San Pedro INS Detention Center

Dear Mr. Hodgson,
During the past three years, Human Rights Watch Young Advocates have visited San Pedro Service Processing Center (SPC) five times. The purpose of our visits has been to examine conditions at the INS detention center and to monitor how effectively the INS is implementing its own detention standards (contained in the Detention Operations Manual, last updated on February 11, 2002). This letter summarizes our findings from our series of visits and interviews with detainees, focusing on our more recent findings from late 2001 and our follow-up meeting with you and your staff in April 2002.