America’s internal “gulag"-the imprisonment of immigrants in the US

[undeterred]

By Jon Levine
9 June 2005
WSWS

A network of prison facilities in which detainees are held indefinitely without charges, denied access to attorneys and family, terrorized by dogs, and subjected to abuse tantamount to torture, as well as sexual humiliation. This description applies not just to Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Base, but also to another “gulag” of jails and detention facilities strung across the United States in which tens of thousands of immigrant workers are being held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). While the “global war on terrorism” is used to justify unlawful detention and torture abroad, it has likewise served to sanction the brutal treatment of immigrants at home.

ICE, a branch of the Homeland Security Department, deported a record 198,000 detainees in 2004. On any given day last year, an average of 22,814 immigrants languished in jails across the country, nearly four times the number held in 1994. The ICE contracts out the detentions to county jails. Often housed alongside violent criminals, these detainees face verbal abuse, overcrowding, and denial of medical attention, as well as physical beatings, solitary confinement and the psychological torture of not knowing if they will ever be released.

Some of these immigrants have been in jail for years without any ruling on when they might be either freed or deported. A June 4 article in the New York Times highlighted the case of Keyse G. Jama, a Somali refugee arrested in 1999 on a minor assault charge. He was sentenced to a year in jail, but almost six years later, he is still imprisoned. After his sentence was completed, he was ordered deported to war-torn Somalia, but was turned away by local officials there.

According to the Times, data from the Department of Homeland Security shows “1,225 immigrants from more than 100 countries in long-term detention, like Mr. Jama, as of March.” Many of the immigrants facing long-term detention have committed no crime at all. Madani Ba, a Mali immigrant denied political asylum, was recently released from Passaic County jail in Paterson, New Jersey, after having been detained for more than a year.



http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jun2005/immi-j09.shtml

[ima_sinnic]

1. I wondered why the media had been so silent on this--only NPR,

to my knowledge has done anything at all in exposing it (will look for the link).

My husband, a Jamaican citizen and US permanent resident for the past 12 years, is awaiting a deportation hearing on a misdemeanor marijuana possession charge from 7 years ago, on which he paid his fine. INS says any immigrant with even the most minor charge (including, I heard, unpaid traffic tickets--don't know if this is true) WILL BE DEPORTED. The marijuana misdemeanor is apparently the only POSSIBLE exception, but even then a lawyer must be retained and the outcome can't be guaranteed.

My husband suffers from schizophrenia, severe diabetes (caused by the antischizophrenia medication), rectal cancer, and high blood pressure. He wouldn't last more than a few days in an abusive prison situation.

We were told the deportation hearing wouldn't be scheduled for a year or 2, in the meantime we are just about to put our house on the market and hope that it sells as quickly as possible, so he can cash in and flee back to Jamaica BEFORE the hearing. Otherwise, he keeps talking about killing himself. I have been heartsick over this development.

Meanwhile, several months ago my daughter in Oakland, CA, was sick over the fact that her friend's African husband was suddenly deported, leaving a wife, small child and business, over some misdemeanor for which he paid the penalty years ago.

THEY ARE BREAKING UP FAMILIES. Many of these people own businesses and have made valuable contributions to American society. In addition, trying them again for misdemeanor "crimes" is double jeopardy. But NOBDOY seems to care.

[undeterred]

2. There are plenty of stories that I only find on the WSWS

granted, they have their bias, but they cover subjects that the mainstream media won't go near.

Deportation on a misdemeanor crime is absurd.

I am so sorry that this has happened to your husband- 7 years is a long time to have something hanging over your head. Whatever happened to the notion of a "speedy trial"?

