More Immigrant Abuse At The Hands Of Government

The case of Jason Ng and his abuse, neglect and death at the Donald D. Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls, Rhode Island described in my previous post here this week and my post last August was not an isolated incident.  A consistent pattern of delays of or a lack of adequate health care and mistreatment of persons held in federal detention is widespread, throughout the country.  In an article titled: “Report Faults Treatment of Women Held at Detention Centers”, Dan Frosh writes in the New York Times:

Some 300 women held at immigration detention centers in Arizona face dangerous delays in health care and widespread mistreatment, according to a new study by the University of Arizona, the latest report to criticize conditions at such centers throughout the United States…

Researchers examined the conditions facing women in the process of deportation proceedings at three federal immigration centers in Arizona. An estimated 3,000 women are being held nationwide.

The study concluded that immigration authorities were too aggressive in detaining the women, who rarely posed a flight risk, and that as a result, they experienced severe hardships, including a lack of prenatal care, treatment for cancer, ovarian cysts and other serious medical conditions, and, in some cases, being mixed in with federal prisoners.

True to form for any bureaucratic functionary caught apparently sanctioning (by allowing it to occur on her watch) the abusive practices, Katrina S. Kane, the local director of detention and removal operations for ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in Arizona tried to deflect the truth in a statement she made:

Katrina S. Kane, who directs Arizona detention and removal operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, dismissed the study as unsubstantiated accounts from a limited number of detainees and their advocates.

“Reports such as this, while alleging to be unbiased, do great harm to the public’s understanding of the complex issues involved in immigration law enforcement,” Ms. Kane said.

Ms. Kane’s blatant stone walling does not hide the truth, nor does it offset incidents of abuse of immigrants at the hands of our government such as that suffered by one West African woman as reported by Dan Frosch:

In one of several cases documented in the study, a woman being held at the Central Arizona Detention Center in Florence who experienced excruciating abdominal pain for months after she had been forced to undergo female genital mutilation in West Africa was told by the center’s staff to “exercise and watch her diet,” her lawyer at the time, Raha Jorjani, said. After nearly six months, the woman, who had been convicted of a nonviolent crime, was taken to a hospital where an ultrasound revealed a cyst the size of a five-month-old fetus, Ms. Jorjani said.

Immigration officials then suddenly released the woman with no money or health insurance to treat the cyst, Ms. Jorjani said.

The three detention centers that the University of Arizona report focused on, like the Wyatt detention facility, are operated by contractors for the feds, the Pinal County Sheriff’s Department and the Corrections Corporation of America.   This has been the pattern in various cases of abuse of individuals detained by ICE throughout the country ever since the Bush administration began reacting to the 9/11 attacks.

This is the kind of human rights abuse that we are used to reading about occuring in third world countries, but instead, over zealous, some could say, sadistic, low and middle level government functionaries, with the tacit encouragement of the former corrupt administration have made our own country a Hellish pit of human misery.  In many cases, people who looked to the United States as a beacon of freedom, as a place where they might be able to make a safe and productive life for themselves and their families, have instead become victims of a callous government, that at least for the past eight years, had seemed unaccountable to the laws and moral values of  its people.

Let us not be complacent though.  Do not think that just because we have spoken and have seen a new administration that is committed to following the rule of law, and responding to the majority of the people, that the pockets of abuse, incompetence and mismangement throughout the federal bureaucracy will automatically self-correct.  It is incumbent upon all of us to still raise the alarms when these issues are uncovered, and make our voices heard, to keep the pressure on our representatives and leaders to always respond appropriately to these issues.

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Too Late For One Human Being: Government Acknowledges Prisoner Abuse

Pictured is a cell block at the Donald D. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island.  The Wyatt facility was part of the network of public and private prisons that the federal government has used as outsourced “warehouses” for human beings held in detention.

We are not talking about hard core criminals here, although it is likely these facilities do house convicted criminals of every stripe.  In terms of  “warehousing” (as opposed to criminal punishment) the inventory is non-violent, non-criminally charged men and women being held for various immigration regulation infractions.

