Government Publicizes

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today’s show looking at horrific conditions for some 52,000 immigrants held in for-profit jails around the country. At least 24 immigrants have died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Trump administration. At least four more died shortly after being released. Now Homeland Security’s own inspector general has revealed how detained immigrants are subjected to rotten food, severe overcrowding, inadequate medical care, and broken and overflowing toilets. In two facilities, in particular—Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California and Essex County Correctional Facility in New Jersey—the inspectors found, quote, “immediate risks or egregious violations of detention standards … including nooses in detainee cells.”

AMY GOODMAN: The inspectors showed up at these four detention jails unannounced between May and November 2018 in response to several concerns raised by immigration rights groups and complaints made by prisoners. The LaSalle ICE Processing Center in Louisiana, the Aurora ICE Processing Center in Colorado were also inspected. Three of the facilities are operated by the private prison company GEO Group. This comes as a separate inspector general report recently documented dangerous overcrowding at a Border Patrol processing facility in El Paso, Texas.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has announced it plans to hold some 1,400 immigrant children at a site on Fort Sill Army Base in Oklahoma that was once used as an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. The agency is already holding a record number of children in some 168 facilities and programs in 23 states.

For more, we go to Houston, Texas, where we’re joined by Aura Bogado, immigration reporter for Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. She’s been speaking with migrants held in a number of these jails.

Aura, welcome back to Democracy Now! There was not a lot of mainstream media attention on this inspector general report—again, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security. Talk about what it revealed.

AURA BOGADO: Good morning, Amy. It’s great to be back.

The inspector general’s report indicates what immigrants have said for years about conditions in various detention facilities. As you mentioned, the inspector general’s report did surprise visits to four sites. Three of them are run by the private prison company GEO, and the other one is local to Essex County, New Jersey.

And it’s hard to know where to begin, but, you know, some of what stands out are the photos, for example, from the bathroom facilities, where there is unusable toilets, mildew and mold on the showers. The inspector general said that this poses health risks to the people who—to the detainees who are being held there: little to no access to recreation, horrible food conditions—moldy bread; raw, leaking chicken blood; unmarked, unlabeled food—again, things that we’ve heard about for years. And as you mentioned, this is DHS inspector general, and they found that there were multiple violations of ICE’s own detention standards.

And ICE concurred with the one recommendation, which was to have increased oversight. In some cases, they tried to make fixes right away, such as replacing the kitchen manager at one of the facilities during the inspection. But with some other recommendations, they sort of indicated that they’d think about it. For example, the Aurora facility in Colorado has a space for in-contact visits, which we know improves the morale of people who are being held in any kind of detention or prison environment. And although it has those facilities, it doesn’t allow contact visits. And the inspector general’s report cited that, and ICE’s response was, “You know, we’ll think about it, but the standard isn’t to have contact visits.” So, it’s an interesting way to sort of skirt that particular issue which was addressed in the report.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Aura, could you talk some about the GEO Group, for those viewers and listeners who may not be familiar with it?

AURA BOGADO: Sure. So, the GEO Group is a private prison contractor. And for ICE, it runs several detention facilities around the country. And it does, you know, what it sounds like. It holds people for civil immigration custody. Something that I think people don’t always understand is that people who are in immigration, in ICE custody, they’re in civil custody, not criminal custody. So it doesn’t have to do with any kind of criminality. It’s people who are going through some kind of immigration process, one of the many immigration processes that exist in the United States. And ICE contracts with a few contractors, but particularly with GEO. And they’re a large firm that holds a lot of people around the country for this agency.

AMY GOODMAN: So, can you talk about the significance of this report, and specifically, also, the number of migrants who have died during the Trump administration? It’s both children, a record number—I mean, I think the number was six from back to last year, and there hadn’t been a death, a child death, in immigration detention in 10 years. And now you have this latest figure of—what was the number?—24 migrants—these are adults—who died in detention, with another four dying right after they’re released.

