372 F.3d 413, 418-19 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (holding that, under APA, federal agency must respond to rulemaking petition); Richard J. Pierce, Jr., Administrative Law Treatise § 6.10 (4th ed. 2002) ("At a minimum, the right to petition for rulemaking entitles a petitioning party to a response to the merits of the petition.") If an agency fails to respond to a petition, courts have the authority to "compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed. " 5 U.S.C. § 706 (1).
Thus, it is clear that DHS is required to at least definitively respond to plaintiffs' petition -- that is, to either deny or grant the petition. Indeed, DHS conceded this point at oral argument. (See 12/18/08 Tr. at 6). It is also undisputed that, as of this writing, DHS has neither denied nor granted plaintiffs' petition. (DHS Mem. at 1 ("DHS has neither granted nor denied the petition."); 12/18/08 Tr. at 6; 1/21/09 Ltr. at 1 (referencing fact that DHS has not issued a final decision on petition)). The only question remaining, then, is whether DHS's delay in answering the petition is unreasonable as a matter of law.
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2. Is DHS's Delay Unreasonable Under the APA?
In Telecommunications Research and Action Center v.
FCC, 750 F. 2d 70 (D. C. Cir. 1984) ("TRAC"), the District of
Columbia Circuit established a six-factor test for courts to
consider in determining whether a federal agency's failure to
respond to a petition is unreasonable under the APA. The TRAC
factors are as follows:
(1) the time agencies take to make decisions must be governed by a rule of reason; (2) where Congress has provided a timetable or other indication of the speed with which it expects the agency to proceed in the enabling statute, that statutory scheme may supply content for this rule of reason; (3) delays that might be reasonable in the sphere of economic regulation are less tolerable when human health and welfare are at stake; (4) the court should consider the effect of expediting delayed action on agency activities of a higher or competing priority; (5) the court should also take into account the nature and extent of the interests prejudiced by delay; and (6) the court need not find any impropriety lurking behind agency lassitude in order to hold that agency action is unreasonably delayed.
Id. at 80. The D.C. Circuit's decision in TRAC has been widely
followed by federal courts. See, e.g., Brower v. Evans, 257 F.3d
1058, 1068 (9th Cir. 2001) (following TRAC); Wellesley v. FERC,
829 F.2d 275, 277 (1st Cir. 1987) (same); Assadzadeh v. Mueller,
No. 07 Civ. 2676, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 80915, at *15 (E.D. Pa.
Oct. 30, 2007) (following TRAC and referring to it as "seminal"
test for unreasonable delay); Natural Res. Def. Council v. Fox,
93 F. Supp. 2d 531, 543 (S.D.N.Y. 2000) (following TRAC).
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Applying the TRAC factors, I conclude that DHS's nearly two-and-one-half year delay in deciding plaintiffs' petition is unreasonable as a matter of law.
As to the first factor -- which the D.C. Circuit has characterized as the "most important," In re Core Communs., Inc., 531 F.3d 849, 855 (D.C. Cir. 2008) -- applying a rule of reason compels the conclusion that DHS's delay is unreasonable. The D.C. Circuit has held that, while" [t]here is no per se rule as to how long is too long to wait for agency action, [] a reasonable time for agency action is typically counted in weeks or months, not years." In re Am. Rivers & Idaho Rivers United, 372 F.3d at 419 (internal citation and quotations omitted). It is unreasonable for DHS to take years to decide whether it intends to commence rulemaking regarding standards for detention facilities, given the gravity of the problems plaintiffs describe. Its delay in even responding to plaintiffs "saps the public's confidence in an agency's ability to discharge its responsibilities," and therefore runs afoul of the APA. Potomac Elec. Power Co. v. Interstate Commerce Comm'n, 702 F.2d 1026, 1034 (D.C. Cir. 1983).
The second factor is neutral, as there lS no indication that Congress has established a timetable within which DHS must render a decision.
As to the third factor, concerns of human health and welfare are undeniably at stake. Indeed, plaintiffs allege that detainees in DHS custody are dying as a result of the substandard
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conditions under which they are held. Plaintiffs' claim clearly implicates concerns of human health and welfare, making DHS's delay in responding to the petition that much more egregious. See Fox, 93 F. Supp. 2d at 544 (court should only compel agency action under 706 (1) where delay is '" egregious ''') (quoting TRAC, 750 F.2d at 79).
As to the fourth factor, expediting DHS's decision in this respect surely would not interfere with any "agency activities of a higher or competing priority," TRAC, 750 F.2d at 80, for the concerns raised by plaintiffs are of the utmost importance.
As to the fifth factor, as discussed in the context of factor three, at issue here is the health and welfare of detainees in DHS custody, and thus the risk of prejudice due to further delay is severe.
As to the sixth factor, there is no suggestion that there has been any impropriety, and thus this factor is neutral.
DHS argues that its delay in deciding plaintiffs' petition is not unreasonable, and it cites cases in which courts have held that delays of several years are reasonable. DHS acknowledges, however, that there is no per se rule as to whether a given delay is reasonable, and that courts must determine the reasonableness of delay based on the totality of the circumstances. (DHS Reply at 6 n. 2) .
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Here, considering the TRAC factors and the totality of the circumstances of this case, I hold, as a matter of law, that DHS's almost two-and-one-half year delay is unreasonable.
3. Remedy

"When an administrative agency simply refuses to act upon an application, the proper remedy -- if any -- is an order compelling agency action, not plenary review of the application by a district court." McHugh v. Rubin, 220 F.3d 53, 61 (2d Cir. 2000). Accordingly, I hereby order DHS to grant or deny plaintiffs' complaint within thirty days of entry of judgment.
C. Plaintiffs' Second Claim

Because I hold that DHS has not yet responded to plaintiffs' petition within the meaning of the APA, plaintiffs' claim that DHS's response constitutes a constructive denial is dismissed, without prejudice, as moot.
CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, DHS's motion to dismiss is

denied. DHS is hereby ordered to respond to plaintiffs' petition

within thirty days. Plaintiffs' second claim is dismissed,

without prejudice, as moot. The Clerk of Court is directed to

enter judgment accordingly and to close the case.

SO ORDERED.

Dated:

New York, New York June 25, 2009

I

DENNYCHINC· United States District Judge

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 nat ional
IMMIGRATION
p roject
of the National Lawyers Guild
14 Beacon Street, Ste. 602 Boston, MA 02108 Phone 617 227 9727 Fax 617 227 5495

For more information, contact Paromita Shah at (202)271-2286 or Marisol Orihuela at (404) 625-2307 (Spanish).

IMMIGRATION DETAINEES AND ADVOCACY GROUPS SUE HOMELAND SECURITY FOR COMPREHENSIVE AND ENFORCEABLE IMMIGRATION DETENTION STANDARDS
Widespread and systematic abuses in immigration detention persist due to lack of regulations
April 30, 2008
NEW YORK, NY – Former detained immigrants and advocacy groups filed suit today against Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), demanding that DHS issue comprehensive and enforceable regulations governing detention standards for immigration detainees. At present, no federally-mandated regulations exist, resulting in inconsistent and substandard living conditions, grossly inadequate medical care, and the widespread abuse of detainee rights.
“DHS is one of the largest jailers in the world,” said Paromita Shah, Associate Director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, one of the plaintiffs in the suit. “But it behaves like a lawless local sheriff. The refusal to adopt comprehensive, binding regulations has contributed to a system in which thousands of immigration detainees are routinely denied necessary medical care, visitation, legal materials, or functioning telephones.”
“I was detained for six years,” said Rafiu Abimbola, one of the detainee plaintiffs. “The telephones frequently did not work and legal materials were unavailable or out of date. Because I was managing my case on my own, this was extremely hard for me. DHS did not attempt to fix these problems. When I complained to the jail, I never received a response, and sometimes was punished for complaining. There are no consequences to the government for failing to obey its own standards.”
Last year, DHS detained approximately 300,000 immigrants, primarily based on charges of non-criminal immigration violations. On any given day, DHS holds approximately 30,000 immigrants in custody. Nevertheless, the treatment of immigration detainees is currently only governed by a DHS detention manual, which is neither legally enforceable nor universally applied. Recent government reports have documented patterns of noncompliance with the detention manual, and last year former detainees and advocates attested to the inadequate medical care at detention facilities at a congressional hearing.
“The DHS manual fails to address basic aspects of detention,” said Janis Roseheuvel, director of Families for Freedom, one the plaintiffs in the suit. “And what standards the

manual does include are weak and unenforceable. How many more people must suffer before DHS starts to behave like the mature warden it has become?” The need for enforceable, uniform standards is especially critical in light of the patchwork system currently employed to house detainees: in addition to using of its own facilities, DHS contracts with local jails and privately operated prisons for this purpose. Detention regulations, the lawsuit contends, are necessary to ensure humane and uniform treatment of detainees and prevent future violations. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, specifically demands that DHS fulfill its obligation under the Administrative Procedures Act (“APA”) to respond to a January 2007 petition submitted asking that DHS develop detention regulations—a petition that, over one year later, DHS continues to ignore. The plaintiffs seek a court order requiring DHS to begin the rulemaking process, or at the very least, explain why it has not done so. Plaintiffs—the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers’ Guild, Families For Freedom, and two former detained immigrants—are represented by the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization at Yale Law School.
2

 
 Yale Law School
Michael J. Wishnie Clinical Professor of Law
January 24, 2007 Michael Chertoff Secretary U.S. Department of Homeland Security 245 Murray Lane, SW Washington, D.C. 20528
Re: Petition to initiate rule-making Dear Secretary Chertoff:
The National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, American Immigration Lawyers Association, American Immigration Law Foundation Legal Action Center, Casa de Proyecto Libertad, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc., Families for Freedom, National Immigrant Justice Center, and eighty-four individual immigration detainees hereby petition the Department of Homeland Security to initiate a rulemaking proceeding pursuant to the Administrative Procedures Act, 5 U.S.C. § 553, to promulgate regulations governing detention standards for immigration detainees. The petition is enclosed.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Michael J. Wishnie Counsel for petitioners
cc: Julie Myers, Assistant Secretary, DHS Philip J. Perry, General Counsel, DHS
P.O. BOX 209090, NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT 06520-9090 • TELEPHONE 203 432-4800 • FACSIMILE 203 432-1426 COURIER ADDRESS 127 WALL STREET, NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT 06511 • EMAIL MICHAEL.WISHNIE@YALE.EDU

PETITION FOR RULE-MAKING TO
PROMULGATE REGULATIONS GOVERNING DETENTION STANDARDS
FOR IMMIGRATION DETAINEES
SUBMITTED TO
THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
JANUARY 25, 2007
National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers’ Guild, American Immigration Lawyers’ Association, American Immigration Law Foundation Legal Action Center, Casa de Proyecto Libertad, Catholic Legal Immigration Network,
Inc., Families for Freedom, National Immigrant Justice Center,
and
Rafiu Abimbola, Flavio de Jusus Acosta, Roberto Aguilar, Antonio Aleman, Luis Aleman, Fidel Amaya, Victor Amaya, Adalberto Andrade, Martin Arego, Francisco Duran Armas, Josue Baeza, Joseph Bailey, Jose Baldazo, Valentin Barrita, Dimas
Batista, Jose Bernabe, Emiliano Bernal, Andrew Burrell, Angel Carillo, Diego Cervantes, Enrique Cruz, Francisco A. Cruz, Gustavo Cruz, Joao DaSilva, Josue Diaz, Augusto Reynoso Domindo, Luis Estrada, Rafael Estrada, Daniel Fernandez,
Rosalio Flores-Flores, Solomon Garcia Flores, John Fraser, David Freeman, Evarado Polo Garcia, Fernando Garcia, Francisco Garcia, Fredi Garcia, Jose Garcia, Jair Gomes, Alejandro Gutierrez, Oscar Gutierrez, Andrew Hango, Esteban Hernandez-Hernandez, Jose Ramirez Hernandez, Ruben Hernandez, Luis Islas, Kykhoun Kham, Wilson Romero Lara, Hilario Lopez, Alfredo Machado, Camal Marchabeyoglu, Carlos Martinez, Jaime Martinez, Miguel Perez Martinez, Israel Mateo, Josue Maye, Juan Maye, Pedro Maye, Augusto Moreira, Pastor Paredes, Alfredo Perez, Edwin Pineda, Guillermo Polo, Carlos Reyes, Jose Reyes, Richard Reyes, Jose Rivera, Claudio H. Rodriguez, Armando Acosta Rojas, Luis Rojo, Virgilio Romero, Domingo Rosa, Rafael Saavedra, Raul Sanchez, Jacobo Santiago, Carlos E. Lanza Sevilla, Carlos Soto, Boima Stevens, George Thompson, Yysyfy Touray, Baltazar Vasquez, Jorge Garcia Vazquez, Juan Vieya, and Kenyatta
Wilkinson,
Immigration detainees.

I.

STATEMENT OF PETITION

The National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild (“National Immigration Project”), American Immigration Lawyers Association, American Immigration Law Foundation Legal Action Center, Casa de Proyecto Libertad, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc., Families for Freedom, National Immigrant Justice Center, and eighty-four individual immigration detainees hereby petition the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) to initiate a rulemaking proceeding pursuant to the Administrative Procedures Act, 5 U.S.C. § 553, to promulgate regulations governing detention standards for immigration detainees. The Secretary of Homeland Security has ultimate authority over the administration of all immigration-related laws, including the care and treatment of immigration detainees, pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. §§ 1103(a)(1), (3); see also id. § 1103(a)(11).1

II. STATEMENT OF INTEREST

The National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, a legal support group specializing in defending the rights of immigrants facing deportation and incarceration. Through the Keeping Hope Alive (KHA) program, the National Immigration Project provides legal support to immigration detainees, including monitoring human rights abuses at detention facilities, working to improve facility conditions, and providing legal resources to detainees and the general public. The Keeping Hope Alive program for immigration detainees provides legal representation to detainees facing deportation as well as legal assistance with class action lawsuits on behalf of abused detainees.2 Through this work, the National Immigration Project has observed grave problems with detention conditions that point to the need for regulations. These problems include physical and sexual abuse of detainees, inadequate medical care, lack of access to legal materials, needless difficulty in communicating with counsel, violations of religious freedom, and serious problems with phone access, often a detainee’s only window of communication with the outside world.

1 Section 1103(a)(11)(A) authorizes the Attorney General to use appropriated funds for “necessary clothing, medical care, necessary guard hire, and the housing, care, and security of persons detained by the Service pursuant to Federal law” in agreements with states or localities. See also id. § 1103(a)(11)(B) (authorizing Attorney General to enter into agreements with states or localities for “necessary construction, physical renovation, acquisition of equipment, supplies or materials required to establish acceptable conditions of confinement and detention services” in states or localities providing bed space for immigrant detainees.) To the extent that § 1103(a)(11) relates to the detention of immigrants, the function has been transferred from DOJ to DHS. See 6 U.S.C. § 251(2),(establishing that reference to “the Attorney General” is now read as “the Secretary of Homeland Security”); see also id. § 557 (“With respect to any function transferred by or under this chapter . . . reference in any other Federal law to . . . any officer . . . the functions of which are so transferred shall be deemed to refer to the Secretary [of Homeland Security]”). Petitioners recognize that in 2000, Congress appropriated funds to establish the Office of Federal Detention Trustee (OFDT) to assist in coordinating some matters related to federal detainees. Congress has not transferred any authority from DHS to OFDT to regulate conditions of confinement for immigration detainees. Therefore, this petition is directed to DHS. 2 National Immigration Project 2004 Annual Report.
1

