Detainees

Re "The detainee problem," Editorial, Sept. 23 The Times writes: "The administration needs to make more of an effort to arrange the repatriation or resettlement of individuals no longer considered a threat. " The Department of Homeland Security cannot unilaterally return foreign detainees without an approved travel document from their countries. The DHS has released many - probably hundreds, if not thousands - of foreign-born detainees who have been ordered deported but have not been accepted back in their native countries.

Re "Obama's Gitmo woes," Opinion, May 5 As a fan of Doyle McManus, I was disappointed to read his claim that most of the detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay were anti-American extremists when they were apprehended. Our own government has acknowledged that many of these men were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border when the war started in 2001. They are guilty of nothing. I also note with dismay the remarks of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)

Virtually the first order of business for Barack Obama after his inauguration was a series of executive orders aimed at closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay within a year and providing for a fair disposition of charges against the remaining detainees there. His break with Bush administration policies garnered extravagant -- and premature -- praise. Thanks to presidential procrastination and congressional resistance, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. recently said that the Jan. 22 deadline "will be difficult to meet."

Re "Obama renews call to close prison," May 1 The slogan "Close Guantanamo" obscures as much as it illuminates. To be sure, the prison there must close, for as President Obama said this week, it is an affront to American values, our global standing and U.S. counter-terrorism interests. But the slogan disguises the fact that, while more than two-thirds of the 166 detainees will eventually be released (or die hunger striking), the United States will hold indefinitely up to 50 detainees whom the executive branch has determined are too dangerous to release but too difficult to prosecute.

In 2009, President Obama vowed to overhaul the nation's immigration detention system. Since then, his administration has taken some steps to deliver on that promise, such as providing detainees improved access to medical care and closing troubled facilities. But it has yet to provide the most meaningful fix: ensuring that indigent immigrants in detention have access to legal counsel. Until now, federal courts have held that only criminal defendants are entitled to court-appointed counsel.

Immigrants detained for more than six months without a bond hearing can sue the federal government in a class action aimed at getting a court to recognize their right to a swifter appearance before a judge, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. In a case brought by civil rights groups, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court decision denying the group class status for their lawsuit. "This is a huge victory for immigrants who have been held in prolonged, indefinite detention without the most basic element of due process: a hearing to determine if their detention is justified," said Ahilan Arulanantham, director of immigrants' rights and national security for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is poised to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA abuses committed during the interrogation of terrorism suspects, current and former U.S. government officials said. A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be "narrow" in scope, focusing on "whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized" in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws.

The Obama administration Friday disclosed the identities of 55 prisoners who have been cleared for release from the Guantanamo Bay detention center for terrorism suspects. The reversal of its long-standing policy of keeping the names confidential means defense lawyers for the men no longer considered a threat to U.S. or international security can try to find countries willing to take them in. An additional 31 prisoners were cleared for transfer home or resettlement in third countries after a review of the grounds for holding each detainee ordered by President Obama shortly after he took office in January 2009.

A bipartisan Senate compromise regarding proper handling of detainees has drawn a veto threat from the White House and sharp criticism from other Senate Democrats. The Obama administration on Thursday said it would reject a series of provisions on detainees for the defense authorization bill. "In their current form, some of these provisions disrupt the executive branch's ability to enforce the law and impose unwise and unwarranted restrictions on the U.S. government's ability to aggressively combat international terrorism," the administration wrote in a statement.

Immigrants detained in a short-term processing center in the basement of a Los Angeles federal building can no longer be held for weeks without access to drinking water, clean clothes or items such as sanitary napkins, according to a settlement announced Wednesday. The settlement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities resulted from a lawsuit filed in April by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, the National Immigration Law Center and the Paul Hastings law firm.

