‘Torture’: Amnesty International calls for ICE to be abolished

A leading international human rights organization is calling for ICE to be abolished after the group claims it documented widespread abuses by the immigration enforcement agency, including fatal shootings, attacks on protesters and unconstitutional conditions at detention centers.

The group, Amnesty International, on Thursday, Sept. 24, called for the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to be abolished and issued a 168-page report detailing ICE’s suspected abuses. The report covers everything from the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez to systemic issues of denying immigration detainees attorneys while holding them in conditions that "may amount to torture," the group said.

"There are simply no reforms that would bring this agency into alignment with the United States’s human rights obligations," Amy Fischer, Amnesty International’s director for refugee and migrant rights in the U.S., said at a news conference Thursday. "The scale, persistence and structural nature of these failures cannot be adequately addressed through piecemeal reform."

Amnesty International is one of the world’s leading international human rights organizations. It was founded in the United Kingdom in the 1960s by lawyers working to free unjustly imprisoned people. The group won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1977.

White House spokesperson Lauren…

Original source: https://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/