The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) is a national, voluntary bar association of over 10,000 attorneys, practicing and teaching in the field of immigration law. AILA was established to promote justice, advocate for fair and reasonable immigration law and policy, advance the quality of immigration and nationality law and practice, and enhance the professional development of its members. AILA is deeply concerned about conditions of immigration detention and has long advocated for reasonable and enforceable detention standards.
The American Immigration Law Foundation (AILF) is a non-profit organization founded in 1987 to increase public understanding of immigration law and policy, to promote public service and professional excellence in the immigration law field, and to advance fundamental fairness, due process, and basic constitutional and human rights in immigration law and administration. The AILF Legal Action Center conducts national impact litigation; writes amicus curiae briefs; produces practice advisories on a wide variety of topics; conducts the Litigation Institute and other legal educational programs; and mentors, coordinates and provides technical support for lawyers litigating due process and fairness issues in family, removal and business cases nationwide.
Casa de Proyecto Libertad, of Harlingen, Texas was founded in 1981 to provide legal defense and advocacy to Central American immigrants seeking asylum in the United States. Proyecto Libertad has evolved from a Central American project into a community based organization that assists immigrant families living in the Rio Grande Valley. The mission of Casa de Proyecto Libertad is to promote and defend the human rights of immigrant families in the Rio Grande Valley through legal defense and community organizing. Proyecto Libertad believes that all persons -- Proyecto Libertad clients, constituents, members of the public, and Proyecto Libertad employees -- have the right to be respected, live with dignity, and enjoy well-being.
The Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (“CLINIC”), a subsidiary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), is the nation's largest charitable legal agency for immigrants. CLINIC supports a national network of 161 charitable immigration programs. These programs, in turn, offer low-cost and pro bono legal services out of 261 offices nationwide. CLINIC directly represents immigrant detainees in several sites. It also co-founded the Detention Watch Network, a national network of agencies that serve immigrants in DHS custody. Based on its extensive experience with the DHS detention system, CLINIC has long advocated for the promulgation of a federal regulation that would govern the conditions and treatment of immigrant detainees.
Founded in September 2002, Families for Freedom (“FFF”) is a multi-ethnic defense network for immigrant families facing deportation, and an organizing support center for targeted communities. A New York-area network of support, education and action, FFF members are primarily low-income people of color, current and former detainees, loved ones of people being deported and individuals at-risk of deportation based on immigration status. FFF provides direct support to detainees and their families, conducts outreach in the most affected communities and raises public awareness about the deportation system and the erosion of immigrants’ civil rights. FFF regularly
2

corresponds with immigrant detainees and documents detention conditions to members of Congress, the Department of Homeland Security, consulates and embassies, and the media.
The National Immigrant Justice Center (“NIJC”) specializes in the legal representation of noncitizens held in government detention, including immigrants, asylum seekers, victims of domestic and gender-based violence, and unaccompanied children. In addition to providing legal services, NIJC regularly offers legal orientation "Know Your Rights" presentations to detained immigrants to ensure that they are aware of the reasons for their detention and of their basic rights. Drawing upon the thousands of cases handled by our staff and pro bono attorneys, NIJC works to remedy injustice through litigation and public education.
The individual immigration detainees, each of whom is now or recently was confined in DHS custody at Oakdale Federal Detention Center, Oakdale, Louisiana; Corrections Corp. of America San Diego Correctional Facility, San Diego, California; Etowah County Jail, Gadsden, Alabama; or other facilities, are: Rafiu Abimbola, Flavio de Jusus Acosta, Roberto Aguilar, Antonio Aleman, Luis Aleman, Fidel Amaya, Victor Amaya, Adalberto Andrade, Martin Arego, Francisco Duran Armas, Josue Baeza, Joseph Bailey, Jose Baldazo, Valentin Barrita, Dimas Batista, Jose Bernabe, Emiliano Bernal, Andrew Burrell, Angel Carillo, Diego Cervantes, Enrique Cruz, Francisco A. Cruz, Gustavo Cruz, Joao DaSilva, Josue Diaz, Augusto Reynoso Domindo, Luis Estrada, Rafael Estrada, Daniel Fernandez, Rosalio Flores-Flores, Solomon Garcia Flores, John Fraser, David Freeman, Evarado Polo Garcia, Fernando Garcia, Francisco Garcia, Fredi Garcia, Jose Garcia, Jair Gomes, Alejandro Gutierrez, Oscar Gutierrez, Andrew Hango, Esteban Hernandez-Hernandez, Jose Ramirez Hernandez, Ruben Hernandez, Luis Islas, Kykhoun Kham, Wilson Romero Lara, Hilario Lopez, Alfredo Machado, Camal Marchabeyoglu, Carlos Martinez, Jaime Martinez, Miguel Perez Martinez, Israel Mateo, Josue Maye, Juan Maye, Pedro Maye, Augusto Moreira, Pastor Paredes, Alfredo Perez, Edwin Pineda, Guillermo Polo, Carlos Reyes, Jose Reyes, Richard Reyes, Jose Rivera, Claudio H. Rodriguez, Armando Acosta Rojas, Luis Rojo, Virgilio Romero, Domingo Rosa, Rafael Saavedra, Raul Sanchez, Jacobo Santiago, Carlos E. Lanza Sevilla, Carlos Soto, Boima Stevens, George Thompson, Yysyfy Touray, Baltazar Vasquez, Jorge Garcia Vazquez, Juan Vieya, and Kenyatta Wilkinson.
III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF DETENTION STANDARDS FOR IMMIGRATION DETAINEES
Explosive growth in the numbers of non-citizens in immigration detention across the country has resulted in inconsistent conditions of confinement and repeated incidents of detainee abuse. Though federal immigration authorities adopted generalized detention standards in 1998 and 2000, these standards do not apply to all immigration detainees and are not fully enforceable even by those detainees to whom the standards do apply. In particular, observers report problems in local jails where a substantial proportion of the detained population is held. Earlier this month, an audit by DHS’s own Inspector General found widespread violations of detention standards concerning medical care,
3

environmental health and safety, detainee grievance procedures, access to legal materials, access to telephones, housing classifications, recreation, and other topics in five facilities audited.3 This report also demonstrated that the agency’s existing system for monitoring detention conditions is severely deficient. The lack of enforcement and ineffectiveness of the existing standards confirm the need for DHS to promulgate legally binding regulations to ensure the uniform and humane treatment of immigration detainees.
A. Explosive Growth in the Detention of Immigrants
The responsibility to detain non-citizens accused of immigration violations rests with the Office of Detention and Removal (“DRO”), a division of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) within the Department of Homeland Security. ICE secures facilities and DRO carries out and monitors the detention process. ICE operates eight detention facilities, known as Service Processing Centers (“SPCs”), and contracts with seven additional facilities, known as Contract Detention Facilities (“CDFs”).
In 1987, the predecessor to ICE, the Immigration Naturalization Service (“INS”), began contracting with local jails to house long-term detainees, after a riot occurred at a detention facility in Louisiana and detainees were dispersed to local jails.4 The practice of contracting with local jails via Intergovernmental Service Agreements (“IGSAs”) was further expanded in response to a dramatic rise in the immigrant detainee population. Between 1994 and 2001, the average daily population of immigrant detainees rose from 5,532 to 19,533.5 In 2000, immigration detainees represented the fastest-growing segment of the United States’ prison population.6 Such a rapid increase put substantial pressure on INS-run detention centers. Even the CDFs, private facilities contracted by the INS to house detainees, could not absorb the rising numbers of detainees. INS concluded that dispersing detainees to local jails would be the best solution.
By 2000, approximately 225 local jails housed almost 60 percent of all INS detainees.7 In 2005, Congress authorized a $90 million dollar increase in ICE appropriations for detention beds.8 Currently, IGSAs allow ICE to place in local and state facilities detainees set to be held 72 hours or longer. ICE compensates these local jails on a per diem basis. Much of the recorded detainee abuses occur in these local jails.
3 Department of Homeland Security, Office of Inspector General, Treatment of Immigration Detainees Housed at Immigration and Customs Enforcement Facilities (released Jan. 16. 2007) [hereafter DHS OIG Report], available at http://www.dhs.gov/xoig/assets/mgmtrpts/OIG_07-01_Dec06.pdf. 4 Chris Hedges, “Policy to Protect Jailed Immigrants is adopted by U.S.,” The New York Times, Jan. 2, 2001, A1. 5 Mark Dow, American Gulag 9 (Univ. of California Press 2004). 6 Hedges, supra note 4 at A1. 7 Hedges, supra note 4; Human Rights Watch, Locked Away: Immigration Detainees in Jails in the United States (Sept. 1998), available at http://www.hrw.org/reports98/us-immig/ [hereafter Human Rights Watch, Locked Away]. 8 Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, Homeland Security Department: FY 2006 Appropriations, p. 26 (June 29, 2005), available at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL32863.pdf.
4

Anger and frustration about detention conditions have also resulted in uprisings, episodic violence, and hunger strikes.9
B. Public Concern about Detention Conditions
Several high-profile incidents about poor or abusive immigrant detention conditions arose in the 1990s. These included a 1995 uprising by INS detainees at the Elizabeth, New Jersey facility run by Esmore Inc. (now Correctional Services Corp., or “CSC”), which resulted in injuries, extensive damage to the detention center, media scrutiny of deplorable immigration detention conditions,10 and costly civil litigation.11 An INS investigation later reported that “detainees were subjected to harassment, verbal abuse, and other degrading actions”12 and concluded that “some of the decisions made by Esmore had a serious negative impact upon relations between the INS and the general public since, in the public perception, INS is inextricably linked to the operations of the Elizabeth facility.”13
In a second example, alarming allegations about detention conditions at a detention facility in Florida prompted the Congressional Task Force on Immigration Reform in 1995 to send a fact-finding mission to the Krome SPC facility near Miami.14 The facility managers allegedly endeavored to deceive the Congressional visitors about detention conditions at the facility with a Potemkin-inspired plan to reduce the detention population by 40% through temporary transfers, releases, and deportation. The ensuing scandal prompted an Inspector General audit of conditions in detention facilities. 15
C. The 1998 Detention Standards
In addition to public revelations about abuses and deplorable conditions in detention, concern was raised that the widespread dispersion of immigrant detainees across the country created difficulties in assuring uniform, just treatment of all detainees. In response to these problems, INS in 1998 issued twelve detention standards for INS Service Processing Centers and privately contracted for-profit facilities. These standards, however, did not apply to local jails. Later the same year, a senior INS official shed light
9 Human Rights Watch, Locked Away. 10 John Sullivan, “Operator of Immigration Jails Has a History of Problems,” New York Times, June 20, 1995, p.A1. 11 Three separate federal suits were filed. A partial settlement required a $2.5 million payment to plaintiffs. See Jama v. U.S.I.N.S., 343 F. Supp. 2d 348 (D.N.J. 2004). Esmore lost its federal contract to operate the Elizabeth facility. The detention center reopened in 1997 and is now operated by another private company, Corrections Corp. of America (“CCA”). 12 U.S. INS, Headquarters Detention and Deportation Division, "The Elizabeth, New Jersey Contract Detention Facility Operated by ESMORE Inc.: Interim Report," July 20, 1995. 13 Id. 14 See Miami INS Report – III. The Allegations Concerning Krome; available at http://usdoj.gov/oig//special/9606/miafile4.htm. 15 See USDOJ/OIG Special Report - Alleged Deception of Congress: The Congressional Task Force on Immigration Reform’s Fact-Finding Visit to the Miami District of INS in June 1995 Executive Summary, available at http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/9606/exec.htm.
5

on INS’s reasons for not applying standards to IGSA facilities, stating, “It’s not in the INS’s interest to force the jails to meet certain standards because we need the space.”16
Without binding detention standards applied uniformly on behalf of all people in immigration detention, grave inconsistencies continued to exist among the various detention sites. In particular, failure to enforce standards for immigration detainees in local IGSA jails led to poorer conditions and more frequent abuse than in the federal-run SPCs and the CDFs. In the case of asylum seekers, for example, former INS Commissioner Doris Meissner acknowledged in a Senate hearing that documented cases of abuse had occurred exclusively in state and local facilities.17 Detainees in local facilities across the country, including New Orleans, Chicago, and Los Angeles, filed a law suit alleging physical assaults, overcrowding, lack of working showers and toilets, and inadequate medical care.18 In August 2000, around two dozen detainees from the Hudson County Correctional Center in Kearny, New Jersey, sent a letter to INS claiming they were held in cells where “human waste was clearly visible over the floors and toilets.”19 Hundreds of cases of abuse were documented by human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, the Catholic Legal Immigration Network and the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights’ Project.20
D. The 2000 Detention Operations Manual
To mitigate future abuses, the INS and Attorney General, with the help of the ABA, drafted and approved thirty-six detention standards, which were released in November 2000 as the Detention Operations Manual (“DOM”).21 The DOM standards apply to SPCs, CDFs, and IGSA facilities holding detainees for more than 72 hours.22 The DOM merely serves as guidelines for IGSA facilities, however. 23
With the release of the DOM, then-INS Commissioner Doris Meissner stated, “Our continued goal is to provide safe, secure and humane conditions of detention for all aliens in INS custody, and these new standards will help us achieve that.” 24 However,
16 Human Rights Watch, Locked Away. 17INS Reform and Oversight of Detention Facilities: Hearing before Senate Immigration Subcommittee, 105th Cong. (1998) (statement of Doris Meissner, INS Commissioner). 18 Hedges, supra note 4. 19 Id. 20 Id. 21 INS News Release- INS to Adopt New Detention Standards, (Nov. 13, 2000), available at http://www.uscis.gov/text/publicaffairs/newsrels/detainee.htm 22 Since then, the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Commission on Immigration has created a Detention Standards Implementation Initiative to urge facilities to consistently implement existing standards. 23 “IGSA facilities may find such procedures useful as guidelines. IGSAs may adopt, adapt, or establish alternatives to, the procedures specified for SPCs/CDFs, provided they meet or exceed the objective represented by each standard.” Detention Operations Manual, “INS Detention Standard: Hold Rooms in Detention Facilities,” (2000). By contrast, IGSA facilities functioning primarily as criminal detention facilities must adhere to standards outlined in the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) Justice Core Standards. 24 INS News Release- INS to Adopt New Detention Standards, (Nov. 13, 2000), available at http://www.uscis.gov/text/publicaffairs/newsrels/detainee.htm
6

