THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

ICE has done it again. A new report has come out claiming that our favorite "movie villain" agency has been complicit in the many human rights violations its private contractors have perpetrated on detainees in their for-profit prison facilities.

Inspections of immigrant detention centers overseen by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are ineffective and often facilitate favorable ratings at centers with reported human rights abuses, according to a report released Wednesday by rights advocacy groups.

Detention center inspections matter because they generate ratings that determine whether ICE continues using taxpayer dollars to fund public and private entities that detain immigrants, the report said.

“The failures of the inspection system ... really do make ICE complicit in obscuring human rights violations in detention facilities,” said Claudia Valenzuela, the director of detention at the National Immigrant Justice Center, which published the report with the Detention Watch Network (DWN).

The inspections are “laughable,” said Mary Small, the policy director at the DWN. She said reports contain “barely any relation between documented deficiencies and overall ratings a facility gets.” Despite these violations, public and private contractors continue to profit from these centers without adequate oversight, the report said.

According to the report, “Lives in Peril,” in 2014, Florida’s Baker County Detention Center had 14 deficiencies and received a rating of good from ICE inspectors, and the following year, the center registered five deficiencies but its rating fell to acceptable.

Some deficiencies were identified as administrative- or security-related violations, like the opening of immigrants’ mail without the appropriate protocols, the report said. But the DWN said it found more worrisome problems, including denial of visitation rights and exorbitant charges for making phone calls. It also said it found that certain facilities did not allow detainees access to fresh air and sunlight.

"We have to ask whether these ratings are based on anything at all," Small said.

Perhaps ICE's ratings are based on their ROI?