Thread: {Sob}Lost in detention

Crackdown's fallout print






By BARBARA FERRY | The New Mexican
May 20, 2007


Ripped from their families, warehoused in detention centers, undocumented immigrants find themselves unwelcome in the U.S.


Lost in detention
Cramped quarters, lack of medical care greet those awaiting deportation
During the two years she lived in Santa Fe, ``Alicia,'' 19, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, shared a mobile home with her brother on the city's south side. But after being arrested by immigration officials during a weeklong operation in March, home was the Regional Correctional Center, a privately operated detention center in downtown Albuquerque.

Formerly Bernalillo County's main jail, the nondescript tower, operated by Houston-based Cornell Cos., houses hundreds of undocumented immigrants awaiting deportation or appealing deportation orders.

Alicia said she spent the first month at the detention center sleeping on a cot in a hallway because there were no empty beds available in the four- to six- person cells. ``She's sad and she wants to go home,'' her brother, who is also undocumented, said in an interview last month.

Alicia was finally deported to Guatemala on May 15, he said.

With a crackdown on illegal immigration, the United States is detaining more undocumented immigrants than ever and scrambling to find places to house them. The RCC, with 978 beds for immigrant detainees, is filling part of that demand.

Government officials, pointing to lower apprehension numbers along the border, say the detention policy has been successful in deterring illegal immigration.

Critics say detention centers are often overcrowded jails where undocumented immigrants are treated as dangerous criminals. A detention center in Taylor, Texas, where families are detained, has come under fire from human- and civil-rights groups for housing young children in prisonlike conditions. Another detention camp near the Texas-Mexico border houses 2,000 immigrants in a tent city.

In Albuquerque, immigrant detainees arrive on buses and airplanes from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, the Mexican border and other parts of the country.

``They're moving people here from all over the United States,'' said Sister Marlene Perrotte, a Catholic nun who has a contract with the government to inform detainees of their legal rights. ``They get shuffled around and warehoused here.''

Rachel LaZar, director of El Centro de Igualdad y Derechos, an Albuquerque immigration advocacy group, said her agency has been receiving dozens of calls from people around the country searching for their detained relatives. ``People have no idea where their family members are,'' LaZar said. ``They are having a really hard time getting any information.''

Detainees spend weeks or months at the center waiting for deportation officers to arrange travel to Guatemala, Korea, Israel and other corners of the globe.

Difficult conditions

Amir Ali, a medical doctor from Pakistan who had been studying at the University of Texas at El Paso, was detained in El Paso and Albuquerque for more than two years because the Pakistani government, not recognizing him as a citizen, would not allow the United States to send him there.

Ali, who was initially detained because he stayed in the United States after his student visa expired, was released earlier this month after he filed a habeas corpus petition and was assigned a federal public defender. He said he was at times denied access to legal materials he needed to prepare his appeals for freedom. Fellow Muslim detainees were called ``camel jockeys,'' ``suicide bombers'' and other derogatory terms by guards, Ali said.

Such complaints aren't isolated, according to Brandt Milstein, a Santa Fe lawyer who has interviewed dozens of detainees about conditions at the Albuquerque facility. Detainees report delays or denials in medical care, overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, poor quality food and lack of access to their assigned deportation officers. Some have held periodic hunger strikes to protest the quality of food, according to reports received by Milstein and other advocates.

Cornell Cos. declined to respond directly to questions about some issues raised by detainees, but forwarded a letter that was sent to the Santa Fe Reporter in response to a story in that newspaper about the facility.

``Cornell Companies is proud of its operations at the Regional Correctional Center, where we strive to provide service to our detained population and our customers that meets or exceeds nationally recognized detention standards,'' wrote Michael Caltabiano, the company's vice president.

Regarding complaints about food, Caltabiano said the company provides ``a culturally sensitive menu that meets both nutritional and caloric requirements,'' and senior facility staff eat the same meals as detainees several times a week ``to ensure food quality and compliance.''

Leticia Zamarripa, a spokeswoman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, said the detention center is bound by standards developed by the American Bar Association. Zamarripa said she could not respond to some specific complaints raised by detainees and referred questions to Cornell.

Death at the center

In August, Young Sook Kim, a 56-year-old Korean woman, arrived at the detention center in poor health, according to fellow Korean detainees who were brought to the jail with her.