INS did not adopt the detention standards as regulations, making them difficult to enforce. Facilities that fail to adhere to the standards are rarely held accountable.
In 2003, six detainees at the Passaic County Jail staged a hunger strike to protest the substandard conditions at the jail. These detainees stated, “We are being held without adequate ventilation, in unclean and unhealthy quarters.”25 Jail Warden Charles Meyers responded, “They’re treated professionally, but they’re in jail. This isn’t camp, and they’re not Boy Scouts.”26
Yet the substandard conditions at Passaic continued to attract media attention. In 2004, National Public Radio investigated the use of dogs at the Passaic County jail.27 In the report, a detainee named Hemnauth Mohabir described how prison guards beat detainees and used dogs in order to threaten them, reminding all listeners of the images of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.28 Most recently, Nina Bernstein of The New York Times has continued to report on the use of dogs in Passaic County jail.29
Detention problems have of course not been limited to New Jersey. The DHS Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) recently audited five detention facilities (Krome, Passaic, Hudson, CCA, and Berks), and identified numerous instances of non-compliance with the DOM.30 In addition, in January 2006 the DHS Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Committee31 requested that the OIG perform a detention audit focusing on five particularly important areas: telephone access, visitation rights, medical care, access to legal materials, and transfers.
E. The Next Step: Promulgation of Regulations
Clearly, without meaningful enforcement, the DOM alone is insufficient to assure uniform and human treatment of detainees. Opportunities for redress when facilities fail to adhere to detention standards depend largely on detainees asserting themselves, perhaps with the assistance of a family member or legal advocate. ICE compliance with the DOM is lacking and many detention staff have no knowledge of the standards in the DOM. Furthermore, detainees cannot address grievances in writing to an ombudsman or ICE liaison.32 Despite ICE’s monitoring of conditions, widespread reports of abuse
25 Elizabeth Llorente, “INS Detainees in Hunger Strike at Passaic Jail Protest Conditions of Captivity”, The Record, Jan. 16, 2003, at L10. 26 Id. 27 Daniel Zwerdling, “Immigrant Detainees Claim Brutal Treatment and Abuse by Guards and Dogs at the Passaic County Jail in New Jersey”, All Things Considered, November 17, 2004. 28 DHS added Passaic to its audit after the NPR report. In 2005, the county sheriff forced federal auditors to leave the facilities, and although they later returned, the sheriff subsequently terminated the DHS contract. 29 Nina Bernstein, “9/11 Detainees Describe Abuse Involving Dogs,” The New York Times, April 3, 2006. 30 See DHS OIG Report, supra note 3. 31 The DHS Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Committee is an informal working group of NGOs that meets regularly with the Inspector General and Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. 32 The Staff-Detainee Communication Standard provides for scheduled and unscheduled visits by ICE Office in Charge and department heads; however, that standard distinguishes those visits from the formal grievance procedure. The formal grievance procedure allows for written grievances and appeal up to the
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persist. Detainees themselves identify the lack of access to attorneys and legal materials and conditions of confinement (healthcare, longevity of detainment, and various forms of abuse) as major concerns. Despite these criticisms, there still exists no meaningful recourse for change within the detention facilities. The creation of the DOM represented an important step forward in creating uniformity among facilities and acknowledging the necessity for safe and humane treatment of immigrant detainees, but experience has taught that the lack of proper enforcement mechanisms seriously undermines the effectiveness of the standards.
DHS is now a mature detention agency, with many years of experience housing thousands of immigration detainees, directly or in contract facilities. Like the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, DHS should promulgate regulations that are more formal and enforceable than the DOM, so as to assure uniformity in the treatment of immigration detainees and to guarantee that minimum standards for humane treatment are honored. The agency should be engaged in rulemaking under the Administrative Procedures Act, including publication of proposed regulations in the Federal Register, notice-andcomment, and promulgation of a final rule, in order to improve the overall management of immigration detention operations.
In short, DHS has the opportunity and authority to take the next crucial step toward establishing detention conditions that meet the agency’s needs and preserve the general welfare of the detainee population. By codifying the DOM into regulations, DHS can serve the best interests of the agency and policy goals of the administration and provide uniformity in the treatment of detainees.
IV. LEGAL AUTHORITY
DHS possesses the full statutory authority necessary to regulate conditions of detention for its immigration detainees. See 8 U.S.C. § 1103(a)(1) (conferring on Secretary of DHS ultimate authority over administration of all immigration-related laws); id. § 1103(a)(11) (conferring authority over conditions of detention for those immigrants detained by the federal government but held in non-Federal institutions).33 The scope of DHS’s authority includes the ability to regulate detention conditions in contract facilities governed by IGSAs.34 DHS should exercise this undisputed authority by promulgating detention regulations.
Center’s Officer in Charge (OIC). The OIC’s decision is final; if the OIC wishes, he may chose to file it with the Assistant District Director for Detention and Removal. 33 The reference in § 1103(a)(11) to “the Attorney General” now means “the Secretary of DHS.” See 6 U.S.C. § 557; id. § 251(2); note 1, supra. The language of § 1103(a)(11), including terms such as “necessary clothing, medical care” and “acceptable conditions of confinement,” acknowledge that there are minimum standards for how individuals must be detained and what resources should be available to them. The absence of regulations to define the level of services, such as detainee supplies and medical care, that are “necessary,” or to explain and implement the statutory terms “acceptable conditions of confinement,” creates potential for abuse and agency exposure to litigation liability for any failure to address inappropriate treatment. 34 See Roman v. Ashcroft, 340 F.3d 314, 320 (6th Cir. 2003) (“It is clear that the INS does not vest the power over detained aliens in the wardens of detention facilities because the INS relies on state and local governments to house federal INS detainees. Whatever daily control state and local governments have over
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A. DHS Authority to Regulate Detention Conditions
Immigration-related regulations identify and distinguish between categories of immigration detainees. Regulations regarding immigration detainees include 8 C.F.R. § 232 (“detention of aliens for physical and mental examinations”); id. § 235.3 (expedited removal for “inadmissible aliens”); id. § 236 (pre-final order detention); id. § 241 (postfinal order detention). The regulation covering detention in non-ICE facilities, 8 C.F.R. § 235.3, sets generalized standards for detainees’ treatment. Id. § 235.3(e). It cites “four mandatory criteria” for immigration detainees including 24-hour supervision, conformance with safety and emergency codes, food service, and availability of emergency medical care.
B. Proposals to Codify Regulations
DHS could issue detention regulations in any of several ways. Petitioners request that the agency undertake an informal rulemaking proceeding as set forth in 5 U.S.C. § 553, to: (a) promulgate the standards already listed in the DOM, as well as additional regulations to address gaps and deficiencies in the Manual; (b) make the regulations binding on all facilities housing immigration detainees; and (c) mandate that all IGSAs include terms compelling adherence to the detention standards. In addition, several further alternatives are outlined below.
One way to regulate detention standards would be to incorporate detailed standards similar to those in the DOM into the DHS regulations themselves. DHS could establish a subsection of Title 8 of the Code of Federal Regulations that would contain all detention standards, and amend each section describing categories of detainees to refer to that section. In the alternative, DHS could expand the section outlining some standards, 8 C.F.R. § 235.3(e), to include the extensive discussion of standards in the manual, while making clear that the standards apply to detainees covered in other sections as well.
As noted above, many of the standards are widely viewed as adequate, with most problems stemming from lack of enforcement. Basing proposed regulations on the current Detention Manual could expedite the rulemaking process, as the Manual could serve as a reasonable blueprint for new regulations, supplemented by public comment regarding flaws revealed by experience with the current standards.
Alternatively, ICE could issue proposed rules with strengthened provisions covering areas such as health care and family visitation, to address current deficiencies in the Manual. This would represent an important commitment by ICE to the safety and welfare of detainees. Or, ICE might codify standards for immigration detainees without adding extensive new regulations by publishing regulations that simply reference the
federal INS detainees, they have that control solely pursuant to the direction of the INS.”); ACLU of New Jersey v. County of Hudson, 799 A.2d 629, 654 (N.J. App. Div. 2002) (“while the State possesses sovereign authority over the operation of its jails, it may not operate them, in respect of INS detainees, in any way that derogates the federal government's exclusive and expressed interest in regulating aliens”).
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Detention Manual and mandate that all facilities housing immigration detainees abide by its standards.35
It is critical that any rulemaking involving detention standards ensure that the standards are binding in all of the facilities housing detainees, in particular IGSAs. To ensure that detainees receive the same treatment when housed pursuant to an IGSAs as when confined in CDFs or SPCs, the regulations should mandate that all contracts for IGSAs require adherence to standards outlined in the regulations and agree to submit to ICE’s enforcement. This is especially important given that IGSA facilities also house criminal prisoners, who have less legal protection against mistreatment than do civil prisoners like ICE detainees (who have not been convicted of any crime and thus, unlike convicted criminals, cannot be punished).36 There is therefore a greater danger that such prison facilities will broadly apply impermissibly punitive policies to ICE detainees in the absence of any directive forbidding them to do so. Without question, the authorization in 8 U.S.C. § 1103(a)(11) for DHS to enter into agreements to establish “acceptable conditions of confinement” in state or local facilities empower the agency to insist on such terms in its IGSAs.
V. DHS SHOULD CODIFY ITS STANDARDS INTO REGULATIONS
A. Regulations are needed to insure uniformity and consistency in detention conditions, an announced agency priority
INS and DHS have long acknowledged the need for uniform detention conditions meeting acceptable minimum standards consistent with relevant statutes and the Constitution. The current detention standards were adopted in 2000 to ensure consistent treatment and care as the population of non-citizen detainees in various INS, private and local facilities across the country grew rapidly. At the time the standards were issued, then-INS commissioner Doris Meissner declared, “We are committed to ensuring that our detention standards are met by all facilities we use for detention, regardless of whether they are operated by INS, private contractors or state, local or federal government officials under Intergovernmental Service Agreements.”37 Three years later, ICE issued its Detention and Removal Strategic Plan for 2003-2012, entitled “Endgame.” The second listed goal of the plan was to “provide safe, secure, and humane confinement of
35 Such a regulation could state, for example: “Any institution detaining individuals subject to 8 C.F.R. §§ 232, 235, 236, or 241 must adhere to all of the standards for facility resources and detainee treatment outlined in the ICE Detention Manual.” See, e.g., 32 C.F.R. § 199.2 (2005) (requiring that partial hospitalization programs for mentally ill individuals be in “substantial compliance” with standards in Mental Health Manual of Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations); 5 C.F.R. § 338.301 (1997) (civil service employees given competitive service agreements must meet requirement’s in Office of Personnel Management’s “Operating Manual: Qualification Standards for General Schedule Positions”); 29 C.F.R. § 221.100 (1999) (incorporating standards outlined in “HUD Handbooks”). 36 See Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 535 (1979). 37 “INS to Adopt New Detention Standards: Standards to Be Implemented at All Facilities Housing INS Detainees” Nov. 13, 2000, available at: http://uscis.gov/text/publicaffairs/newsrels/detainee.htm.
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persons detained in accordance with immigration law.”38 To effectuate that goal, ensuring compliance with the detention standards was emphasized.
Unfortunately, six years after the adoption of the standards and three years after ICE announced its strategic plan, detention facilities across the country continue to fail to fully comply with the standards. Conditions across different detention facilities vary greatly. Not only do many violations of the standards go unchecked and unaddressed, but for many facilities, no effective enforcement mechanism exists to respond to complaints about detention standard violations. The procedures and mechanisms to identify and correct violations of the detention standards are not working, and the root of this problem can be traced back to the non-binding nature of the standards.
Codification of the standards into regulations would provide much-needed consistency and enforceability and allow ICE to achieve its goal of providing “safe, secure, and humane confinement of persons detained in accordance with immigration law.” Critically, promulgating regulations would make the detention standards binding upon all immigrant detention facilities, including the contract IGSA facilities, which would be bound through the doctrine of preemption An example of this doctrine in action can be found in a recent lawsuit to compel a county jail to release the names of its immigration detainees, pursuant to a state “Jailkeeper’s Law.” An intermediate state court in New Jersey held that the federal immigration regulation barring release of immigrant detainees’ names preempted contrary state law.39 This case demonstrates the strong benefits to DHS of promulgating detention regulations that will protect agency interests and policy choices, even in the face of contrary state laws. By contrast, the nonbinding guidelines of the DOM do not preempt contrary state laws applicable to many contract facilities.
B. The expanding detainee population, housed in the absence of uniform standards, risks exposing DHS to legal liability and adverse publicity
The average daily population of immigrant detainees has risen to over 20,000, and the numbers are unlikely to diminish soon; to the contrary, immigration reform legislation may increase detention demands. The occasional disturbances in immigrant detention facilities, if not ameliorated with improvements in conditions and enhanced uniformity across facilities, will likely recur, with negative publicity and potential legal liability for the agency, and its contractors. Most at risk, of course, are the immigration
38 Endgame: Detention and Removal Strategic Plan 2003-2012, Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Office of Detention and Removal (June 2003). 39 ACLU of New Jersey, 799 A.2d at 647 (“where there is an operational conflict, a federal regulation will pre-empt state law if its promulgation was within the scope of the agency's delegated authority and in compliance with the procedural provisions of the APA”). Because the federal government has “exclusive authority over matters involving…immigration,” courts “have recognized that judicial deference to the executive branch…is especially appropriate in the immigration context,” Id. at 648, to the extent the Executive Branch’s regulations does not interfere with other Constitutional protections. See, e.g., Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987) (holding that inmates have a constitutionally protected right to marry); Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U.S. 374 (1978).
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detainees themselves crammed into detention facilities without the protection of legally enforceable standards.
As the examples from Section III supra indicate, inadequate oversight over immigration detention has led to inhumane treatment, detainee unrest, public outcry and litigation. Promulgation of uniform, binding regulations can reduce the likelihood of all these negative outcomes, including the potential liability of DHS and agency officials in the event of future detainee uprisings. DHS has already taken the first step by promulgating the detention standards. The next step in the development of DHS as a detention agency is to transform the standards into more comprehensive, detailed, and enforceable regulations.
C. DHS can better monitor and assure quality control in all of its facilities through the promulgation of standards
The private contractors and local detention facilities seeking lucrative contracts from DHS may resist the imposition of what they will perceive as additional costs associated with complying with any new standards. Under the current, non-binding regulations, providers of contract facilities have no incentive to improve their standard of care to the level necessary to achieve the goals outlined above. Instead, their bargaining power derives from ICE’s increasing demand for bed-space and its inability to rectify supply problems in the near term. Pressure to achieve procurement goals while containing costs provides ICE with a dangerous incentive to accept the lowest-bid contract or provider. These pressures have increased as a result of the rapid increase in detention needs of the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee (OFDT) and the outsourcing to private jails.
Binding regulations, especially ones which clearly delineate the differing requirements of non-punitive and punitive detention, will provide ICE with the ability effectively to negotiate with these suppliers, whether directly or through the OFDT.40 Contracts with third-party providers are subject to the requirements of the Federal Acquisition Regulation System, which provides for “equitable adjustment for nonconforming services.”41 If the standards to which these third-party contractors are held are legally binding, ICE will then be able effectively to threaten either exclusion from contract competition or significant reduction of contract value for non-performance. While legally binding standards for detention conditions may reduce the expected profit margin of these third-party providers, the lucrative nature of ICE contracts and the incentive to maintain eligibility for future contracts should ensure ICE an adequate supply of detention facilities more mindful of conformity to the detention standards.
40 The Office of the Federal Detention Trustee was established to exercise all power and functions authorized by law relating to the detention of federal prisoners and aliens awaiting adjudication and/or removal from the United States. “Provided, That the Trustee shall be responsible for construction of detention facilities or for housing related to such detention; the management of funds appropriated to the Department for the exercise of any detention functions; and the direction of the United States Marshals Service and Immigration and Naturalization Service with respect to the exercise of detention policy setting and operations for the Department.” Pub. L. 106-553, § 166, 114 Stat. 2762 (2000) 41 48 C.F.R. § 46.407(f).
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D. Regulations are needed so DHS can preserve the health and welfare of detainees, prevent cruel and improper treatment, and reduce liability for violating the constitutional rights of detainees
Non-citizens have well-established substantive due process rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments which protect them from punitive detention conditions without due process of law.42 This constitutional protection extends to non-citizens not yet legally admitted to the U.S. but who are nevertheless held in U.S. immigration detention.43
Not only does the Constitution impose a duty on government officials for ensuring the safety and well-being of all detainees during government detention,44 more importantly, the Constitution prohibits mistreatment amounting to punishment of any government detainee who has not had an adjudication of criminal guilt in accordance with due process of law.45 This means that any person detained by the government who has not been adjudged guilty of a crime and who is not detained to serve a criminal sentence may not be subjected to punitive conditions. Generally speaking, this prohibition includes civil detainees, pre-trial criminal detainees, and those detainees who have been convicted of a crime and who, upon finishing their criminal sentence, continue to be held under civil law in civil detention.46 As persons held under the civil immigration laws, DHS detainees are included in these groups.
The Constitution prohibits punitive conditions for DHS and other civil detainees because they have not been adjudicated guilty of any crime and are not being held for criminal purposes. This constitutional mandate is not only prohibitive but also prescriptive, because the standard for constitutionally acceptable detention standards is higher for those, such as DHS detainees, whose detention serves no punitive purpose. As
42 Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 369 (1886) (“The fourteenth amendment to the constitution is not confined to the protection of citizens.”); Wong Wing v. U.S., 163 U.S. at 235; Mathews v. Diaz, 426 U.S. 67, 77 (1976) (holding even one whose presence is unlawful is entitled to constitutional protections under the 5th and 14th amendments). 43 Lynch v. Cannatella, 810 F.2d 1363, 1373 (5th Cir. 1987). Due process protections apply even to some non-citizens held outside the U.S. HCC v. Sale, 823 F. Supp. 1028, 1041-42 (E.D.N.Y. 1993). 44 DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept. of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189, 199-200 (1989) (“[W]hen the State takes a person into its custody and holds him there against his will, the Constitution imposes upon it a corresponding duty to assume some responsibility for his safety and general well-being.”); Colle v. Brazos County, Tex., 981 F.2d 237, 246 (5th Cir. 1993) (“A constitutional right to minimally adequate care and treatment [for pre-trial detainees] is not a novel proposition.”). 45 Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 535 (1979) (“In evaluating the constitutionality of conditions or restrictions of pretrial detention …, we think that the proper inquiry is whether those conditions amount to punishment of the detainee. For under the Due Process Clause, a detainee may not be punished prior to an adjudication of guilt in accordance with due process of law.”). 46 Jones v. Blanas, 393 F.3d 918 (9th Cir. 2004) (in case involving sexual predator, holding that civil conditions of confinement which were the same as or similar to those for criminal prisoners or even pretrial detainees were presumptively punitive and unconstitutional).
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the Supreme Court held in Youngberg v. Romeo,47 civil detainee conditions must be superior to conditions of confinement for convicted criminal offenders.
Clearly then, prison conditions held to violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment also violate civil detainees’ due process rights.48 Under the Eighth Amendment, courts have held unconstitutional the denial of adequate medical care, when there is “‘deliberate indifference’ to the ‘serious’ medical needs of prisoners,”49 as well as the “use of force amount[ing]… to ‘punishment’ or ‘the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain.’”50 While there is no right to “comfortable prisons,” the Constitution also forbids overcrowding resulting in “serious” deprivations of amenities51 and deliberate indifference by prison officials to their obligation to protect prisoners from violence (such as violent attacks by fellow inmates) and suicide.52
Under the Due Process Clause, detention conditions for all persons detained without adjudication of criminal guilt must exceed the requirements under the Eighth Amendment for prisoners. For individuals detained on criminal charges awaiting trial, this means they too may not be subjected to punitive conditions of detention. Thus courts have invalidated policies subjecting pre-trial detainees to the same conditions as convicted prisoners.53 For example, the Fifth Circuit has held that pretrial detainees are owed greater access to medical care than prisoners54 and several circuits have held that pretrial detainees may be owed greater access to counsel than convicted inmates.55 The use of excessive force constituting punishment is also forbidden for detainees, as are long periods of isolation, gratuitous strip searches, and unnecessary shackling not required for the orderly running of the facility.56 Furthermore, the denial of a mattress and a bunk has been widely held to be a valid due process claim regardless of overcrowded prison conditions.57
Importantly, at least one U.S. Court of Appeals has held that conditions of confinement for civil detainees must be superior to those of pre-trial criminal detainees,
47 457 U.S. 307, 324 (1982) (holding that persons who have been involuntarily committed are entitled to more considerate treatment and conditions of confinement than criminals whose conditions of confinement are designed to punish). 48 City of Revere v. Mass. General Hosp., 463 U.S. 239, 244 (1983) (“In fact, the due process rights of a person in Kivlin's situation are at least as great as the Eighth Amendment protections available to a convicted prisoner”). 49 Howard B. Eisenberg, Rethinking Prisoner Civil Rights Cases and the Provision of Counsel, 17 S. Ill. U. L.J. 417, 429 (1993) (collecting cases). 50 Id. at 432-43. 51 Id. at 429. 52 Id. at 430-1. 53 Sarah Botz and Robert C. Scherer. Substantive Rights Retained by Prisoners, 84 Geo. L. J. 1465, 1498 (1996) (hereinafter Botz & Scherer, Substantive Rights). 54 Id. at 1499 (citing Hare v. City of Corinth, 36 F.3d 412, 415 (5th Cir. 1994). 55 Id. (citing Covino v. Vermont Dep’t of Corrections, 922 F.2d 128, 130 (2d Cir. 1991) (transfers to locations which impair access to counsel may violate Sixth Amendment); see also Murphy v. Walker, 51 F.3d 714, 718 (7th Cir. 1995) (Sixth Amendment applies if “revocation of phone privileges interferes with access to counsel”). 56 Botz & Scherer, Substantive Rights, at 1497, 1499. 57 Id. at 1499.
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in addition to those of convicted criminal offenders.58 Under this analysis, when conditions for civil detainees are equally restrictive as those of pre-trial criminal detainees, then the conditions are presumptively punitive and unconstitutional.59 Moreover, unlike criminal detainees and prisoners, civilly detained individuals need not prove “deliberate indifference” on the part of government officials to prevail on a Fourteenth Amendment claim regarding their conditions of confinement.60
Constitutionally, then, the rights of immigration detainees differ substantially from criminal pre-trial detainees and prisoners. Unfortunately, reports from attorneys indicate that detention officials, particularly wardens and sheriffs at IGSA contract facilities which also serve as local jails, do not distinguish between their DHS and other jailed populations. See Section III.D supra. This kind of attitude by jail authorities towards the civil immigration detainees under their care raises serious constitutional questions.
Given these concerns, it is critical that the proposed regulations reflect the difference between punitive and non-punitive conditions of detention to ensure that ICE detainees are treated properly and according to the relatively higher standard for civil detainees held for non-punitive reasons. In order to be constitutional, restrictions imposed upon detainees by the regulation must be “reasonably related to a legitimate, nonpunitive, and governmental purpose.”61 Under the Due Process Clause, any policy justified by recourse to a punitive objective would be rejected as unconstitutional.62
The constitutional case law on detention conditions for civil detainees underscores the importance of enforcing the detention standards. The DOM standards, if properly enforced, would provide for constitutionally appropriate conditions of confinement. Too often, however, DHS detainees experience detention conditions that do not even meet fundamental Eighth Amendment standards for prisoners, let alone the higher Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment standards for civil detainees.
The abuses and violations of the existing detention standards point to the need for codification of the standards, and constitutional concerns underscore this imperative. To avoid the continued occurrence of situations in which minimum constitutional protections are violated, codification of the existing detention standards is crucial. Codification will also help clarify the civil purposes of alien detention, demonstrate that unconstitutionally
58 Jones v. Blanas, 393 F.3d at 934 (“With respect to an individual confined awaiting adjudication under civil process, a presumption of punitive conditions arises where the individual is detained under conditions identical to, similar to, or more restrictive than those under which pretrial criminal detainees are held…”). Other circuits have analyzed due process protections for immigration detention by utilizing standards for those held in pre-trial detention. See, e.g., Ortega v. Rowe, 796 F.2d 765, 767 (5th Cir. 1986). (following line of cases regarding pre-trial detainees’ due process rights to analyze detention conditions claim by INS detainee). 59 Jones v. Blanas, 393 F.3d at 934. 60 Id. 61 Botz & Scherer, Substantive Rights, at 1497. 62 Id.
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punitive detention conditions will not be tolerated, and confirm DHS’s commitment to upholding detainees’ constitutional rights by creating truly enforceable standards.
E. DHS Should Emulate the Bureau of Prisons’ Promulgation of Binding Regulations
DHS should follow the example of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP), which has nearly a century of experience in federal prison administration and which promulgated comprehensive, binding regulations for detention standards over thirty years ago. The Bureau of Prisons was established by Congress in 1930,63 largely in response to overcrowding in prisons and also to enable federal administrators to effect policies necessary to “preserve the health of the prisoner…[and to] prevent cruel and improper treatment.”64 Congress was also responding to widespread public outcry against prison conditions generally.65
In the 1960s and 1970s, a marked increase in court decisions expanding judicial remedies for prisoners with prison condition claims prompted major changes in the Bureau of Prisons administration.66 The increase in legal claims by prisoners tracked rising public awareness of prisoners’ rights issues due to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.67 Driven in part by a desire to reduce the number of prisoners’ rights cases in the courts, in 1974 the director of the BOP issued a policy statement establishing an administrative review process for hearing prisoner complaints.68 This change was not forced upon the Bureau by Congress or compelled by emerging jurisprudence; rather it was undertaken upon the Director’s own initiative in anticipation of “the direction in which the courts were moving.”69
