Detention isolates illegal immigrants

WASHINGTON, July 12 (UPI) -- Illegal immigrants held in alien detention centers are isolated from the world, a new report says.

The illegals cannot reach their families or their lawyers because of a faulty telephone system, according to a new Government Accountability Office report released Friday.

The GAO found that over a 12-month period starting in November 2005, phones weren't working properly in 16 of 17 alien detention centers around the country that use pro bono telephone systems. In June of 2006, only 35 percent of phone-calls out of the detention system were successful and the percentage was never above 74.

"Detainees are completely isolated within the system," Mark Dow, author of "American Gulag: Inside U.S. immigration prisons," said in a phone interview. "Even their help-line is clearly a joke."

"What a lot of people don't understand about these detainees is that usually they don't speak English and are held in isolated areas," Dow said. "The telephone is a lifeline."

Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, says that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which runs the prisons, can't be blamed for the problem. "The detention standards are considerably better than most other centers," he said in a phone interview. "Given the high rate of immigration violations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has a pretty good performance rate. I think employers and other groups don't appreciate how costly it is to manage illegal immigration."

But according to Dow, the phone lines are badly maintained for a reason. "It can no longer be considered an accident," he said.

--

Leander Schaerlaeckens, UPI Correspondent.