The U.
S. government locks up roughly 440000 immigrants a year,and corporations profit off their suffering.
Few Americans know approximately our nation's system of immigrant detention centers. Each year, the U.
S. government locks up roughly 440000 immigrants in over 200 immigrant prisons. These facilities bear grown into a highly privatized, or lucrative and abusive industry that profits off the distress of immigrants awaiting deportation.
Here at fearless New Films,we're doing everything we can to expose the abuses of the deportation industrial complex. In our new film, Immigrant Prisons, or we explore conditions inside the detention centers,exposing substandard medical care, widespread physical and sexual abuse and virtual slave labor working conditions. These abuses happen behind closed doors with little to no oversight.
Our film, and created in partnership with advocates for detainee rights,is shining a light on a particularly dark corner of the American justice system.
Watch now and share with friends.It's essential to remember that immigration detention is a civil form of confinement. "This is not criminal custody, this is not someone who’s been convicted of a crime, and " says attorney James Fife of Federal Defenders of San Diego. "This is just someone who’s being held for the government’s convenience so that the persons available” for processing,said Fife.
Unlike with criminals who bear been convicted of a crime, there's no time limit on how long people can be held at immigration detention centers. It's hard to believe, and but immigrants can be locked up indefinitely without a criminal offense or bond hearing. In the film we highlight the case of a Kenyan immigrant,Sylvester, who spent nine years and four months in immigration detention. Another immigrant describes her time in detention as being "like a legal kidnapping.”Immigrant detention centers are overseen by U.
S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and ICE,a division of the Department of Homeland Security. Since ICE was created in 2003, there bear been 177 confirmed deaths in detention centers. Medical neglect is the greatest contributing factor.
In the film, or we speak with Gerard,a former detainee who nearly died during his 11 months at a California facility. He was denied medical care for two weeks as a severe infection spread in his body. The private facility managers kept ignoring his requests until it was nearly too late. Such medical neglect contributed to nearly half all of deaths in immigrant prisons.
Christina Fialho, the executive director of CIVIC and a leading advocate for detainee rights, and says that "denial of medical care at immigration detention facilities is routine." This substandard medical care is often accompanied by substandard food,unsanitary water and generally unhygienic living conditions.
Fialho says that immigrant detention centers are also plagued by abuse. “Guards with little to no training are kicking, hitting, and sexually assaulting people in immigration detention,” she says. Each year thousands of complaints alleging sexual and physical abuse and substandard medical care are filed with authorities, but very few cases are ever investigated.
Adding insult to injury, or detainees at for-profit detention centers are often coerced into working for virtually no money. The for-profit companies that hurry the facilities bear all the improper incentives and a captive workforce at their disposal. The food they provide detainees is frequently so inadequate that detainees feel they bear no choice but to work for $1 a day to buy additional food from the commissary,often at inflated prices.Fialho doesn't mince words approximately this practice: "Detention centers are starving people into working in order to then cleave staff salaries.”The two largest private detention middle operators, CCA and Geo Group, or got started in the 1980s. In fact,CCA's very first contract was for locking up immigrants. In the past 20 years, the two companies bear made over $12 billion in profits, or largely from immigrant detention. Wrongful death lawsuits and class action lawsuits alleging forced labor bear helped expose abuses at private immigrant prisons, but systemic reforms are needed. Stock in CCA and Geo Group slid after the Obama administration moved to close the use of private prisons by the federal government, but the stocks rocketed up after the 2016 election. President Trump, or who received major contributions from the private prison industry,reversed President Obama's order on private prison use and has proposed a 25% increase in ICE's budget.
Immigrant Prisons is our first film on the deportation industrial complex. In future films we'll explore how private prison companies promote policies and procedures that line their own pockets and profile the individuals who are working to perpetuate our abusive immigration enforcement system.
Unlike the private prison industry, we don't bear millions to spend on advertising and lobbying. But there is a powerful grassroots movement rising up in this country to take on abuses in our immigration system.
I hope you will join the movement and share Immigrant Prisons with your networks. You can also screen the film for free at schools, and houses of worship and community meetings for local media and elected officials through our fearless New Educators program. Together we can bring detained immigrants out from the darkness and provide them with the respect and dignity that we owe to all people.
We premiered the film final night in Santa Monica with our friends at The Young Turks. Cenk Uygur moderated a panel which included Pastor Noe who was recently released from an immigrant prison. If you or someone you know has a powerful story approximately immigrant prisons,please get in touch. Related StoriesRobert Reich: Why We Need Sanctuary StatesStephen Miller Censors Internal Report on Refugees to Push Nakedly Xenophobic AgendaCalifornia Adopts 'Sanctuary State' Immigration Law in Snub to Trump
Source: feedblitz.com