Arizona migrant aid group calls ICE detention conditions 'torture'

In a new report to the United Nations, an Arizona migrant advocacy group argues that conditions in immigration detention centers in the United States amount to torture.

The report from the Kino Border Initiative and Loyola University Chicago School of Law documents instances of alleged mistreatment in immigration detention from recent deportees in Nogales, Sonora.

“Abuses have been going on and are still ongoing to this day in detention centers in the U.S. for immigrants, which is very preoccupying because they go to the level of becoming torture,” said Juan Cuellar, KBI director of education and advocacy and report author.

Recent deportees told KBI they experienced crowded conditions and verbal and physical abuse in U.S. immigration detention centers.

“They were being denied food, they were being denied water, they were being denied access to medical attention when it was direly needed,” Cuellar said.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said that any claim of subprime conditions at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers is false.

The interviews and surveys cited in the report were conducted with people who had recently been deported from the United States at Mexico’s “Mexico te Abraza” — or “Mexico Embraces You” — center in Nogales, Sonora, just across the border from Arizona.

The Mexican government set up those centers along the U.S.-Mexico border at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term to process recent Mexican deportees and set them up with transport to the parts of the country their families are from.

Testimonies cited in the report include alleged examples of poor conditions in ICE detention centers, including a recent deportee who claimed there was a lack of access to clean water or edible food while he was detained in Arizona. He and others whose testimonies were cited in the report also said they were denied access to healthcare.

The report argues the conditions inside U.S. detention centers amount to violations of international human rights standards.

The United Nations Convention Against Torture prohibits torture under any circumstances, as well as other cruel or degrading treatment or punishment. That treaty defines torture as acts in which “severe pain or suffering” are used by a public official to obtain a confession, as punishment or for “any reason based on discrimination of any kind.” The United States ratified the treaty in 1994.

The KBI report argues poor conditions inside immigration detention facilities are an intentional tactic used to convince detainees to leave the United States on their own accord, rather than wait for immigration proceedings to unfold. The report cites several examples of recent deportees who said they signed “voluntary departure” agreements after being denied access to healthcare or after experiencing other poor conditions while in detention.

“The fact that the treatment is so bad is a way for them to say: ‘We can make them leave without having to wait for a final decision by a judge, which can take months,’” Cuellar said.

Typically, submissions like this one are sent to the United Nations after a call for input when the body is preparing its own report, Cuellar said. But KBI and Loyola University are submitting their report outside of a call for public input from the intergovernmental organization.

“This is something that we decided to do unilaterally,” Cuellar said, ”because the level of abuse is too much.”

Cuellar said his organization hopes the report provides the United Nations with tools they can use to start their own investigation into alleged abuses inside U.S. immigration detention centers.