Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center to honor those who help immigrants - Miami Herald	February 12, 2010 Printable version
BY HERALD STAFF crline dadenews@MiamiHerald.com The Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center will be honoring several people for their work on behalf of immigrants during their annual awards dinner at the Hotel InterContinental on Feb. 25. The honorees: Miami Herald reporter Jacqueline Charles, Dr. Stephen Symes, of the University of Miami Medical School and celebrated artist Edouard Duval-Carrié. Dr. Pedro Jose Greer will be master of ceremonies and CNN Special Correspondent Soledad O'Brien will be the keynote speaker. This year's awards dinner co-chairs are Norma Kipnis-Wilson, FIAC Board Member and South Florida Philanthropist, Raoul G. Cantero, former Florida Supreme Court Justice and Stephen N. Zack, the first Cuban-American president-elect of the American Bar Association. Symes, a native of Jamaica, will be awarded the Arthur Helton Humanitarian Award. Last year, he played a pivotal role in helping Rosemarie, a FIAC client in immigration custody, get urgently needed surgery. Dr. Symes' medical opinion, based on her medical records, was crucial to winning a federal court lawsuit ordering her treatment. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ultimately released Rosemarie. Dr. Symes also is collaborating with FIAC to involve medical students from UM's Jay Weiss Center for Social Medicine and Health Equity in other cases where medical assessment is critical. The Sister Catherine Cassidy Compassion Award will be given to the Miami Herald's Charles, who covers the Caribbean for the newspaper. In 2008, she was the first to report on the devastation and death in caused by back-to-back storms in Cabaret, Haiti. Her work in the aftermath of this year's horrific earthquake has acquainted the world with the struggle of the Haitian people. President Bill Clinton was right in January when he described Charles as "Haiti's advisor to the world'' and added, "She doubled the knowledge of Haiti in America, this one woman.'' The Sister Maureen T. Kelleher Altruism Award will go to Edouard Duval-Carrié, one of the best known Haitian artists in the world. The Bernice Steinbaum Gallery describes his work as a combination of ``African fables, classical mythology, and Haitian world history with contemporary events. Duval is passionate about Haiti, and his work provokes the viewer to consider why Haiti has been forgotten by the world powers." His work may be best understood through the phenomena of émigrés in a new land. For more information, go to www.fiacfla.org or contact Leslie Martinez at (305) 299-6457 or Kate Sanderson at (305) 302-0480. © 2010 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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Haitians already in U.S. get a temporary reprieve - Miami Herald	January 16, 2010 Printable version
BY ALFONSO CHARDY, VIVIANA MUNOZ AND SERGIO R. BUSTOS achardy@MiamiHerald.com The Obama administration said Friday it would grant tens of thousands of undocumented Haitian nationals in the United States Temporary Protected Status, an immigration benefit sought for years by Haitian activists, immigrant rights advocates and South Florida lawmakers. In announcing the move only days after Haiti's devastating earthquake, Homeland Security Department Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement that the TPS designation was part of the administration's effort to support Haiti's recovery following ``a disaster of historic proportions.'' But she also made a point to discourage Haitians from leaving the country -- a sign the administration would crack down on illegal immigration. ``At this moment of tragedy in Haiti, it is tempting for people suffering in the aftermath of the earthquake to seek refuge elsewhere. But attempting to leave Haiti now will only bring more hardship to the Haitian people and nation,'' she said. WORK PERMITS TPS will enable about 30,000 Haitians without legal immigration status, most in South Florida, to remain here legally for 18 months. They would also be able to apply for work permits, allowing them to land jobs many need to send money to surviving family members in earthquake-devastated Port-au-Prince. Only those Haitians in the United States as of Jan. 12 are eligible. Those arriving after Jan. 12 will be repatriated to Haiti. Although shielded from deportation, Haitian TPS holders cannot become permanent U.S. residents or U.S. citizens. Earlier this week, the administration temporarily halted deportations of Haitian nationals. The administration's move to approve TPS for Haitians comes after years of lobbying from Haitian-American activists, immigrant advocates and lawmakers, especially those in South Florida. But Tuesday's earthquake bolstered their cause. ``This is the right thing to do,'' said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. ``Haitian immigrants already in the U.S. will not only be able to make money to support themselves, but also to send remittances to their suffering families back in Haiti.'' ``It's even more justified [now] than it was 72 hours ago,'' said Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami, whose district includes Little Haiti. ``This will help Haiti rebound, it'll also help in the recovery process.'' ``It is a humanitarian gesture worth commending,'' said Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, who along with more than 80 lawmakers signed a letter this week urging President Obama to approve TPS. PROVIDING COMFORT Cheryl Little, executive director of Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center an ardent promoter of TPS for Haitian migrants, is already lobbying the Obama administration