The Immigrant Gulag

The chilling front page report in the New York Times, May 5th, 2008, of the 66 people who died while under detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and its private subcontractors detail a moral and political crisis- and one that will worsen without loud denunciation.

More detainees have died while in custody of ICE than died in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo combined. Yet, the devaluation of the lives of immigrants, by politicians, media personalities and others, threatens to diminish the the neglect and violence they experience while in detention.

Join our panel of human rights lawyers, activists and detainees as we investigate what’s happening inside America’s newest gulag, its immigrant prisons.

Amy Gottlieb is the Program Director of the American Friends Service Committee Immigrant Rights Program in Newark. She is a graduate of Rutgers Law School - Newark, where she is currently an adjunct professor of immigration law. Roberto Lovato is a writer on immigrant issues with The Nation, the Huffington Post, and other publications. Jean Montrevil, a Haitian national greencard holder who has been detained on several occasions, works with the Brooklyn-based immigrant rights organization Families for Freedom and is a founding member of the New York Sanctuary Coalition. Aarti Shahani, whose father was a detainee, is a founder and board member of Families for Freedom.