The Wyatt facility is where Hiu Lui (Jason) Ng was held the last month of his life, subject to the abuse and neglect of the staff and management of the facility.  I told Jason Ng’s story on these pages in my posting titled “Liberty & Life Ultimately Denied By A Callous Government”.  Jason was a law abiding resident, growing up in the United States since his arrival at age 17 and 1992, trying to work within the system to obtain legal residency status, all the while contributing as a productive member of society.

Nina Bernstein reported in the New York Times story titled “U.S. Report On the Death Of a Detainee Is Scathing” on January 16 that federal Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials investigated and found staff and management of the Wyatt facility culpable for the mistreatment and death of Jason Ng.  ICE has terminated its contract with Wyatt.  Bernstein’s reporting last week was a follow-up to her reporting in August of 2008 and included:

The federal investigation began last summer, soon after The New York Times reported on the death of Mr. Ng, 34. His extensive cancer and fractured spine had gone undiagnosed, despite his pleas for help, until shortly before he died in custody on Aug. 6.

Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for the federal agency, said the investigation showed that supervisors at the Wyatt detention center had in effect prevented Mr. Ng from meeting with his lawyer by refusing him the use of a wheelchair when he was too ill and in too much pain to walk.

The 33-page investigation report also found that the guards and medical staff, acting on orders of the warden, violated the jail’s policy on the use of force when Mr. Ng was dragged to a van for a trip to Hartford, where his lawyers say he was pressured to withdraw all his appeals and accept deportation.

The jail’s overhead surveillance video cameras captured everything…

Investigators interviewed 158 people in the course of their inquiry, but the surveillance videotapes clearly told them most of what they needed to know. At one point, they wrote, the captain cursed Mr. Ng, calling him an idiot, and ordered him to “stop whining.”

Mr. Ng kept saying that he could not walk, begged for a wheelchair, and “continued to scream,” the report said, as he was pulled under his armpits from his bed, and to another part of the jail to be shackled…

Not surprisingly, officials at Wyatt claimed no  responsibility for Jason Ng’s death:

Dante Bellini, a spokesman for Wyatt, called the results of the investigation “disappointing.” Last month, citing its investigation, the immigration agency removed all of its detainees from Wyatt.

“We will continue to look at ways to reverse this,” Mr. Bellini said. “We will continue to look at all our options and filling our beds. But we will steadfastly maintain that we had nothing to do with the detainee’s death.”

Last week, Wyatt announced that it was punishing seven employees in connection with the case, with penalties ranging from termination to reprimand. “We took stern and appropriate action,” Mr. Bellini said.

The only appropriate action, in my view, would be criminal prosecution of the appropriate staff and management of Wyatt involved in this.  But it should not stop there.  We need the federal authorities under the direction of the new adminstration to take a long hard look at all of our detention policies, Wyatt was not the only contractor used by the government to hold convicted prisoners and un-convicted immigration delinquents in custody, there are many such for profit operations across the country that need a bright light shined upon them.  Prisoner abuse at the hands of non-accountable private contractors is not acceptable in this country.

The entire scope of our country’s immigration laws and policies needs to be put under a bright light, and reasonable, humane consideration and decisions need to be made.  Advocates were rallying on behalf of Jason Ng’s plight while he was still alive, but if fell upon the deaf ears of our government officials.  If for nothing else, Jason Ng’s life and death should now serve as a wake-up call to Americans and spur on our current govenment as the beginning of a turning  away from the lawless police state that the previous administration and complicit Congress in Washington led us to.

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Did federal agents abuse detainees this May in Postville, IA? Two say “Yes!”

Sirens Chronicles readers learned about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in Postville, IA last May. It was (at that time) the largest ICE raid ever conducted. Almost 400 undocumented workers were rounded up and arrested. It started a chain reaction that has spun out of control, wreaking havoc in the lives of thousands.