ICE should emulate the BOP administrative review process for prisoner complaints about detention conditions.70 As outlined in 28 C.F.R. §§ 542.10-542.19, the administrative review program provides for formal but non-judicial review of issues arising from confinement.71 Generally, inmates are first required to bring issues to the attention of staff informally. In the absence of satisfactory redress inmates are permitted to file a standard form, “Request for Administrative Remedy,” and to submit it to a
63 An Act To Reorganize the administration of Federal prisons; to authorize the Attorney General to contract for the care of United States prisoners; to establish Federal jails, and for other purposes, H.R. 7832, 71st Cong. (2nd Sess. 1930); 60 Am. Jur. 2d Penal & Correctional Insts. § 11 (2006). 64 H.R. Rep. No. 71-106 (1930) (Comm. Rep.). 65 Federal Prisoners and Penitentiaries: Hearing Before the Comm. on the Judiciary, 71st Cong. 23 (1929) (statement of Sanford Bates, Superintendent of Prisons, Department of Justice). 66 See, e.g., Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817, 822 (1977); see generally Song Hill, Casey v. Lewis: The Legal Burden is Raised; The Physical Barrier is Spared, 25 Golden Gate U. L. Rev. 1, 4-8 (1995). 67 H.R. Rep. No. 92-116 at 1435-36 (1971). 68 Bruce Bernstein, Federal Bureau of Prisons Administrative Grievance Procedure: An Effective Alternative to Prisoner Litigation?, 13 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 779, 779 (1976). 69 John W. Roberts, View From the Top: The Bureau of Prisons’ five Directors Discuss Problems and Ethics in Corrections, 1 Fed. Prisons 4, 39-40 (1990). 70 Bruce Bernstein, Federal Bureau of Prisons Administrative Grievance Procedure: An Effective Alternative to Prisoner Litigation?, 13 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 779, 779 (1976). 71 28 C.F.R. § 542.10(a).
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designated staff member.72 Inmates also may, in the case of sensitive issues, submit the request directly to the Regional Director.73 In order to appeal unsatisfactory warden decisions, inmates have access to the Regional Director, and after that to the General Counsel, the final level of administrative appeal.74
In 1976, the Attorney General authorized the director of the Bureau of Prisons “to promulgate rules governing the control and management of Federal penal and correctional institutions and providing for the classification, government, discipline, treatment, care, rehabilitation, and reformation of inmates.”75 Immediately following this explicit delegation of authority and according to the notice and comment procedures of the Administrative Procedure Act, the proposed Bureau of Prisons regulations were published in a series of seven sections, starting on May 23, 1977 and ending on Oct. 29, 1979.76 The justification for this procedure was the desire to “afford interested persons additional notice of Bureau regulations and proposed regulations” through “a formal process for solicitation and consideration of comments” relating to policies then “contained [only] in Policy Statements and Operations Memoranda.”77 Today, these regulations appear at 28 CFR § 500.1 - § 572.40.
We do not suggest that ICE regulations governing confinement of civil immigration detainees should be identical in substance to BOP regulations governing incarceration of criminal convicts and pretrial detainees; the needs and circumstances of immigration detainees differ in numerous critical respects from those of criminal detainees, and demand appropriate tailoring. But the evolution of Bureau of Prisons mechanisms for controlling and regulating prison conditions serves as an important model for ICE. First operating solely on policy statements and unofficial guidelines, the Bureau established an internal mechanism for the enforcement of standards and the management of complaints as a result of both public pressure and increasingly successful prisoner litigation in the courts. A mere three years later, however, the Bureau of Prison decided to promulgate legally binding regulations. The long experience of the Bureau of Prisons in managing a national system of detention, and its ultimate decision to promulgate binding regulations, serves as an instructive model to younger agencies, like ICE, currently facing public pressure concerning conditions of detention.
Many parallels exist between the pressures faced by the BOP in the 1970s and ICE today: just as public outcry eventually drove the BOP toward concrete standards, ICE faces increasing criticism as the public learns more about conditions in detention facilities; both agencies face the daunting task of coordinating detention conditions across the nation; and both suffer from overcrowding and under-funding. ICE should draw from
72 Id. §§ 542.13-542.14. 73 Id. 74 § 542.15(a). 75 Organization of the Department of Justice, 28 C.F.R. § 0.96(o) (2006) (published in 41 Fed. Reg. 56802 as 28 C.F.R. § 0.96(t)). 76 42 Fed. Reg. 26344 (May 23, 1977); 42 Fed. Reg. 41368 (Aug 16, 1977); 42 Fed. Reg. 64084 (Aug 17, 1977); 43 Fed. Reg. 64082 (Dec 21, 1977); 43 Fed. Reg. 30574 (July 17, 1978); 44 Fed. Reg. 38244 (June 29, 1979); 44 Fed. Reg. 62248 (Oct. 29, 1979). 77 42 F.R. 26344 (1977).
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the vast experience of the BOP and promulgate comprehensive, binding regulations tailored to the circumstances of civil immigration detainees.
F. Codification of Humane Detention Standards will Complement U.S. Foreign Policy Goals and Strengthen Compliance with International Norms
The increasing number of non-citizens in U.S. detention facilities who are subsequently removed to their countries of origin provides DHS with a unique opportunity to shape the image of the U.S. as perceived by hundreds of thousands of nonAmericans. In FY 2003 alone, the Detention and Removal Office (DRO) of ICE removed over 140,000 non-citizens and detained more than 230,000 non-citizens. In its Strategic Plan for 2003-2012, DRO noted the rapidly increasing numbers of removable aliens subject to mandatory detention as a result of legislative and policy changes over the past decade.78
Codification and enforcement of humane detention standards for ICE detainees would serve to further U.S. foreign policy goals. The U.S. Department of State recently noted that: “Throughout the world, the public face of the United States generates strong opinions, positive and negative. These public attitudes directly affect our ability to achieve our foreign policy and development assistance objectives.”79 DHS can further U.S. diplomatic goals by ensuring that hundreds of thousands of removable non-citizens return to their countries with a positive impression of the United States.
Detainees in ICE facilities consistently report that while in detention, they were made to feel like criminals even though a significant portion of the detainees have never committed a crime. One detainee, illustrating a common sentiment, explained that “the whole detention system is there to break you down further.” Another, an asylum seeker who fled persecution in his country of origin, stated in reference to his treatment while in detention, “I fled my country because of this [mistreatment]. I broke down and cried when it happened here.”80 When detainees are removed, they carry these negative impressions to their countries of origin, and share them with family and friends. Improving detention conditions could have a profound positive impact on the image of the United States among formerly detained individuals. Even some prison officials realize the importance of immigration detainee experiences. At Florida’s Broward Detention facility, many guards feel that creating a positive impression of the United States for the detainees in their care is a crucial element of their professional duty.
In addition to promoting a positive image of the U.S. abroad, codification and promulgation of humane detention standards will strengthen U.S. compliance with
78 Endgame: Office of Detention and Removal Strategic Plan, 2003-2012 2-1 (2003), available at http://www.ice.gov/graphics/dro/endgame.pdf. 79 Department of State and USAID Strategic Plan (August 2003), available at http://www.state.gov/s/d/rm/rls/dosstrat/2004/23506.htm. 80 II Craig Haney, Ph.D., Report on Asylum Seekers in Expedited Removal 190 (United States Commission on International Religious Freedom) (2005).
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international legal norms.81 International law unequivocally mandates the humane treatment of all detainees, regardless of the reason for their detention. The prohibition against torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment is a fundamental tenet of international human rights law, as codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR),82 the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),83 and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT).84 The United States has ratified both the ICCPR and CAT,85 acknowledging that, “all persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.”86
The United Nations has provided guidelines for implementing the general prohibitions discussed above in the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (Standard Minimum Rules).87 The Standard Minimum Rules apply to all detainees, and reflect agreed-upon norms of treatment for detainees.88 Many of the Standard Rules’ provisions are already reflected in the DOM.89
Among the population of detainees housed in ICE facilities are refugees, whose protection is mandated by the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.90 To provide states with guidance regarding the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers in detention, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has created the Guidelines on Applicable Criteria and Standards Relating to the Detention of Asylum Seekers (UNCHR Guidelines), rooted in the Refugee Convention.91 Fundamentally, the
81 See Human Rights Watch, Locked Away, Section III. See also Physicians for Human Rights and the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, From Persecution to Prison: The Health Consequences of Detention for Asylum Seekers, 167-173 (June 2003). 82 Universal Declaration of Human Rights art. 5, December 10, 1948, U.N.G.A. res. 217 A(III). 83 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights art. 7 and 10, December 19, 1966, 999 U.N.T.S. 171. 84 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment arts. 2 and 16, December 10, 1984, 1465 U.N.T.S. 85. 85 U.S. CAT ratification is subject to reservations with regard to the interpretation of the terms “torture” and “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” 86 ICCPR, supra note 83, at article 10. 87 United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, May 13, 1977, Economic and Social Council res. 2076 (LXII). 88 In 1998, the international community of states signaled its commitment to the Standard Minimum Rules through a U.N. General Assembly Resolution. See Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment, 1998, G.A. res. 43/173, U.N. Doc. A/43/49. 89 Provisions of the Standard Minimum Rules reflected in the DOM include a requirement that “civil prisoners” be kept separately from “persons imprisoned by reason of a criminal offence,” that each prisoner be allowed at least one hour of outdoor recreation daily, that dental services be made available to detainees, and that detainees be provided with a library for their use. 90 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, July 28, 1951, 189 U.N.T.S. 150. As a party to the Convention’s 1967 Protocol, the United States is bound by Article 31 of the Convention, which limits the restrictions that States parties may make on the movements of refugees. See Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees article 1, October 1967, 606 U.N.T.S. 267, which provides that all States Parties must “undertake to apply articles 2 to 34 inclusive of the Convention to refugees as hereinafter defined.” The Protocol removes the geographic and temporal limitations on refugee protection that were originally included in the Refugee Convention. 91 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Revised Guidelines on Applicable Criteria and Standards Relating to the Detention of Asylum Seekers, February 1999. The UNCHR Guidelines state the
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detention of asylum seekers must not be undertaken as a punitive measure.92 The UNCHR Guidelines provide that in all cases, the conditions of detention of asylum seekers should be “humane with respect shown for the inherent dignity of the person,” and that such conditions “should be prescribed by law.”93 Like the Standard Rules, many of the provisions found in the UNHCR Guidelines are already included in the DOM Standards.
Codification of the standards of U.S. treatment of non-citizen detainees, by ensuring humane and non-punitive treatment of detainees, will bolster U.S. compliance with international norms and ensure that ICE’s detention operations do not contribute to anti-American sentiment abroad.
VI. CURRENT MONITORING AND ENFORCEMENT MECHANISMS ARE INSUFFICIENT
A. Suggested Enforcement Mechanisms
Though regulations are an important first step, it is equally important that ICE establish effective procedures for their enforcement. The design of an effective enforcement mechanism may be the most crucial step ICE can take to ensure the safe, secure, consistent, and humane treatment of detainees.
The most important component of enforcement is meaningful oversight. ICE officers should inspect detention facilities regularly, using the inspection checklists included with the DOM. Petitioners recommend that inspections be carried out at least once a month, preferably more frequently as resources permit. We recommend that the inspecting officers be responsible for specific detention conditions so that officers may develop expertise in particular standards.
ICE does presently monitor and occasionally audit detention facilities, but the inspections are ineffective and inadequate, a point made vivid in the contrast between the myriad reports of non-compliance documented within this petition and the official results of many ICE inspections. There are a number of changes that ought to be made in order for the inspections to be more than a mere rubber stamp of existing conditions. ICE should establish a procedure to ensure follow-through with inspection findings. When an inspector identifies a violation, the head of the facility should be notified and given a period of time during which the violation must be corrected. This timeframe may vary depending on the difficulty of remedying the violation, but normally should not be longer than the length of time between inspections. On the subsequent visit, the head of the
fundamental principle that: “The detention of asylum seekers is … inherently undesirable.” The Guidelines provide that detention should occur only when absolutely necessary to verify identity; to determine the bases for a claim of refugee or asylee status; in cases where asylum seekers have destroyed their travel and/or identity documents or have used fraudulent documents in what is considered an attempt to mislead the authorities; or to protect national security and public order. 92 Id. at 3. This requirement is rooted in Article 31 of the Refugee Convention. 93 Id. at 10. Enumerated requirements for establishing such conditions include appropriate medical treatment and psychological counseling, access to outdoor recreational facilities, access to grievance procedures, and access to basic necessities such as “beds, shower facilities, [and] basic toiletries.”
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facility should notify the inspector of any violations identified during the previous visit and should note whether the problem has been corrected. Facilities should maintain records of all past violations and make them available to the inspecting officer This will help ensure that violations are not permitted to continue unaddressed and that facilities do not repeatedly fall out of compliance without consequences. In situations in which a facility fails to remedy a problem within two or three inspections or where a facility has multiple instances of noncompliance with the same standard (even if not successive), the head office should be notified, and it is essential that in such situations there be consequences for continued non-compliance. Otherwise, the inspection process will be meaningless and facilities will not take findings of non-compliance seriously. If a facility demonstrates continued non-compliance, that facility should be fined. In extreme cases their contract should be terminated.
1. Factors not covered by current inspections
There are several conditions not covered by current inspection procedures that ICE should add. An important suggested addition is that inspectors conduct confidential interviews with detainees. Detainees themselves may be a valuable resource to ICE in detecting potential violations before they become serious problems. We suggest that ICE interview at least two or three randomly selected detainees during each visit.
The detainee complaint process can also serve as a useful tool in identifying violations of the standards. The DOM does contain a Detainee Grievance Procedure, including both informal and formal complaints and some opportunity for administrative appeal. Many facilities are not in compliance with this standard, which in any event does not address detainee complaints of abuse or civil rights violations. In practice, when grievances cannot be resolved locally, advocates have been advised to notify ICE Headquarters and the OCRCL. Unfortunately, even when advocates do so, ICE and the OCRCL have failed to resolve most complaints relating to detention standards compliance.
Where detainee complaints are not resolved through the internal complaint process, detainees ought to have the opportunity to send their complaint to the ICE head office anonymously and free of charge. All complaints received by the head office should also be forwarded to the relevant ICE district office. The complaints should be received by an officer whose sole responsibility is processing and evaluating them. Facilities should keep records of all complaints, which can indicate systemic problems, and as contemplated by the present DOM standard. Complaints alleging serious violations, especially those involving the regulation of medical care, legal access, and physical abuse, should be given special scrutiny and subject to heightened investigation. Facilities or the head office should provide inspectors with information regarding any complaints filed before conducting inspections of that facility.
Additionally, more comprehensive audits ought to be used to ascertain problems not identified by regular inspections. An audit may be triggered by a number of factors, including a specified number of detainee complaints or complaints alleging serious
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abuses. Alternatively, audits could be conducted randomly to improve facility compliance due to the possibility of be audited at any time.
The video surveillance systems that many prisons and jails already employ could serve as another effective tool for ICE enforcement of facility standards. Requiring facilities to use such systems for the documentation of compliance with ICE standards could be an extremely powerful deterrent to detainee abuse.
Finally, when making their inspections, ICE officers should be instructed that the mere appearance of compliance or superficial compliance is insufficient. Rather, what is required is meaningful compliance.
2. Meaningful Compliance
In order to be truly effective, the regulations should include a proviso requiring meaningful compliance with the standards. Meaningful compliance requires more than minimal efforts to comply with the letter of the standards; it demands honoring the purpose behind the standard.
Meaningful compliance should include, but not be limited to, requiring that a facility have the necessary infrastructure and technology to effectuate the standard. For example, meaningful compliance with a standard requiring facilities to have an adequate law library would require not only that a facility possess appropriate law books, but that detainees have access to the books; that they are stored in a clean library and in an orderly fashion; that when they are available on disk, computers work properly; and that legal material include all relevant jurisdictions including state legal references. Inadequate access thwarts the standard’s purpose and the facility cannot be said to be in compliance.
B. Relative Lack of Enforcement has Resulted in Widespread Violations
Legal service providers, the press, human rights organizations, and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as well as DHS’s own Inspector General, have reported on serious violations of DHS detention standards. Many recent allegations of abuse have appeared in the media, including the death of an 81-year old Haitian minister in a Florida detention center amidst allegations that, while detained, he was not properly given his medication or allowed visits from family members.94 Other violations of the DOM, relating to less sensational issues such as phone access and access to legal materials, have been the subject of consistent complaints by detainees and their advocates. For detained non-citizens, every violation is a matter of personal urgency. The violation of a standard such as telephone access can cause serious delays in a detainee’s case; inability to access information might prove fatal to his or her defense against deportation.
94 Jessica M. Walker, Suit filed over Haitian man's death at Krome, Broward Daily Business Review, February 8, 2005, P. 1. See Ruth Morris, Detention Center Wins Accreditation; Krome Hopes to Shake its Troubled History, Sun-Sentinel, January 22, 2005, 1B.
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A tragic pattern of abuse at the Passaic County Jail serves as an illustrative example of the dangers posed by the lack of enforcement mechanisms available to detainees. Abuses against immigrant detainees at Passaic persisted unchecked for years despite repeated but futile attempts by detainees and their advocates to make use of existing enforcement mechanisms. The abuse only stopped after intense pressure was brought to bear by the media and local grassroots organizations.
Although Passaic held a small number of immigrant detainees prior to September 11, 2001, the numbers increased dramatically after that date. At times, the Jail held nearly 500 immigrant detainees. Beginning as early as December 2001, ICE detainees at Passaic complained of abuses. Many detainees participated in hunger strikes and protests, alleging overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and physical abuse by guards. In March 2002, allegations were made public through an Amnesty International report and a visit to Passaic by U.S. Senator John Corzine.95 Despite widespread violations of the DOM, no effective enforcement mechanisms were available to the Passaic detainees and their advocates. DHS did not act until a November 2004 National Public Radio report in which reporters produced corroborating evidence that immigrant detainees at Passaic had been beaten by guards and attacked and intimidated by guard dogs.96 Although lawyers and civil rights organizations had been protesting the conditions in Passaic County Jail for years, it was in the month following the National Public Radio report that DHS announced that Passaic would be added to the list of detention facilities included in its nationwide audit of detention facilities.97 Nonetheless, the problems at Passaic continued. In October 2005, the jail discontinued its practice of serving halal and kosher meals to inmates. Twenty detainees staged a hunger strike in response to this violation of their religious freedom.98 On December 17, 2005, more than 90 detainees petitioned DHS for an end to ICE’s contract with the jail, citing “very poor and health risk conditions at this jail.”99 In late December 2005, Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale decided to stop holding immigration detainees at the Passaic County Jail.100 For the detainees at Passaic, the decision marked the end of years of violations of not only the DOM but also violations of their basic human dignity, violations for which no viable recourse was available.
Organizations and practitioners providing legal and social services to immigrant detainee populations have identified the following five detention standards as those for which violations are the most rampant: Medical Care, Telephone Access, Visitation, Access to Legal Material, and Detainee Transfers. The following discussion and examples illustrate the most common problems.
95 Karen Keller, County jail ends federal program; Widespread detainee abuses reported, Herald News, December 29, 2005, at A01. 96 National Public Radio, Immigrant Detainees Tell of Attack Dogs and Abuse (November 17, 2004), available at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4170152. 97 Jonathan Miller, Calling off the Dogs, The New York Times, December 5, 2004, 14NJ. 98 Karen Keller, Jail halts halal and kosher meals for inmates, Herald News, October 19, 2005, A01. 99 Keller, County jail ends federal program, supra note 95. 100 Id.
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1. Medical Care
The DOM Standard on Medical Care requires on-site access to medical service for routine evaluations and treatment. Additionally, arrangements are to be made as necessary for specialized health care, mental health care, and hospitalization. Dental care is to be provided in cases of emergency such as pain or acute infection.101
Violations of the Medical Care Standard are widespread and severe. Detainees with chronic health problems routinely report that they are not given their medication, or are given the wrong medication. For instance, A Haitian man detained at York County Prison in Pennsylvania reported problems with the medical care he received as an HIVpositive patient recently diagnosed with cancer in his right leg. The facility on occasion failed to give him his HIV medication. During an arranged visit to an oncologist, the doctor recommended that the man see an orthopedist for his swollen cancer-infected leg. Two months later, the facility had still not arranged for him to see an orthopedist.102
Despite the provision in the Standards for dental care in cases of severe pain or infection, detainees routinely report suffering severe tooth pain for months at a time. One detainee complained daily of tooth pain and was forced to wait three months before receiving care. When the tooth was finally pulled, the detainee was handcuffed during the procedure, and the health practitioner pulled the tooth before the anesthetic set in.103
2. Telephone Access
The DOM Standard on Telephone Access requires that detainees have “reasonable” and “equitable” access to telephones, including free calls for indigent detainees to contact legal counsel, consular officials, and government offices.104 Telephone access is particularly important for ICE detainees, as they do not have a right to government-appointed counsel. Therefore, access to the phone is vital, whether to contact counsel or, for pro se detainees, to gather information regarding their legal cases.
Even if detainees have access to phones, that access is meaningless if they cannot afford to use them. Private phone companies providing services charge high per-minute rates in addition to hefty connection fees. For example, prisoners in New York State prisons are limited to collect calls, for which MCI (the only available provider) charges a $3 connection fee and 16¢ per minute thereafter. The average prison phone call lasts 19
101 DOM, “Medical Care” Standard, available at http://www.ice.gov/doclib/partners/dro/opsmanual/medical.pdf. 102 Letter from Coalition of 6 Non-Governmental Organizations to Richard L. Skinner, Inspector General, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (January 11, 2006); see also DHS OIG Report, supra note 3, at 3-7. 103 Physicians for Human Rights and the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, From Persecution to Prison: the Health Consequences of Detention for Asylum Seekers 90 (June 2003). 104 DOM, “Telephone Access” Standard, available at http://www.ice.gov/doclib/partners/dro/opsmanual/teleacc.pdf.
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minutes, costing just over $6—a mark up of 630 percent over consumer rates.105 Practitioners document many cases where prisoners, their families, and their lawyers have been subject to staggering phone bills.106 Finally, calls are often dropped after a set period of time, thereby requiring the detainee initiate another call and therefore pay an addition connection fee.
Courts have ruled that such price-gouging is acceptable for the regular prison population.107 However, immigrant detention is civil and non-punitive requiring a separate analysis. Many detainees have never been convicted of a crime; those with convictions have already served their sentences. Compounding the problem of exorbitant connection fees, many immigrants arrive in the United States with few if any resources (especially asylum seekers who are fleeing for their lives). High prices make contact with family members, friends, and attorneys prohibitively expensive.
Many other phone problems have been documented by organizations working with immigrant detainees. Some phone contracts allow detainees to make calls only after 5:00 pm, which makes contacting an office during regular business hours impossible. In other facilities phones are not pre-programmed to allow detainees to call free legal services. Even where phones are pre-programmed, there may be no notice of that fact provided to detainees.108 At the Plymouth County Correctional facility in Plymouth MA, in order to make outgoing calls, detainees must have phone numbers programmed into their phone/call out lists and the process of adding numbers can take several days. In addition, the only way to make an outgoing call is to call collect. Detainees cannot call their ICE deportation officer because ICE does not accept collect calls. Also at this facility, detainees cannot buy phone cards to make non-collect outgoing calls, nor can they make international calls. In addition, many detainees are not allowed to make 1-800 calls. This makes it impossible for detainees who are eligible for bail to call bail bondsmen or other organizations who could help.109 Most facilities do not allow attorneys to call into the facility to speak to their clients, and practitioners report that the staff often does not deliver phone messages to detainees. Despite the provision in the
105 The Center for Constitutional Rights, “New York Families of Prisoners Launch Campaign to End Backdoor Tax on Prison Phone Calls from the Kickback Contract with MCI”, available at http://www.ccrny.org/v2/reports/report.asp?ObjID=0z90mxpZk5&Content=452. 106 A retired couple living on a fixed income in New Hampshire paid $5,000 in 2003 in order to accept collect calls from their daughter who was incarcerated in New York. A man living in Iowa pays $18.89 for 15-minute collect calls from a person in prison in Texas, adding up to monthly phone bills of between $500 and $700. The Office of the Appellate Defender in New York City and the Metropolitan Public Defender’s Office in Davidson County, Tennessee each pay in excess of $1,000 monthly to accept collect calls from their clients who are in prison. See Ad Hoc Coalition for the Right to Communicate, Comments of the Ad Hoc Coalition for the Right to Communicate Regarding Petition for Rulemaking Or, in the Alternative, Petition to Address Referral Issues in Pending Rulemaking 8-9 (2003)). 107 See Miranda v. Michigan, 141 F.Supp.2d 747 (E.D. Mich. 2001). 108 Interview with Malik Ndaula, National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild (April 11, 2006); see also DHS OIG Report, supra note 3, at 23-25. 109 Letter from National Immigration Forum, Immigration Equality, Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, University of Detroit Mercy Immigration Law Clinic, Freedom House, Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights, Midwest Immigrant & Human Rights Center to Richard L. Skinner, Inspector General, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (January 11, 2006) (hereinafter, “January 2006 NGOs letter to Inspector General”).
