For Release Dec. 6, 2004
Contact:
Eric Lerner
973-736-0522
elerner@igc.org

Press conference to be held
Monday, Dec. 6
1:00 PM
Rutger’s Newark Campus
Newark, NJ
Hill Hall (Room 208)
To get to Room 208, please go up the ramp from the second floor of Hill Hall. Hill Hall is at the corner of MLK Jr. Blvd. and Warren St., next to the Student Center.

Representatives of immigrants rights and civil rights groups, including NJ Civil Rights Defense Committee, Casa Freehold, Council on American Islamic Relations-NJ, and others will describe how this victory was achieved and the broader context of the struggle for immigrant rights.

The representatives of the groups and detainee family members will explain what has been won so far and the much greater tasks that still must be accomplished to defend the civil rights of all who live in this country.

The directive, effective Dec. 11, was a response to a report on National Public Radio documenting the use of the dogs to terrify and physically attack detainees. Officials at Passaic County Jail, one of several facilities that used the dogs, stated that they had already removed the dogs from the jail, an action confirmed by detainees.

The NPR report was the result of an 18-month-long campaign by immigrant rights and civil rights groups to expose the use of dogs to torture immigrant detainees.

The canine abuse was first reported to the press by NJ Civil Rights Defense Committee (NJCRDC) in a press conference July 18, 2003. The conference was held in connection with a hunger strike by Nigel Macado and Hemnauth Mohabir, one of the detainees interviewed in the NPR report last week. Since then, NJCRDC, Families for Freedom and other immigrant rights organizations have been vigorously exposing dog attacks. The groups arranged detainee interviews for the NPR story.

This effort has been part of a general campaign to win the release of all the detainees, who are being held unconstitutionally without any criminal charges “This victory is a step forward,” said NJCRDC member Jeannette Gabriel, “but it puts an end to only one type of detainee abuse. The worst abuse is to hold them at all, as they are not charged with any crimes.” Detainees are held by the Department of Homeland Security as “civil” detentions under laws passed in 1996 and vigorously enforced since September, 2001.

The end of the torture-by-dog is one of the limited but important victories which the growing immigrant rights movement has won in the past year. In Freehold, New Jersey, a coalition of immigrants and citizens united in Casa Freehold and other organizations defeated an attempt by the Township government to shut down a muster zone for immigrant day-laborers. With the support of this coalition, the day–laborers were able to organize a hiring-hall-type of system, ending competition among the laborers and enforcing minimum labor standards on contractors. When police harassment drove the contractors away, NJCRDC and Casa Freehold, joined by other immigrant rights and peace groups, organized a march in Freehold in July which succeeded in countering the harassment.

This new civil rights fight is just beginning. Thousands of detainees remain unconstitutionally incarcerated and immigrant communities are under attack. The detainee featured in NPR’s report for being deliberately subjected to a dog bite, Rosendo Lewis, and another detainee, Abdoulie Secka, have just finished a nine-day hunger strike at Passaic County jail to demand their freedom. They report being subjected to threats by ICE officials to move them to other detention facilities thousands of miles from their families. The dogs are gone, but the violations of human rights remain and only continued exposure and protest will stop them.