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Give us your poor Dave Francis This was originally published in Inter Visa, a Russian magazine. Give us your poor Dave Francis "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door." That is inscribed on what may be the most famous symbol of the USA. The statue of liberty. She stands in NY harbor, welcoming the immigrants since being given to the USA by France, in 1886. If we Americans had any shame, we would take her down. The message the lady has been displaying for many years is one that most Americans no longer want to be heard. We don’t want any more immigrants, and we are treating those that come very poorly. Especially in the last 20 years America has become xenophobic and is turning increasingly cold to the idea of accepting people from other countries. We have routinely treated those that have braved unimaginable hardships to find their way to the USA with less than the respect one would hope to show to any fellow human being, but now we are going at it with a zeal that is horrifying. INS routinely runs rampant over the rights of potential immigrants, violating international standards in their attempts to dissuade people making the trek. Courtesy and kindness are forgotten traits at immigration. I defy anyone to find a more difficult voice mail system than that employed by the immigration service. It is an example of how unfriendly, unwieldy, and confusing the process has become. It is that way on purpose. INS sees its job as stopping immigration. Its mission is to send ‘em back. That’s too bad really. America is a rich country largely because of its immigrants. When someone makes it the the borders of the USA, they get to deal with the INS. If they have a visa, they may be let in. They may not. I talked to a young lady from Mexico who flew into Houston and upon presenting her visa, was asked how much cash she had on hand. She brought about 500 dollars. The INS inspector told her that wasn’t sufficient for her intended stay of two weeks, and that he was not going to allow her entry into the US. She tried to explain that she was going to be staying with friends, but the inspector was uninterested. She was directed to a bench, and was put on the next plane back to Mexico City. Some people come to the USA with a far more serious plan than seeing a friend. They come to escape persecution in their home country. The USA has long welcomed these refugees. That is until Fidel Castro opened his prisons and insane asylums in what is now called the “Mariel” boatlift. Thousands of Cubans came floating across the sea to land in Dade county, which was totally unprepared to deal with them. Not long afterwards, Haitians followed suit. Southern Florida had a problem, and they didn’t know how to deal with it. The Cubans were screened as they came in, but many were held in internment camps built under the freeways, and others were sent away to state and federal prisons. Some were criminals in Cuba, but none had committed any crimes in the USA. All were under suspicion. These two massive influxes of people horrified middle America. These people were non-white, didn’t speak English, were largely unskilled, and were loud, smelly, and unsightly. They were depersonalized to the average American. It was in the after effect of these events that INS has been able to begin its systematic abuse of its charges. Mogadishu, Somalia. On the 28th of Dec. 1990, armed men kicked in the door of a young boy named Mohammed Hassan. The men asked Hassans father what clan they belonged to, and upon hearing the answer, they took them outside and machine gunned them. Mohammed Hassan survived with a wound to the hip. He got help from some local men and lived in various parts of Somalia for the next four years. In October of 1994, he arrived in New York. His story follows: The INS detained Mohamed Hassan at JFK airport for arriving without proper documents. The agency then placed him at the Esmor detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The INS moved him back and forth between Esmor and Lehigh County Jail in Allentown, Pennsylvania, twice within a five-month period, and then to the Dorchester Detention Center in Baltimore, Maryland, where he stayed for one month. At 4 am one day in September 1995, Mohamed Hassan states that immigration officials took him out of bed and drove him to the Orleans Parish Prison in New Orleans, Louisiana. He says that the INS officers did not allow him to collect any of his belongings, so all of his asylum application papers were left behind. Due to his frequent transfers, his inability to speak English when he arrived in the USA, and the difficulty in contacting organizations and attorneys who would not accept collect calls, Mohamed Hassan was unable to obtain an attorney during the first year of his detention. On 9 May 1995 Mohamed Hassan appeared without an attorney before an Immigration Judge in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and was found credible. The Immigration Judge believed his story but denied him asylum, on the grounds that there were places in Somalia where he would be reasonably safe. Mohamed Hassan appealed against this decision, filing a handwritten notice to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) in May 1995. He remained in jail in Maryland and then in Louisiana. In Louisiana he finally obtained an attorney with the help of Amnesty International USA. According to Mohamed Hassan, the conditions in the Orleans Parish Prison were poor. In a letter written to the Amnesty International USA's Refugee office he wrote, "life in the jail is very difficult with regard to the feeding and all the poor conditions that I find myself. For how long will I continue to be in this situation when I don't know what is happening to me?" After she took up the case, Mohamed Hassan's attorney submitted a motion to admit new evidence in January 1996. She argued that the Immigration