WASHINGTON - Obaidullah, an Afghan villager captured with diagrams of improvised bombs, has marked nearly 11 years as a detainee at the U.S. naval base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Three months ago, outraged by what he called another prison "shakedown," he joined a hunger strike there, and now is locked in solitary confinement with at least 100 fellow detainees. "I have seen men who are on the verge of death being taken away to be force-fed," Obaidullah said in a federal court affidavit declassified Friday.

President Obama sounded genuinely outraged last week when he talked about the Kafkaesque situation at the Guantanamo prison camp, where the United States has been holding 166 men without trial for terms that are, at this point, officially endless. "It's not sustainable," the president thundered. "I mean, the notion that we're going to continue to keep over 100 individuals in a no man's land in perpetuity?" But at least some of Obama's anger should be directed at himself, because his own silence and passivity on Guantanamo are part of the problem.

On Monday, the Obama administration announced a new policy to provide legal help to mentally disabled immigrants awaiting deportation trials in federal detention centers. A day later, a federal judge in Los Angeles reached the same conclusion, ruling that the Department of Homeland Security is required to provide free legal assistance to immigrants in detention if they are not capable of representing themselves because of mental illness. Both decisions are welcome and could help bring more fairness to the system.

The federal government has the authority to detain and deport immigrants who violate the law. But it also has the responsibility to ensure that those it holds while they fight their deportation cases aren't locked up for months, or years, without an opportunity to appear before an immigration judge who can determine whether their prolonged detention is warranted. This week the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the Obama administration's obligation to provide such hearings to immigrants detained for more than six months, at least in Southern California.

NEW YORK - An independent review of the U.S. government's anti-terrorism response after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks found that it was "indisputable" the U.S. engaged in torture and the George W. Bush administration bore responsibility. The report released Tuesday by the Constitution Project, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, is an ambitious review of the Bush administration's approach to the problems of holding and interrogating detainees after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Solitary confinement in immigration detention centers across the nation is often overused and arbitrarily applied. According to data obtained by the National Immigrant Justice Center, as many as 300 immigrants, or about 1% of all detainees in the 50 largest facilities in the country, are confined to small cells on any given day, even though many pose no security risk. In many cases, they're held there for 23 hours each day without a break, often for weeks. The use of solitary confinement is troubling enough in regular state and federal prisons, where inmates held in such conditions for prolonged periods are at risk for severe mental illness and suicide, according to medical experts.

FT. MEADE, Md. -- Top officials at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, denied Tuesday that hidden microphones or other devices were installed in the courtroom, meeting huts and prison compound to enable government intelligence officials to eavesdrop on confidential sessions between defense lawyers and five detainees in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The witnesses also testified that legal mail for the detainees is not routinely opened and reviewed, except during prison-wide inspections to check for contraband.

WASHINGTON - Obaidullah, an Afghan villager captured with diagrams of improvised bombs, has marked nearly 11 years as a detainee at the U.S. naval base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Three months ago, outraged by what he called another prison "shakedown," he joined a hunger strike there, and now is locked in solitary confinement with at least 100 fellow detainees. "I have seen men who are on the verge of death being taken away to be force-fed," Obaidullah said in a federal court affidavit declassified Friday.

In recent weeks, Republican lawmakers have slammed the Department of Homeland Security for releasing 2,228 immigrants from detention centers around the country, questioning, among other things, whether murderers, rapists and drug traffickers were among those set free. But while it is unclear whether Homeland Security's decision to release the detainees was prompted by the austerity requirements of sequestration or by political theatrics, what is certain is that those who were released didn't pose an egregious threat to public safety.

WASHINGTON - Immigration officials acknowledged Thursday that they had released 2,228 illegal immigrants from detention in February and early March, not several hundred as they previously had announced, in an effort to reduce spending in advance of mandatory budget cuts. John Morton, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told a House subcommittee hearing that four of those discharged were rearrested after agents discovered they had violent criminal records. At least six others had felony convictions or had repeatedly violated immigration laws, Morton said, and dozens more had been arrested for shoplifting and petty larceny, or cited for drunk driving.