Florida Mistaken Identity Arrest
Woman Seeks to Hold Police Accountable for Mistaken Identity Arrest
What was supposed to be a joyous Christmas celebration turned into a nightmare for Jennifer Heath Box, when Broward County, Florida, sheriff’s deputies arrested her and threw her in jail for three days—all because they refused to check their paperwork to make sure they had the right person. Because of indifference of police and jail personnel, Jennifer missed Christmas with her family and, most importantly, missed seeing her son before he deployed overseas with the United States Marines.
Police did have a warrant for “Jennifer”—but not this Jennifer. This Jennifer had never been the subject of an arrest warrant and had never been charged with a crime. The Jennifer that police wanted was 23 years younger and five inches shorter than the Jennifer they arrested. She also lived in a different county, had a different driver’s license number, had different hair and eye colors, and even had a different last name—all information that police and jail personnel ignored.
While the wrong Jennifer spent her Christmas in jail, terrified and confused as to how something like this could happen, her family worked around the clock to get Jennifer out. But the more they learned, the more it became clear that Jennifer was sitting in jail because of an obvious mistake—one that Broward County officials failed to rectify even after they learned that Jennifer had been wrongfully arrested and incarcerated, and one to this day they’ve never apologized for.
Jennifer’s wrongful arrest and detention violated both the Fourth Amendment’s right to be free from unreasonable seizures, and the constitutional right to due process. Government officials should be held accountable when their mistakes lead to violations of constitutional rights. Jennifer is teaming up with the Institute for Justice (IJ) to hold Broward County and its officials responsible for their mistakes and to ensure that this nightmare does not happen to someone else.
In September 2025, a judge ruled the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity, allowing Jennifer’s case to move forward.
Two Years With No Moon
Immigration Detention of Children in Thailand
Rohingya women and children who arrived by boat from Burma pass the time at a closed shelter in Phang Nga, Thailand, in October 2013 © 2013 Reuters/Athit Perawongmetha
Two Years With No Moon
September 1, 2014 News Release
Thailand: Migrant Children Locked Up
Immigration Detention of Children in Thailand
Prologue: Bhavani and Her Sisters
Summary
Key Recommendations to the Thai Government
Methodology
Terminology
I. Paths to Immigration Detention
Arrests of Migrant Workers and their Children
Arrests of Refugees
Arrests of Burmese Refugees
Arrests of Urban Refugees and Asylum Seekers
II. Immigration Detention of Children
Arbitrary and Indefinite Detention of Children
International Law Prohibiting Detention of Migrant Children
II. Impact of Immigration Detention on Children
Risk of Psychological Harm
Risk of Harm to Physical Health
Lack of Adequate Exercise
Lack of Adequate Nutrition
Poor Health and Insufficient Medical Care
Social and Developmental Harm
Denial of Family Contact
Denial of Adequate Education
III. Abusive Conditions for Children in Immigration Detention
Abusive Conditions for Children in the Bangkok IDC
Failure to Separate Children from Non-Relative Adults
Degrading Treatment in Initial Holding Cells
Children in Overcrowded, Squalid Cells
Children Exposed to Violence
Abusive Conditions in Other Immigration Detention Centers
Abusive Conditions in Police Lock-ups
IV. Alternatives to Detention
Thailand’s Limited Recognition of Children’s Right to Liberty
Successful Use of Alternatives to Detention Elsewhere
A Five-Step Process to Avoid Detention of Children
V. Recommendations
To the Thai Government
To the Parliament
To the Police Immigration Division
To the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security
To the Ministry of Interior
To the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand (NHRCT)
To the UN Resident Coordination and UN Country Team
To UNHCR
To the International Organization for Migration (IOM)
To UNICEF
To the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
To Donor and Resettlement Governments
Acknowledgments
Appendices
Related Content
September 1, 2014 News Release
Thailand: Migrant Children Locked Up
Thousands Held in Immigration Detention
Prologue: Bhavani and Her Sisters
From age 8 to 10, Bhavani spent two years locked up in Bangkok’s squalid, overcrowded Immigration Detention Center (IDC). She and her family, refugees from Sri Lanka, were detained because Thailand’s immigration laws precluded them from gaining legal status and protection in the country.
Bhavani is the youngest of six children. She was living in hiding in Bangkok with her mother, father, three sisters, and the younger of her two brothers. Early one morning when her mother and brother were out, the police raided the apartment, apprehended Bhavani, her father, and her sisters, and sent them to the Bangkok IDC. Her older brother had already been detained there for over a year, and even though they had not been able to see him—they lacked any paperwork that would let them visit—the family had some idea of the harsh conditions inside.
When Bhavani’s mother, Mathy, learned that her husband and daughters had been arrested, she was shocked. “I just thought I should surrender,” she told Human Rights Watch. “I wasn’t able to leave four of my girls in the IDC alone.” Mathy voluntarily reported to a court, where the judge ordered her to pay a 6,000 baht (about US$200) fine for being in the country without a visa, then let her surrender and join her daughters in the IDC. In the two days they were apart, Mathy said, “I felt like I was dreaming. I wasn’t able to sleep, I’d hear them talking like they were calling me, knocking at the door.”
