Washington (AFP) - The US Department of Homeland Security on Thursday said it would stop using two detention centers accused of mistreating immigrant detainees.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said he had directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to stop using the facilities in Georgia and Massachusetts.
"We will not tolerate the mistreatment of individuals in civil immigration detention or substandard conditions of detention," Mayorkas said in a memo to acting ICE director Tae Johnson.
"We have an obligation to make lasting improvements to our civil immigration detention system," the secretary said. "This marks an important first step to realizing that goal."
"DHS detention facilities and the treatment of individuals in those facilities will be held to our health and safety standards," he said. "Where we discover they fall short, we will continue to take action as we are doing today."
The announcement was welcomed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
"Today's announcements show the Biden administration's willingness to decisively break from the immigrants' rights abuses of prior administrations," said Naureen Shah, senior advocacy and policy counsel at the ACLU.
The ACLU said the detention center in Irwin County, Georgia, was "notorious for its dehumanizing and nightmarish conditions, including pervasive medical neglect and horrific reports of forced sterilizations."
It said immigrants at the facility in Bristol County, Massachusetts, had been denied "adequate food and medical care."
In a letter to Mayorkas last month, the ACLU called for the closure of 39 ICE detention facilities "as a starting point toward ending the mass criminalization and default incarceration of undocumented immigrants."
