A front-page article in today’s New York Times takes a peek into an immigration detention center in the heart of Manhattan and finds that the detention system continues to have serious problems. Here’s how former detainees describe conditions at the Varick Street Detention Facility:
…cramped, filthy quarters where dire medical needs were ignored and hungry prisoners were put to work for $1 a day.
In the article, a government spokesperson says the Obama administration “inherited an inadequate detention system” from the Bush administration, and promises what the Times calls a “complete overhaul.” In the meantime, 400,000 immigrants and asylum seekers a year find themselves in immigration detention, many in conditions like those on Varick Street.
Fixing the mangled detention system can’t happen soon enough.