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Standards requiring that “the facility shall take and deliver telephone messages to detainees as promptly as possible,” legal service providers at the Elizabeth Detention Facility in New Jersey note that messages regarding legal matters are given to detainees so rarely that attorneys must visit the facility each time they have a question or message for a detained client, an inconvenience that requires substantial time and resources. This puts a strain on many understaffed organizations providing legal services to the immigrant detainee population.110 These factors combined with the high prices discussed above create nearly impossible attorney-client phone communication in many cases.111
The standards should require that detainees have meaningful access to phones. Such meaningful access includes the requirement that phone charges be reasonable, that collect calls be allowed, that dialing toll-free numbers be allowed, that phone numbers for free legal services be provided, and that phones should be pre-programmed to allow detainees to contact legal service providers, and that detainees are made aware of how to use the phones to take advantage of these features.
Inspecting officers should be instructed that meaningful compliance with the standards is required. The checklist used by the inspecting officers should reflect factors that represent meaningful compliance with the standards.112 In addition the officer should be instructed to use his or her common sense to identify situations where a facility is technically complying, but where such compliance is not meaningful.
Immigration detainees are the only segment of the prison population that lacks the state-funded assistance of counsel. As a result, phone access is particularly important. The phone may be their only hope for finding an attorney. If detainees cannot make phone calls to free legal service providers, not only are they denied free legal counsel, they are constructively deprived even of the right to secure their own representation.
110 Id. 111 Id. 112 Auditors should physically test each phone when measuring the following:
• Whether phones are pre-programmed to allow detainees to make free calls to legal service organizations
• Whether detainees are notified about how preprogrammed phones operate; whether specific instructions are posted in the facility and accessible to detainees
• Detainee access to telephones during established facility waking hours • Detainee notification of telephone access rules • Number of telephones per detainee • Number of telephones on which detainees can make private phone calls, and degree of privacy
afforded (including overhearing and electronic monitoring) • Number of telephones in proper working order/frequency of telephone maintenance and repair
service when needed • Frequency and length of direct calls (free) by detainee • Restrictions (if any) on detainee calls to legal representatives • Length of detainee calls to legal representatives • Whether facility takes and delivers telephone messages to detainees • Description of “emergency” during which telephones privileges have been suspended • Whether lists of pro bono agencies are posted by each phone • Whether multi-lingual instructions on how to operate the phone are posted by each phone.
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3. Visitation
The DOM Standard on Visitation states that ICE “encourages visits from family and friends” in order to “maintain detainee morale and family relationships.” Immediate family, extended family, friends and associates are all to be permitted visitation periods of no less than 30 minutes, in a “comfortable” and “pleasant” atmosphere. Legal counsel and legal assistants are to be permitted to visit seven days a week including holidays, and to meet with their clients in private consultation rooms.113
Despite these provisions, facilities often severely restrict detainees’ visitation rights.114 The official “Visitor Handbook” at Bergen County Jail, where many ICE detainees are housed, explicitly limits visitors to parents/legal guardians, spouses, children, siblings, and grandparents, in direct contravention of the DOM Standards.115 In another example, legal service providers report that there is only one client-attorney visitation room at the Mira Loma Facility in California, where between 500-800 immigrant detainees are held at any given time.
4. Access to Legal Materials
The DOM Standard on Access to Legal Materials provides that each detainee shall have access to an adequately equipped law library. Attached to the DOM is a list of materials that are required to be placed in each library; the Standard provides that the list is to be reviewed annually and updated as necessary.116 These requirements are vitally important for the immigrant detainee population, of which a large percentage argues their deportation cases on a pro se basis.
In addition to a list of required legal materials, the Standard also delineates the submission process for additional published or unpublished legal materials from outside persons or organizations. However, it is up to the discretion of the Officer in Charge (OIC) to accept or decline the material based on considerations of usefulness and space limitations.117 The Standard is silent as to the definition of usefulness. The ambiguity of the term allows for possible abuse at the hands of the OIC. To improve this gap, the Standard needs to clearly define useful, consistent with judicial opinions regarding detained persons’ constitutional right to access to legal libraries sufficient to directly or collaterally attack their sentences and the conditions of their confinement.118
113 DOM Standards, “Visitation” Standard, available at http://www.ice.gov/doclib/partners/dro/opsmanual/visit.pdf. 114 DHS OIG Report, supra note 3, at 25. 115 Bergen County Jail, Bergen County Jail Visitor Handbook Rules & Regulations 2 (January 12, 2006). 116 DOM Standards, “Access to Legal Material” Standard, available at http://www.ice.gov/doclib/partners/dro/opsmanual/legal.pdf. 117 Id. 118 Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817 (1977) (holding that prisoners’ constitutional right of access to courts requires that prison authorities provide inmates with adequate law libraries).
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Practitioners report that detainees throughout the country have difficulties accessing the legal material necessary to prepare a pro se case.119 In preparing its February 2005 report on Expedited Removal, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom visited eighteen facilities housing ICE detainees. In none of the eighteen facilities were the materials required by the DOM Standards present and up-to-date in the facility’s law library.120
5. Detainee Transfers
The DOM Standard on Detainee Transfers provides that detainees may be transferred for the following reasons: medical, change of venue, recreation, security, or “other needs of ICE” such as overcrowding problems or special detainee needs. Once a detainee is en route to a different facility, the facility must notify detainee’s counsel of the transfer. Additionally, the Standard requires that all of the detainee’s belongings be transferred with him to the receiving facility, together with medical records and medication.121 Although the DOM recognizes that “[i]n deciding whether to transfer a detainee, ICE will take into consideration whether the detainee is represented before the immigration court,”122 in practice ICE appears to give little or no weight to the presence of counsel, nor to the availability of witnesses.
Throughout the country, legal service providers have reported violations of the Detainee Transfer standards. Pro bono counsel for an asylum seeker who was transferred from the Queens Contract Detention Facility to the New Jersey Elizabeth Detention Facility in June 2005 never received notice from ICE or facility staff of the transfer. Requests made by detainees at the Calhoun facility in Michigan for transfer to the Monroe facility, two hours closer to access to counsel, are routinely denied.123 Detainees at the Wicomico County Detention Center in Maryland reported a wave of transfers of all detainees who were friendly with Joseph Daniel Zarou, a detainee who died in November 2004 of complications that may have been exacerbated by the negligence of detention guards.124 Additionally, legal service providers have noted that detainees’ belongings are often not transferred from one facility to the next.
ICE has not made public in what manner and to what extent, if any, it does in fact “take into consideration whether the detainee is represented before the immigration court.” The DOM does not elaborate on what weight ICE should give to the presence of counsel in a given case, nor to the availability of witnesses. Nor does it appear that ICE anywhere records or documents that it has taken the presence of counsel into consideration in making a transfer decision, thereby defeating efforts to monitor compliance with the existing DOM requirement. The experience of many practitioners is that cost and bed space determine where ICE will confine a detainee, and that the
119 January 2006 NGOs letter to Inspector General. 120 Report on Asylum Seekers, supra at 80; see also DHS OIG Report, supra note 3, at 16-17. 121 DOM Standards, “Detainee Transfers” Standard, available at http://www.ice.gov/doclib/partners/dro/opsmanual/index.htm. 122 Id. 123 January 2006 NGOs letter to Inspector General. 124 Id.
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presence of counsel is irrelevant. The result is that even those detainees who have succeeded in retaining counsel are de facto deprived of that counsel, and the ability to mount a defense to the removal proceedings, because they are transferred to jurisdictions to which their counsel and witnesses cannot travel. If ICE is to realize the promise to “take into consideration” the presence of counsel in making individual transfer decisions, it must clarify in what manner and to what extent the presence of counsel will affect such a decision, and it must document that determination.
6. Religious Practices
The DOM Standard on Religious Practices mandates that detainees’ opportunities to practice their faith may be limited only by concerns relating to safety, security, the “orderly operation of the facility,” or “extraordinary costs.” Dietary requirements and other special needs are to be facilitated to the greatest extent possible.125
Nonetheless, religious practices are routinely restricted. In a 2003 study of 70 asylum seekers detained in ICE facilities throughout New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 17% of detainees reported difficulty practicing their religion. One detainee reported that he tried to save his food until the evening on numerous occasions in order to carry out his Ramadan fast, only to see the food thrown away by facility staff. Another detainee reported that facility staff repeatedly confiscated the materials he had mailordered from the American Bible Academy.126
7. Segregation
The DOM Standard on Disciplinary Segregation allows for the use of a disciplinary unit somewhat akin to a solitary confinement unit found in correctional facilities. The Standard requires that use of the unit be subject to strict requirements of due process and humane conditions.127
Unfortunately, the use of disciplinary “segregation” is widely abused.128 The due process requirements are often disregarded, particularly in county jails where facility staff uses terminology more appropriate to correctional facilities, referring to segregation by terms such as “the hole.” Segregation is often used as a disproportionate response to minor offenses. One detainee, for example, reported being placed in segregation for two days as punishment for arguing with another detainee. Other detainees have stated that the arbitrary use of segregation led them to hide suicidal thoughts from facility staff for fear that confiding such thoughts would result in segregation.129
125 DOM Standards, “Religious Practices” Standard, available at http://www.ice.gov/doclib/partners/dro/opsmanual/relpract.pdf. 126 PHR/Bellevue Report, at 14, 127. 127 DOM, “Special Management Unit (Disciplinary Segregation)” Standard, available at http://www.ice.gov/doclib/partners/dro/opsmanual/smu_dis.pdf. 128 See DHS OIG Report, supra note 3, at 14-16. 129 PHR/Bellevue Report, at 75, 77, 115.
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Detainees report inhumane conditions in segregation. Some of the segregation rooms are dirty, odorous and subject to frigid temperatures.130 The use of segregation as a type of solitary confinement can be particularly psychologically damaging for refugees and asylum seekers, many of whom have suffered forced imprisonment and harsh jail conditions as a part of the persecution from which they have fled. The use of segregation in such cases, particularly without the restrictions that the Standards caution, can result in retraumatization.131
8. Use of Force
The DOM Standards authorize the use of force against immigrant detainees “only after all reasonable efforts to resolve a situation have failed.” Even in such dire situations, officers are to use “as little force as necessary to gain control of the detainee.”132 Widespread reports of physical abuse of ICE detainees persist throughout the country, however, particularly in county jails.
Detainees often report seeing their fellow detainees hit or beaten by guards, for “talking back” or quarreling with other detainees.133 An illustrative example of detainee abuse is the story of Jose Mancilla Gutierrez, formerly detained at the Northwest Detention Facility in Seattle. In 2004, Mancilla filed suit against the Correctional Services Corp., alleging that he suffered an unprovoked and brutal beating at the hands of facility officers. Mancilla reports that he was stopped by a guard while returning to his cell. The guard handcuffed him, slammed his face into a wall, and threw him to the ground where he and another officer repeatedly beat and kicked him while other detainees yelled out for them to stop. The many detainees who witnessed the event corroborated Mancilla’s story.134
9. Issuance and Exchange of Clothing, Bedding, and Towels
The DOM Standard provides that “basic hygiene is essential to the well-being of detainees.” The Standard specifically requires that detainees’ socks and undergarments be exchanged daily.135 In some facilities, however, women detainees are given two pair of underwear which are not exchanged daily or replaced when they wear out. Women detainees often report difficulty in obtaining feminine hygiene products.136
130 Id. 131 PHR/Bellevue Report, at 115. 132 DOM, “Use of Force” Standard, available at http://www.ice.gov/doclib/partners/dro/opsmanual/useoffor.pdf. 133 PHR/Bellevue Report, at 120. 134 Paul Shukovsky, Immigration Prisoners Allege Guard Abuse, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 4, 2004, B2. 135 DOM, “Issuance and Exchange of Clothing, Bedding, and Towels” Standard, available at http://www.ice.gov/doclib/partners/dro/opsmanual/cloth.pdf. 136 See also DHS OIG Report, supra note 3, at 21-22.
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10. Marriage Requests
The DOM Standard requires that a detainee’s request for permission to marry must be granted unless one of the following circumstances apply: he/she is not legally eligible to marry; he/she is not mentally competent to marry; his/her fiancé(e) has not provided written affirmation of his/her intent to marry; the marriage would present a security threat; or a “compelling government interest exists for denying the request.” The Standard provides as an example of a “compelling interest” a situation where the marriage would require postponement of removal. However, the Standard specifically states that “‘compelling interests’ ordinarily do not include administrative inconvenience or the possibility that the marriage may allow the detainee to pursue a new avenue of relief from deportation.”137
For immigrant detainees, marriage requests may be particularly important because a marriage may be the detainee’s only available immigration relief. Legal service providers, however, report that marriage requests are rarely granted to ICE detainees, regardless of the legitimacy of the request. Advocates in the New York and New Jersey area report that none of their clients’ numerous marriage requests have ever been granted. One client requested a marriage to his longtime common-law wife, the mother of his children and a U.S. citizen. The request was denied.
11. Grievance Procedures
Although the DOM Standards provide for a Detainee Grievance Procedure, detainees and their advocates have found the system to be largely ineffective.138 Legal service providers point to stacks of unanswered complaints filed by their clients alleging violations of the DOM. When complaints cannot be resolved locally, advocates are advised to notify ICE Headquarters and the OCRCL. Unfortunately, even when advocates do so, ICE and the OCRCL have failed to resolve most complaints relating to detention standards compliance. The DOM Standards are intended to provide protection to a growing population of immigrant detainees and to ensure accountability for those responsible for their care. Without the force of the law behind them, the Standards will never fully serve either purpose.
C. Gaps in the Detention Standards
In addition to the lack of enforcement of the DOM Standards, immigrant detainees also suffer due to problems that the current standards do not even address. While many advocates regard the DOM Standards as currently written to be generally adequate, some problems reported by detainees to practitioners and NGOs point to specific detainee issues that could be addressed by additions to the existing Standards. The following are descriptions of a number of these reported problems:
137 DOM, “Marriage Requests” Standard, available at http://www.ice.gov/doclib/partners/dro/opsmanual/marreq.pdf. 138 DHS OIG Report, supra note 3, at 20-21.
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1. Medical Care
One of the most common complaints from detainees concerns medical care. Many problems with detainees’ medical care stem from the lack of enforcement of the Detention Manual standards. However, even full compliance with the standards allows for insufficient access to medical care. Furthermore, there are no provisions for access to a mental health practitioner, which is particularly important for immigrant detainees.139 Requiring an audit of medical care and medical facilities at any facility before it is approved to house immigrant detainees would ensure that proper medical care is given to detainees. Revised ICE medical standards promulgated as regulations should include:
a. Medical Screenings
According to the Detention Manual, detainees’ initial medical screening may be conducted by a health care provider or by “an officer trained to perform this function.” Screening by non-medical professionals may result in improper screenings that miss significant medical problems, or may delay necessary emergency care. In addition, detainees may feel uncomfortable discussing certain sensitive medical topics, such as HIV status, with a non-medical professional.
A second concern about medical screenings is the use of other detainees to provide translation services during screenings. Though the detainee being screened must consent to translation by another detainee, detainees may feel pressured to consent, especially if they have urgent medical issues or do not know when another translator will be available. Translations by other detainees run the risk of inaccuracies, especially when complicated medical terms are involved, and also raise serious issues of confidentiality. The required use of professional services such as telephone translation services would be more likely to ensure accuracy and confidentiality.
b. Dental Care
Other than emergency care, under the current Standards, no dental care need be provided to detainees. The DOM Standards state routine dental care “may be provided” to those in detention for more than six months. Changing this standard to mandate routine dental care, besides the positive impact on detainees’ health, could even result in cost savings for facilities, because of the potentially catastrophic expense of emergency dental care.
c. Chronic/Long-Term Care
When an immigrant is first confined, the duration of detention is usually unknown. Many individuals who facility staff expect will be detained just for a short period of time but are ultimately detained for months or years never receive adequate non-acute care.
139 “From Persecution to Prison: The Health Consequences of Detention for Asylum Seekers,” Physicians for Human Rights and The Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, available at http://www.phrusa.org/campaigns/asylum_network/detention_execSummary/detention_pdf.pdf.
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Since a medical professional does not need to conduct the initial medical screening under the current DOM Standards and since the standards provide fourteen days in which the initial screening may be conducted, individuals with chronic conditions such as HIV/AIDS or kidney disease run the risk of not receiving adequate screening or may find their health seriously compromised in even the relatively short pre-screening if they are denied proper medications or other care. The general Standards for medical care state only that detainees must receive “initial medical screening, cost-effective primary medical care, and emergency care.” Specialty care, mental health care, and hospitalization must only be provided within the local community when it is arranged by the Officer in Charge (OIC). There are no provisions as to the frequency or consistency with which this outside care must be provided.
d. Sick Call Procedures
The Standards mandate that sick call is available for all detainees but offer no guarantees of the adequacy of these services. First, the DOM Standards state that the health care provider determines when a detainee is seen, but do not provide specific standards for how quickly detainees must be seen beyond general numerical requirements as to the frequency of sick call based on the detainee population.140 Waiting a week for an appointment could cause serious health consequences for detainees with some health conditions. In addition, there is no system in place to track detainee requests and ensure that they are actually received by medical staff within a given time frame.
Confidentiality is also a significant problem associated with sick call. In some facilities, detainees are required to leave sick call request slips between the bars of their cells, allowing other detainees access to the information and in some cases discouraging candor by detainees about the reason for their request. The DOM Standards as written have no confidentiality requirements pertaining to sick call.
e. Emergency Care
The Standards include requirements to train staff to respond to medical emergencies within four minutes. However, the Standards do not actually address provisions for ensuring that a four-minute response time is enforced; they require only that relevant staff training take place.
f. Accreditation
The Division of Immigration Health Services Policies and Procedures Manual states that facilities housing detainees should comply not only with National Commission on Correctional Healthcare (NCCHC) standards, but also with Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) standards. However, the detention standards require only NCCHC accreditation while stating that facilities should “strive”
140 The DOM requires that facilities housing fewer than 50 detainees must have sick call available at least once a week; those with 50-200 detainees, three times a week; and with more than 200, five times a week.
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for JCAHO accreditation. In addition, NCCHC accreditation is required only for SPCs and CDFs, and not for IGSAs.
Besides the fact that JCAHO standards are much more extensive and would ensure higher quality care, requiring compliance with JCAHO standards would be important as an acknowledgment that immigrant detainees are not in criminal detention and therefore should have access to the quality of care deemed minimally acceptable for non-detained individuals in the United States.
g. Mental Health Care
Other than provisions to identify and monitor those detainees deemed suicidal, the general provisions that the initial screening should evaluate detainees for mental illness, and that mental health care should be available in the community; there are no specific standards for the provision of regular mental health care to detainees.
h. HIV/AIDS Issues
HIV-positive detainees face a number of specific problems resulting from omissions in the DOM Standards. First, it is unclear from the Standard as written whether HIV/AIDS is categorized as a communicable disease for purposes of isolation. The INA does consider HIV a “communicable disease,” but the Standards state that the facility physician will determine whether a specific individual with HIV may be housed with the general detainee population. There is no information in the Standards as to how a physician should make this determination.
In addition, as noted above, HIV-positive individuals may not receive their medications and other necessary care for one to two weeks after they arrive at a facility because of the screening policy. There should be specific standards in place to assure that HIV-positive individuals are identified by medical staff immediately after arrival in facilities. HIV-positive detainees’ care is also sometimes delayed by the unavailability of necessary drugs at the pharmacy or the fact that their medical records have not been transferred with them.
The lack of comprehensive confidentiality provisions in the Standards, as mentioned above, has particular significance for HIV-positive detainees. Other omissions in standards addressing confidentiality include the public distribution of medications in many facilities.
2. Telephone Access
Detainees report a number of problems with telephone access beyond noncompliance with the DOM Standards. While instructions for phone use are posted next to the phones (as provided in the Standards), they are often not posted in any language other than English and sometimes Spanish. Detainees who do not speak these languages find it difficult or impossible to use the phone to contact their family or legal
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representative. Additionally, detainees generally do not know the telephone code needed to reach their consulate or the contact information for any free legal service providers unless they can learn it from other detainees. Finally, detainees are often unable to dial necessary toll-free (including 1-800) numbers, such as court dial-in systems, since they are often blocked.
3. Detainee Handbook
The current Standards require merely that detainees be given a handbook that “will list detainee rights and responsibilities.”141 Detainees report that they are often given the facility’s regular inmate handbook, which does not contain information pertinent to them as immigrant detainees. If the standards more clearly laid out the content to be included in the handbook, the rights and responsibilities of detainees would be much more clearly and effectively communicated to them.
4. Visitation
Detainees report that the time they are allowed to meet with family visitors is unreasonably short. As the DOM Standards recognize, family visitation is important for maintaining detainee morale and family relationships.142 Increasing the minimum allowable length for visits in the Standards would better meet this goal143.
Another significant problem is the inadequate number of attorney meeting rooms in many facilities. While the standards provide that there shall be private consultation rooms for meetings with attorneys, they do not indicate that there should be a minimum number of them.144 One attorney reports that he routinely waits an hour to see his clients at Otey Mesa, and must wait an additional thirty or forty-five minutes for each subsequent client he might see on the same visit. The meetings themselves often need only be a few minutes, but time wasted waiting to meet privately with clients can impose a substantial cost on legal services and pro bono lawyers, or on the detainee if s/he has retained private counsel.
5. Access to Legal Materials
Many detainees do not know how to use the law library. Allowing the required legal presentation to be held in the library so that detainees could learn how to use it would help alleviate this problem. Additionally, NGOs and other groups report that a significant amount of legal resources donated to law libraries at immigrant detention facilities are rejected, with little apparent reason. A more clearly explicated process by which facilities would review donated materials would help ensure that usable material makes its way to the law libraries.
141 DOM, “Detainee Handbook” Standard, available at http://www.ice.gov/doclib/partners/dro/opsmanual/handbk.pdf. 142 DOM, “Visitation” Standard, available at http://www.ice.gov/doclib/partners/dro/opsmanual/visit.pdf. 143 Currently, the minimum visit for friends and family is 30 minutes. Id. 144 Id.
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6. Detainee Transfers
A commonly reported problem regarding detainee transfers is that detainees with legal counsel are often transferred to facilities far away from their counsel, family, and witnesses, such that the attorney-client relationship is effectively terminated and the detainee’s ability to mount a defense to removal is severely compromised. Little or no notice is given. While transfers may be necessary at times, the Standard describing transfer decisions should better account for the importance to the detainees of maintaining their legal counsel, and should obligate the agency to document to what extent the presence of counsel is taken into consideration in determining transfers.
7. Living Conditions
There is currently no standard that directly addresses living conditions and requires that detainees be kept in humane and hygienic conditions. Detainees report that bathrooms are often in unhygienic states. One detainee reported contracting a skin fungus due to unsanitary conditions in the shower.145
8. Training
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, Amnesty International-USA, and the National Immigration Forum have all recommended training for detention guards and health care personnel working with detained immigrants and asylum seekers.146 Often detention facility staff do not understand the status of ICE detainees and do not have the training to respond to the issues they face. Heartland Alliance and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services each found that detention facility staff was better able to communicate and work with ICE detainees after receiving training. Such required training could include (1) an overview of immigration detention and legal pathways for detainees, (2) medical and mental healthcare concerns, (3) cultural competency and language access, and (4) resources and support available to detention facility staff.147
9. Sexual Abuse
The DOM Standards do not address the problem of sexual abuse in immigrant detention centers. The organization Stop Prisoner Rape issued a report in 2004 compiling accounts of the sexual abuse of female, male, and youth detainees nationwide. Such problems continue today, and are wholly unaddressed by the current standards.148
145 Human Rights Watch Young Advocates Letter to Robert Hodgson, INS, available at http://hrw.org/press/2002/10/san-ltr0906.htm. 146 Letter from Coalition of Four NGOs to Daniel Sutherland, DHS (October 25, 2005). 147 Id. 148 “Stop Prisoner Rape Releases Report on Sexual Abuse in Immigration Detention,” Stop Prisoner Rape, available at http://www.spr.org/en/pressreleases/2004/1007.html.
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VI. CONCLUSION
For the reasons stated above, petitioners respectfully request that DHS initiate a rulemaking proceeding pursuant to the Administrative Procedures Act, 5 U.S.C. § 553, to promulgate regulations governing detention standards for immigration detainees .
January 25, 2007
Respectfully submitted,