Another Korean woman, who has since been deported to Korea, stated in an affidavit that she requested medical care for Kim repeatedly over the next weeks and translated into English Kim's own pleas for help. The woman said Kim was given only Tums or Tylenol and periodic finger-prick blood tests for diabetes by a nurse for a two-week period during which her condition deteriorated. After numerous pleas, the woman said, Kim was transferred to a local hospital. She died there a few days later.

The state Office of the Medical Investigator could find no autopsy record for Kim, and spokesman Tim Stepetic said her death wasn't reported to OMI.

The Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General is investigating Kim's detention conditions and death, according to a letter from the agency sent to Milstein. The woman's son said he thinks his mother had cancer, according to a letter he sent via a lawyer to Milstein.

Zamarripa said the description of Kim's detention and death was inaccurate but declined to elaborate.

Caltabiano's letter responding to the Reporter's article said the level of medical care in the RCC ``equals that of community standards. Detainees make appointments and are seen as scheduled. Emergencies are addressed immediately.''

Milstein believes access to medical care has improved somewhat since he first start visiting the detention center last fall. At that time, he said detained immigrants reported it was taking a month or longer to see a doctor. The waiting time now is about five days, according to detainees, he said.

``The place seems a bit cleaner too,'' Milstein said. ``I'm heartened to see that things seem to be getting better.''

New detention policy

Like an untold number of undocumented immigrants from Guatemala who live in Santa Fe, Alicia bought a fake Social Security card and worked busing tables at a restaurant. As a beneficiary of Santa Fe's minimum wage law, she earned $9.50 an hour. She also took English classes and was studying to take a high-school equivalency exam at Santa Fe Community College.

But at the end of February, she was arrested during raids by Immigration and Customs and Enforcement agents, who had arrived in town with a list of names of undocumented immigrants with outstanding deportation orders or criminal warrants.

Like most of the 30 undocumented immigrants arrested that week, Alicia wasn't on the list. She was a ``collateral capture'' -- a term for undocumented immigrants who aren't being specifically sought but have the bad luck to cross ICE agents' path.

In the past, had she been arrested, Alicia might have been given a court date for a deportation hearing and released. Many immigrants, knowing those court dates would likely result in their deportation, skipped their appointments and disappeared.

But congressional and popular discontent over the failure of this ``catch-and-release'' policy led the government to move toward detaining non-Mexican immigrants to ensure that once ordered deported, they indeed leave the country. (Mexican nationals are generally brought over land to the Mexican side of the border soon after being apprehended.) In a news release earlier this month, the White House said ``catch-and-release'' has ``effectively ended'' for non-Mexicans, and the Department of Homeland Security has funded nearly 8,000 new detention beds, an increase of 40 percent since President Bush took office.

Now, on any given day, more than 26,500 undocumented immigrants find themselves detained in centers such as the one in Albuquerque. The U.S. government reports that it now detains 230,000 immigrants a year, triple the number in detention nine years ago.

Otero County also is planning to build a detention center to hold detainees for ICE.

In Albuquerque, Cornell Corrections rents the building from Bernalillo County for $1.5 million a year. The company has an intergovernmental agreement to detain inmates there for $57 per detainee per day, according to deputy county manager John Dantis. The jail also houses overflow inmates from the new Bernalillo County jail, immigrants with criminal charges and federal detainees under custody of the U.S. Marshals Service. Dantis said the arrangement is ``money-neutral'' for the county.

Dantis said the center received ``constant oversight'' from the Department of Justice and has been favorably reviewed.

The detainees wear uniforms color-coded for their status. Alicia's, like those of other ``noncriminal aliens,'' is tan. In a conversation last month, she said she passed the time crocheting handicrafts, reading the Bible and awaiting news of her case. ``I just want to go home,'' she said.

The detainees are transferred in and out of the detention center in ankle chains, handcuffs and belly chains, according to Luz Flores, a detainee from the Dominican Republic who said she was taken to the hospital that way after she rolled over in her sleep and fell to the floor from her upper bunk, injuring her face and neck.

Flores, who emceed karaoke shows and sold draperies in New Jersey before her arrest, said she protested guards transporting her like a dangerous criminal.

``I said, `Come on, this is an exaggeration. Do you think I am going to escape?' ''

ICE spokeswoman Zamarripa said the use of cuffs and chains is consistent with the agency's detention policy.