to waive the $340 TPS application fee. ``We are thrilled that at long last deserving Haitians will be getting TPS,'' said Little. ``We hope this will provide some comfort to Haitians here who are suffering in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake.'' Haitian community leaders on Friday also expressed relief over the TPS decision, but their joy was tempered by the tragedy back home. ``We are pleased by the decision of the Obama administration to award TPS to the Haitians,'' said Marleine Bastien, president of Haitian Women of Miami. ``But we need that they also listen to the clamor of those who are in detention centers and urgently need to recover their freedom to mourn their dead and join in the pain of surviving relatives.'' Said Jean Robert Lafortune, president of Haitian American Grassroots Coalition: ``This was a long journey, a battle that lasted six years so that thousands of Haitians could have a dignified life.'' That's exactly the feelings of Little Haiti residents gathered at Chef Creole, a restaurant at the corner of Northwest Second Avenue and 54th Street. ``I felt like I won the Lotto,'' said Wilkinson Sejour, owner of Chef Creole. ``Do you know how many Haitians come here and say `Give me a job' and I have to say `No, you're not straight'? Now we can fill the whole house with Haitians.'' The application process for TPS will be handled by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a federal agency. Haitians in the United States eligible to apply for TPS should call the USCIS toll-free number: 800-375-5283. They can also visit uscis.gov. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2010 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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Administration to allow Haitians in U.S. illegally to stay for 18 months - Washington Post	January 16, 2010 Printable version
By Spencer S. Hsu and N.C. Aizenman Washington Post Staff Writers Saturday, January 16, 2010; A09 The Obama administration will allow 100,000 to 200,000 Haitians living in the United States illegally to stay for 18 months because of Tuesday's earthquake but warned that Haitians who are newly caught trying to enter the country will be deported. In granting eligible Haitian nationals temporary immigration status Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called the move a gesture of compassion and an attempt to ensure that the flow of remittances to their devastated homeland continues. "Providing a temporary refuge for Haitian nationals who are currently in the United States and whose personal safety would be endangered by returning to Haitiis part of this administration's continuing effort to support Haiti's recovery," Napolitano said. She coupled her message with a caution, as Homeland Security officials said the change applies only to eligible illegal immigrants from Haiti in the country as of Tuesday. "At this moment of tragedy in Haiti, it is tempting for people suffering in the aftermath of the earthquake to seek refuge elsewhere, but attempting to leave Haiti now will only bring more hardship to the Haitian people and nation," Napolitano said. Haitians living the United States send back about $1.2 billion in remittances annually, accounting for about 20 percent of Haiti's economy. About 535,000 Haitian-born immigrants live in the United States, with the largest communities in New York and Florida. About 31,000 have outstanding deportation orders, and about 160 are in immigration detention. The U.S. government announced this week that it was temporarily halting deportations of Haitians, including those in detention. The U.S. government extends temporary protected status to nationals from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Somalia and Sudan under a law that is intended to provide relief to countries torn by war, natural disaster or political upheaval. Immigrants must pay a fee to apply and are eligible only if they do not have a criminal record. The government can extend the program as conditions warrant. Haitian American groups and immigration advocates have been asking for the ruling for years, citing four storms that wreaked havoc in the country in 2008 and a recurring food crisis. "Victory at last," said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, which requested the change after Obama took office last year. While saying she was thrilled, Little added, "It's troubling indeed that it takes a disaster of this proportion to get our government to do the right thing for the Haitians." The advocates were joined this week by Republican and Democratic lawmakers from Florida; Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and dozens of refugee agencies. Some advocates for stricter immigration controls called the move justified, but others expressed reservations, noting that the status has been continually renewed for other groups long after the disaster that triggered it. Tens of thousands of Salvadorans, for example, have remained in the United States under the temporary immigration status granted to them in the wake of a 2001 earthquake. Staff writer Peter Whoriskey contributed to this report. © 2010 The Washington Post Company
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Haitians Illegally in U.S. Given Protected Status -- NYT	January 16, 2010 Printable version