On the petition:
Heidi Altman Rebecca Antar Sarah Fick Anthony Ford Jennifer Friedman John Grant Lisa Gouldy Alexis Hoag Amanda Klasing Sonia Lin Priscilla Marquez
J.D. Candidates, NYU School of Law

___________________________ Michael J. Wishnie 127 Wall Street New Haven, CT 06511 (203) 436-4780 Counsel for petitioners

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APPENDIX A: Short-Term Detention on the Southwest Border
For Future Consideration: Regulations Regarding Short-Term Detention on the Southwest Border
The ICE Detention Operations Manual discussed in this petition delineates standards that apply to Service Processing Centers, Contract Detention Facilities, and Intergovernmental Service Agreements (“IGSAs”) under which ICE may detain noncitizens for 72 hours or longer. DHS has not, however, created a coherent and consistent set of standards governing the treatment of detainees held for shorter periods of time, including in Border Patrol custody. This Appendix presents the existing situation faced by those individuals placed into Border Patrol custody along the southwest border, and outlines the pressing need for regulations to ensure that such individuals are treated in a uniform and humane manner.
Border Patrol records indicate that from 1994 to 2004, between 0.9 million and 1.7 million migrants were apprehended in the nine southwest Border Patrol sectors each year.149 While the number of apprehensions overestimates the number of individuals who find themselves in Border Patrol custody, due to repeated crossing attempts, each apprehension represents an encounter between a migrant and the agency. The vast majority of these apprehensions result in voluntary departures, in which migrants who admit to being illegally in the country and agree to depart voluntarily receive no legal penalty of any kind.150 These deportations generally do not fall under the standards developed to guide treatment of detainees held 72 hours or more due to the rapidity with which Mexican crossers are returned to Mexico.
The harsh and often life-threatening conditions along the southwest border require that particular attention be paid to the treatment of those in Border Patrol custody. After the Southwest Border Strategy was announced in 1994, migration patterns started to shift. The Border Patrol focused its resources on urban areas with the highest volumes of crossers, such as San Diego and El Paso. Migrant traffic therefore shifted from traditional corridors to more remote areas, particularly the harsh terrain of the ArizonaSonora border.151 The number of deaths along the southwest border increased dramatically – data from the Border Patrol’s Border Safety Initiative shows that the number of deaths along the southwest border increased from 241 in 1999 to 472 in 2005.152 As migrant traffic patterns shifted, exposure replaced traffic accidents as the leading cause of death.
149 United States General Accounting Office, Report to the Honorable Bill First, Majority Leader, United States Senate: Illegal Immigration: Border-Crossing Deaths Have Doubled Since 1995: Border Patrol’s Efforts to Prevent Deaths Have Not Been Fully Evaluated, GAO-06-770 (August 2006), p. 44, available at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06770.pdf. 150 David Dixon, Spotlight on U.S. Immigration Enforcement, Migration Information Source (September 2005), available at http://www.migrationinformation.org/USFocus/display.cfm?ID=335. 151 GAO Report on Border-Crossing Deaths, at 6-9. 152 Id. at 4.
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For migrants, vulnerability to harsh desert conditions is often heightened by poor health and a generally weakened state exacerbated by multiple crossing attempts often occurring in rapid succession. Because migrants cross repeatedly, their experiences while in Border Patrol custody are likely to affect their actions and reactions in future encounters. Increasing their vulnerability, migrants from Mexico who are leaving through voluntary departure are transported to the border and dropped off on the U.S. side to walk across to Mexico under surveillance. They may have no money or resources and may never have visited the city they are entering before, making them particularly vulnerable. While all individuals should be treated in a humane and consistent manner, such treatment is particularly important for those migrants encountered in the more remote and life-threatening terrain in which many now cross.
Migrants report that treatment in the field and at detention centers is arbitrary and inconsistent. While many field agents carry water and food, others are unable or unwilling to offer even water to detained migrants, some of whom may have been in the desert for more a week or more by the time they are encountered. Humanitarian groups in Arizona relate that agents in the field often decline offers of food and water to immigrant detainees, even when these detainees indicate that they are hungry and thirsty. Conditions in detention facilities are similarly uneven. Immigrants report being held for up to three days with minimal nourishment, consisting of one small glass of water and one hamburger a day.153
DHS should create basic regulations that are uniform across all sectors and that ensure humane treatment of all immigrant detainees, including those held for less than 72 hours. Such regulations must include standards on the treatment of detainees in the field, as well as in processing and detention centers. Regulations should cover:
1. Access to Water
Many migrants encountered by the Border Patrol are severely dehydrated and in a vulnerable condition, yet migrants report being detained for up to 24 hours without water or food. Hydration in these instances is of paramount concern. One migrant deported through Agua Prieta reported begging officers who were drinking water in front of her group of nine detainees for water for her children aged six and nine. The detainees were denied water although they were detained for over fourteen hours.154 Migrants deported from the Tucson Sector almost uniformly report inadequate water and food in the field and in detention, and many report receiving no water.155 Regulations must ensure that sufficient water is available in the field and in detention centers and that migrants have unlimited access to drinking water.
2. Access to food
Migrants often report receiving only cookies or crackers while held in detention
153 Archives, No More Deaths Summer 2006 Documentation Project. 154 Id. 155 Id.
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for periods ranging from six to thirty-six hours.156 Regulations must ensure that there is an adequate supply of appropriate food and that there is a consistent supply of food throughout their detention.
3. Basic medical treatment
Migrants report insufficient medical treatment in relation to: pre-existing medical conditions; injuries sustained during crossing attempts; and deportation from hospitals.
a. Pre-existing medical conditions
Many migrants report pre-existing medical conditions, including diabetes, high or low blood pressure, heart conditions, and arthritis. Generally, migrants report that the Border Patrol takes migrants’ medicine along with their other belongings when they are taken into custody. Although claim checks may be issued and items eventually returned, it is not uncommon for individuals to be deported without their possessions.157 Regulations must guarantee that detainees receive all of their belongings when they are released, and that they have access to necessary medications while detained even for short periods. Additionally, the Border Patrol should not release individuals in compromised and vulnerable conditions without ensuring that they have adequate medical care. Volunteers have reported a recurrent need to call ambulances for deported migrants upon their arrival in Mexico; in one instance, this need arose after the Border Patrol had refused treatment for a detainee known to be diabetic.158
b. Injuries sustained during crossing attempts
Humanitarian groups offering medical aid to migrants upon deportation into Mexico report untreated or severely under-treated wounds, blisters, serious sprains, broken bones, advanced stages of dehydration and heat exhaustion, and other severe conditions. Untreated blisters and wounds may be life threatening as infection sets in – one migrant deported to Nogales, Sonora, arrived with an advanced infection due to blisters sustained during his journey, eventually resulting in the amputation of his feet.159
c. Direct deportation from hospitals
Migrants are sometimes deported directly from hospitals, occasionally still wearing hospital gowns. Paperwork they carry with them often includes directions for filling prescriptions and returning for follow-up visits.160 Regulations must guarantee that individuals have access to necessary medical care.
156 Id. 157 Id. 158 Id. 159 Id. 160 Id.
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4. Safe transportation
Migrant detainees report being held in the field in vehicles without air conditioning on days with temperatures exceeding 110 degrees. Migrants have also complained of instances in which agents denied requests to turn down the air conditioning and in fact turned it up in response to their requests. Buses used to transport migrants frequently lack seatbelts. Conditions are often crowded, and women report being asked to lie among men to be transported from the field to processing centers.161 Regulations must ensure that conditions for transportation from the field to the processing center and to the port of entry are humane and do not threaten detainees’ safety.
5. Freedom from verbal and physical abuse
Short-term immigration detainees consistently report being verbally abused and cursed at by agents in the field and in detention centers. Reported instances of physical abuse during arrests and subsequent detention include: being shoved into cacti; being kicked or otherwise struck, particularly in the knees, head, and chest; the use of momentary chokeholds; the use of nightsticks to wake migrants; being forced to sit or stand in positions that are painful due to previous injury; and being handcuffed in “strange” and painful positions.162 These instances of physical abuse affect not only the individual detainee, but all those who witness the abuse, reducing the likelihood that migrants will turn themselves in when faced with life-threatening situations and increasing the likelihood that they will flee in future encounters, possibly provoking additional abuse. Humanitarian workers have encountered migrants lost in the desert who have asked if they are likely to be shot, and found migrants reluctant to call an ambulance due to a fear of being beaten. Migrants have reported being forced to sign legal documents under the threat of criminal charges by men with guns, without understanding the content of the documents they are signing.163
6. Safe Deportation
Migrant detainees are currently deported 24 hours a day through ports of entry on the border. In many instances, they have never been to the city through which they are being deported and have no familiarity with the resources that might be available, making them particularly vulnerable on unfamiliar streets.
a. Night-time deportations
While any deportation at night is a matter for concern, migrants report the consistent deportation of women (including pregnant women) and children between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., long after shelters have closed their doors.164 Regulations should prevent these unnecessary night-time deportations.
161 Id. 162 Id. 163 Id. 164 Id.
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b. Separating families Short-term detainees are often separated from their family members and deported at separate times, despite standards that are designed to avoid this. This is particularly problematic in cities such as Nogales where migrants must walk several miles between the two ports of entry used for deportations and find it difficult if not impossible to reunite or find news of their relatives.165 Regulations must prioritize family unity throughout the detention and removal process. The transitory nature of detention in this instance poses special challenges for establishing effective enforcement mechanisms. Detainees are not afforded the opportunity to make telephone calls to family, friends, or legal aid, and there is little opportunity for them to pursue any complaint regarding their treatment. DHS should establish a community review board to monitor the treatment of detainees and to ensure accountability for compliance with standards and regulations. In order to function effectively, the review board should be granted access to detention centers and officers in the field, and authority to conduct on-going surveys and interviews in migrant centers in northern Mexico.
165 Id.
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 July 24,2009