[ima_sinnic]

3. the misdemeanor itself was 7 years ago, and he paid a fine

--the last time he returned from a visit to Jamaica, about 8 months or so ago, he was harassed by a real A-HOLE customs agent, who held him off to the side and looked into his record to see what he could harass him with. When he spotted the misdemeanor, he wrote all over his papers that he was on a "temporary visa, awaiting deportation hearing," despite the protestations of other INS agents nearby that that was a minor bust and my husband was nobody. Then he had to report to an agent in Jacksonville with his "rap sheet." She took it to the next level, writing up all the papers that were then sent to a judge, and told him it could be a year before he even finds out when he has to go before the judge. I have gotten nervous that the appointment could be in the mail any day now and he agrees he just wants to get out of here BEFORE a hearing.

[Igel]

8. It was featured on NPR earlier this week.

And it's popped up from time to time.

The problem is that the numbers of immigrants in this situation are low, nobody can argue that they haven't violated the terms of their admission to the US, and due process was typically followed. It may not have been followed perfectly, in every sense, but perfection is typically beyond the reach of mere mortals--expecting it from the system, and not from the immigrant, is a bit much for most activists.

The erstwhile immigrants are stuck in limbo, usually: their countries of citizenship refuse to accept them for their own reasons (with the case of Somali being featured prominently as a matter of course, since it's one of the most mind-numbing examples, with detainees with kids being second most prominent).

As we told the Russians we tutored in English, it's prudent to get on with naturalization proceedings as quickly as possible, whenever that's possible. And, until then, to keep their noses squeaky-clean (always a humorous mixed metaphor) until those proceedings are over. Otherwise, they'd be sent home (and with most of them ill, in their 70s, their life-expectancy would surely suffer); if they wanted to avoid having their families broken up, their families would have to join them. Most realized this was undesirable, since their kids had usually immigrated here (breaking up their families), with the US allowing the elderly parents into the US in order to restore family unity.

[Karenina]

4. Note the DATE on this piece...

The Gatekeeper: Watch on the INS
by Alisa Solomon
Detainees Equal Dollars
The Rise in Immigrant Incarcerations drives a prison boom
August 14 - 20, 2002

t was a shaky spring for the correctional workers of Hastings, Nebraska (pop. 24,064), as the stagnation in the nation's prison population and the increasingly high costs of incarceration jostled the sleepy town, some two hours' drive from Lincoln. On April 9, the 84 employees of the Hastings Correctional Center were told that the 186-bed facility would be closing at the end of June. State funds were scraping bottom, and the $2.5 million annual price tag for the prison was too big a burden to carry. "We really didn't know what we would do," says Jim Morgan, who had been working at HCC for 15 years and lives to this day in the house where he was born. "There aren't a lot of job opportunities out here, and most of us have homes and kids and couldn't even think about moving somewhere else." For two months, the workers scrambled, filling out applications at nearby meatpacking and cardboard-container plants and anticipating long hours in the unemployment office.

Then salvation came from, of all places, the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Days after HCC closed as a state prison in June, it reopened as an INS detention center.

"It's a win-win," says Morgan. The INS is desperate for more beds for its ever expanding detainee population. And the state of Nebraska, collecting $65 per detainee per day from the INS, rakes in more than $1 million a year over and above the cost of running the place.

County jailers have long known that housing INS detainees pumps easy income into the coffers. Nearly 900 facilities around the country provide beds for the INS, and in interviews over the years, several county sheriffs and wardens have described such detainees as a "cash crop."

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0233/solomon.php

[undeterred]

5. Call me naive, but I had no idea the INS was running a 'prison' of its own

[ima_sinnic]

6. our effing tax dollars are paying for that

... paying to have people who are no danger, who have already paid the fine or done the time for MISDEMEANORS, who in many cases have been making a valuable contribution, working and running businesses and RAISING FAMILIES, locked up under who knows what conditions, in violation of our Consitution. I spit on Herr Bush and his brownshirt INS agents--meanwhile, Busholini is kissing Fox's butt down in Mexico over all those illegal aliens we're going to get to replace our LEGAL aliens.

[Karenina]

7. Kick!

;kick: