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Immigration detainees’ transfer reset
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Posted on Sep 29 2004
The Division of Immigration will not be able to meet its Oct. 11 target for the transfer of immigration detainees to the juvenile detention facility.
Immigration director Antonio Sablan said yesterday that construction is still ongoing for the fence that would ensure sight-and-sound barrier between the youth and immigration detainee populations.
“[The scheduled transfer by Oct. 11] is not going to happen. We’re still building the fence. As you know, in situations like this, you have to make sure that everything is covered,” Sablan said.
The move would be done in the last week of October, he added.
The Attorney General’s Office earlier said the fence would create separate access paths to the multi-purpose space inside the compound, where the detainees could have recreation and other activities.
Schedules are also being arranged to ensure that both groups would not be outside the building at the same time.
“The security of the kids is our No. 1 priority,” Division of Youth Services director Victor Mesta had said in an earlier interview.
The U.S. Department of Justice has approved the use of the juvenile detention facility in Kagman to temporarily house immigration detainees pending the completion of the adult prison project in Susupe.
The facility consists of two buildings, each of which has a capacity of 20 detainees. The youth offender population in the facility, however has remained low in one building, while the other has been totally unutilized.
For this reason, the AGO sought to use one of the buildings, which has zero population, to house immigration detainees until the adult prison project in Susupe is completed.
Constructed only recently, the DYS facility has better living conditions than the immigration detention facility in As Perdido.