Now this, from the National Immigration Justice Center: these unfortunate workers affirm that they were mocked, injured, and needlessly hurt in the process by federal officers conducting the raid. The courageous Florida International University Professor Erik Camayd-Freixas interviewed 94 detained immigrant workers in Florida this fall before they were deported to Guatemala. Two of them provided statements detailing the abuse. Camayd-Freixas has given permission for the affidavits to be posted online. Download the PDF file here.

Two Guatemalans, Marvin Danilo Perez-Gomez and Mardoqueo Valle-Callejas, describe being kept awake for more than 48 hours, shackled. They claim people were humiliated when taken to the bathroom, and, worse, that they received threats and violence.

From the affidavit of Marvin Danilo Perez-Gomez:

That day they had us suffering hunger. I had started my shift at 4:00am, and they didn’t give me anything to eat until 10:00pm. I felt my head was going to explode. In Waterloo [National Cattle Congress] they kept me sitting down without my sweatshirt and barefoot in the cold from 8:00pm to 2:00am, while they arranged the paperwork. Then they put me in one of the cages where they had the cots for sleeping. But they did not let us sleep at all for 48 hours. They kept coming every so often to run the scanner over the barcode of a bracelet they had put on us. They would come in shouting: “Wake up!” There were also cages with women. Those who asked to go to the bathroom were told not to be such a nuisance, and whenever they were finally taken, it was with four guards or chained, amid mockeries and humiliations. They made us eat and drink in shackles, and you had to lean way over sideways on the chair in order to sip a bit of water from the bottle. Then they would mock us for the way we walked with the chains, and since our clothes were too long on account of our short height, they would tell us “You look like clowns.” I, when they would tell me all of those insults and humiliations, all I could see were the faces of my daughters, and I would cry.

U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff need to investigate these sworn statements which contradict the testimonies given by officials from the Attorney General’s office and the ICE Office of Investigations during a House Immigration Subcommittee hearing in July 2008. Camayd-Freixas and a team of researchers at FIU have started compiling information about allegations of abuse of detainees by ICE officers during raids. “This is a trend nationwide, which is just now starting to be documented,” he said.

Let’s get down to the bottom of this wormpile; our proud nation cannot tolerate abuse in the name of our citizens.

The 111th Congress opens in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2009. Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121, ask to speak to your senators and representatives, and tell them that fair immigration reform that ends inhumane detention and deportation practices must be a priority for 2009.

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ICE deported 349,041 immigrants during the 2008 fiscal year

And I bet they are damn proud of that number too. It’s a new record for deportations. From Jurist:

Nationwide, ICE deported 349,041 immigrants during the 2008 fiscal year ending September 30, as opposed to the 288,663 reported as removed in the 2007 fiscal year and 2004’s 174,000 deportations. The reports, released by local ICE offices throughout the country, also cited local deportations which have gone up as well. About a third of the deported immigrants had criminal records. The Pew Hispanic Center recently released a report showing a decreased number of undocumented immigrants in the US from 2005 to 2008. While not identifying a specific a reason for the decrease, that report noted increased enforcement of immigration laws. The Miami Herald has more. AP has additional coverage.

The increase in deportations comes despite ICE’s recent abandonment of its voluntary deportation program. ICE maintains a wide range of other initiatives to combat illegal immigration, including raids. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University reported this summer that US immigration prosecutions hit record levels early this year. TRAC attributed the increase in prosecutions to Operation Streamline, a joint federal program under which federal prosecutors levy minor charges against illegal immigrants crossing the US-Mexico border. “Reentry of a deported alien” is by far the most common charge in immigration prosecutions.

Will this change under President Obama? Only time will tell….Remember, these are the smarmy bastards that forceably inject people with psychotropic drugs without their consent…so they can dump them without any problems.

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Liberty & Life Ultimately Denied By A Callous Government

Hiu Lui Ng was born in China and came to the United States from Hong Kong in 1992 with his family when he was 17 years old. Known to friends, family and associates by his Americanized first name “Jason”, Ng, graduated from high school in Long Island City, New York, then took technical training at a community college and entered the workforce as a Microsoft Certified Engineer. Ng was married in 2001 to an American citizen, starting his own family and had won a contract providing computer support to a company operating from the Empire State Building.