By JULIA PRESTON The Obama administration extended a special immigration status on Friday to Haitians living illegally in the United States that protects them from deportation for 18 months and allows them to work here. Calling the aftermath of the earthquake “a disaster of historic proportions,” the secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, said she was granting the designation, known as temporary protected status, for Haitian immigrants because their safety would be at risk if they were deported. Administration officials said the special status would cover at least 100,000 Haitians believed to be living in the United States illegally, as well as about 30,000 Haitians who had been ordered deported. Haitians who receive the temporary status will be able to obtain documents allowing them to live here and work legally. The administration’s decision followed a rising chorus of calls for the temporary status after the earthquake on Tuesday. On Friday, 80 representatives and 18 senators, including Democrats and Republicans, sent appeals to the administration to grant the status, as did the conference of Roman Catholic bishops. Ms. Napolitano said the protection would extend only to Haitians who were already in the United States as of Tuesday. Until now, officials had hesitated to grant the temporary status for fear it would encourage a new exodus of desperate Haitians by boat toward South Florida. “Attempting to leave Haiti now will only bring more hardship to the Haitian people and nation,” Ms. Napolitano said Friday. She said Haitians who tried to travel illegally to the United States after this week would be sent back to Haiti. The administration’s move drew praise from members of Congress. “To send Haitians back to that country right now would be nothing short of inhumane,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, chairman of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on immigration. Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Republican of Florida, lauded the administration, saying he had requested the status for Haitians in a telephone conversation on Friday with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. State Department officials took part in the decision by providing their assessment of the scope of the disaster. Refugee advocates were elated. Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center in Miami, said she and other advocates had contended that allowing Haitians who lacked legal status to work in this country could help prevent a new wave of boat people because the immigrants would send money back to needy relatives in Haiti, giving them resources to rebuild. On Wednesday Ms. Napolitano suspended deportations of Haitians. She can grant temporary protected status to immigrants in the United States from countries that have suffered a catastrophic war or “an environmental disaster” that would make it dangerous to deport their citizens back home. Although the status is granted originally for a short period, in practice it has been renewed for years for citizens of some countries. Immigrants from Honduras and Nicaragua have enjoyed the status since 1999, after Hurricane Mitch battered their countries. El Salvador was added to the list in 2001. Somalia and Sudan were added more recently. The Haitian government and refugee advocates have been asking for protected status since 2008, when four major hurricanes killed about 800 people. The Bush administration decided not to grant the request. The Obama administration continued to deport Haitians last year, but officials said that those cases mainly involved people who had committed crimes in the United States. Some groups that have opposed protected status for Haitians changed their views after seeing the destruction in Haiti. Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, called Thursday for the protection for Haitians. But he said officials should also cancel the status for immigrants from El Salvador and some other countries.
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Groups seek temporary legal status for Haitians illegally in U.S. - Washington Post	January 14, 2010 Printable version
By N.C. Aizenman Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, January 14, 2010; 3:15 PM In response to Haiti's devastating earthquake, dozens of immigrant advocacy groups and several members of Congress are renewing a long-standing call for the Obama administration to grant temporary legal status and work permits to as many as 125,000 Haitians in the United States illegally. By law the secretary of homeland security, in consultation with the secretary of state, can offer "temporary protected status," or TPS, to illegal immigrants of a particular nationality if calamities such as natural disaster or war make it too burdensome for their home countries to receive them. Immigrants must pay a fee to apply for TPS and are eligible only if they were already in the United States at the time the benefit was offered and if they do not have a criminal record. The status is usually granted for up to 18 months, but the government can, and often does, renew it repeatedly as conditions warrant. Although immigration authorities have halted all deportation flights to Haiti for the time being, there was no word yet on whether TPS would be granted. "TPS is in the range of considerations we consider in a disaster, but our focus remains on saving lives," Matthew Chandler, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman, said Thursday. Supporters of Haitian immigrants have been lobbying for the move since the fall of 2008, after two hurricanes and two tropical storms ravaged Haiti over a four-week period. Within hours of Tuesday's quake, Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and Mario Diaz-Balart -- all Republicans from Florida -- sent a letter to President Obama reiterating their earlier pleas for TPS for Haitians. "The combined destruction of today's catastrophic earthquake and the previous storms clearly makes forced repatriation of Haitians hazardous to their safety at this time," they wrote. "We strongly believe that it is for such a situation that Congress enacted TPS." They are among several leaders holding