From [HERE] The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Arizona today demanded that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials remove immigration detainees from the Pinal County Jail (PCJ) or immediately remedy unconstitutional conditions at the facility, where hundreds of detainees are held in unsanitary conditions and subjected to abuse, despite the government’s pledge to create a “truly civil” immigration detention system.

In a letter sent today to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director John Morton and other top government officials, the ACLU charges that an investigation into the jail has revealed unacceptable conditions of confinement that are indisputably punitive, despite the fact that the immigration detainees there are held on civil, and not criminal, charges.

“[Conditions at the Pinal County Jail] violate the U.S. Constitution, as well as ICE’s own National Detention Standards, and continue in spite of the Obama administration’s pledge – honored mostly in the breach – to establish a truly civil system of immigration detention,” the ACLU’s letter reads. “The confinement of immigration detainees at PCJ, at least under current conditions, has no place in any system that aspires to civility.”