According to Susan Thomas who worked at the company in the Empire State Building and who knew Jason Ng:

Everyone who met him was quite fond of Jason — a sweet fellow with an easy smile, who would immediately jump to anyone’s assistance, anytime and who was very smart and capable at his job…

People who knew him personally, or who have come to know who he was could reasonably draw a conclusion that Jason Ng was a kind, productive, contributing member of our society.

As reported by Nina Bernstein in the New York Times Ng was caught up in the maze of the United States’ immigration system during the entire sixteen year period of his residency in the U.S.:

Born in China, he entered the United States legally on a tourist visa. Mr. Ng stayed on after it expired and applied for political asylum. He was granted a work permit while his application was pending, and though asylum was eventually denied, immigration authorities did not seek his deportation for many years…

In 2001, a notice ordering him to appear in immigration court was mistakenly sent to a nonexistent address, records show. When Mr. Ng did not show up at the hearing, the judge ordered him deported. By then, however, he was getting married, and on a separate track, his wife petitioned Citizenship and Immigration Services for a green card for him — a process that took more than five years. Heeding bad legal advice, the couple showed up for his green card interview on July 19, 2007, only to find enforcement agents waiting to arrest Mr. Ng on the old deportation order.

Once placed in immigration detention in July of 2007, Ng never regained his freedom. He was incarcerated in county jail facilities in Massachusetts and Vermont, relatively small facitities with few staff and no onsite medical personnel that contracted with the United States Marshalls Service. For a large part of the time that Ng was held in detention by the United States government it was at the Donald W. Wyatt Dention Facility, a maximum security private prison in Central Falls, Rhode Island. Wyatt is a contractor providing services to the U.S. Marshalls Serve, and touts itself on its web site as:

The Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility was the first publicly owned/privately operated adult secure detention facility developed for use by the USMS in the Northeast…

The average length of stay for most detainees is approximately 97 days, however, some stay for more than a year and therefore a full-service custody and control program is provided to ensure the daily health and well being of all detainees.

Routine and special transportation services are available to ensure court appearances; delivery to other jurisdictions; transportation to outside hospitals and clinics; and scheduled airlifts.

In April of this year Ng began complaining of severe back pain but received little treatment or accommodation from his jailers. His physical condition deteriorated to such a degree that by July he could not stand or walk, yet he was denied access to a wheelchair by those supervising his detention. The consensus opinion of those supervising his detention, was that Ng was in essence faking his symptoms. The most that medical personnel at Wyatt did for Ng was prescribe pain killing medication and muscle relaxants for him, but they required him to leave his cell and walk to a despensary to obtain them.

As reported in the New York Times article things only got worse for Ng, unable to walk on his own power he was then denied access to pain medication, and even denied access to his attorney:

But his condition continued to deteriorate. Once a robust man who stood nearly six feet and weighed 200 pounds, his relatives said, Mr. Ng looked like a shrunken and jaundiced 80-year-old.

“He said, ‘I told the nursing department, I’m in pain, but they don’t believe me,’ ” his sister recalled. “ ‘They tell me, stop faking.’ ”

Soon, according to court papers, he had to rely on other detainees to help him reach the toilet, bring him food and call his family; he no longer received painkillers, because he could not stand in line to collect them. On July 26, Andy Wong, a lawyer associated with Mr. Cox, came to see the detainee, but had to leave without talking to him, he said, because Mr. Ng was too weak to walk to the visiting area, and a wheelchair was denied.

