Immigrant detainees file lawsuit over jail conditions

[AlphaCentauri]

Source: LAT

Federal authorities are violating immigrant detainees’ constitutional rights by holding them for weeks at a detention facility in downtown Los Angeles that was designed as a short-term processing center, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court.

The center is “regularly overcrowded, causing violence, safety hazards, and humiliation,” while detainees are denied access to attorneys and courts and are rarely provided drinking water or a change of clothing, according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and the National Immigration Law Center.

Detainees are held at the center during the day and then shuttled to local jails at night and on weekends, which the suit said “effectively cuts detainees off from contact with the outside world” and deprives them of their basic needs.

“They are detaining people in inhumane conditions, grossly unsanitary and disgusting conditions,” said Marisol Orihuela, a staff attorney at the ACLU. “There are serious violations of due process.”



Read more: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/04/immigrant-detainees.html

[midnight]

1. Are the only legal minds in this country willing to address abuse

coming from the ACLU? Where are the judicial people who talk about the rule of law?

[AlphaCentauri]

2. Opportunist talk about the rule of law when it's used to oppress people n/t

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R