When the sisters and their father reached the IDC—two days before Mathy arrived—the police separated the girls from their father and sent them to different holding cells. The girls were initially held in a large hall with many adults. “When they took our dad away from us, we started to cry. That’s when I realized we couldn’t get out of there,” said Amanthi, Bhavani’s sister, who was 12 at the time. “When I saw them there,” said Mathy, “I was so scared.”
After a few days, Mathy and her four daughters were moved to the cell where they would spend the next two years. The cell was overcrowded, sometimes with over 100 occupants. People were “sleeping all on top of each other, so crowded even right up to the toilet,” said Amanthi. “At some point we couldn’t sit.” Mathy said she coped as best she could, but “One of my sons was never arrested. It was really difficult. I wanted to be in the IDC with my girls, but I missed my second son.” He could not visit without risking arrest himself.
Because of the detention center’s policy of holding males in one cell and females in another, without chances to visit, the family was separated, despite being in the same facility. They were only brought together when a charity group visited once or twice per month and asked to see the whole family. “When Bhavani wanted to meet my dad or brother,” said Amanthi, “she’d really cry.”
Crammed in their cigarette smoke-filled, fetid permanent cell, the girls saw their health and education suffer. Bhavani developed a rash all over her body, but Mathy said the medication the IDC’s clinic gave her did not help. The toilets—just three for the hundred or so migrants held there—were filthy, and Bhavani’s teenage sister avoided using them because there were no doors. Though the International Organization for Migration ran a small daycare center that the girls could attend once or twice a week, there was no school. “I worried that my girls’ education stopped,” said Mathy.
Fights often broke out between women in the overcrowded cell, frustrated by their indefinite detention. “When someone behaved badly to other people, I didn’t like that,” said Bhavani. “They would shout at night.” The guards would not do very much when fighting started, and the girls would hide, explained Amanthi. “The [other migrants] are really, really strong. My mom didn’t know how to fight, she tried to take us to a corner and protect us. It was scary.”
Detained without release in sight, the family members slowly found ways to cope. “The first three to four months was really hard,” said Mathy. “It was difficult to manage and take care of my girls. I got used to it. We met people who had more problems than us.” Bhavani became friends with a Sri Lankan boy and girl detained with her. Their mothers would carve out a small space for them to play, defending the area against encroachment from others in the overcrowded cell.
Bhavani and her family were finally released on bail in the process of being resettled as refugees to the United States. Yet Bhavani, who had spent one fifth of her life in detention, had become accustomed to life in the IDC. When the family finally left, “I was so sad I had to leave my friends,” she said. “I knew they wouldn’t be coming out too.”
Now, living safely in the US, Bhavani has not seen her father in over a year. He was not cleared for resettlement alongside his wife and children, and, despite the risk of persecution, chose to return to Sri Lanka rather than remain in the IDC. The family decided that splitting up was the only way to get their children out of detention and back to regular education. Mathy still worries about the 20 or so other children left behind in her cell in the IDC: “Their education, their health, their future is spoiled.”
Summary
Every year, Thailand arbitrarily detains thousands of children, from infants and toddlers and older, in squalid immigration facilities and police lock-ups. Around 100 children—primarily from countries that do not border Thailand—may be held for months or years. Thousands more children—from Thailand’s neighboring countries—spend less time in this abusive system because Thailand summarily deports them and their families to their home countries relatively quickly. For them, detention tends to last only days or weeks.
But no matter how long the period of detention, these facilities are no place for children.
Drawing on more than 100 interviews, including with 41 migrant children, documenting conditions for refugees and other migrants in Thailand, this report focuses on how the Thai government fails to uphold migrants’ rights, describing the needless suffering and permanent harm that children experience in immigration detention. It examines the abusive conditions children endure in detention centers, particularly in the Bangkok Immigration Detention Center (IDC), one of the most heavily used facilities in Thailand.
This report shows that Thailand indefinitely detains children due to their own immigration status or that of their parents. Thailand’s use of immigration detention violates children’s rights, immediately risks their health and wellbeing, and imperils their development. Wretched conditions place children in filthy, overcrowded cells without adequate nutrition, education, or exercise space. Prolonged detention deprives children of the capacity to mentally and physically grow and thrive.
In 2013, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the body of independent experts charged with interpreting the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Thailand is party, directed governments to “expeditiously and completely cease the detention of children on the basis of their immigration status,” asserting that such detention is never in the child’s best interest.
***
Immigration detention in Thailand violates the rights of both adults and children. Migrants are often detained indefinitely; they lack reliable mechanisms to appeal their deprivation of liberty; and information about the duration of their detention is often not released to members of their family. Such indefinite detention without recourse to judicial review amounts to arbitrary detention prohibited under international law.
Thailand requires many of those detained to pay their own costs of repatriation and leaves them to languish indefinitely in what are effectively debtors’ prisons until those payments can be made. Refugee families face the unimaginable choice of remaining locked up indefinitely with their children, waiting for the slim chance of resettlement in a third country, or paying for their own return to a country where they fear persecution. Many refugees spend years in detention.
