GADSDEN, Alabama - The buttons inside the elevator do not work. Guards in a distant control room watch through cameras and guide the car to the upper level, where doors open onto the locked vestibule outside Unit 10.
On the other side of a pair of steel doors wait more than 100 federal detainees, immigrants shipped to an Alabama jail while they wait on judgment or deportation or maybe release.
In general, illegal immigrants are either deported or let go within 360 days. But Gadsden is home to long-term detainees from all over the nation, ones who do not fit neatly and easily into the system. Some are stateless, some seeking political asylum. There is no time limit on detention for individuals who refuse to sign the paperwork necessary to be deported. There is no time limit on detention while appealing to the Board of Immigration Appeals.
A man from Uzbekistan approaches. In spotty English he says he has spent 20 months locked up in Etowah County. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not allow for interviews with individual detainees without prior consent, although members of the media were given access to the general population during a tour Tuesday.
"We are not criminals, not murderers," said another inmate, approaching members of the media. "The conditions are awful." The man immediately referred to the food. Many more would do the same throughout the day. In July, the immigrant population held a hunger strike and 100 detainees signed a protest letter saying the food was at times rotten and nutritionally inadequate.
The Detention Watch Network, a national coalition of religious groups, last month labeled Gadsden as among the 10 worst immigrant detention centers in the United States, saying the facility should be immediately shuttered.
The facility, essentially a couple of wings inside the Etowah County Jail, provides inadequate and poor food, poor medical and psychiatric care and no opportunity for outside recreation, argues the Detention Watch report on Etowah County. Detainees may only visit with family through video monitors. "The conditions experienced by immigrants held at the Etowah County Jail are among the worst in the country," reads last month's report.
In the wake of the nonprofit calls for closure, ICE on Tuesday arranged a two-hour tour for several media outlets.
The immigrant detainees are held in three separate units, segregated from county and state inmates in Gadsden. Metal tables and stools are bolted to the floor in the center of each narrow unit. Two-person cells line the walls. More cell lines look out from a second tier. In Unit 10, a few detainees speak on the phones, usable with a prepaid phone card, that line a wall upstairs.
A small recreation area sits at the end of each unit, where chain link allows the only fresh air. Two TVs are suspended at either end of the dining area. Detainees spend day and night inside the unit, taking meals just outside their cells, eating alongside the exposed showers. One unarmed guard watches over each unit.
Gadsden is the only fully dedicated immigration detention center in Alabama, although ICE agents say they hold immigrants in county lockups in Montgomery and Baldwin counties for up to 72 hours. And DeKalb County can hold ICE transfers.
But Etowah is something else, home on an average day to more than 300 detainees from all over the world, detainees transferred from all over the nation. ICE officials estimate on average an immigrant is held for 35 days during processing. But in Gadsden, ICE estimates inmates spend an average of 98 days behind bars.
"It is a very complicated process," says Bryan Cox, spokesman with the ICE office in New Orleans. "There are several folks who are here much longer than that."
ICE is funded to deport just 400,000 individuals each year, says Phil Miller, field office director out of New Orleans. So ICE has to be selective in who is to be removed. In Gadsden, he says, many detainees were let out of other facilities after serving time for criminal charges and then targeted for deportation.
Yet others wait for longer periods because they come from countries that lack diplomatic relations necessary for deportation, including Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. For those who refuse to sign the passport or paperwork from their home country, deportation is also not possible. ICE will regularly review such cases. At some point, ICE may choose to release them on an "order of supervision," essentially a lifetime probation by ICE, said Miller. They are released to downtown Gadsden.
But there is no time limit on detention before an immigration order is issued. And there is no time limit for those "failure to comply" cases when someone refuses to sign.
According to the Detention Watch Network, the federal government held about 380,000 immigrants in 2009 in about 350 facilities at an annual cost of more than $1.7 billion.
In Gadsden, two electronic kiosks hang near the stairs, where detainees can use personal money or money supplied by family to purchase snacks and toiletries, a small bag of Ripple potato chips for $1.75, a new t-shirt for $4.05, a birthday card for $1.35, a chocolate doughnut for 90 cents.
The law library in each unit, a small computer nook without online access, is available by scheduled appointment from 8:30 a.m. through 2:30 a.m. six days a week. Each unit has one puppy. The dogs must be kept to the upstairs cells, away from the central dining area, due to religious concerns of Muslim detainees.
There are only men in the Gadsden facility. Women are kept in Jena, La.
Etowah County began working with ICE in 1997. But ICE officials say the county jail was mainly used as overflow for Atlanta. In 2010, ICE looked at ending the relationship and closing the detention center. Alabama's congressional delegation, led by U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Haleyville, intervened.
Miller says the "man day rate" for incarceration in Gadsden is $40 per detainee. With a capacity of 345, that works out to an annual contract worth $5 million to Etowah County. County officials in 2010 also said closure would cost dozens of jobs.
So in March of 2011, the New Orleans ICE office took over the detention center, changing a weigh station into a special home for immigrants facing open-ended detention. U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colorado, last month joined a renewed call to close the facility. But Aderholt last month reiterated his support. And a review last year by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security found Etowah County Detention Center "to be well managed and in compliance with the areas and standards inspected."
Miller says the detainees receive 2,400 calories per day, that they have access to sunlight through the chain link in the recreation area. They also say they are updating the facility to comply with the latest federal standards, meaning they will add an outdoor recreation area and introduce face-to-face visits for immigration detainees. The county inmates will still visit family through video monitors.
In a shared recreation area with ping pong tables and a heavy bag, an African detainee launches into a loud and lengthy criticism. "We want change. We are trapped in this place," he says, his voice rising as he addresses the full tour. "Our rights are violated every day here." He urges the media to stay to see the truth. Several detainees say the facility was improved in preparation for public scrutiny. But jail officials say they give a dozen tours to nonprofits, media and others each year.
The tour lingered in the kitchen, which is stocked with 66.5 oz. cans of Port Royal tuna, 90 oz. cans of barrel-cured shredded sauerkraut, 105 oz. cans of Lakeside Foods sweet peas. Shelves are lined with bananas, lemons and Nature's Own wheat bread. Tuesday's menu is turkey helper, mushy peas, cucumber salad and a slice of bread. Miller says the inmates are provided adequate calories. "The bottom line is it's the lack of choice," says Miller of the food complaints. All on the tour are offered a sample, but only one ICE agent takes a tray.
Immigration detention is a complicated issue. As Miller pointed out, this is a civilian population, not a criminal population. Yet they find themselves locked in a county jail in Alabama.
"They have their own personal philosophy that no one should be detained," said Miller of the nonprofit Detention Watch. He said ICE complies with law and judicial orders regarding detention standards. "Our job isn't political, isn't philosophical.
"We're confident that the conditions of confinement here are outstanding."
