Defending its new controversial immigration policy that overwhelmingly targets Haitian migrants, the Bahamas invited members of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to visit the island-nation and see for themselves how the policy is being carried out.

Last month, the commission, part of the Organization of American States, called on the Bahamas to improve conditions for detainees at its Carmichael Road Detention Center in Nassau following the Nov. 1 launch of the policy and subsequent criticism by human-rights defenders. The Caribbean Institute for Human Rights, the International Human Rights Clinic of the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico, and the Wshington, D.C.-based Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights have all condemned the policy and asked the commission for precautionary measures at the detention center to protect detainees.

But Damian Gomez, the Bahamas’ minister of state for legal affairs, rejected the claims Friday.

“The petitioners have failed to identify a single victim of human-rights abuses in the Bahamas or a single failing in our domestic jurisdiction,” Gomez told the commission at a hearing in Washington, D.C.

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