Judge did not consider his age, his inability to speak English or to adequately understand the proceedings, and his inability to communicate with or obtain a lawyer despite his stated desire to do so. The INS opposed the motion. In its original response to the motion the INS claimed that Mohamed Hassan did have an attorney in his earlier proceedings. Later, the INS admitted that they had confused Mohamed Hassan's case with that of another asylum-seeker. In November 1996, an Amnesty International delegation (which included Mohamed Hassan's attorney) visited the Orleans Parish Prison to contact him and other detainees who had asked the organization for assistance. Officials at the prison denied the delegation access to the detainees and refused to allow Mohamed Hassan's attorney to see her client. Mohamed Hassan finally received asylum in December 1996 - after two years, six jail transfers and time spent in four different jails. Unfortunately, the story of Mohammed Hassan is not unique. More and more refugees are finding that America is not a place for them anymore. The following are letters culled from the files of Human Rights Watch. They have received these letters from INS detainees in US prisons and jails awaiting determination of their cases. June 11, 1998 "Since the day I came to America [September 28, 1997], I have not committed any crime. I have never been in any type of prison system but when I came here they locked me up like I'm some kind of criminal...they locked me up along with inmates, people that have committed crimes...that's why I fear for my life....The situation here is no good for me, because they don't offer the basic needs in which to live. The food they give us is not enough to live on. When I request something from the officers they either deny me or tell me to write a request form, which they deny afterwards anyways. I don't have an attorney for I cannot afford one. I escaped from my country's army to come to America, but if I go back now to Iran, the consequences will be deadly." -P.H. from Iran, Nacogdoches County Jail, Nacogdoches, Texas February 5, 1998 "Let me inform you that I was violently beaten today...at 10:30 this morning. It was time for my `checkdown' and an officer told me to put my hands on the wall. It's because I asked him to be more gentle that he beat me up. He hit my head into the wall many times and threw me forcefully on the floor. To hold me down, an officer put his foot on my head. I let them do whatever they wanted. Here it is normal for officers to beat detainees without reason....I think your presence here would be indispensable." -E.M. from Democratic Republic of the Congo, Virginia Beach Detention Center, Virginia Beach, Virginia June 3, 1998 "Again I ask you to please help me...I don't know what to think, maybe they want me to die in this place....I already paid my time in state prison and now they put me again in prison far away where [my family] can't visit me because it is an eight hour journey. Also, they no longer let us send letters so I had to send this letter out with some county prisoners detained here...." -F.T.G. from Cuba, Yuba County Jail, Marysville, California March 1, 1998 "I was born in Hamburg, Germany on January 14, 1948 in a refugee camp...my parents came form the U.S.S.R. We were brought to the United States as legal permanent residents by Catholic Services. I'm fifty-years old now and have been in the United States for forty-eight years. In 1990 I went to jail...and when I was ready to go home the INS arrested me. Since September 6, 1996, I have been waiting to be deported. Germany has already told the INS that they will not accept me, have no records of me at all or of my parents either....I always showed up in court and never ran from [the INS]. I asked them to release me and I would go on my own, but they said no one would take me. Why still hold me then? " -M.J. from Germany, Snyder County Jail, Selingsgrove, Pennsylvania January 8, 1998 "In June of 1997 my application for immigrant status with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was rejected. Since then, my presence in the United States became illegal, and that is why I was arrested....After the ruling I was placed in solitary confinement, in a cell with no heat and no hot water. I was not allowed to use the telephoneto talk to my lawyer. A Muslim prison employee was prevented from giving me a copy of the Quran. I was not allowed to perform Friday congregational prayers with other Muslim inmates, nor could I go to the gymnasium. To this day, jail management refuses to provide a vegetarian meal. I do not eat meat because of religious convictions. Since my arrest, I have lost 25 pounds...." -N.S. from Egypt, Mercy County Detention Center, Trenton, New Jersey November 17, 1997 "[I am] Vietnamese, 21 years old....Because I have no lawyer or legal representative I did not appeal the judge's decision in proper time and from the information from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office I filed a motion to reopen or to reconsider my case along with my political asylum application. [It was] denied on August 1, 1997. Now I don't know what to do and who I can ask for help. Please, somebody help me on this matter. I've been in this detention center for over a year for nothing, we have no sunlight, no fresh air nor life necessity." -T.N. from Vietnam, Carter County Detention Center, Ardmore, Oklahoma Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy asylum if they are forced to flee their country to escape persecution. The USA accepts this principle. It was one of the main architects of the international system of refugee protection. Yet although the USA has agreed to be bound by international standards to protect refugees, US authorities violate the fundamental human rights of asylum-seekers. Asylum-seekers who arrive without proper documents are held behind bars in the USA. They are often detained indefinitely