INS Detainees Abused in Jail, Advocates Allege

Immigrant detainees housed in a county jail in northwestern Florida endured verbal and physical abuse, including electric shocks and beatings, at the hands of their guards, immigrant advocates said Thursday.

The allegations so concerned the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which sends detainees to county jails when its facilities are overcrowded, that it transferred 34 immigrants from the Jackson County Jail earlier this month, said Maria Elena Garcia, Florida spokeswoman for the INS. The Jackson County jail is in Marianna in northwestern Florida.

Garcia said an internal INS investigation was underway.

Twenty-six of the immigrants were moved to Monroe County Jail in Key West and eight were transferred to Bradenton.

In affidavits taken by lawyers at the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center in Miami, the immigrants, from the Bahamas, Haiti, Bangladesh, Cuba and other countries, said guards had verbally and physically abused them. Some said they had been shackled and jolted with a device that gives electric shocks.

Patrick Reed-Johnson, a Bahamian awaiting deportation for a criminal conviction, said he was knocked to the floor with a device known as a “shock shield” and kicked after he protested a guard’s use of a racial epithet.

Others said they were denied such basic necessities as toilet paper and medical care, and placed in solitary confinement arbitrarily for weeks at a time.

John Sullivan, administrator of the Jackson County Jail, said he was investigating the complaints, but said there was no pattern of racism or abuse in the 300-bed jail, which has housed thousands of INS detainees since 1992.