Report: Immigrant Prisoners Being Held In Secret

Secret detention center across the United States are holding immigrants, according to a yet-to-be published report.

 WASHINGTON, D.C. — Secret detention center across the United States are holding immigrants, according to a yet-to-be published report.

The centers operated by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are located in office parks and commercial zones, said the report.

“You actually walk down the sidewalk and into an underground parking lot. Then you turn right, open a big door and voilà, you’re in a detention center,” Ahilan Arulanantham, an ACLU immigration attorney told The Nation magazine.

Reporter Jacqueline Stevens said that these “subfield offices” for transferring prisoners do not meet conditions for military or civilian prisons.

In describing a center in Los Angeles, the report said that “B-18” was “an irrationally revolving stockroom that would shuttle the same people briefly to the local jails, sometimes from 1 to 5 am, and then bring them back, shackled to one another, stooped and crouching in overpacked vans.”

The report said that the immgrants were kept in these cells without sufficient mattresses or climate controls for heating and cooling.

There are reportedly 186 such detention centers, according to The Nation’s report  due on Jan. 4, 2010.