Standards give detainees more rights

Rules crack open door that tough laws aimed to keep shut forever.

 BY DRAEGER MARTINEZ

 Four years after the adoption of harsh laws that led to the detention and
 deportation of thousands of foreign nationals, the U.S. Immigration and
 Naturalization Service is quietly softening the impact of those laws.

 In the last four months, INS officials have issued new guidelines and standards
 designed to make the 1996 laws more flexible and improve conditions in detention
 facilities nationwide.

 The guidelines give INS officials more say in whether a foreign national can be
 prosecuted or released -- cracking open the door that the tough laws intended to
 keep shut forever. And the new detention standards give INS detainees more
 rights, including access to telephones, religious services, law libraries,
 typewriters and computers.

 The 1996 laws mandated the detention and deportation of foreign nationals
 convicted of felonies, regardless of circumstances, often confining some
 detainees to indefinite detention if they came from nations with no deportation
 agreement with the United States -- such as Cuba and Vietnam.

 Under guidelines INS began issuing in September, INS officials are now required
 to provide detainees with copies of a detentions standards handbook, which
 outlines their rights and obligations.

 The new INS standards will be phased in this month at all detention centers
 administered by the immigration service, including Krome Detention Center. They
 will be phased in over time at state and local jails that house INS detainees.

 County jails in particular, including ones in Louisiana, Texas, New Jersey and
 Florida, have drawn criticism for alleged mistreatment of detained foreign
 nationals, including beatings, placement in solitary confinement for trivial
 offenses, and inadequate water and food.

 And in November, the agency issued more guidelines that allow its officers to
 consider extenuating circumstances such as the type of crime committed and the
 convicted immigrants' length of stay in the country.

 Taken together, the guidelines and standards promise a change of heart toward
 detained foreign nationals, but Ira Kurzban and Cheryl Little, two prominent Miami
 immigration advocates, remained skeptical.

 ``That sounds like a Band-Aid® approach to a bigger problem: the ability of the
 INS to detain people for substantial periods of time,'' said Kurzban, referring to
 new guidelines governing detention and deportation of convicted aliens.

 ``The INS doesn't have the resources or the ability to provide long-term detention,
 and consequentially they do a poor job of it. That often leads to the mental and
 physical abuse of detainees.''

 Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, praised the
 standards regarding detainees' rights but worried that INS officials face no
 penalties for ignoring the standards.

 ``INS tends to fall in line very rigidly, not to go out of their way to do the right
 thing,'' Little said. ``If they don't follow them, there's very little that can be done
 about it, other than for us to say `shame on you.' ''

 In the guidelines, the INS reserves for itself discretion to enforce the 1996 law,
 noting that while it limited the ability of immigration judges to release detained
 immigrants, it did not curb the agency's ``prosecutorial discretion.'' The INS
 argues that, like any other law enforcement agencies, it can choose how, or if, to
 enforce the law.

 It remains to be seen how the new Congress and presidential administration will
 seek to reconcile the apparent conflicts between the 1996 law and the new
 guidelines.

 The guidelines have particular resonance in Florida, where immigration advocates
 have long complained about the vulnerability of female detainees at the Krome
 Detention Center, an INS facility in West Miami-Dade. Federal agents have been
 investigating allegations of sexual abuse of female inmates at the Krome facility
 by officers assigned to guard them.

 Last month, INS moved the female inmate population from Krome, about 90
 women, to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in an effort to protect
 them.

 Maria Cardona, an INS spokeswoman in Washington, told The Herald last week
 that the INS is also considering releasing some of the women or placing them in
 other facilities such as shelters.

 Immigration advocates have welcomed moving the women out of Krome, but they
 have criticized INS for putting them in a county jail.

 In April, the U.S. Department of Justice concluded that conditions at a Florida
 Panhandle county jail violated the civil rights of INS detainees, some of whom
 complained of being shocked with electric stun shields.

 In an 18-page letter to Jackson County administrators, the department's civil
 rights division said an investigation prompted by the detainees' complaints
 uncovered many violations at the jail, including medical care so poor that it
 endangered lives and a practice of shackling prisoners face down on concrete
 beds for hours at the risk of asphyxiation.

 The INS guidelines are a legacy of Doris Meissner, who resigned as immigration
 commissioner in November.

 On any given day, the INS has about 20,000 aliens detained across the country,
 including about 400 in Krome -- pending the outcome of their deportation process.

 This report was supplemented by Herald wires services.