Matthew J. Ruff Federal Criminal Law Blog on Lawyers.com

According to recent reports, the federal government routinely failed to follow its own standards regulating immigration detention centers across the country, denying detainees sufficient recreation time and adequate access to San Pedro criminal defense attorneys, legal materials and telephones, according to a new report issued by various sources.

As a result of the widespread human rights violations, hundreds of thousands of detainees faced incredible challenges in making their case to stay in the U.S. and were frequently denied basic due process rights, according to the report.

In California, criminal detainees are held in a private facility in San Diego, a government-run center in El Centro and at 13 local jails throughout the state. The report covered several of those centers, as well as one in San Pedro CA that closed in 2007 for repairs and has not reopened. The authors noted violations of the standards for legal and family visits at both San Pedro and a Lancaster facility run by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Dept.