AURA BOGADO: Right. So, something to keep in mind is that there are various agencies that hold immigrants, asylum seekers, migrants. So, we have just been talking about ICE immigration detention. The Customs and Border Patrol also holds people at Border Patrol stations, which are often referred to as hieleras, or “iceboxes,” by people who are held in them. They always describe them as being incredibly cold. I spent time with a couple of girls who I first reported on back in 2013, and they described, in great detail, especially one of them, what the icebox was like. And, you know, here we are, years later. They have green cards now. They’re looking forward to becoming citizens. And when we went back to talk about the conditions in these Border Patrol stations, it was like it could have happened yesterday. I mean, they just described how freezing they were, how the one little piece of Mylar didn’t feel like enough for either of them, and the older sister felt so bad for the younger one, that she took it and tried to create a second layer for her sister. And she was scared of sleeping through getting her name called, because they say that they were told that if they didn’t hear their name, they would stay in there forever. So, you know, again, this is stuff that we’ve heard about for a long time.

Unaccompanied minors then who leave the Border Patrol stations are then taken to shelters around the country, which are run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. These are all contracted facilities throughout the country, and that’s a different department altogether. That’s not DHS, but the Department of Health and Human Services. Some of what we found is tremendous abuse, both accusations and proven allegations, as well as, you know, in some of these places, there is the use of restraints, forced drugging. My reporting partner and I, Patrick Michels and I, we’ve been investigating secret shelters, in which the Office of Refugee Resettlement, without any judicial oversight, sends children to psychiatric facilities or residential treatment centers, and they’re sort of off the map of the shelters that we do know about. They’re not contracted facilities.

And, yes, people die. There are really horrible conditions in a lot of these places. And as you mentioned, there have been two dozen deaths during the Trump administration. That accounts for the 200 or so deaths since we’ve been keeping track, which is since 2003, I believe. And then there have been four deaths immediately after custody. So those are also tricky to track. We think that it’s four people who died immediately after being released. They may have been in custody when there were taken to a hospital, and then paroled, essentially taken out of custody immediately thereafter. But these are pretty high numbers. And again, they come from places in which people have been detailing the horrid conditions for quite a long time.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Aura, the inspector general’s report, from your own reporting, do you get the sense that they’re actually talking to the detainees, or are they just basically inspecting the delivery of basic services and dealing with the personnel in these facilities?

AURA BOGADO: You know, there’s mention in the report where they cite that detainees said such-and-such things. Detainees noted that not having contact visits was difficult for them, for example. But their actual perspective isn’t included. There are no quotes from the detainees themselves in the report. And again, it’s interesting, and I think it validates what people have been saying for a long time, but, again, you know, for immigration reporters, whose sources are the people who experience these policies, this isn’t necessarily anything new. I think the photos do illustrate, however, exactly what has been described to me and many other reporters for quite a long time.

AMY GOODMAN: And now the inspector general report author, John Kelly—not the General John Kelly, who’s gone on to the board of another for-profit detention facility—is resigning, after this report has come out. But, finally, the Trump administration saying it’s going to suspend legal aid programs, recreational activities, even English classes—all education for unaccompanied migrant children jailed in federally run immigration centers, the move drawing condemnation from groups like Amnesty International USA, which wrote, “It’s bad enough that the Trump administration is trying to normalize the warehousing of children, It’s unconscionable that they would so blatantly try to strip them of their rights. Locking up children and then denying them legal aid, education, and even playtime is all part of this administration’s cruel efforts to dehumanize people who have come to the U.S. seeking safety.” Those are the words of Amnesty International USA. And yet you have President Trump taking $8 billion to build a wall, and saying he doesn’t have money for kids having classes.

AURA BOGADO: Yeah. Again, my reporting partner, Patrick Michels, actually broke that story on Twitter recently. And it was surprising to see that memo, that email, which internally stated we’re not providing English classes right now. We’re not providing fútbol, or soccer, recreation services. And as you note, there is quite an irony in saying that there isn’t funding available for something really basic. Like, you know, how much does a soccer ball cost? I’m not sure.