Immigration detention, particularly when arbitrary or indefinite, can be brutal for even resilient adults. But the potential mental and physical damage to children, who are still growing, is particularly great.
Immigration detention negatively impacts children’s mental health by exacerbating previous traumas (such as those experienced by children fleeing repression in their home country) and contributing to lasting depression and anxiety. Without adequate education or stimulation, children’s social and intellectual development is stymied. None of the children Human Rights Watch interviewed in Thailand received a formal education in detention. Cindy Y., for example, was three years older than her classmates in school when she was finally released. She said, “I feel ashamed that I’m the oldest and studying with the younger ones.”
Detention also imperils children’s physical health. Children held in Thailand’s immigration detention facilities rarely get the nutrition or physical exercise they need. Children are crammed into packed cells, with limited or no access to space for recreation. Doug Y. wanted to play football, his favorite sport, but said, “If you kick a ball, you’d hit someone, or a little kid.” Parents described having to pay exorbitant prices for supplemental food smuggled from outside sources to try to provide for their children’s nutritional needs. Labaan T., a Somali refugee detained with his 3-year-old son, said, “The diet for the boy consists of the same rice that everybody else eats. He needs fruits which are neither provided nor available for purchase.”
The bare and brutal existence for children in detention is exacerbated by the squalid conditions. Leander P., an adult American who was detained in the Bangkok IDC, said that one of the two available toilets in his cell, occupied by around 80 people, was permanently clogged, so “someone had drilled a hole in the side – what would have gone down just drained onto the floor.” Multiple children we interviewed described cells so crowded they had to sleep sitting up.
Even where children have room to lie down and sleep, they routinely reported sleeping on tile or wood floors, without mattresses or blankets. “The floor was made from wood, the wood was broken and the water came in,” said one refugee woman detained for months in the Chiang Mai IDC with a friend and the friend’s 6 and 8 year-olds. “While I was sleeping, a rat bit my face.”
Severe overcrowding appears to be a chronic problem in many of Thailand’s immigration detention centers. The Thai government detained hundreds of ethnic Rohingya refugees, including unaccompanied children, in the Phang Nga IDC in 2013. Television footage showed nearly 300 men and boys detained in two cells resembling large cages, each designed to hold only 15 men, with barely enough room to sit. Eight Rohingya men died from illness while detained in extreme heat with lack of medical care in the immigration detention centers that year.
Children are routinely held with unrelated adults in violation of international law, where they are exposed to violence between those detained and from guards. A Sri Lankan refugee, Arpana B., was pregnant and detained in an overcrowded cell in the Bangkok IDC with her small daughter in 2011. “One of the detainees beat my daughter,” she said. “He was crazy. There was no guard, no police to help us.”
Thailand faces numerous migration challenges posed by its geographical location and relative wealth, and is entitled to control its borders. But it should do so in a way that upholds basic human rights, including the right to freedom from arbitrary detention, the right to family unity, and international minimum standards for conditions of detention. Instead, Thailand’s current policies violate its international legal obligations, put children at unnecessary risk, and ignore widely held medical opinion about the detrimental effect that detention can have on the still-developing bodies and minds of children.
Alternatives to detention exist and are used effectively in other countries, such as open reception centers and conditional release programs. Such programs are a cheaper option, respect children’s rights, and protect their future. The Philippines, for instance, operates a conditional release system through which refugees and other vulnerable migrants are issued with documentation and required to register periodically.
Children should not be forced to lose parts of their childhood in immigration detention. Given the serious risks of permanent harm from depriving children of liberty, Thailand should immediately cease detention of children for reasons of their immigration status.
Key Recommendations to the Thai Government
- Enact legislation and policies to expeditiously end immigration detention of children consistent with the recommendations of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.
- Adopt alternatives to detention, including supervised release and open centers that fulfill the best interests of the child and allow children to remain with their family members or guardians in non-custodial, community-based settings while their immigration status is being resolved.
- Until children are no longer detained, ensure that their detention is neither arbitrary nor indefinite, and that they and their families are able to challenge their detention in a timely manner.
- Drastically improve conditions in Immigration Detention Centers and any other facilities that hold migrant children in line with international standards, including by providing access to adequate education and health care and maintaining family unity.
- Sign and ratify the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol.
Methodology
This report builds on two previous Human Rights Watch reports that examined Thailand’s treatment of migrants: Ad Hoc and Inadequate: Thailand’s Treatment of Refugees and Asylum Seekers (2012), and From the Tiger to the Crocodile: Abuse of Migrant Workers in Thailand (2010).
The report is based on 105 interviews conducted between June and October 2013, of people detained, arrested, or otherwise affected by interactions with police and immigration officials in Thailand. This report also uses an additional nine interviews, collected between September 2008 and October 2011 in the course of researching previous reports that refer to issues still relevant today. Interviewees ranged in age from 6 to 48, plus a grandmother who did not know her age. Fifty-five of the migrants interviewed were female. The majority of migrants interviewed were Burmese (including Rohingya); the next largest source country was Cambodia; and the remainder were from China, Nepal, Pakistan, Somalia, Sri Lanka, and the United States.
