http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/st ... &ran=93787

By TIM MCGLONE, The Virginian-Pilot
© May 31, 2005

Bitbila Yonko has an iron bar holding his right leg together.

The bones in that leg were crushed, he said, when Ivory Coast soldiers rammed the car he was riding in with his father. On that November day in 2000, he watched as his father lay dying.

Now, sometimes when he walks, the bar pushes into his kneecap and causes excruciating pain. He said he should have had the bar removed two years ago.

But as an immigration detainee at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Portsmouth, Yonko knows that is unlikely to happen anytime soon.



See the complete Pilot, exactly as in print
- View stories, photos and ads
- E-mail clippings
- Print copies
Log in or learn more

-Email this Page
-Print this Page
-Get Email Newsletters
Yonko and thousands like him have found themselves caught in a post- Sept. 11, 2001, crackdown on illegal immigration and a tightening of rules on those seeking asylum from even the world’s most brutal regimes.

The Hampton Roads Regional Jail, which can be spotted through the trees on the north side of Interstate 264 near the Victory Boulevard exit, has become the Department of Homeland Security’s favored detention facility in Virginia.

In less than two years, the number of detainees at the regional jail has gone from a few dozen to, on some days, more than 250.

In an interview recently, Yonko, 27, pointed to scars on his forehead, neck and arms that he said came from whippings he received while in an Ivory Coast jail following the car crash that killed his father. The country had just gone through a military coup d’etat and his father had been a loyal officer of the ousted leader, President Henri Konan Bedie.

Yonko said the government released him on the promise that he remain quiet. He fled to Cameroon , where he worked and attended college. His friends in America urged him to come to the U .S.

He flew from Paris to Washington Dulles International Airport on Jan. 19, 2003. He never made it out of the airport a free man.

He applied for asylum, believing that his story of incarceration and torture would easily win him a new life here. But the only paperwork Yonko had with him was a photocopy of a passport that, he admits, may not be authentic. He has no other identification.

U.S. Immigration authorities immediately jailed Yonko and he has been behind bars ever since – 28 months.

Without at least some form of proper identification, Yonko did not have much of a chance gaining asylum, immigration officials said. And with no identification, his native land won’t take him back. He would prefer to return to Cameroon.

And Yonko’s efforts to be released on bond have been denied repeatedly. This month, he filed his second petition for release with the Norfolk federal court. A judge had dismissed the first one, but Yonko is hoping that recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings favoring immigrants’ rights will win him release this time.

“We do not know who he is,� said Ernestine Fobbs, a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement. “We can’t let them out on the streets if we don’t know who they are.�

Said Yonko: “This is not the America I thought it was.�

The Hampton Roads Regional Jail, which began taking in immigration detainees in October 2003, now has a daily average population of about 238 detainees, according to March figures, the most recent available. Nationally, more than 230,000 immigrants were jailed in 2003, according to the federal government.

Deborah Sanders, executive director of the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, a group that provides legal assistance to detainees, said that on a recent Friday she counted 295 immigration detainees at the jail. Roy Cherry, the jail superintendent, acknowledged that the facility has held as many as 300 detainees.

The federal government pays the jail $75 a day for each immigration detainee. That amounts to about $27,375 a year per detainee. Cherry said the jail earns between $5 million and $6 million a year for the detainees.

The federal money helps keep costs down for the five local cities that pay to house inmates in the facility, he said. But the influx of detainees has caused double-bunking among the local inmates to make room.

The jail’s capacity is 798 , but with double-bunking the jail can hold up to 1,200. Cherry said the facility is just about at maximum capacity.

A recent state inspection found the facility in 100 percent compliance with state regulations, Cherry said.

While Sanders is critical of the crackdown by the government, she has praised the Hampton Roads Regional Jail staff for allowing her and her staff inside. She visits the jail at least once a month to review legal papers and address complaints.

“They really are running a better jail,� she said. “They are incredibly responsive to us.� If a detainee has a complaint, she said the jail usually resolves the issue before she leaves. Complaints typically involve medical care and phone usage, she said.

She said federal immigration agents have been targeting “very low-level violators. Nobody is thinking about the real-life impact.�

“The categories of people mandatorily detained keeps increasing,� she said. “They can’t be out working. They can’t be out supporting their children.�

The government would save millions of dollars by releasing low-level, non violent illegal immigrants, she said. The few who do win release must follow strict rules, including being monitored through an electronic bracelet.

She said the rules and laws get tougher every year. The Real ID Act, just passed by Congress, will make it even harder for asylum seekers to get into the country.

The double hits of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the sniper killings in the Washington area have fueled crackdowns, she said.

“No one will stand up and say this should stop,� she said. “It’s too easy for the anti-immigration side to say you’re soft on crime. No one has had the courage.�

June will mark the second anniversary of Majed Talat Hajbeh’s incarceration . He has called the Hampton Roads Regional Jail home for the past year.