On July 29th of this year, Ng’s attorneys filed a habeus corpus petition in federal court on his behalf, on July 30th Ng was placed in shackles by Wyatt guards and dragged to a vehicle and transported to an immigration office in Hartford, Connecticut, where according to the New YorkTimes article:

On July 30, according to an affidavit by Mr. Wong, he was contacted by Larry Smith, a deportation officer in Hartford, who told him on a speakerphone, with Mr. Ng present, that he wanted to resolve the case, either by deporting Mr. Ng, or “releasing him to the streets.” Officer Smith said that no exam by an outside doctor would be allowed, and that Mr. Ng would not be given a wheelchair.

Mr. Ng told his lawyer he was ready to give up, the affidavit said, “because he could no longer withstand the suffering inside the facility,” but Officer Smith insisted that Mr. Ng would first have to withdraw all his appeals.

On July 31, the judge hearing the habeus corpus petition did not rule on the petition, but did recognize that Ng needed immediate medical attention and ordered that appropriate medical care be administered. On August 1 Ng was taken to a hospital where it was determined that he had a fractured spine, and his internal organs were riddled with cancer. Ng died in the hospital five days later, one day after his 32nd birthday, leaving a widow and two sons, three and one years old.

At a minimum Jason Ng’s treatment by those responsible for his detention was negligent homicide, although it seems a case could also be made that Ng’s pain, suffering and ultimate death were exacerbated by torture, facilitated by government contractors and Larry Smith, the deportation officer.

Jason Ng was not the first innocent person to lose his life while in U.S. immigration detention, and it is quite possible he will not be the last, but the fact that this has happened should be a wake up call to all of us that there is something fundamentally wrong, that in a country founded on the principals of freedom and liberty, we have permitted government functionaries, and their surrogate contractors from the world of commerce, to play “God” with any persons’ lives. We have all been shamed by this incident, not only should we shed tears of grief for Jason Ng and his family, we should shed tears of grief that we have allowed those who administer our laws and protect us to bring our society down to the depths of depraved indifference.

To learn more:

Affidavit filed before the death of Hui Lui Ng.

Petition for writ of habeus corpus on behalf of Hui Lui Ng.

In depth reporting of in custody deaths.

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The Postville Legacy: Do You Want Lies With That Hot Dog?

My dear blog friend Border Explorer has been diligent and passionate in her series about the Postville Raid. Called “the biggest immigration raid in American history,” this raid has also opened the largest meat packing scandal since Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, about the corruption in the meat packing industry in the early part of the 20th Century.

And here we have history repeating itself. Sinclair wrote about horrific working conditions, the exploitation of children and women, about workers falling into rendering tanks and being ground along with animal parts into beef lard. Sinclair wrote about a system that was supposed to bring progress to our nation; instead, the increased industrialization bred chaos, amorality, greed and a kind of individuality that has no regard for human dignity – forget about animal rights.

Agriprocessers, in Postville, hired illegal immigrants, mostly from Guatamala. The employees were coerced, threatened, beaten, kept in what they describe as a “slave-like” environment. The raid was conducted not as an immigration raid, but instead as a criminal raid with the main thrust being about “identity theft.” Workers had been given “cooked” social security numbers. The immigrants, mostly unable to speak or read English, had no idea what they were being given. Opps. Their bad.

Much has been made over the fact that Agriprocessers is also the largest Kosher Meat and Poultry producer in the USA. Believe me, this has nothing to do with Orthodox Jewry. Nothing. This is about the over-industiralization of our economy.

The Meatrix is a small website I found after watching Fast Food Nation. This film shows the dark side of the fast food industry, from the ground up. The exploitation of illegal immigrants is a huge part of this chain of greed. Franchise America builds itself on cheap labor (subtext: illegal immigrants), sloppy production, and lies. Hey, Neocons? You want to stop illegal immigration? Shut down McDonalds.

At the Eat Well website, I put in my zip code: I am within 20 miles of 22 farmers markets, 2 restaurants, and 13 stores. There are actually more organic restaurants that they don’t have on the list – but the telling piece is the 22 farmers markets. I go, weekly. They are local California farmers, with either Certified Organic or one step below Certified produce. I save money, I eat better, and I support the local economy. Give this a try.