Forty-one of the interviewees were migrant children under the age of 18. Five others were adults under the age of 23 at the time of their interview who related experiences that occurred when they were children. We interviewed 10 adults who were parents of, related to, or had spent significant time detained with children below the age of 5.
We conducted some interviews in English and in Urdu, and others through the use of interpreters in a language in which the interviewee was comfortable, such as Rohingya, Burmese, Thai, or Khmer. We explained to all interviewees the nature of our research and our intentions concerning the information gathered, and we obtained oral consent from each interviewee.
Most interviews took place in Thailand, including in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Mae Sot, Phang Nga, Ranong, and Samut Sakhon. We also interviewed, in their home country or in a third country, nine migrants and refugees who had been detained in Thailand. Most of these interviews took place in person; one took place by videoconference.
Most interviews were conducted individually and privately; this included extensive, detailed conversations with released detainees. In addition, Human Rights Watch researchers visited several immigration detention facilities and conducted group interviews with two or three of those detained at a time. In order to safeguard interviewees who were detained, our conversations took place outside the hearing of immigration staff.
Human Rights Watch researchers met eight government officials concerned with migration who worked for the police, immigration department, and the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security. We also sent letters requesting data and other information concerning immigration and detention in Thailand, on January 18, 2014, to the Office of the Prime Minister, the Immigration Division, the Minister of Social Development and Human Security, and the Thai ambassadors to the United States and to the United Nations in Geneva and in New York. Although we received a letter from the office of the ambassador to the UN in Geneva acknowledging receipt of our letter, the office did not provide any answers to the questions we raised. We also sent a summary of our findings, and requested comment on July 15, 2014, to the ministries of foreign affairs and interior, and the Thailand mission to the United Nations in New York. The mission responded on August 14, 2014, and both our letter and their response are included as an annex to this report.
In addition, we met with representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), officials of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), migrant community leaders, journalists, human rights lawyers, and activists.
All names of migrants interviewed, including those of all children, have been replaced by pseudonyms to protect their identity. Pseudonyms used may not match the country of origin. In cases where the interviewee was concerned about the possibility of reprisal, we have concealed the location of the interview or withheld precise details of the migrant’s case. Many staff members of government agencies, intergovernmental organizations, and NGOs in Thailand are not identified at their request.
Human Rights Watch did not assess whether the migrants we spoke to qualified for refugee status. Some, perhaps many, do. This report instead focuses on how the Thai government fails to uphold migrants’ human rights, regardless of whether or not those migrants have legitimate asylum claims or other protection needs.
On May 22, 2014, the Thai military took control of the government. Although the research for this report was completed prior to the coup, its findings remain relevant. The military government, known as the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), has instituted no major policy changes regarding detention of migrant children. Thailand’s policy of detaining migrants has remained consistent across previous governments, including military governments.
Terminology
This report focuses on migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in urban centers in Thailand. Most non-Burmese asylum seekers lodge refugee claims directly with UNHCR because Thailand is not party to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (the 1951 Refugee Convention) and its 1967 Protocol, has no procedure for determining refugee status for urban asylum seekers, and has made no commitment to provide permanent asylum. UNHCR recognizes some as refugees but has no authority to grant asylum. The Thai authorities do not allow UNHCR to conduct refugee status determinations for members of certain nationalities, including Burmese, Lao Hmong, and North Koreans.
An “asylum seeker” is a person who is trying to be recognized as a refugee or to establish a claim for protection on other grounds. Where we are confident that a person is seeking protection we will refer to that person as an asylum seeker. A “refugee,” as defined in the Refugee Convention, is a person with a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion” who is outside their country of nationality and is unable or unwilling, because of that fear, to return. In this report, we use the term “refugee” when that person has been recognized as a refugee by UNHCR in Thailand, though it should be noted that UNHCR recognition of refugee status is declaratory, which means that people are, in fact, refugees before they have been officially recognized as such.
In this report, “migrant” is a broad term used to describe foreign nationals in Thailand, including people traveling in and through Thailand and passengers on boats moving irregularly. The use of the term “migrant” does not exclude the possibility that a person may be an asylum seeker or refugee.
In line with international law, the term “child” as used in this report refers to a person under the age of 18,[1] including children traveling with their families and unaccompanied migrant children. This report discusses these groups separately and together, and uses the term “migrant children” to refer to them together. This term includes children who are seeking asylum or have been granted refugee certificates from UNHCR.
For the purposes of this report, we use the definition of “unaccompanied migrant child” from the term “unaccompanied child” employed by the Committee on the Rights of the Child: “Unaccompanied children” are children, as defined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, “who have been separated from both parents and other relatives and are not being cared for by an adult who, by law or custom, is responsible for doing so.”[2]
I. Paths to Immigration Detention
There are approximately 375,000 migrant children in Thailand, including children who work, children of migrant workers, and refugee and asylum-seeking children.[3] Children constitute around 11 percent of Thailand’s total migrant population of 3.4 million people.[4]
Under Thai law, all migrants with irregular immigration status, even children, can be arrested and detained.[5] Immigration authorities and police arrest migrants while they are working, at markets, or as they travel within the country or seek to cross borders.[6]
Migrants of all nationalities who are arrested—and as a practical matter unable to pay bribes—are likely to be taken to police lock-ups or Immigration Detention Centers (IDCs). [7]
Those from countries bordering Thailand tend to spend a few days or weeks in detention before they are taken to the border to be deported or otherwise released. Nationals from countries that do not border Thailand, however, can spend years in indefinite detention, being essentially held until they can pay for their own removal.[8] Refugees can be held until they are resettled to a third country, an unlikely outcome for many refugees; and the relatively few who are resettled often spend many months, sometimes years, in detention prior to their resettlement.
