Oluwole Aboyade, a Nigerian asylum seeker being held in Elizabeth, New Jersey made claims of verbal and physical abuse that prompted the INS to call for an FBI investigation of the detention facility. Now the INS has put him in a prison disciplinary cell following his complaints about being required to clean toilets at the facility.

Before the move, Aboyade was being held in the non-criminal section of the facility, along with many other asylum seekers. According to his attorney, Penny Venetis, he is now being held in solitary confinement because he spoke out against alleged abuses by guards.

This incident highlights the concerns of human-rights activists relating to the U.S. policy of detaining asylum seekers. While they are not generally held with criminals, the practice of essentially jailing them is inappropriate treatment given their status. When a detainee is placed in with the general prison population the INS no longer has primary control over their treatment and care. Allyson Collins of the Human Rights Watch worries that once a detainee is placed in a prison, they are punished for conduct violations as a criminal would be when "the punishment they receive shouldn’t be the same as that received by a criminal inmate who is serving time. The problem is that any kind of punishment that is received by an immigrant in this kind of setting is, by its nature, inappropriate."