By Ariel Barkhurst, Sun Sentinel
12:33 p.m. EDT, April 30, 2013
Americans for Immigrant Justice has released a report detailing alleged mistreatment and policy violations inside the Broward Transition Center in Pompano Beach, a privately run detention facility.
The 71-page report tells dozens of stories gleaned from detainees in the past two years by two AIJ attorneys who represent them for free, said Susanna Barciela, policy director at AIJ.
It includes examples of men and women who suffered food poisoning or sexual assault, who were denied access to needed medical care and legal resources, or who are paid $1 per day for labor and charged up to $3 per minute for phone calls.
BTC is an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, privately run by the GEO Group. It houses immigrants accused of entering the country without legal authorization or staying longer than permitted, and who have not committed a violent crime.
"There are a lot of different problems there," Barciela said. "There are Dreamers who were detained there. There have been cases of sexual assault. We see people with potentially valid asylum claims who aren't given an opportunity to apply for an asylum case."
The AIJ, a nonprofit law firm, works for the rights of immigrants in the U.S. and has released reports on conditions at detention centers and on other immigrant issues including "Dreamers," young people raised in the U.S. but without legal status.
Conditions at BTC were brought to the attention of the public and lawmakers last year when two illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children turned themselves in to BTC to expose what they claimed were human rights abuses and policy violations at the center.
Monday's report was already in the works then, Barciela said.
The report's introduction relates an incident from November 2010, when a BTC officer apparently told an AIJ attorney, "I don't know how you do what you do. It's not like they are people."
The examples of mistreatment include: A suicidal woman was not taken to a mental health professional, and when her friends wrote to a BTC officer asking that she be taken, they were reprimanded for writing a "joint letter." Detainees referred to outside psychiatrists were not taken for weeks. Reports of male-on-male sexual assault were made to center officers, but never investigated. Women fleeing domestic abuse in their home countries were not given a chance to plead asylum cases.
The GEO Group has ICE monitors on-site at BTC and "adheres to strict contractual requirements set by ICE," said Pablo E. Paez, vice president of corporate relations for the GEO Group in a prepared statement responding to the report.
"The Center is audited and inspected by ICE on a routine and unannounced basis," he wrote. "The Center is also independently accredited and received a perfect score of 100% in its most recent evaluation by the American Correctional Association, which is widely recognized as the foremost independent detention accreditation agency in the United States."
ICE was reviewing the report on Monday but said a spokesman said the organization is "committed to upholding an immigration detention system that prioritizes the health, safety and welfare of all of those in our care."
abarkhurst@tribune.com or 954-356-4451