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INS Still Jails Foreign Children, Experts Say

The Immigration and Naturalization Service continues to jail foreign children -- including housing them with juvenile criminals -- in apparent violation of a Supreme Court settlement, human rights observers said this week after a four-state tour. The INS also threw "obstacle after obstacle" in the observers' path during their four-state tour, refusing to let them enter jails in Texas and interview teens in California, said the U.S. director of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children and a Washington, D.C., attorney monitoring the conditions.

Director Wendy Young and attorney Andrew Morton toured Multnomah County's juvenile detention center, the Donald E. Long home, this week before returning Friday to Washington, D.C. The INS currently has no one in custody at Donald E. Long, although a small number of foreign minors have been held in the past year.

Young and Morton are scheduled to testify Sept. 19 before Congress on legislation that would boost protections for foreign minors. They began their tour of Texas, California, Washington and Oregon with the permission of the national INS juvenile coordinator. They notified each county jail and sent their daily itinerary to INS headquarters. They were turned away from three juvenile jails and not allowed to interview minors in a fourth because they did not submit written permission to the local district director, the jailed children's attorneys, and in one case, failed to include the name of a Mandarin Chinese interpreter on their written request.

The INS blamed the problems on poor planning and discounted Morton's position as the attorney who represents all detained minors on confinement issues. His firm, Latham & Watkins, is co-counsel on a Supreme Court settlement that regulates INS detention of minors. Such attitudes and communication lapses among INS headquarters, district directors and county jails are typical, Young insisted. "This is a broken system that is disintegrating," Young said.

Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the INS Western region, said the protocol for getting into jails is not made to protect the INS. Rather, it is there to protect jailed minors. "Some have a price on their heads -- they are the smugglers' collateral -- and we have to be absolutely sure that people who come in are who they say they are. That may seem obvious, but we need to treat everyone the same for potential liability," she said.

Tim Heck, INS Western regional juvenile coordinator, says his office has an "open door policy" that has welcomed the media and Morton's law firm into the same jails this month.

Young and Morton said they found conditions in some detention centers that moved them to tears. One 14-year-old shared a cell with a juvenile charged with a violent felony. Other girls -- including an asylum seeker -- lived in a jail in which bathroom and shower facilities offered almost no privacy.

Morton said his firm is considering suing the INS for violating the 1997 Flores vs. Reno settlement that requires the INS to hold minors in the "least restrictive setting possible." The Oregonian reported similar cases in a special investigative report in December 2000.

In January, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., introduced the "Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act" that would turn responsibility for unaccompanied minors over to a new Office of Children Services in the U.S. Department of Justice. The act would prohibit jailing foreign minors in adult or delinquent youth jails and require that children receive legal counsel or a legal guardian. The American Bar Association also provided $40,000 in matching grants to local bar associations to encourage pro bono representation of the minors. Congress will hear testimony on the legislation later this month.

About 4,800 people under age 18 are detained annually by the INS after they arrive or are found in the United States without parents or guardians. About one-third are held in detention centers or jails. But the INS's Heck said only about 130 are held more than 90 days.

"We're aware of the problem" with those longer stays, Heck said. But he maintained that those who stay in jails are there legally because they have behavioral problems, are charged with crimes or await deportation.

Young said the INS has made considerable progress, including passing new jail guidelines, since the Women's Commission began monitoring INS detention in the mid-1990s. The watchdog organization, co-founded by actor Liv Ullman in 1989, advocates to governments and the United Nations on behalf of refugee women and children internationally.

Young has visited adult INS detainees and juveniles in 45 jails nationwide, producing numerous reports. Young and Morton flatly dispute that all the children in jail deserve to be there. "Our concerns are at the national level. The county jails are an unwitting partner in this, including Donald E. Long. This is why Congress has got to step in," Young said.