Another site, Sustainable Table, gives all kinds of tips for building community, healthy eating, and defying the conglomerates. It is a way to connect us to our land, our food, and with each other.

The tactics used in the Postville Raid bespeak a totalitarian society. We know what we’ve become over the last eight years of the Bush Administration. But I contend this has been going on for far longer than Bush has even walked this earth. Greed is not new, nor is the exploitation of the poor and disenfranchised. But we can speak out, we can do more. We really can.

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Just who is “illegal” here? House Committee reviews ICE Raid on Postville, IA

Lawyers and professors testified before the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary on Thursday, July 24 that the government process used to arrest and convict undocumented workers in Iowa in May was illegal and violated the immigrants’ due process rights, reports Jurist Legal News and Research. On May 12, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials raided an Agriprocessors Inc. meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa and arrested 389 undocumented workers. Over four days, 270 of those arrested were each sentenced to five months in prison and 27 more received probation after pleading guilty to the use of false immigration documents. Following the sentencing, a New York Times report suggested that it was uncommon for illegal immigrants to face criminal prosecution as opposed to civil charges and deportation. During the Committee hearing Thursday, American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) vice-president David Wolfe Leopold reiterated the group’s previous criticism of the convictions process, saying:

A prosecutor’s professional, moral, and ethical duty is to do justice, not merely to convict. This cardinal principal was ignored by the government in its zeal to criminalize undocumented workers. In essence, the expedited justice or “Fast Tracking” system concocted by the government, with the willing assistance of the US District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, was a conviction / deportation assembly line which could not be burdened with protecting the fundamental rights of the defendants, mostly poor uneducated Guatemalan farmers.

Interpreter Erik Camayd-Freixas also criticized the system, saying that the immigrants were unable to understand their rights, the charges against them, or the plea bargains to which many finally agreed. The Washington Post has more.

Not surprisingly, representatives from both the Department of Justice (DOJ) and ICE defended the government’s arrest and conviction processes, saying that the immigrants’ constitutional rights were strictly applied. Howeve, the Jurist notes that, in general, US immigration prosecutions continued to increase in March 2008, jumping nearly 50 percent from the previous month and nearly 75 percent from the previous year, according to a report released by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. Federal immigration prosecutions have risen since February, when such prosecutions hit a record high. TRAC attributed the increase to Operation Streamline, a joint federal program under which federal prosecutors levy minor charges against illegal immigrants crossing the US-Mexico border.

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I can’t be in Postville, but I can still help.

Border Explorer has been covering the largest ICE Raid in US History, the May 12 raid that apprehended 400 meat-packers in Postville, IA. The resulting raid has been a horrific bastardization of our rights, where Habeus Corpus has been turned on its ear. Border Explorer’s coverage of this situation has been incredible, and you should all go read it.

Today, she writes:

The Postville Community Response Committee is asking those who are concerned about the situation to send a $20 donation. This will allow the Food Pantry to purchase approximately the following items for a family of four: rice, beans, a can each of fruit and vegetables, a box of cereal, eggs, and a $5 coupon for milk.

Please send your donation to the Postville Food Pantry c/o Pastor Steve Brackett, St Paul Lutheran Church, 116 Military, Postville IA 52162

My check is in the mail, and since I can’t be in Postville, I can still help – this is how.

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What the government doesn’t want you to know about how they handle illegal immigrants

From the Real News website:

Each day, over 30,000 people are housed within detention centers across the United States. The New York-based Detention Watch Network says that last year, over 276,000 immigrants were deported.

Deportations have increased significantly since 1996, when laws became much more punitive. A criminal charge results in jail time and guarantees deportation of non-citizen immigrants, regardless of legal status and family ties.

Attempts to re-haul the US immigration system were made in 2006. Since that effort failed, no comprehensive reform has made it to the table, and the pressure has been stepped up on Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to ramp up its deportation activities.

I hope this changes with the new President in 2009. This is total bullshit to deport people that have been here for over 20 years and have family here in the U.S. Read more about it at the Real News link above.

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