Detention Centers

Gang violence in Central America has led to a startling increase in the number of children who make the dangerous journey across the Mexican border alone in search of asylum in the United States, according to a report by the Women's Refugee Commission, a nonprofit that advocates for displaced women and children. The number of unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. detention centers grew nearly 50%, from 6,854 in fiscal 2011 to more than 10,000 in the nine-month period ended June 30, according to federal statistics cited in the report, titled "Forced From Home: The Lost Boys and Girls of Central America.

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.

Seven members of the Revolutionary Youth Brigade--protesting a detention center for illegal immigrants--were arrested Saturday when their demonstration at MacArthur Park erupted into a bottle-throwing confrontation with police, authorities said. Four people were arrested for investigation of assault with a deadly weapon and three for investigation of rioting in the melee that drew 700 onlookers and created a "tremendous traffic problem," said Los Angeles Police Sgt. Alex Salazar.

Tule Lake Segregation Center in Tulelake, Calif., just south of the Oregon border, was the largest of the 10 relocation camps across the country where Japanese Americans were rounded up and held during World War II. Now the story of the former camp will be told through traveling exhibits and a restored building at what has become a national historic landmark. The National Park Service awarded $1.4 million in grants Tuesday to fund projects in seven states to help tell the story of the 120,000 detainees scattered nationwide.

Supporters of asylum seekers used a car to drag down fences at Australia's most notorious detention center, allowing 34 people to escape, the government said. Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said 15 asylum seekers were involved in a mass breakout from the Woomera detention center in southern Australia and that the other 19 took advantage of the confusion to flee into the desert. A group calling itself Our Sacred Country claimed responsibility for the breakout.

Sitting in the dreary immigration detention center courtyard, straining to understand a young Filipino as he told the story of his journey to the United States, Isaac Galarza Jaramillo broke into laughter. The toughened young Contra from Nicaragua was not laughing at the storytelling in a language he did not understand.

About 1,000 Haitians massed outside an alien detention center Sunday, tearing down a fence and calling on immigration officials to release their countrymen. A special riot-control team of 79 Immigration and Naturalization Service officers was deployed to hold back the protesters as they crashed through one gate and advanced on another, said INS District Director Richard Smith.

Police and demonstrators clashed Sunday at a protest outside an Immigration and Naturalization Service detention center in Los Angeles, resulting in 16 arrests and charges from each side that it had been assaulted. Three protesters were taken to hospitals for treatment of injuries, and at least two officers were bruised on the arm after they were struck by demonstrators wielding sticks, police said.

Police fired tear gas to break up a three-hour riot among Vietnamese "boat people" in Hong Kong's Whitehead detention center. Seven were injured. The clash reportedly erupted between two groups from neighboring Vietnamese provinces.

Severe overcrowding at a federal immigration detention facility here places detainees' health and safety at risk, the American Civil Liberties Union alleged in court documents filed this week. The San Diego Correctional Facility's 6-by-12-foot cells are designed for two people but in many cases house three, forcing some detainees to sleep on the floor near toilets, the ACLU said in its complaint.

Latrice lifts the sleeve of her gray sweatshirt to reveal small, dark lines - scars from slicing her forearm over and over to drown out pain from years of sexual abuse. She says she was an alcoholic, dropped out of school in the eighth grade and got pregnant at 16. Now 18, she is in Los Angeles County's juvenile justice system because she violated probation. Latrice says she has been locked up more than 20 times in four years. Petite and talkative, she has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and takes antidepressants.

For more than two years, Alfredo Angulo was boxing's version of Elvis. He had left the building. Now he is back, trying to return to the level that got him fights with the likes of Kermit Cintron and James Kirkland, as well as a lucrative offer to fight Sergio Martinez. But the baggage he will take into the Sports Arena ring Saturday night when he goes against Jorge Silva in a prelim of the Amir Khan-Carlos Molina card is heavier than most. Angulo's story, told in complete detail, is "War and Peace.

L.A. Councilman Richard Alarcon is hoping to save the Verdugo Hills Golf Course from residential development by adding it to the city's list of historic and cultural monuments, citing its history as a detention center for Japanese Americans during World War II. Residents contend the planned housing project would bring a torrent of vehicle traffic to the urban-rural area and get rid of a long-standing recreational resource. Other efforts to prevent development on the land have included failed attempts to rezone it or cobble together enough grants and government funding to buy it outright.

The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department has run the Mira Loma Detention Center, one of the largest immigration jails in the state, for more than a decade. But next month, the center is scheduled to close because Sheriff Lee Baca and federal authorities can't agree on the basic rules governing how the jail should operate. There are several areas of disagreement between the two sides. But in general, the Department of Homeland Security deserves praise for fulfilling its pledge to hold immigration jailers like Baca accountable and for imposing standards to ensure that the tens of thousands of immigrants across the country, including asylum seekers, are being treated fairly and humanely.

Gang violence in Central America has led to a startling increase in the number of children who make the dangerous journey across the Mexican border alone in search of asylum in the United States, according to a report by the Women's Refugee Commission, a nonprofit that advocates for displaced women and children. The number of unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. detention centers grew nearly 50%, from 6,854 in fiscal 2011 to more than 10,000 in the nine-month period ended June 30, according to federal statistics cited in the report, titled "Forced From Home: The Lost Boys and Girls of Central America.

The Mustangs will take to the field for the final time this fall. The sports program at the Kilpatrick juvenile detention center is being disbanded - "suspended," officials call it - so the 50-year-old facility in the Malibu Hills can be leveled and rebuilt. The remake has been in the works for years; it's one of the oldest, most decrepit of the county's 14 rural juvenile camps, with a gym yellow-tagged since the Northridge earthquake and a pitted, patchy playing field. But it is also the only camp with a sports program , one that made a national name for itself six years ago in the movie "Gridiron Gang.

Los Angeles city officials are seeking to shut down a privately run U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service detention center in the Pico-Union District that has been the focus of repeated demonstrations in recent months by radical groups. Last week, two officials from a firm that runs the detention center were arraigned in Los Angeles Municipal Court on charges that their company, Transitional Housing Inc.

"Today is the dawn of the CCC camp of Tujunga which is outside of Los Angeles. . . . We are prohibited to go within 10 feet of the fence, and it is most painful to be cut off from the outside world." --Daisho Tana's diary, Sunday, March 15, 1942 From the day after the Pearl Harbor attack until the end of 1943, the Immigration and Naturalization Service ran a little-known detention center in Tujunga for civilians classed as enemies of the United States.

ATLANTA - Suspected illegal immigrants in Georgia are suffering from a “systemic violation ... of civil and human rights” during their confinement in “substandard” federal immigration detention facilities, including Stewart Detention Center, the largest of its kind in the nation, according to a new report by the state's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. The 182-page report, released Wednesday, immediately added fuel to the hot-burning debate over illegal immigration in this Deep South state, where the presence of an estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants - the seventh-largest population in the nation - has transformed large swaths of both cities and countryside.

This month, the Department of Homeland Security opened the Karnes County Civil Detention Center in Texas -- a state-of-the-art facility intended to symbolize the Obama administration's effort to reform a deeply troubled immigration jails system. The center, which houses only detainees with no serious criminal backgrounds, has no barbed-wire fencing. Immigrants are free to roam the facility. Those who choose to can do their own laundry. The administration deserves praise for acting on its promise to treat immigrants as civil defendants awaiting their day in immigration court rather than as criminals serving time.