Arrests of Migrant Workers and their Children
Thousands of migrant workers cross into Thailand each year from the neighboring countries of Burma, Cambodia, and Laos. Particularly those who remain unregistered with the Thai government face constant risk of arrest. These migrant workers make up a significant proportion of the workforce in Thailand.[9]Some bring children with them, and some give birth to children in Thailand. Infants stay in the migrant workers’ camps or in other homes with relatives, and young children attend informal schools in migrant communities. Many migrant children start working around 13, 14, or 15 years old.
Prior to the military coup of 2014, Thailand had made some progress toward regularizing migrant workers, but the process of applying for and gaining migrant worker status remained prohibitively expensive for many workers.
After the military coup, large numbers of Cambodian migrant workers left Thailand in response to rumors of migrants being arrested and harassed.[10] In just 18 days between June 8 and 25, at least 246,000 Cambodians fled the country, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).[11] Cambodians in particular fear reprisals because of political tension between the two countries.[12] However, it is possible that Burmese and other migrants are also being targeted, but are less likely to flee due to conditions in their home countries.[13] The NCPO government denied that a crackdown on migrants is taking place and categorically denied all allegations of attacks and human rights violations against migrants.[14] On June 25, 2014, the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) announced the creation of service centers to issue temporary entry permits to migrant workers and temporary work permits to their employers, both of which are required to obtain legal migrant worker status. After 60 days workers will have to verify their nationality before receiving a longer work permit. The announcement states that “relevant law enforcement entities shall strictly enforce the law” against migrants whose permits expire.[15]
Thailand routinely arrests migrant workers and their accompanying family members. Migrants, including children, report being arrested repeatedly. Nhean P., a 12-year-old Cambodian boy, said he had been arrested, detained, and deported three times in the past five years. He described his most recent arrest, in early 2012:
I was on the bus [with my mother and brother]. Police came and asked for ID – we didn’t have it. So they told us to get down and they took us to jail and sent us back to Cambodia. They sent us back in a pickup truck, without covering, open to the rain. We came right back to Thailand. [If we stayed] in Cambodia, we wouldn’t have any money.[16]
The lack of a legal framework in Thailand that recognizes and provides government-issued documents for refugees, and some obstacles to regularization for migrant workers, means that hundreds of thousands of Burmese adults and children are vulnerable to arrest on the street, workplace, or home. In most cases this can lead to detention and deportation.[17]
Police or immigration authorities raid migrant worker camps, other accommodation, or places of employment; they also stop migrants on the street or in markets. Aung M. was 13 years old in March 2013 when she went to a market in the town of Samut Sakhon with her two sisters. The police stopped them, arrested Aung, and took her to the police station as she had no papers. “I wanted to cry because I was afraid,” she said.[18] Her sisters, who had work permits, ran home and told her mother. Aung’s mother told Human Rights Watch, “The moment I knew, I was terrified. I had to find my daughter; I worried [that she would be deported to Burma]”.[19]
Parents reported fear of letting children leave their sight, in case they should be arrested. Phoe Zaw, a Burmese man in Mae Sot with a 12-year-old daughter, said, “I worry about my daughter. I’m afraid of the police. If she goes out and doesn’t come in on time, I go after her.”[20]
Police and immigration authorities frequently demand money or valuables from detained migrants or their relatives in exchange for their release, either from detention or at the time of arrest. Migrants reported paying bribes ranging from 200 to 8000 baht (US$6 to 250) or more, depending on the region, the circumstances of the arrest, and the attitudes of the officers involved. In some cases the migrant could be forced to pay the equivalent of one to several months’ pay in one incident.[21] The police sometimes tell apprehended migrants that they can pay a smaller amount directly to the police to avoid the higher fines they would be required to pay if taken to court.[22]
Sometimes children with a school ID card or in a school uniform are not arrested. (Thailand revised its education policies in 2005 in line with the “Education for All” movement principles to permit migrant children to attend Thai government schools.)[23] Koy Mala, a 13-year-old Burmese girl who attended government school, said, “My parents say that if the police come, wear your school uniform so they won’t arrest you.” She saw her 14-year-old classmate arrested by the police in 2013 when she was not wearing her uniform.[24]
Police arrest criteria seem arbitrary and vary considerably. Saw Lei, a Burmese man with migrant worker status who was living in Samut Sakhon, told us that in 2012 the police tried to arrest his then 10-year-old son, but when they discovered his son was a student at an unofficial migrant school, they let him go without requiring uniform or ID.[25] Yet Saw Lei’s daughter, who was 13 years old at the time, was arrested in a separate incident in 2012, even though she also went to the migrant school. She was released when her teacher came to the police station and vouched that she was a student.[26]
While Thailand has made progress in enrolling migrant children in school, there are still significant gaps, leaving some children vulnerable to arrest. “Many families live far into the fields,” said Saw Kweh, a veteran community activist in Mae Sot, “and schools can’t come pick them up. There are costs for going to school and some families can’t afford it.”[27]
Arrests of Refugees
The largest group of refugees living in Thailand is from Burma, both from the civil wars and more recently from the violence against Muslims in Burma’s western Arakan State.[28] Thousands still live in camps along the Burmese border. There are also around 2,000 refugees from more distant places, including Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Somalia, and Syria.[29]
Thailand’s refugee policies are fragmented, unpredictable, and ad hoc, leaving refugees and asylum seekers unnecessarily vulnerable to arbitrary and abusive treatment.[30] Thailand has not signed the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees nor its 1967 Protocol (the Refugee Convention) and does not have an asylum law. It therefore considers refugees and asylum seekers and their families to be irregular migrants subject to detention. The lack of a legal framework makes the status of refugees and asylum seekers unclear and renders them vulnerable to arrest and detention.
