Pour agir,

Dear Secretary Napolitano,

I am writing to you to express my concern regarding the use of immigration detention in the USA. Any migrant in the USA can be arrested and detained, and this in violation of international standards. There has been a dramatic increase in the use of detention by the USA as an immigration enforcement mechanism. Each year, over 320,000 men, women and children are detained by US immigration authorities pending deportation proceedings. These include asylum seekers, torture survivors, victims of human trafficking, long-time lawful residents and parents of US children. Many of these people held in prison together with individuals convicted of criminal offences.

I welcome as an important first step, the recent announcement by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement to overhaul the immigration detention system. However international standards require that detention of migrants is used only in exceptional circumstances. I therefore urge you Secretary Napolitano to ensure that alternative non-custodial measures such as community-based supervision, reporting requirements or a bond, are always explicitly considered before resorting to detention. I am concerned at the recent decision by the DHS to reject proposals for legally binding rules governing conditions in immigration detention centres and I urge the DHS to introduce enforceable human rights detention standards for all detention facilities that house immigration detainees, either through legislation or through the adoption of enforceable policies and procedures. Furthermore, I exhort you to ensure that every detention is subject to judicial review and that imprisonment is only used in justified individual cases.

Finally, I ask you to establish effective oversight to ensure compliance with detention standards and accountability for any violations.

I thank you Secretary Napolitano for reading this letter and for acting on it as a matter of urgency.

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