Flores, who has been detained at the center for five months, said she is still suffering the effects of her injury. She said the left side of her face is numb, her field of vision is obstructed and she can't turn her head without pain. She had a single appointment with a neurologist who prescribed pain pills, but her requests for follow-up care have been rebuffed, she said.

Flores said she approached a deportation officer, who seemed friendly, for help in getting an appointment with a chiropractor, but he laughed at her. ``He told me, `When was the last time you saw a prisoner getting therapy?' ''

ICE spokeswoman Zamarripa said Flores' descriptions of her injuries and treatment are inaccurate but declined to elaborate.

Flores said she is married to a U.S. citizen, and she is appealing a deportation order she received in absentia for not appearing at an immigration court date. She said she never received the notice informing her of the appointment.

Deportation officers are scheduled to have weekly visits with detainees to give them updates about their cases, according to Zamarripa. But Perrotte said detainees sometimes go for a month without seeing their deportation officer. ``The ICE people are supposed to come once a week, but they don't show up,'' Perrotte said. ``They are the only ones who can tell (the detainees) where they are in the process. Otherwise, they have no recourse to find out what is going on.''

The lack of information exacerbates anxiety at the facility, Perrotte said.

Lost documents

``Marta,'' also from Guatemala, lived outside Boston, where she worked as an office cleaner and cared for her diabetic parents. She said she and her boyfriend were returning to Massachusetts from a bus trip to Chicago and were stopped by immigration agents in Pennsylvania. Upon being arrested for not having papers, Marta said immigration agents handcuffed her. ``I asked them why, and they said I was a dangerous criminal.''

Marta said she was held in jails in York, Erie and Pittsburgh, Penn., before being transferred to Albuquerque. In the process, she said, she lost some of her personal belongings, another frequent complaint from detainees. Among the items lost by detainees are documents such as passports and birth certificates that detainees need to resolve their deportation cases, Milstein said. Zamarripa said ICE is investigating detainee complaints of missing property.

In the meantime, while she is detained, Marta said she only has one uniform, which she washes out at night in the sink in her cell.

As anxious as many detainees are to get out of jail, even being released can be fraught with problems. According to a compilation of complaints collected by Milstein, Maria Esther Guerrero, a Salvadoran detainee, was released from the detention center onto the streets of Albuquerque, a city she did not know, without any money.

``Guerrero # was terrified at her release. She apparently banged on the doors of the facility for some time, seeking to be let back in. Detainees report that the Cornell staff only laughed at Ms. Guerrero. It is not clear what has happened to Ms. Guerrero since her release,'' the report states.

Contact Barbara Ferry at 995-3817 or bferry@sfnewmexican.com.




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Starting over:
Father’s deportation, uncertainty forces family’s return to Mexico

On David's last day of kindergarten at Ramirez Thomas Elementary School on Friday, his class broke open a pinata shaped like a bull and listened to their teacher, Sylvia Lee, read El Gato con Botas (Puss in Boots). At the end of the day, David's classmates surrounded him for a giant hug.

David and his sister, Astrid, a third-grader at Ramirez Thomas, ended the school year early to move back to Chihuahua, Mexico, with their mother. There, they will rejoin their father, who was deported two months ago.

The children's father had worked in construction in Santa Fe for six years. But in February, while he was driving on Interstate 25, police stopped him for having an expired license plate, according to his wife who asked that the couple's names not be printed in the newspaper. Police discovered the father had no documents, and he ended up in the Regional Correctional Center in Albuquerque for three weeks before being deported to Mexico, his wife said.

Astrid and David's mother said she couldn't visit her husband in detention because she is also undocumented. But her mother, who lives in Chihuahua, has a visa that allows her to enter the United States, and she traveled from Mexico to visit her son-in-law.

The children's mother, who worked at an antiques store and cleaned houses in Santa Fe, said it was hard explaining to David and Astrid why their father was absent. ``They would say, `Tell him to come back,' '' she said.

She started making plans to return to Mexico soon after his arrest. She began packing and sold her mobile home.

``I know that they are talking about changing the immigration laws, and maybe I could stay and qualify, but what am I going to do without my husband?'' she said.

She said the children are happy, knowing they will be living with their father again, but sad to be leaving their school. ``David asked me if we could bring his teacher with us to Chihuahua,'' she said.