Arrests of Burmese Refugees
As of 2013, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) statistics said that there were 77,913 Burmese refugees in refugee camps in Thailand, 34,289 of whom were children.[31] These figures may be low; The Border Consortium, a nongovernmental organization providing assistance in the border camps, estimates that there are 117,000 Burmese refugees in the 10 camps in which they work as of May 2014.[32] Most fled decades of fighting in Burma, and many children were born in Thailand to refugee parents.[33] Some portion of the tens of thousands of Burmese migrant workers in Thailand are, in fact, refugees, but have not been officially recognized as such, in large part because they are precluded from lodging claims with the government or with the UNHCR.[34]
Some 92,000 Burmese refugees were resettled from Thailand to third countries between 2005 and January 2014.[35]Political changes in Burma since 2011, including the signing of preliminary ceasefire agreements between the Burmese government and most of the ethnic armed groups, have opened the possibility for future voluntary repatriation. However, up to now, few ethnic minority group members have opted to return.[36]
Registered Burmese refugees in Thailand face stark decisions: they can remain in one of the refugee camps along the Burmese border, where they are relatively protected from arrest, but lack freedom to move or work, and are dependent on aid agencies, which have reduced funding since the ceasefires in Burma. Alternatively, they can live and work outside the camps (in areas such as in Mae Sot, Chiang Mai, Kanchanaburi, and Bangkok), but typically without legal status of any kind, which makes them subject to exploitation, extortion, arrest, and deportation.[37]
For decades, tens of thousands of ethnic Rohingya, a Muslim minority that is effectively denied citizenship in Burma, have fled persecution by the Burmese government. In 2012, the situation significantly worsened as a result of sectarian violence, including “ethnic cleansing,” in Arakan State, causing massive flights of even more people fleeing Burma by boat.[38] In 2013, Thailand permitted 2,055 Rohingya to enter the country, stating it would offer them “temporary protection,” but then treated them as undocumented migrants and detained them in IDCs and closed government shelters.
Starting in October 2013, significant numbers of the Rohingya escaped detention and traveled south through Thailand to Malaysia, with the involvement of people smugglers who detained them in jungle camps and then demanded payments to facilitate travel to Malaysia.[39] Other Rohingya were deported by Thai immigration officials in Ranong but were not sent to Burma, but rather into the hands of people smugglers who confined them in remote camps and inflicted physical torture on those who could not arrange payment for travel on to Malaysia.
Arrests of Urban Refugees and Asylum Seekers
UNHCR-registered refugees and asylum seekers (often from countries not neighboring Thailand) tend to live at the margins of society in Thailand’s cities, in particular in Bangkok. Without any way to regularize their status with the Thai government, they risk arrest and detention. When the Thai government detains a refugee or an asylum seeker, it argues that it is simply detaining an irregular migrant in order to deport him or her. Therefore, many remain in detention indefinitely, awaiting the limited places available for resettlement to a third country. [40]
Saleem and Shandana P., a Pakistani couple seeking asylum, were arrested early in the morning in February 2011. “The police came and did rounds,” Saleem said. “They came in three or four cars. They knocked on our door [of the apartment they shared with other asylum seekers]. They took us to the police station.” Saleem and Shandana were taken to the Bangkok IDC and detained indefinitely.[41]
Refugees and asylum seekers outside detention live in fear of arrest and extended detention. Suvik P., a Sri Lankan asylum seeker living in hiding in Bangkok with his wife and 3-year-old son, said he rarely travels outside his apartment: “If I was alone, I’d be ready to take the risk, but I can’t now because I’m with my son… If we don’t want to go back [to Sri Lanka] we’d have to stay in the IDC for the rest of our lives.”[42]
Nimal P., another Sri Lankan asylum seeker living in Bangkok, echoed this sentiment: “If I’m arrested, my son [who is 6 years old] will go to the IDC [with me]. I fear that even just when I go to the market and come back.”[43]
Thai authorities have limited the role of UNHCR in Thailand, severely restricting the organization’s ability to protect refugees, including children, from arrest or detention. UNHCR is not allowed to conduct refugee status determinations for Burmese, Lao Hmong, or North Koreans.[44] For individuals from other countries, UNHCR attempts to process refugee status determination requests and resettle to third countries refugees who qualify and for whom there are available places. UNHCR also issues “Asylum Seeker Certificates” for asylum seekers from other countries that say the bearer is a “Person of Concern” to UNHCR. However, Thai authorities often refuse to recognize these certificates, meaning they provide scant protection when police arrest people.[45]
Many refugees and asylum seekers in Bangkok complain about the lengthy waiting periods for UNHCR refugee status determination interviews, for UNHCR to report back on the results of the interviews, and for the appeals process to run its course. Even once UNHCR recognizes a person as a refugee, it can take years to be resettled, and only a fraction of refugees will qualify for the limited numbers of resettlement places. These delays can leave refugees and asylum seekers more vulnerable to arrest and detention.[46] While UNHCR is able to move the procedures slightly faster for people in indefinite detention, a number of refugees and asylum seekers still languish for months or years in IDCs before their cases are fully processed.