on grounds beyond those allowed by international standards. Many are confined with criminal prisoners, but unlike criminal suspects, are frequently denied any opportunity of parole (release). They are held in conditions that are sometimes inhuman and degrading. Asylum-seekers detained in the USA have often been treated like criminals: stripped and searched; shackled and chained; sometimes verbally or physically abused. Many are denied access to their families, lawyers and non-governmental organizations who could help them. International standards provide that no one should be returned to a country where they would be at risk of serious human rights abuses. They require that the detention of asylum-seekers should normally be avoided. If detention is necessary, this should be demonstrated by means of a prompt, fair individual hearing before a judicial or similar authority. The decision to detain should be reviewed regularly by an independent body. Asylum-seekers should be advised of the reasons for their detention, of their rights and release options, and of access to assistance. They should be distinguished from other detainees and held only in conditions appropriate to their status as people seeking international protection. US laws, policies and practices consistently fail to meet these standards. The INS, part of the Department of Justice, is responsible for the detention of thousands of people in detention centres and jails throughout the USA. Among them are an unknown number of asylum-seekers. Faced with a US court order to inform asylum-seekers from El Salvador about their rights to seek asylum, an INS official asked to give information to people of other nationalities refused, saying that "to do that would be a sign of weakness". It is a deeply disturbing "sign of weakness" that INS personnel might consider explaining rights to asylum-seekers as a courtesy rather than as an obligation rooted in international law. When asked about a jail's refusal in 1998 to allow an asylum-seeker to receive human rights information through the mail, an INS official responded "I don't know, sometimes I have to walk mail over there myself". The asylum-seeker was unrepresented by counsel and his only apparent source of assistance was an Amnesty International member who sent him the packet of information, which included the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The man was denied asylum and deported. There is no coherent national data provided by the INS on asylum-seekers in its custody. Basic information such as country of origin, gender, length of detention, reasons for release and, most importantly, transfer records are not available. There is no effective system for tracking the whereabouts of asylum-seekers in detention and refugee advocates have reported that their clients were "lost" in the system. Asylum-seekers are shunted from one facility to another, across state lines, without any explanation other than that their bed space is needed. There is no effort to keep them near their families or their legal representatives. There is also some evidence that "troublesome" detainees are taken from INS facilities and put into local or county jails as a form of punishment. There are limited circumstances in which international standards provide that asylum-seekers may be detained. But as the US system stands now, one official can keep a person who has committed no crime (save to flee for their life) in jail for months or years. The discretion allowed single individuals in effect to try, judge and sentence a person to jail can never produce a system that respects asylum-seekers' rights Some detained asylum-seekers receive information about their rights and have adequate access to the outside world, with those who wish to help them allowed opportunities to visit. Most often, however, the INS holds asylum-seekers in isolation, sometimes in conditions designed for the most dangerous of criminal offenders. Advocates have little, if any, effective access to them. The INS may keep them in a prison-like setting despite mental or physical illness, with no consideration of the circumstances that prompted their flight to seek protection. Many asylum-seekers find themselves held under these conditions for months before their asylum claim is heard, with rules governing their behavior changing each time they are transferred to a new facility, and no rules covering the frequency of their transfers nor how far away they are sent. The INS may jail them for months (in one case recorded in this report for over a year) after they are granted asylum, while INS attorneys (from the same jurisdiction that jails them) appeal against the granting of asylum. INS officials may refuse to release asylum-seekers even though an Immigration Judge has determined that they meet the definition of a refugee, a person the USA is bound by treaty to protect. "We can't charge the [New Orleans] sheriff with protecting asylum-seekers' rights" -- Acting District Director of New Orleans INS District, 1998, speaking of problems for asylum-seekers jailed in the Orleans Parish Prison. When dealing with asylum-seekers, the USA appears prepared to disregard domestically basic human rights which it purports to defend internationally. Asylum-seekers and refugees are not only deprived of their liberty, they are sometimes held in conditions that amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. In some facilities detainees rarely see natural daylight and the food provided violates deeply held religious beliefs. Asylum-seekers are frequently detained in shoddy temporary shelters or in centres run by private companies that may be less well regulated by the authorities than jails. Detained asylum-seekers do not know how long they will be held and are in fear that they may be sent back to their persecutors. Torture victims in particular may suffer further trauma through the psychological stress of detention. DJF |