The detention of these children is administrative, not punitive, but the enforcement mandate of the INS makes conditions of detention harsh. In fact, many children in detention centers believe that they are being punished, and are generally confused about their status. This perception is no doubt especially strong for those who live in secure detention centers with youths accused of violent crimes. These children may spend their days living in bare concrete cells, with no books other than an English-language Bible, under the strict monitoring of officials who have disciplined them for laughing, speaking their own language, or even scratching their nose without permission.

Detained and Deprived of Rights, released in December 1998, details the situation of children in the Berks County Youth Center in Pennsylvania, which includes the secure INS detention center for the East Coast. Children report being made to do push-ups as discipline for disobedience, even if they have asthma or are ill. They say that they are sometimes punished for not understanding instructions, which are given in a language many do not understand well; despite some efforts by the INS to recruit more interpreters and the recent initiation of English as a Second Language classes, translation remains inadequate and language barriers a daily problem.

The INS fails to inform children of their rights and often does not adequately facilitate contact with family members. Most of the children do not have access to legal representation. Some are transferred by the INS from the East Coast to the West without the INS informing their relatives or attorneys. Through such transfers, both the emotional support of relatives and friends and legal representation are made much more difficult for the children.

In the Berks County shelter, there has been some progress made since Human Rights Watch's first report on this topic, the 1997 Slipping Through the Cracks: Unaccompanied Children Detained by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. More teachers have been hired, and there has been increased outreach to local nonprofits to find books for the children in their languages. We welcome these developments, but the fact remains that there are limits to how far the INS will look after the children's best interests, given that the agency's ultimate goal is deportation. Even a period of detention which seems short from an adult's perspective can have a great and lasting impact on a child's development.

Social service groups which are solely devoted to protecting and nurturing children regardless of their legal national status would be better suited to caring for these children as they live through an inevitably difficult time of limbo while waiting for due process to be served. We urge the government to end this conflict of interest by assigning the care-giving role to appropriate child welfare agencies while the INS assesses their immigration status.

HRW is part of the National Detention Watch network, affiliated with the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, a group of about 150 organizations and individuals.

In February 1999, representatives of Human Rights Watch met with INS commissioner Doris Meissner to discuss the report's recommendations. Commissioner Meissner agreed in principle that the children's access to counsel should be a priority, and HRW will continue to follow up on this point.