She said she feels insecure about the move. ``After six years, we were established here. It's like starting over again.''

Lee, David's teacher, said more than half the current kindergartners at Ramirez Thomas are Spanish speakers. And the percentage of students who speak Spanish is even greater among kindergarten students who registered to start school in the fall, she said.

An estimated 1.8 million undocumented children live in the United States, while another 3.1 million children have undocumented parents, according to recent report by the Carnegie Corporation.


http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/58770.html#

Maybe we should use a Mexican prision as a holding center since they don't seem to like the conditions of our detention centers. I'm sure that will be more to their liking.

Such complaints aren't isolated, according to Brandt Milstein, a Santa Fe lawyer who has interviewed dozens of detainees about conditions at the Albuquerque facility. Detainees report delays or denials in medical care, overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, poor quality food and lack of access to their assigned deportation officers. Some have held periodic hunger strikes to protest the quality of food, according to reports received by Milstein and other advocates.

Are we supposed to believe the prisons and jails in their homeland are less crowded, more accommodating, and cleaner? Perhaps Central America prisons provide five course meals with caviar hor'dourves ( ), but here in America many of us believe Maricopa County Arizona's sheriff Joe Arpaio has the right idea:

http://www.snopes.com/crime/deserts/pink.asp

When it comes to people sneaking into this country instead of coming in via the front door, I have no problem with them being picked up and returned to their home countries.
If parents with children are picked up, and the parents are deported, their children should accompany them. They are the ones who chose to come here illegally and have kids. And if they really cared anything about their kids, if they loved them, NOTHING OR NO ONE would separate them.
I'm sorry these people have such miserable lives in their home countries. I'm sorry a country as rich as Mexico does nothing for their poor. I'm sorry their government is so corrupt that only the wealthy are catered to.
I think instead of millions of them coming to the U.S. and demanding rights, demanding they be taken care of, they should be doing it in Mexico. The TV cameras should be recording it and showing it around the world. If the people of Mexico don't start demanding their government change its policies, the U.S. will be the dumping grounds forever.

The real tragedy involved in such stories as these is that soft-hearted people forget what got these illegals in a jam in the first place. What ever happened to that saying, "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time"? I love my fellow man/woman as much as anyone on this planet, but I see no wisdom whatsoever in rewarding bad behavior, and that is exactly what some of our less wise countrymen prefer. How is it that ANYONE in their right mind can sympathize over such stories as we see in this post after years of welfare fraud and abuse, repeat criminal offenses, false documentation and identity theft, and a pattern of general disrespect for Americans and our laws ? Why, the story itself eludes to an admission of a number of what would be chargable felonies for an American citizen! I think the only thing missing in those deportation centers is a cellmate who employed the illegals while they werte here! Are there still folks in this country that are so ill-informed as to want to oblige illegal aliens with a room at the Hilton while they await deportation? WAIT! What am I asking here??? Some airport just put foot sinks in their bathrooms for Muslims....AARRRGGGGG!

Originally Posted by tiredofapathy

The real tragedy involved in such stories as these is that soft-hearted people forget what got these illegals in a jam in the first place. What ever happened to that saying, "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time"? I love my fellow man/woman as much as anyone on this planet, but I see no wisdom whatsoever in rewarding bad behavior, and that is exactly what some of our less wise countrymen prefer. How is it that ANYONE in their right mind can sympathize over such stories as we see in this post after years of welfare fraud and abuse, repeat criminal offenses, false documentation and identity theft, and a pattern of general disrespect for Americans and our laws ? Why, the story itself eludes to an admission of a number of what would be chargable felonies for an American citizen! I think the only thing missing in those deportation centers is a cellmate who employed the illegals while they werte here! Are there still folks in this country that are so ill-informed as to want to oblige illegal aliens with a room at the Hilton while they await deportation?

WAIT! What am I asking here??? Some airport just put foot sinks in their bathrooms for Muslims....AARRRGGGGG!

Well said!! These people shouldn't be complaining about any of this.
They are criminals and broke the law. They are treated better than
they would in their own countries. I had enough of these sympathy
stories.

She's sad and she wants to go home,''

Should have done that before you got caught. Oh, but you are confused, you thought the trailer house in the middle of America was your home.

Sounds like the conditions in Guatamala are better than a cot in the hallway of a detention center.

Dixie