People in Thailand who have fled conditions of conflict or persecution are refugees in fact (so-called de facto refugees) even if Thai officials have not recognized them as refugees under the law or allowed UNHCR to do so.[47] The absence of a legal framework for refugee status recognition does not mean that these people should be denied protections owed to refugees, including protection from detention.
II. Immigration Detention of Children
“My [five-year-old] nephew asked, ‘How long will I stay?’ He asked, ‘Will I live the rest of my life here?’ I didn’t know what to say.” [48]
– Yanaal N., indefinitely detained with family in the Bangkok IDC for approximately six months in 2011
Migrant children—both children in families and unaccompanied children—are arbitrarily detained in squalid detention facilities in Thailand. Authorities routinely detain children from neighboring countries (Burma, Cambodia, and Laos) for relatively short periods that can range from a few days to a few weeks, while children from countries that do not border Thailand can be held for much longer periods.[49] Children of refugees and asylum seekers can be held for years. Migrants, including children, are typically detained without judicial review or bail, access to lawyers, or any way to challenge their detention. Such indefinite detention without recourse to judicial review amounts to arbitrary detention prohibited under international law.
Some IDCs, such as in Bangkok or those in towns nearer the country’s borders, are more heavily used than others. The Bangkok Immigration Detention Center (IDC) is the location for most of the long-term detainees. However, some interviewees described detainees held for months in IDCs in other parts of the country, including in Chiang Mai, Ranong, and Phang Nga.
2014 Human Rights Watch
Arbitrary and Indefinite Detention of Children
Thailand routinely detains migrant children and their families without providing information on length of detention. Human Rights Watch asked, among others, the Office of the Prime Minister and the Immigration Division for details on the numbers of migrants detained, the length of detention, and the demographic details of the detainees, but the government did not provide this information. However, according to information collected from an international organization, approximately 100 children per year are detained on a long-term basis (that is, for a period of longer than one month).[50] Meanwhile, at least 4,000 children are thought to move through the immigration detention system each year for shorter periods (days or weeks).[51]
The average length of stay for refugees and asylum seekers was 298 days between 2008 and 2012.[52] This figure does not include migrants who do not make asylum claims. Staff with Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), which provides assistance to some detainees, informed Human Rights Watch in 2011 that there were Sri Lankan refugees in the Bangkok IDC who had been detained for four to five years.[53]
Not only does the Thai government fail to inform detainees of the length of detention, their policies mean some groups are held without any prospect of release. Refugees—who by definition fear returning home—and migrants from distant countries who cannot afford to pay their way home have no way to get out of detention. Ali A. was an Ahmadi asylum seeker who fled Pakistan in a group with several children.[54] “We left Pakistan because we were afraid of prison,” he said. “But in the IDC in Thailand, we stayed two years… We didn’t see the moon for two years.”[55]
Amjad P., an Ahmadi refugee detained with his wife and three sons in the Bangkok IDC from December 2010 until June 2011, said that the indefinite nature of their detention was particularly troubling: “There was no timeframe in detention. We could be there forever until someone would take us for third country resettlement.” Amjad and his family were ultimately released through a trial bail program (discussed in Chapter IV, below).
Parents worried about the impact of indefinite detention on their children. Cindy Y. and Doug Y.’s mother said, “I worried about the long time we were in the IDC… I didn’t know what their future would be. Inside they had nothing, we were losing all hope.[56]
Though the majority of our interviewees who were held indefinitely for long periods were detained in the Bangkok IDC, Human Rights Watch also received reports of indefinite detention for months or longer in the IDCs in Chiang Mai, Phang Nga, and Ranong. Most of the interviewees held for long periods were refugees or asylum seekers who feared persecution if they were to leave the IDCs and go back to their country of origin.