Like Yonko, Hajbeh is an asylum seeker. But the similarities end there.

The government has labeled Hajbeh a terrorist and refuses to allow his release. Hajbeh has not been charged criminally with terrorist activities and has consistently maintained his innocence.

A Palestinian born on the West Bank, Hajbeh and his family fled to Kuwait during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. They were forced out of that country during the first Persian Gulf War and settled in Jordan.

Because of continuing unrest in Jordan, Hajbeh followed his mother and brother to Chicago in 1993. He worked at a car wash and later moved to Tennessee to study and work. He and his wife, whom he married in 1988, had divorced in Jordan before his departure.

In late 1993, he returned to Jordan because of his son’s health problems. It was during this period that Jordanian police arrested him, imprisoned him for 13 days and tortured him until he signed an agreement to spy on his fellow Muslims at local mosques, according to Hajbeh and witness statements filed in his immigration case.

Following his release, he returned to the United States, remarried his wife and brought her here to live. Hajbeh and his wife obtained legal permanent residency status and have been working toward becoming naturalized citizens.

He returned to Jordan briefly in 1997 for his father’s funeral.

The following year, Hajbeh was charged in absentia in Jordan with leading a terrorist group called Harakat al-Islah wal-Tahadi (Reform and Defiance Movement), which sought to overthrow the Jordanian government.

In 1998, the group was held responsible for the bombings of an American school, a Jordanian police office and a hotel. The bombings caused property damage but no injuries.

Hajbeh denies the charges and said they were trumped up in retaliation for his backing out of the 1993 agreement he signed.

“They want me to work for them as a spy,� he said from the jail. “I refused.�

An immigration judge has found Hajbeh’s story credible, basing his decision on news reports and witness statements. Ten of the 13 defendants in that case convicted and sentenced to life in prison were later acquitted by a Jordanian court, and the government of Jordan, citing torture and coerced confessions, issued a formal apology, according to news reports. Those actually responsible for the bombings were later caught, tried and convicted, the reports, cited in Hajbeh’s court papers, said.

Hajbeh is one of the three not acquitted because each refuses to return to Jordan.

“I’m scared to go back because they torture you,� he said. “First they take your clothes. Then they use a stick and beat you – sometimes in your private area.�

But Hajbeh has remained in jail because the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have appealed his case, arguing that they still believe he has ties to terrorism.

They also cited a mistake on his immigration documents. Hajbeh listed himself as single, when in fact he was divorced when he entered the country and later remarried. Hajbeh called that an honest mistake.

That’s been enough to keep him in jail since June 2003.

He won a partial victory on May 26 when the Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that he is entitled to another hearing before an immigration judge on his application for asylum. Hajbeh also has a petition pending in Norfolk’s federal court seeking his release on bond.

Hajbeh and his wife have seven children, ages 2 to 15. Three were born here and are U.S. citizens.

While he has been in jail, his family has subsisted on food stamps, government rent subsidies and financial assistance from friends and family.

“It’s very hard,� his wife, Najwa Abu Alhija, said in a phone interview from her home in Woodbridge. “You can’t imagine.�

Hajbeh’s attorneys question how the government has been able to label someone a terrorist without pursuing criminal charges.

“To give the government unchecked power to unilaterally and arbitrarily designate someone as a terrorist is draconian at the least,� William Orr Smith, one of Hajbeh’s attorneys, wrote in a court brief.

The Department of Homeland Security, Smith continued, is attempting to “eviscerate� the power of the immigration courts to grant bond. “It gives the government the key to the prison gates,� he wrote.

The government’s position following the 2001 terrorist attacks has been one of no tolerance – even for the smallest of paperwork errors. Most of the hijackers had managed to stay in the country with expired visas and two were free pending decisions on their asylum applications.

Immigration officials say they can take no chances.

The tightening of immigration regulations began after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and accelerated after the 1996 passage by Congress of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. More reforms followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 .

The reforms have expedited the deportation process and reduced the number of asylum applicants granted entry into the country.

Deportations of undocumented immigrants increased to 186,000 in 2003 from 33,000 in 1991, according to the Office of Detention and Removal, an arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Foreigners granted asylum also dropped from 86 percent before Sept. 11 to 62 percent in 2003, the last year for which figures were available.

Most of those immigrants seeking asylum are detained no more than 90 days, according to the office.

For Yonko, the days have grown more and more frustrating.

He has been fighting from a jail cell without the help of a lawyer, and his embassy has done little to help him obtain identification papers.

“We are ready to help our folks if they have a problem here,� Bamba Franck Mamadou, a spokesman for the Ivory Coast embassy in Washington, said on May 10.

Yonko said Mamadou visited him that week and promised to assist him.

But he fears what awaits him if he is sent to his native land, a country still suffering through civil unrest and warfare.

“They kill you for just about anything. They kill with impunity,� he said. “I’m not sure what would happen to me.�

Reach Tim McGlone at (757) 446-2343 or tim.mcglone@pilotonline.com