Contact your U.S. senators and ask them to defend the rights of immigrants and asylum seekers by supporting the Secure and Safe Detention and Asylum Act.

In May, investigative reports by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and 60 Minutes detailed the failure of the U.S. government to provide adequate medical care to immigrant men, women, and children detained in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities. In those stories, government documents and interviews with detainees and their families describe medical neglect, unreported deaths and suicides, forced sedation of detainees by immigration officers, lack of access to lawyers for detainees, and severe lack of resources for doctors and nurses working inside immigrant detention facilities.

The Secure and Safe Detention and Asylum Act (S. 3114) is an important step toward restoring human decency to the U.S. immigration system.

This bipartisan legislation was reintroduced yesterday by Senators Joseph Lieberman (ID-Conn.), Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), and Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska).

The Secure and Safe Detention and Asylum Act:

• Mandates improved detention conditions, prompt medical care, unobstructed access to legal counsel, limits on the use of solitary confinement, and special standards for families and for victims of persecution and torture
• Allows immigration judges to review the detention of asylum seekers and others consider releasing those who pose no risk to public safety
• Enhances alternatives to detention such as supervised release programs
• Requires the recording of interviews with detained asylum seekers and other quality assurance measures to ensure these individuals are not erroneously returned to countries where they fear persecution
• Establishes an Office of Detention Oversight within the Department of Homeland Security to audit and investigate detention facilities' compliance with standards and to report to Congress
• Mandates the reporting and investigation of all deaths that occur in detention facilities

The Secure and Safe Detention and Asylum Act was debated in Congress in 2006 and again in 2007, when a version of the bill was adopted by unanimous consent as an amendment to the Senate's Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (S.1348). Unfortunately, the comprehensive reform legislation stalled, leaving these key provisions for future consideration.

Now armed with hundreds of pages of evidence, Congress must act to protect the human rights of the 311,000 men, women, and children held in the immigration detention system every year.

Contact your U.S. senators and ask them to defend the human rights of immigrants and asylum seekers by enacting the Secure and Safe Detention and Asylum Act in 2008!