| Maria Sacchetti at the Boston Globe has a story about the report's findings today:
ACLU alleges rights abuses
What we basically found is that every day in Massachusetts, around 800 immigrants and asylum-seekers are in detention in county jails around the state waiting to be deported or fighting a legal battle to stay in the country. None of these people are serving sentences for having committed a crime. Yet they spend months, and sometimes years, in cells side-by-side with sentenced criminals, enduring harsh conditions and sometimes abuse at the hands of guards, not knowing when they will be allowed to leave -- and all of this at significant taxpayer expense.
Unfair treatment and indefinite detention such as this do not solve the problems of illegal immigration. In fact, they go against the values of our country and the Constitution, and if we allow the government to deny due process for some people, we allow our own freedoms to be threatened.
http://www.aclum.org/ice/ |