Deputv SCC!"t'/III:'"
u.s. Department of Homeland Security
Washington. DC 20528

Michael J. Wishnie, Esq. Clinical Professor of Law Yale Law School P.O. Box 209090 Ncw Haven, Connecticut 06320-9090
Paromita Shah, Esq. Associate Director National Immigration Project of the
National Lawyers Guild 14 Beacon Street, Suite 602 Boston, Massachusetts 02108
Re: "Petition for Rulemaking to Promulgate Regulations Governing Detention Standards for Immigration Detainees," January 24, 2007
Dear Mr. Wishnie and Ms. Shah:
This letter responds to the January 24, 2007, petition for rulemaking under 5 U.S.C. § 553(c) (the "petition") to promulgate regulations governing detention standards for immigration detainees. After careful consideration of the petition, and for the reasons stated in this response, the Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") does not intend to initiate a rulemaking proceeding covering detention standards for immigration detainees at this time. Accordingly, your petition is denied.
The Petition
The petition asserts that the National Detention Standards ("NOS"), adopted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") in 2003, lack enforcement tools and are ineffective in complying with existing detention standards governing environmental health and safety, grievance procedures, access to legal materials and telephones, housing classifications, and recreation. See Petition at 3-4, 7-8. The petition concludes that codified regulations would provide the best enforcement instrument to ensure compliance with immigration detention standards.
Historical Development of National Detention Standards
The Immigration and Naturalization Service ("INS"), in consultation with outside stakeholders, first issued uniform, comprehensive standards for facilities housing INS detainees
www.dhs.gov

in November 2000. These standards, which later became known as the NOS, took effect in January 2001 and set out thirty-six standards governing conditions of confinement, access to legal representation, safe and secure operations, and health care services that were designed to serve the needs of detainees. See U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security, 2000 Detention Operations Manual (last modified Nov. 17,2008)1. The standards were based on then-current INS detention policies, Federal Bureau of Prisons ("BOP") program statements, and the widely accepted American Correctional Association's ("ACA") Standards for Adult Local Detention Facilities. The NOS covered areas from religious services to legal services and materials and were implemented over a two-year period to enable facilities to "ramp up" their operations to meet these standards.
The American Bar Association (ABA) and other organizations were instrumental in developing these standards. Then-ABA President Martha Barnett called the detention standards "a significant aehicvement" and a positive move toward "providing uniform treatment and access to counsel for immigrants and asylum-seekers, whether detained in INS-run facilities or county jails." See INS Hopes to Bring Uniformity to Detention Facility Processes with Release of Comprehensive Standards, 77 Int. Rei. 1637 (Nov. 20, 2000). The NOS applied to all facilities housing detainees held for more than seventy-two hours, including Service Processing Centers ("SPC"), Contract Detention Facilities ("CDF"), and state and local government facilities with which ICE had entered into an Intergovernmental Service Agreement ("I GSA"). These facilities were required to meet implementing procedures for each detention standard and the facilities were subject to annual inspections to ensure compliance with the standards.
In June 2004, the ACA issued its Fourth Edition Performance-Based Standards for Adult Local Detention Facilities, which set out seven goals of safety, security, order, care, programs and activity, justice, and administration and management. In response, ICE began revising its detention standards to a performance-based format. ICE reasoned that this migration was necessary to promote consistency with established industry standards and integrate its practices and procedures with those measurements employed by the ACA.
Federal Bureau of Prisons and DHS administrative detention populations and operations
The petition refers to the regulations adopted by the BOP as a regulatory standard that DHS should emulate, although, as the petition correctly notes, there are substantial differences between BOP convicted criminal and DHS administrative detainee populations. See 28 C.F.R. parts 522, 524, 527, 540 - 553. See, e.g., Be/! v. Wo/fish,441 U.S. 520, 536-37 (1979) (conditions or restrictions of detention arc premised on whether person is a pretrial detainee (Due Process Clause rights) or an inmate (punishment under the Eighth Amendment)); Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S. 307,322 (1982) (confinement treatment and conditions "more considerate" for civilly detained persons than criminals); Jones v. Blanas, 393 F.3d 918, 932 (9th Cir. 2004) (person detained under civil process cannot be subjected to punitive conditions), cert. denied sub nom., Count)' ofSacramento, Cal. v. Jones, 546 U.S. 820 (2005).
I Available at http://www.ice.gov/pi/dro/opsmanuaVindex.htm.
2

DHS alien detainees differ from inmates remanded to BOP to serve federal criminal sentences. BOP inmates are confined incident to punishment; DHS alien detainees are detained only for the minimum time necessary to effectuate their removal from the United States or release from custody. As of February 2,2009, for example, ICE detainees averaged thirty-three days in custody, while the average length of stay was forty months for a BOP prisoner for calendar year 2008. In fiscal year 2007, ICE detained approximately 311,000 aliens. See Office of Immigration Statistics, Department of Homeland Security, Immigration Enforcement Actions: 2007 (Dec. 2008)2. ICE currently has 32,000 authorized detention "beds," only a small percentage of which are owned and operated directly by DHS. BOP, on the other hand, has reported its inmate population as approximately 200,000. See Federal Bureau of Prisons, Department of Justice, State ofthe Bureau 2007, at II (at the end ofFY2007, BOP's total inmate population was 200,020)3 ICE is trying to reduce the length of time that aliens are detained in its facilities. Due to the fundamental differences in populations, the health care goals, for example, vary greatly between DHS and BOP. DHS provides detainees access to health care within the relatively brief period of detention typical for the detainee population, while BOP provides inmates with health maintenance throughout their extended term of imprisonment.
Performance Based National Detention Standards
On September 12,2008, ICE published forty-one Performance Based National Detention Standards ("PBNDS") to replace the NOS. The PBNDS, which were revised on December 5, 2008, and modified on February 20,2009, to add an additional standard, are publicly available at http://www.ice.gov/partners/dro/PBNDS/index.htm. The PBNDS identify specific outcomes and expected practices to be achieved for each standard, and require SPCs, CDFs, and IGSAs to meet 90% of the non-mandatory components and 100% of the mandatory components. Implementation is multi-phased, with the new PBNDS first applying to SPCs and CDFs. ICE will implement thc PBNDS gradually until final implementation in 20 IO. On-site compliance reviewers and annual reviewers began using the PBNDS for ICE SPCs on April I, 2009. On June I, 2009, the PBNDS were implemented at all CDFs with compliance reviewers and annual reviewers to begin work on January 1,2010. In addition, starting on January I, 2010, the PBNDS will begin implementation at [GSA facilities; implementation at IGSAs will also include the use of on-site compliance reviewers and annual reviewers.
Many of the standards in the PBNDS address concerns raised in your petition. For example, in the PBNDS, the Facility Security and Control standard enumerates procedures protecting the community, staff, contraetors, and detainees from harm and outlines expected outcomes ensuring that: (I) security posts and positions are staffed with quali fied personnel, and (2) the health and safety of the staff and detainees are enhanced through observation, supervision, and interaction. See ICE/ORO Detention Standard, Facility Security and Control at I (Dec. 5, 2008). Additionally, the Environmental Health and Safety standard prescribes hygiene standards to provide for living area safety, housekeeping sanitation and cleanliness, fire prevention and control, and medical operations in administering care to detainees. This standard provides that compliance with the applicable safety and sanitation laws are reflected by documented internal and external inspections and corrective aetions when indicated. See
2 Available at http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/st8tistics/publications/enforcement_ar_07 .pdf. 3 Available at hllp://www.bop.gov/news/PDFs/sob07.pdf.
3

ICE/ORO Detention Standard, Environmental Health and Safety (Dec. 5,2008). Furthermore, the Grievance System standard explains the formal and informal grievance process and provides a mechanism to resolve disputes between staff and detainees, the law libraries standard explains the detainees' accessibility to the law libraries and legal materials, and there are individual standards that govern telephone access, recreation, and housing classification. See ICE/ORO Grievance System (Dec. 5, 2008), Law Libraries and Legal Material (Dec. 5, 2008), Telephone Access (Dec. 5, 2008), Recreation (Dec. 5,2008), and Classification System (Dec. 5, 2008). The PBNDS also include facility quality assurance and inspection contracts, and compliance is monitored through internal assessments, independent annual audits, and quality assurance reviews. In summary, the PBNDS cover the subject matter areas that you express concerns about, and provide performance outcome measures to ensure compliance with these standards.
ICE coordinated with a number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in drafting the PBNDS through the collaborative efforts of the lCE/NGO Working Group, which included, among other organizations, the ABA and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and also with other organizations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The input and perspective gathered from the NGO community was exceedingly valuable as a means for ensuring that the PBNDS give due consideration to the rights, needs, safety, and humane care of the detainee population. ICE thus integrated many of the NGOs' comments and suggestions in the drafts, culminating in a finished product that represents the interests ofthe agency and interested parties to safely house detainees in an environment that protects their legal rights and promotes each facility's compliance with the standards established.
Besides issuing the PBNDS, ICE has implemented another oversight mechanism to ensure compliance. ICE created the Detention Facilities Inspection Group within the Office of Professional Responsibility, which reviews the inspection of facilities against the PBNDS for facility accreditation and conducts quality assurance reviews to further validate these inspections. Put simply, ICE has implemented institutional measures to cross-check facilities' compliance with the PBNDS. ICE plans to publish semi-annual reports on compliance with these standards.
DHS believes that performance-based standards, which currently are employed by the ACA, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, and the Joint Commission, will effectively improve the conditions of confinement for immigration detainees in ICE custody and hold facilities housing detainees accountable by cross-checking their performance against the criteria set out in the PBNDS. The performance-based standards enumerated in the PBNDS articulate goals and objectives in providing detainee care, measure each facility's practices and procedures against these standards, and require the facilities to document actions taken to promote quality detainee and health care services. In focusing on expected outcomes and identi fying clear practices and objectives, the performance-based standards enable the agency to measure specific outcomes over time and evaluate the progress each service provider achieves in meeting the defined performance criteria. In other words, DHS believes that integrating its detention standards into a performance-based format improves the accuracy and credibility of facility performance ratings consistent with industry standards, and will promote best practices and accountability, which will improve detention conditions. Critically, the PBNDS will facilitate ICE's oversight of the facilities and expedite remediation or modification, if appropriate, when standards are not satisfied.
4

