Rights group to protest at Ga. immigrant detention center

By Jeremy Redmon

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A large group of human rights organizations is preparing to hold a vigil in South Georgia on Friday morning in support of suspected illegal immigrants being held in a federal prison there.

The group, which includes Georgia Detention Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, is seeking to highlight the "traumatic effects" the prison is causing for immigrants' families. Those families can be separated for months at a time while their loved ones are held in the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin.

Court cases for inmates at the prison are pending for 63 days on average, according to a recent study by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research organization that monitors the federal government. As of Sept. 17, the center was holding 1,890 inmates.

Emily Guzman, who plans to attend Friday's vigil, said her husband, Pedro, has been held at the prison for more than a year while fighting deportation. She said Pedro's Guatemalan mother illegally brought him over the Mexican border when he was 8 years old as his family was seeking asylum.

She said federal officials arrested him last year after the government rejected his mother's request to stay in the country legally and after Pedro failed to show up at an immigration court hearing. The government, however, had mailed his court hearing notice to the wrong address, Emily Guzman said. Pedro was convicted of two marijuana-related misdemeanors in the late 1990s when he was a teenager, she said.

An ICE spokeswoman declined to comment on Pedro's case, citing federal privacy laws. She said her agency recognizes that “our nation's broken immigration system requires serious solutions, and we fully support comprehensive immigration reform efforts."

"While we continue to work with Congress to enact reform, ICE remains committed to smart, effective immigration enforcement that focuses first on convicted criminal aliens who pose a threat to public safety," said ICE spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez.

The demonstrators also plan to draw attention to what they see as “collusion between government officials and for-profit corporations to place profits and politics over people.” Corrections Corp. of America, which operates the prison in Lumpkin through an agreement with ICE and Stewart County, drew the spotlight this month when National Public Radio reported it helped craft Arizona’s new laws aimed at illegal immigrants.

A CCA spokesman called NPR's report erroneous, saying his company "strongly and unequivocally refutes" the report.

"CCA is committed to the safety of the detainees entrusted to our care at the Stewart Detention Center," CCA spokesman Steven Owen said. "We work very closely with our government partners ... to ensure that all detainees are treated with respect and dignity."