Barbarous treatment

The primary purpose of holding undocumented immigrants in detention holding centers is to insure that they are present for their hearing before the judge. However, in reality, these detainees are being treated as if they were hardened criminals, including being subjected to solitary confinement.

This punishment, 23 hours a day of confinement in a small usually windowless cell, is used in California for the state’s most dangerous inmates. It is argued that this isolation from others impedes their ability to organize and direct criminal acts from inside the prison. Many have raised legitimate questions as to whether this solitary treatment damages the mental health of the incarcerated and the degree to that it violates their civil rights.

That is why is completely unacceptable that this same treatment is imposed on individuals who have committed no crimes, or at the most civil violations . Officials have argued that solitary confinement is as much a punishment for those who break the law as a personal protection for vulnerable detainees, including homosexuals, transgender detainees, detainees with mental illnesses, and others whose security is at risk among the larger population.

It is inconceivable that an individual such as an immigrant with a mental illness would be put in solitary confinement, which is the equivalent of psychological torture, from the perspective of many experts.

In 2009 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights reported on the use of solitary confinement of immigrants. A few days ago, The New York Times estimated that close to 300 immigrant detainees are daily in this situation. Such barbarism must be stopped.

The federal government, the Obama Administration, is responsible for the continuation of this abuse. On its shoulders falls the responsibility for the persistence of this type of torture, no matter what the excuse, exploiting the fact these individuals don’t even have the right to counsel.

It is the government that must demand those who run these detention centers provide adequate means to protect the detainees and put an end to this unacceptable abuse against the undocumented. Such behavior is an affront to a democracy that respects human rights. To continue with such abuse makes it a perpetrator of such violations.