The United States has failed to uphold its international obligations to protect the human right of migrants, subjecting too many to prolonged detention in substandard facilities while depriving them of an adequate appeals process and labor protections, United Nations investigator Jorge Bustamante said last week.  The Los Angeles Times reports that this marks the first time the international committee has made a public criticism of the U.S. treatment of its estimates 37.5 million undocumented immigrants.

Bustamante took particular aim at what he criticized as the "overuse" of detention for immigrants.  Noting that the annual detainee population has tripled in nine years to 230,000 he called on the United States to eliminate mandatory detention for certain migrants and instead expand the use of alternatives, such as electronic ankle bracelets.  He also urged that immigrants be given the right to legal counsel, more impartial hearings and improved holding facilities, particularly for women and children.  "The United States lacks a clear, consistent, long-term strategy to improve respect for the human rights of migrants," said his report," which was presented last week to the U.N Human Rights Council in Geneva.  Bustamante serves as the organizations special rapporteur on the human right of migrants.

In response to the findings, the U.S. delegation issued a statement which called the report disappointing.  The report "focuses only on a narrow slice of the migrant population in the United States and makes no effort to recognize notable, positive aspects of U.S. migration policy," the statements said.  "This results in an incomplete and biased picture of the human rights of migrants."  The delegation said that the U.S. had one of the world’s most generous immigration policies and offered more than 11 million migrants green cards, citizenship, asylum, refugee resettlement and temporary protected status between 2000 and 2006.  

In his three-week fact-finding mission in Los Angeles last May, Bustamante said he was concerned about "rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States" and took testimony about worker abuse, government raids, family separations and other issue.  In his report, he wrote that xenophobia and racism towards immigrants has worsened since the Sept. 11 attacks, with a particularly devastating effect on children, Afro-Caribbean migrants, and those perceived to be Muslim or ethnic South Asians and Middle Easterners.