Some detainees are held for months or years in the IDCs because the Thai authorities rarely deport people at the government’s expense to countries that do not border Thailand. Instead, they hold them indefinitely until their family members can provide plane tickets for them to deport themselves. Migrants without financial resources are faced with very long periods of detention.[57] “People couldn’t afford to pay their way out,” said Leander P., an American who overstayed his tourist visa, who was held in a cell in the Bangkok IDC with around 80 long-term detainees. “It was a modern-day debtor’s prison. I think that’s just wrong.”[58]
Arrest and detention of non-citizens, including children, is regulated by the 2009 Immigration Act, the 2008 Alien Employment Act, and official orders.[59] Sections 19 and 20 of the Immigration Act provide broad discretionary powers for detention, under which “competent officials” have the authority to detain non-citizens. There is no legal limit to the length of detention.[60] Under the Alien Employment Act, a migrant’s case may be processed formally through the court system, in which case the migrant could be subject to a period of imprisonment of up to five years and a fine ranging from 2,000 to 100,000 baht (approximately US$66 to US$3,300).[61]
In 2010, the office of the prime minister issued an order “regarding the suppression, prosecution and arrest of migrants working underground.”[62] This order provides for “special cooperation” on immigration enforcement between the Ministries of Labor and the Interior, as well as the Royal Thai Police Force, the Army, and the Navy. The Mekong Migration Network asserted in a 2013 study that cooperation between the police and armed forces in immigration enforcement “lacks operational transparency and has led to concerns about the treatment of migrants in detention,” noting that after the order was issued, there was an increase in harsh crackdowns on irregular migrants.[63]
Non-national children are subject to the same arrest and detention laws as adults. In 2013, the National Subcommittee on Statelessness, Migration and Displaced Persons issued a report on the rights of children in immigration detention. They found that Thai law unnecessarily criminalizes children by failing to differentiate between children and adults when arresting and detaining irregular migrants. [64]
Under the 2008 Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, if the arresting officials identify an adult or a child as a victim of trafficking, they may refer that person to a government shelter instead of sending them to detention.[65] There are no such exemptions for migrant children who are not victims of trafficking.
In 2013, the Thai government used a new form of indefinite detention: keeping women and children in closed shelters from which they were not permitted to leave. And in a break from previous practice, Thailand permitted 2,055 Rohingya migrants to stay in the country in 2013 under “temporary protection” status. Despite the fact that Rohingya are an oppressed Muslim minority in Burma and have been subject to considerable targeted violence in recent years, Thailand treated the group as “illegal migrants” and did not offer them the chance to claim protection as refugees or consider treating them as stateless persons under international law. The government separated families, holding adult men and some male children, including unaccompanied boys, indefinitely in immigration detention centers,[66] and detaining others, primarily women and younger children, in closed shelters run by the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security (MSDHS).[67]
All Rohingya at government shelters interviewed by Human Rights Watch said they were not permitted to leave the facilities. Service providers, including Thai government officials, confirmed this. The Thai government made no plans to regularize detainees’ immigration status. This left the Rohyinga forcibly confined in shelters they were not permitted to leave .[68]
While hundreds of children such as Rohingya are indefinitely detained for months or more, much larger numbers of children are held typically days or weeks, again without a predetermined time of detention and without recourse to judicial review. An international organization estimates that at least 2,500 children from Cambodia, Burma, and Laos pass through the Bangkok IDC each year before being summarily deported.[69] Many other IDCs around the country also detain children from neighboring countries for short periods, including IDCs in Samut Sakhon, Ranong, Chiang Rai, Mae Sot, and Ubon Ratchathani.
Adults and children are also arbitrarily detained in police lock-ups. Mai M., an ethnic Mon girl from Burma without paperwork in Thailand, was arrested in the outskirts of Bangkok around December 2011, when she was 15 years old. She said she was taken to a police station with her mother, uncle, and cousin, and held for 15 days, without seeing a judge or going to court, before police took her and 30 other migrants to the Burmese border by truck to be deported. [70]
Human Rights Watch documented cases of unaccompanied migrant children who were detained,[71] despite international prohibitions on detention of such children.[72] Htee Yaw, a Burmese migrant living and working in Chiang Mai, reported that police arrested and detained his 17-year-old brother for several weeks, without any family members, in December 2010. He went to the police station and pleaded for his release: “They knew he was 17, my brother told them, I told them…. He was arrested by the police with handcuffs, even though he was young and had committed no crime.”[73]Htee Yaw said he had to pay a bribe of 5,000 baht ($167) to secure his brother’s release.[74]
Very young children and infants, who are exceptionally vulnerable and in need of nurture and care, are nonetheless detained. Labaan T., a Somali refugee and father who had been detained for two years and eight months at the time of the interview in the Bangkok IDC in 2011, emphasized just how hard it was for his young son to develop behind bars. “It is absolutely difficult for a boy of 3 years to grow up amid 50-plus grown-up men in a locked room and only allowed to go out for a short period of less than two hours in the sunshine after three days.” [75]
Under Thailand’s immigration law, any migrant who enters the country without proper documentation will be regarded as an illegal immigrant and may be subject to detention awaiting deportation. Detention is permissible until the authorities execute the deportation, and where they cannot deport, indefinitely. Thailand’s laws do not give migrants or asylum seekers opportunities to challenge their detention, nor do they provide any way for them to know when they will be released.
