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New rules shorten holding time for detained immigrants { April 14 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9311-2004Apr13.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9311-2004Apr13.html
New Rules Shorten Holding Time for Detained Immigrants
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 14, 2004; Page A17
The Department of Homeland Security announced new rules yesterday designed to prevent a recurrence of the lengthy detention of hundreds of foreign nationals, many of whom were prevented from making telephone calls or contacting lawyers for months after they were jailed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The guidelines, made public yesterday by Asa Hutchinson, the department's undersecretary for border and transportation security, were welcomed by civil rights groups that had bitterly denounced the detention of 762 immigration violators after the attacks, based on sometimes ill-founded FBI suspicions that they had links to terrorism.
The new rules are a response to a highly critical 198-page report last June by Glenn A. Fine, the Justice Department's inspector general. It concluded that in the chaotic aftermath of the terrorist strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, hundreds of Arab and South Asian men who had committed sometimes minor immigration violations languished in jail without timely review by U.S. officials. Guards mistreated some of them.
The average detention lasted three months, and the longest was 10 months before the immigrants were cleared of terrorism ties and released from jail.
The old rules called for a hearing to be held or a detainee released on bond within 48 hours of arrest, unless the FBI asserted a national security emergency and invoked an exception. To declare an exception, the new homeland security rules require high-ranking FBI officials -- a special agent in charge or above -- to formally sign off on the detention.
The new rules are "a very significant correction," said Hutchinson, who noted that they could come into play if terrorists attack the United States again.
In addition, the new rules require officials of the Homeland Security Department or its component agencies, such as the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to formally review FBI requests for detention.
"ICE personnel and attorneys are directed to independently review the individual circumstances of each case in which the FBI requests detention," the new rules state. "ICE attorneys are officers of the court and must have confidence in the representations made to the court."
Hutchinson told reporters yesterday: "This brings greater checks and balances, and greater clarity in the decision-making process."
The Homeland Security Department, which for the past year has housed the former Customs Service and Immigration and Naturalization Service, is the agency whose lawyers advocate the release or detention of immigrants before immigration judges, sometimes based on FBI information.
Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said his organization welcomes "the decision by the Department of Homeland Security to reform policies that did so much harm."
The homeland security guidelines do not address the conditions at holding facilities for immigrants, some run by the Justice Department, where Fine said prison guards engaged in "a pattern of physical and verbal abuse" against some detainees.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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