Between the Fences

""Read former prison guard Tony Hefner's disturbing account of sexual and physical abuse at Port Isabel. What, If anything, is the federal government doing to monitor what happens behind the closed doors and locked gates of its detention centers?"--Carol M. Swain, editor of Debating Immigration" ""Tony Hefner's descriptions of human rights abuses at the Port Isabel Center mirror the complaints that continue to emerge from the facility--including reports from over one hundred detainees who went on a hunger strike there in 2009."--Catherine Tactaquin, executive director of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights" "In the Rio grande Valley, one of the most poverty-stricken areas in the United States, good jobs are scarce and the Port Isabel Service Processing Center--one of the largest immigration detention centers in America--pays the best wayes for a hundred miles. The guards Follow orders and keep quiet." "For five years, Tony Hefner served as a security guard at the detention facility and witnessed alarming corruption and constant violations of basic human rights. Between the Fences is the shocking story of the systematic sexual, physical, financial, and drug-related abuses by Immigration and Naturalization Service [INS] officers, and the incredible courage of the author, several fellow guards, and many brave detainees who stood up against it. With 400,000 immigrant detainees in US custody annually, Between the Fences is a call to action demanding that we look inside the detention centers on our own soil and consider how they are run."--BOOK JACKET.