AMY GOODMAN: Aura Bogado, we’re going to have to leave it there, immigration reporter with Reveal. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today’s show in Australia, where press freedom groups are sounding the alarm over a pair of police raids on journalists. On Wednesday last week, Australian Federal Police swept into the headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, reviewing thousands of documents for information about a 2017 report that found Australian special forces may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan. ABC Executive Editor John Lyons spoke on his own network just minutes after police served a warrant naming a news director and the two reporters who broke the story.

JOHN LYONS: They have downloaded 9,214 documents. I counted them. And they are now going through them. They’ve set up a huge screen, and they’re going through, email by email. It’s quite extraordinary. And I feel—as a journalist, I feel it’s a real violation, because these are emails between this particular journalist and his boss, her boss, its drafts, its scripts of stories. I’ve never seen an assault on the media as savage as this one we’re seeing today at the ABC. … And the chilling message is not so much for the journalists, but it’s also for the public.

AMY GOODMAN: Wednesday’s raid on ABC—that’s, again, Australian Broadcasting Corporation—came one day after police in Melbourne, Australia, raided the home of Annika Smethurst, a reporter with the Herald Sun newspaper. Police served a warrant related to Smethurst’s reporting on a secret effort by an Australian intelligence service to expand its surveillance capabilities, including against Australian nationals. Australia’s acting Federal Police Commissioner Neil Gaughan defended the raids, saying journalists could face prison time for holding classified information.

COMMISSIONER NEIL GAUGHAN: No sector of the community should be immune for this type of activity or evidence collection, more broadly. This includes law enforcement itself, the media or, indeed, even politicians.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined by two guests in Australia. With us from Brisbane is Peter Greste. He is the UNESCO chair in journalism and communications at University of Queensland. He’s founding director of Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom. He was imprisoned for over a year, for 400 days, in 2013 to '14, while covering the political crisis in Egypt. And joining us from Perth, Australia, Joseph Fernandez is with us, a media law academic at Curtin University, Australia's correspondent for Reporters Without Borders.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Joseph Fernandez, let’s begin with you. Lay out exactly what happened and when it took place, all the details as you know them, both the raiding of ABC and the journalist’s home.

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ: Thank you for having me on your show. The two raids happened within 48 hours of each other. It began with a raid on Annika Smethurst’s home. You have introduced her. At her home, the Australian Federal Police spent seven-and-a-half hours going through every nook and cranny of her belongings, including the rubbish bin outside the house. And they sought to access her email messages, phone messages and anything they could lay their hands on, including what she might have kept away in her undies drawer. Annika obviously was very traumatized by this, but she has held her head up high, in the knowledge that the story about which she was being investigated was really something very arguably and very strongly in the public interest or of legitimate public concern.

The second raid, the following day—

AMY GOODMAN: And that story was?

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ: Sorry. Can you say that again, please?

AMY GOODMAN: And that story was, Joseph?

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ: The story was that there was a discussion, a discussion about a plan to expand state surveillance, that would have possibly included surveillance of ordinary citizens. And this was quite an unprecedented idea. And the objective of such a plan was obviously going to be justified on the premise of protecting national security.

The second raid happened at the headquarters of the national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in Sydney. And police officers entered the premises armed with a warrant with an exhaustive inventory of things that they were looking for. And as you have noted, they scoured hundreds and thousands of documents and materials, and left with a small collection of materials in a sealed package, with the agreement not to use them until a possible challenge is considered in the days ahead.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Joseph Fernandez, these raids coming within a day of each other, was there any coordination, or were these related in any way?

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ: That’s an interesting question. One of the first questions that sprung into people’s minds was whether they were related, whether this was instigated by the government. The prime minister quickly moved to distance himself and his government from the raids, claiming that the two agencies and the police were acting entirely of their own accord. And the police themselves are on record as saying that the two events are unrelated. And so, it’s left to be seen, you know, whether new light will be shed on the real circumstances that led to these raids. It’s quite hard to accept, without inquiry as to whether there was absolutely no notice given, whether informally or formally, to the bosses in government.

