On Saturday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Alaska, with the ACLU National Prison Project and Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP, sent the Alaska Department of Corrections (DOC), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor a letter demanding that that DOC discontinue its agreement to hold ICE detainees for longer than 72 hours unless it improves conditions of confinement. The letter comes in response to DOC’s failure to meet civil detention standards for 35 federal detainees currently held in DOC custody at Anchorage Correctional Complex (ACC).
“When DOC houses federal civil detainees, it must follow federal detention standards,” said Cindy Woods, Senior Immigration Law and Policy Fellow for the ACLU of Alaska. “The evidence we obtained from individuals in ICE custody detained at ACC confirms that DOC is failing to meet those standards of care, causing real harm and violating the constitutional rights of people held at ACC on an administrative, not a criminal, order.”
Woods testified about these punitive conditions to the Alaska House Judiciary Committee during a hearing held on June 20. She described the inability of detainees to exercise their rights to access legal counsel, necessary medical care, religious materials, and communicate with family members and consular officials.
Given DOC’s failure to provide safe and adequate conditions for the ICE detainees, the ACLU of Alaska and its partners sent a letter to state and federal officials demanding that ICE and DOC promptly remove all immigrant detainees from ACC and stop any additional transfers to ACC unless and until constitutionally adequate conditions of confinement and attorney access can be guaranteed.
The demand letter follows a class action lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Alaska against DOC in May that contends that the state’s failure to provide adequate health care for incarcerated individuals violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments and has resulted in suffering, deterioration, and death.
“DOC has consistently failed to fulfill its constitutional and statutory responsibility to keep individuals charged and convicted of crimes in its custody safe, alive, and healthy,” said Mara Kimmel, Executive Director for the ACLU of Alaska. “Given the heightened standards of care required for those in federal civil immigration detention, the state has opened itself up to liability.”
