Each year, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) imprisons thousands of asylum seekers, including hundreds of women, in detention centers and prisons across the United States. In its two-year investigation of the treatment of women seeking asylum in the United States, the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children has found that women asylum seekers face physical and verbal abuse in prisons used by the INS and frequently endure prolonged detention in conditions that fail to meet international principles of refugee protection and basic standards of decency and compassion.