Administration of Performance Based National Detention Standards
The petition suggests that the detention standards be promulgated as legislative rules for the purpose of making those standards judicially enforceable. Petition at 7, 9-10. DHS declines to create additional judicially enforceable rights through such an action. Adoption of judicially enforceable regulations is no substitute for management of facilities and DHS is committed to better management of detention facilities. Many of the "gaps" raised by the petition have been met by the 2008 PBNDS. Petition at 31-42.
DHS uses a number of internal and external means to ensure quality and compliance with the PBNDS. For example, the Detention Management Control Program (DMCP) assesses detention-related risks and tests the adequacy of internal controls within detention operations. The DMCP provides a template to examine ICE's detention program and conduct reviews and special assessments to ensure compliance with applicable laws, policies, and procedures; recommend solutions to remedy deficiencies at detention facilities; and identify key performance indicators to monitor critical areas and operations. DHS and ICE believe that these standards as implemented promote safe and secure environments for detainees and provide appropriate conditions of confinement.
The Detention Standards Compliance Unit (DSCU) oversees the facility inspection program and develops policies, standards, and procedures for ICE detention operations to conduct compliance reviews. DSCU-certitied officials have unconditional access to the facilities and have employed contract inspection companies to evaluate facilities based on direct observations, interviews with detainees and staff, and documentary reviews. DSCU reviews the final report of the contractor and assigns a rating. Facilities that receive a deficient or at-risk rating must submit a plan of action identifying the correcti ve measures to be taken to address the non-complying conditions. ICE reserves the right to discontinue using any facility that fails to comply with the NOS, and PBNDS, until it receives an acceptable rating. DSCU further distills these assessments to determine whether the detention standards should be amended and internal controls should be modified to improve detention operations.
Moreover, representatives from the UNHCR and the ABA regularly visit detainee facilities. These visits, which commenced in 1993, permit these organizations to give ICE information, recommendations and opinions based on their observations. ICE meets with the UNHCR to discuss its observations and compliance concerns.
Conclusion
After careful consideration of the petition to initiate a rulemaking action, DHS has determined that the PBNDS is the appropriate mechanism to improve detention facility management and ensure compliance with detention standards. DHS believes that implementing the PBNDS, rather than codifying the NOS, is the best way to ensure appropriate detention conditions and improve the quality of life of detainees. The PBNDS will provide the agency with the necessary t1exibility to enforce standards that ensure proper conditions of confinement and will change those standards as appropriate.
5

DHS has considered the benefits and burdens of conducting a rulemaking to codify the NDS and coneludes that rulemaking would be laborious, time consuming, and less flexible, and could impede DHS's ability to expeditiously respond to changed circumstances, emergency situations, and crises to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the detained aliens, agency personnel and contractors, and to ensure compliance with the NDS. DHS advises that ICE may modify the PBNDS in the future, depending on, among other things, suggestions by accrediting bodies or organizations like those you represent. DHS believes that the PBNDS and the multilayered review process now in place preserve and protect the health and welfare of alien detainees, and provide appropriately for both quality control and accountability of the facilities housing the detainees. DHS had decided that ICE will employ the PBNDS as currently published (and subsequently updated, as appropriate) rather than initiating a rulemaking action.
As always, DHS appreciates your commitment to the humane and just treatment of the detained immigrant population and remains engaged in meeting the needs of detainees housed at ICE facilities. Nevertheless, at this juncture, ICE intends to administer the PBNDS and not codify the NDS. Accordingly, the petition for rulemaking is denied.
Sincerely,
c... "\ ~ Jane H·1l Lute Deputy Secretary cc: John Morton, Assistant Secretary, ICE
6

 
 CLOSED, ECF
U.S. District Court United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Foley
Square) CIVIL DOCKET FOR CASE #: 1:08−cv−04056−DC

Families for Freedom et al v. Chertoff Assigned to: Judge Denny Chin Cause: 28:1331 Fed. Question: Other
Plaintiff Families for Freedom
Plaintiff National Immergration Project of the National Lawyers' Guild
Plaintiff Rafiu Abimbola
Plaintiff Camal Marchabeyoglu

Date Filed: 04/30/2008 Date Terminated: 06/26/2009 Jury Demand: None Nature of Suit: 890 Other Statutory Actions Jurisdiction: Federal Question
represented by Michael Joel Wishnie Jermoe N. Frank Legal Services Organization Yale Law School Post Office Box 209090 New Haven , CT 06520−9090 (203)432−4800 Fax: (203)432−1426 Email: michael.wishnie@yale.edu LEAD ATTORNEY ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED
represented by Michael Joel Wishnie (See above for address) LEAD ATTORNEY ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED
represented by Michael Joel Wishnie (See above for address) LEAD ATTORNEY ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED
represented by Michael Joel Wishnie (See above for address) LEAD ATTORNEY ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED

V.
Defendant
Michael Chertoff Secretary of Homeland Security

represented by David Vincent Bober U.S. Attorney's Office, SDNY 86 Chambers Street New York , NY 10004 212 637−2718 Fax: 212 637−2786 Email: david.bober@usdoj.gov ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED

Date Filed

#

Docket Text

04/30/2008
04/30/2008 04/30/2008 04/30/2008 04/30/2008 04/30/2008 05/22/2008 06/09/2008
08/11/2008 08/14/2008
10/09/2008
10/15/2008 10/15/2008 10/15/2008
11/25/2008

1 COMPLAINT against Michael Chertoff. (Filing Fee $ 350.00, Receipt Number 649428)Document filed by Families for Freedom, National Immergration Project of the National Lawyers' Guild, Rafiu Abimbola, Camal Marchabeyoglu.(jfe) (Additional attachment(s) added on 6/6/2008: # 1 complaint pt 2) (mbe). (Entered: 05/01/2008)
SUMMONS ISSUED as to Michael Chertoff. (jfe) (Entered: 05/01/2008)
Magistrate Judge Andrew J. Peck is so designated. (jfe) (Entered: 05/01/2008)
Case Designated ECF. (jfe) (Entered: 05/01/2008)
2 RULE 7.1 CORPORATE DISCLOSURE STATEMENT. No Corporate Parent. Document filed by National Immergration Project of the National Lawyers' Guild.(jfe) (mbe). (Entered: 05/01/2008)
3 RULE 7.1 CORPORATE DISCLOSURE STATEMENT. No Corporate Parent. Document filed by Families for Freedom.(jfe) (mbe). (Entered: 05/01/2008)
4 NOTICE OF APPEARANCE by David Vincent Bober on behalf of Michael Chertoff (Bober, David) (Entered: 05/22/2008)
5 CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE of Summons and Complaint,. Michael Chertoff served on 5/20/2008, answer due 7/21/2008. Service was accepted by A. Charles. Service was made by Mail. Document filed by Families for Freedom. (Attachments: # 1 Affidavit Service on Attorney General, # 2 Affidavit Service on Secretary of DHS, # 3 Affidavit Service on US Attorney)(Wishnie, Michael) (Entered: 06/09/2008)
6 NOTICE of Hearing: Pretrial Conference set for 8/26/2008 at 11:00 AM in Courtroom 11A, 500 Pearl Street, New York, NY 10007 before Judge Denny Chin. (tve) (Entered: 08/11/2008)
7 ENDORSED LETTER addressed to Judge Denny Chin from Mike Wishnie dated 8/14/08 re: Request for an adjournment of the 8/26/08 pre−motion conference. ENDORSEMENT: Adjourned to 9/12/08 at 10:00 a.m. SO ORDERED. (Pre−Motion Conference set for 9/12/2008 at 10:00 AM before Judge Denny Chin.) (Signed by Judge Denny Chin on 8/14/08) (db) (Entered: 08/14/2008)
8 ENDORSED LETTER addressed to Judge Denny Chin from David Bober dated 10/9/08 re: Request that defendant's motion to dismiss would be now due 10/15/08, plaintiffs; opposition would be now due 11/17/08; and defendant's reply would be due 11/26/08. The argument date remains 12/4/08. ENDORSEMENT: Approved. ( Motion due by 10/15/2008. Reply due by 11/26/2008. Response due by 11/17/2008) (Signed by Judge Denny Chin on 10/9/08) (cd) (Entered: 10/09/2008)
9 MOTION to Dismiss for Lack of Jurisdiction. Document filed by Michael Chertoff.(Bober, David) (Entered: 10/15/2008)
10 MEMORANDUM OF LAW in Support re: 9 MOTION to Dismiss for Lack of Jurisdiction.. Document filed by Michael Chertoff. (Bober, David) (Entered: 10/15/2008)
11 DECLARATION of David Bober in Support re: 9 MOTION to Dismiss for Lack of Jurisdiction.. Document filed by Michael Chertoff. (Attachments: # 1 Exhibit A part 1, # 2 Exhibit A part 2, # 3 Exhibit B, # 4 Exhibit C, # 5 Exhibit D)(Bober, David) (Entered: 10/15/2008)
12 RESPONSE in Opposition re: 9 MOTION to Dismiss for Lack of Jurisdiction.. Document filed by Families for Freedom, National Immergration Project of the National Lawyers' Guild, Rafiu

11/25/2008 11/25/2008
12/03/2008
12/10/2008 12/17/2008
12/17/2008
01/09/2009 01/20/2009 04/03/2009 05/15/2009

Abimbola, Camal Marchabeyoglu. (Attachments: # 1 Affidavit Kahn Declaration, # 2 Exhibit Ex. A, # 3 Exhibit Ex. B, # 4 Exhibit Ex C, # 5 Exhibit Ex D, # 6 Exhibit Ex E, # 7 Exhibit Ex F, # 8 Exhibit Ex G, # 9 Exhibit Ex H, # 10 Exhibit Ex I, # 11 Exhibit Ex J, # 12 Exhibit Ex K, # 13 Exhibit Ex L, # 14 Exhibit Ex M, # 15 Exhibit Ex N, # 16 Exhibit Ex O, # 17 Exhibit Ex P, # 18 Exhibit Ex Q, # 19 Exhibit Ex R, # 20 Exhibit Ex S, # 21 Exhibit Ex. T, # 22 Exhibit Ex U, # 23 Exhibit Ex V, # 24 Exhibit Ex W, # 25 Exhibit Ex X, # 26 Exhibit Ex Y, # 27 Exhibit Ex Z, # 28 Exhibit Ex AA, # 29 Exhibit Ex BB, # 30 Exhibit Ex CC, # 31 Exhibit Ex DD, # 32 Exhibit Ex EE, # 33 Exhibit Ex FF)(Wishnie, Michael) (Entered: 11/25/2008)
13 FIRST MOTION for Leave to File Excess Pages for Plaintiffs' Opp to Defendant's Motion to Dismiss. Document filed by Families for Freedom, National Immergration Project of the National Lawyers' Guild, Rafiu Abimbola, Camal Marchabeyoglu.(Wishnie, Michael) (Entered: 11/25/2008)
14 MOTION for Extension of Time to File Response/Reply as to 12 Response in Opposition to Motion,,, 13 FIRST MOTION for Leave to File Excess Pages for Plaintiffs' Opp to Defendant's Motion to Dismiss.. Document filed by Families for Freedom, National Immergration Project of the National Lawyers' Guild, Rafiu Abimbola, Camal Marchabeyoglu.(Wishnie, Michael) (Entered: 11/25/2008)
15 ENDORSED LETTER addressed to Judge Denny Chin from David Bober dated 12/3/08 re: Counsel request a five day extension of time, from 12/5/08 to 12/10/08 to file defendant's reply papers in this action. In addition, counsel also requests permission to file a reply brief in excess of ten pages. ENDORSEMENT: Approved, in both respects. Defendant may have 20 pages for his reply brief. (Signed by Judge Denny Chin on 12/3/08) (tro) (Entered: 12/04/2008)
16 REPLY MEMORANDUM OF LAW in Support re: 9 MOTION to Dismiss for Lack of Jurisdiction.. Document filed by Michael Chertoff. (Bober, David) (Entered: 12/10/2008)
17 MEMO ENDORSEMENT on LAW STUDENT INTERN APPEARANCE FORM of Lindsay Nash. I authorize this student: (a) to appear in court or other proceedings on behalf of the above−entitled client, and (b) to prepare documents on behalf of the above client. (Signed by Judge Denny Chin on 12/16/08) (tro) (Entered: 12/17/2008)
18 MEMO ENDORSEMENT on LAW STUDENT INTERN APPEARANCE FORM of Jeffrey Kahn and Anand Balakrishnan. I authorize this student: (a) to appear in court or other proceedings on behalf of the above−entitled client, and (b) to prepare documents on behalf of the above client. (Signed by Judge Denny Chin on 12/16/08) (tro) (Entered: 12/17/2008)
20 TRANSCRIPT of proceedings held on 12/18/2008 before Judge Denny Chin. (D'Avanzo, Daniel) (Entered: 01/21/2009)
19 ENDORSED LETTER addressed to Judge Denny Chin from David Bober dated 1/16/09 re: Request that the time for Government defendant to issue its decision be extended to 1/21/09. ENDORSEMENT: So Ordered. (Signed by Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, part I on 1/20/09) (db) (Entered: 01/20/2009)
21 RULE 26(f) DISCOVERY PLAN REPORT.Document filed by Families for Freedom.(Wishnie, Michael) (Entered: 04/03/2009)
22 LAW STUDENT INTERN APPEARANCE FORM Anjali Dalal (jmi) (Entered: 05/18/2009)

05/15/2009 05/15/2009 05/15/2009 05/15/2009 05/15/2009 05/15/2009 06/25/2009
06/25/2009 06/26/2009
06/26/2009
08/19/2009
08/19/2009 09/09/2009

23 LAW STUDENT INTERN APPEARANCE FORM Rafiu Abimbola. (jmi) (Entered: 05/18/2009)
24 LAW STUDENT INTERN APPEARANCE FORM Dan Kesselbrennes. (jmi) (Entered: 05/18/2009)
25 LAW STUDENT INTERN APPEARANCE FORM Janis Rosheuvel. (jmi) (Entered: 05/18/2009)
26 LAW STUDENT INTERN APPEARANCE FORM Paromita Shah. (jmi) (Entered: 05/18/2009)
27 LAW STUDENT INTERN APPEARANCE FORM Camal Marchabeyoglu. (jmi) (Entered: 05/18/2009)
28 LAW STUDENT INTERN APPEARANCE FORM Ohad Barkean. (jmi) (Entered: 05/18/2009)
29 MEMORANDUM DECISION denying 9 Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Jurisdiction. For the foregoing reasons, DHS's motion to dismiss is denied. DHS is hereby ordered to respond to plaintiffs' petition within thirty days. Plaintiffs' second claim is dismissed, without prejudice, as moot. The Clerk of Court is directed to enter judgment accordingly and to close the case. SO ORDERED. (Signed by Judge Denny Chin on 6/25/2009) (tve) (Entered: 06/25/2009)
Transmission to Judgments and Orders Clerk. Transmitted re: 29 Order on Motion to Dismiss/Lack of Jurisdiction, to the Judgments and Orders Clerk. (tve) (Entered: 06/25/2009)
30 CLERK'S JUDGMENT That for the reasons stated in the Court's Memorandum Decision dated June 25, 2009, DHS's motion to dismiss is denied; the Court orders DHS to respond to plaintiff's petition within 30 days; and plaintiffs' second claim is dismissed, without prejudice, as moot; accordingly, the case is closed. (Signed by J. Michael McMahon, clerk on 6/26/09) (Attachments: # 1 notice of right to appeal)(ml) (Entered: 06/26/2009)
31 ORDER: On 6/25/09, I issued a Memorandum Decision denying the motion to dismiss by defendant Department of Homeland Security, granting judgment in favor of plaintiffs on their first claim, dismissing their second claim, and ordering DHS to grant or deny plaintiffs' petition within 30 days. To the extent that DHS wishes to be heard further on the issue of reasonableness of the delay, it may move for reconsideration of the Decision within ten days. (Signed by Judge Denny Chin on 6/26/09) (tro) (Entered: 06/29/2009)
32 ENDORSED LETTER addressed to Judge Denny Chin from Michael Wishnie dated 8/18/2009 re: Plaintiffs respectfully request that the deadline for the filing of the application for attorneys' fees be rescheduled to 9/7/2009 to allow parties to explore the possibility of settlement with regard to compensation under the EAJA. ENDORSEMENT: APPLICATION GRANTED. SO ORDERED. (Signed by Judge Denny Chin on 8/18/2009) (tve) (Entered: 08/19/2009)
Set/Reset Deadlines: Motions due by 9/7/2009. (tve) (Entered: 08/21/2009)
33 ENDORSED LETTER addressed to Judge Denny Chin from David Bober dated 9/2/2009 re: Counsel respectfully on behalf of the parties request a two−week extension of time from 9/7/09 to 9/21/09 for plaintiffs to submit their application for attorney's fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act. ENDORSEMENT: Approved. So Ordered. (Signed by Judge Denny Chin on 9/9/2009) (jfe) (Entered: 09/10/2009)

09/09/2009 09/22/2009 10/01/2009

34 ENDORSED LETTER addressed to Judge Denny Chin from David Bober dated 9/2/09 re: Request for an extension of time to 9/21/09 for plaintiff to submit their application for attorneys' fees. ENDORSEMENT: Approved. ( Motion due by 9/21/2009.) (Signed by Judge Denny Chin on 9/9/09) (cd) (Entered: 09/10/2009)
35 ENDORSED LETTER addressed to Judge Denny Chin from Michael Wishnie dated 9/21/2009 re: Counsel request a two week extension of the EAJA statutory deadline so that a final Stipulation of Settlement can be executed by the parties and submitted to the Court. ENDORSEMENT: Approved. So Ordered. (Signed by Judge Denny Chin on 9/22/2009) (jfe) (Entered: 09/22/2009)
36 STIPULATION AND ORDER OF SETTLEMENT OF ATTORNEY'S FEES: The U.S. shall pay to the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization the sum of $46,000 in attorneys' fees and litigation costs, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2412(d), which sum plaintiffs and their counsel agree in full satisfaction of any attorneys' fees and costs plaintiffs have incurred or will incur for services performed in connection with this action. (Signed by Judge Denny Chin on 10/1/09) (tro) (Entered: 10/02/2009)