AMY GOODMAN: And for people to understand, I mean, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is the leading broadcaster throughout the entire country of Australia. I wanted to bring Peter Greste into this conversation. We had you here in our studio after you were imprisoned for well over for year by Egypt with your two Al Jazeera colleagues. You were working with Al Jazeera at the time. You certainly knew what it meant to be arrested, to not have rights, not to be even told at the beginning why the Egyptian authorities were holding you. Now you see the situation in Australia. And I was wondering if you can talk about the laws around press freedom, if you have them in Australia. Amazingly, in this warrant, the warrant gave the police wide-ranging authority to view, seize, edit and destroy virtually any document it saw fit.

PETER GRESTE: Yeah, that’s right. Look, there are a whole host of questions in there, Amy, but let me deal with the very beginning of it, and that’s the way I felt when I heard about the news, because it did—I mean, even now I can feel my skin pricking up, thinking about the raids and what that would have felt like, because I know exactly what it was like to have agents burst into your room looking for evidence, and all of the confusion that surrounds that, the outrage that surrounds that. But I never really honestly expected to see it take place here in Australia. And it seems to me that even though I’m not suggesting Australia is about to become an authoritarian state like Egypt anytime soon, I think that we are being pushed in the same direction by the same kind of imperatives around national security, the prioritizing of national security over the human rights and democratic rights of citizens, largely because it’s much easier to make the political case for national security legislation, particularly when you see attacks in the streets and the consequences of that, but much harder to make the more abstract case for human rights and citizens’ rights, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and so on, until you see what that means in practical terms. And that’s what we saw last week with these two raids. I think it’s very, very concerning to me, and I’m deeply worried.

Now, as you mentioned, we don’t have in Australia any explicit protection for press freedom written into the law, nothing about freedom of speech. Australia has no bill of rights. All we have is an implied right of political communications, that the High Court decided that was there as a function of our democracy. They said that we live in a representative democracy, and you can’t have an effective representative democracy without political communication, therefore, that right is somehow inferred in the Constitution.

But without anything like the First Amendment in the United States here in Australia, without any explicit protection for press freedom, what we’re seeing is a lot of scope for our legislators to draft laws that really intrude on press freedom in all sorts of deeply troubling ways that make it much harder for journalists to protect their sources, make it much harder even for journalists to contact sources within government. And so, what we’re seeing is a vast web of interconnected national security laws that, in all sorts of ways, make these kinds of raids that we saw last week possible.

I’m not so critical of the Federal Police for carrying out the raids. I accept that they were probably doing their jobs. And as we’ve been hearing, there may well have been some kind of political involvement in there. But let’s take what the Federal Police have been saying at face value, that there was nothing political. If there was nothing political, if they were simply fulfilling their duties under the law, then, clearly, the law needs to change. And that’s what we need to start talking about.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Peter Greste, we have about a minute left, but I wanted to ask you, in terms of—who determines the violations of state secrets? Is there one centralized agency, or can various federal agencies decide to conduct these kinds of raids in Australia?

PETER GRESTE: No. Look, it’s quite difficult to know quite how the laws come into effect or come into force. I mean, let’s take a look at the data retention laws, the metadata. In any number of more than 20 agencies, government agencies can look into any Australian’s metadata without a warrant. Now, they need to apply for a special journalist warrant if they want to investigate journalists’ metadata in a search for sources, but, otherwise, there is no—there is no warrant system. They can look anywhere, anywhere that they want.

And I think that’s the kind of scope that we’re talking about. That’s overreach. You talk to any lawyer, any civil rights activist, anyone who knows about the way the law operates, and they’ll acknowledge that that’s overreach. And we need to really start a vigorous conversation within this country about the limits of state power and the kind of ways that we need to encourage and support press freedom, and also the protection of whistleblowers, because, ultimately, these raids were in the hunt for the sources of these stories, for the journalists’ sources, for the whistleblowers that felt that these stories needed to be told.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we have to wrap up right now, but we want to continue the vigorous discussion, and we’re going to bring folks Part 2 at democracynow.org under web exclusives. Peter Greste, we want to thank you and ask you to stay for that Part 2 discussion, UNESCO chair in journalism and communications, University of Queensland, founding director of the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, imprisoned for more than 400 days. Also, Joseph Fernandez, a media law academic at Curtin University, Australia’s correspondent for Reporters Without Borders. Stay with us. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.