separate news conferences in Miami on Thursday to draw further attention to the issue. Others include the head of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, who will be accompanied by Edwidge Danticat, a celebrated Haitian author and winner of a MacArthur Fellow "genius" grant. Twenty-six refugee agencies also sent a joint letter Thursday urging Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to consider TPS for Haitians, and the National Council of La Raza released a statement to the same effect. The U.S. government currently extends TPS to nationals from five countries: El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Somalia and Sudan. However, despite requests by successive Haitian governments, Haitian immigrants have been denied the benefit numerous times during their nation's tumultuous history. Most recently, after the storms of 2008, President George W. Bush's administration suspended deportations for a few months before formally refusing to grant Haitians TPS and resuming repatriation flights. Shortly after Obama took office, his administration informally stopped deporting non-criminal Haitians: According to government statistics, in 2009 only 221 non-criminal Haitians were deported, compared with 1,226 in 2008. (By contrast, the number of Haitians with criminal records who were deported remained roughly the same at 466 in 2009 compared with 428 in 2008.) Immigrant activists contend that although the informal reprieve from deportation offers some relief to illegal immigrants from Haiti, without the right to work that TPS provides, they are still extremely limited. Allowing such immigrants full access to American jobs could also vastly increase the amount that Haitians are able to send relatives back home at a time when Haiti is in desperate need of cash, said Steve Forester, a Miami-based advocate with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. "When somebody works here they can support up to 10 times that number back in Haiti. So we're talking about supporting hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti at no cost to U.S. taxpayers," Forester said. As it is, Haitians living the United States send back about $1.2 billion annually -- accounting for 20 percent of Haiti's GDP, according to Manuel Orozco, an expert with the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue. It is unclear how much higher the figure would be if those here illegally were granted TPS. They number between 75,000 to 125,000, accounting for as many as one in four Haitian immigrants, according to Jeffrey S. Passel, a demographer with the Pew Hispanic Center. Most have stayed under the official radar, but about 31,000 have outstanding orders of removal. About 160 are in detention, said Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The rest include many asylum applicants who were turned down and ordered removed, but not necessarily given a date to report for deportation, according to Nantel. Several advocates for stricter immigration controls expressed reservations about extending TPS to Haitians, noting that the status has been continually renewed for other groups long after the disaster that triggered it. For instance, tens of thousands of Salvadorans have been able to remain under the TPS granted to them in the wake of a 2001 earthquake, even as other Salvadorans who illegally entered the United States in the years since are routinely deported. "TPS was invented for the kind of situation in Haiti, so it's totally justified in this case. But this is also an opportunity to re-assess the way TPS is done," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. "The law should be much more clear that this isn't a way to get your foot in the door and get a green card. Temporary has to mean temporary."
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White House pressed to OK immigration change for Haitians - Miami Herald	January 14, 2010 Printable version
BY ALFONSO CHARDY AND SERGIO BUSTOS dadenews@MiamiHerald.com Haitian-American activists, immigrant advocates and South Florida lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are intensely lobbying the Obama administration to keep undocumented Haitian immigrants from being deported to an island nation whose economy is in ruins following Tuesday's horrific earthquake. On Thursday, all three groups will be holding news conferences in Miami to press their case to the public. The goal: to persuade the Obama administration to grant an estimated 30,000 Haitian nationals Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, an immigration benefit long sought by those involved in the debate. TPS is granted to selected immigrants in the United States who cannot safely return to their homelands because of natural disasters, armed conflicts or other emergencies. Those eligible are allowed to remain here, obtain work permits and temporary stays for specific periods -- a status often renewed indefinitely. The Department of Homeland Security has currently designated citizens from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Somalia and Sudan eligible for TPS. On Wednesday, the Obama administration announced it was temporarily suspending deportations of undocumented Haitians in the United States, but gave no immediate sign that it would move forward on the TPS issue. ``TPS is in the range of considerations we consider in a disaster, but our focus remains on saving lives,'' Matthew Chandler, deputy Homeland Security press secretary, said in an e-mail to El Nuevo Herald after the department announced it was halting deportations. This week's devastating Haiti earthquake, whose death toll and damage costs cannot even be estimated, is making the need for TPS approval an urgent matter. On Wednesday, South Florida's three Cuban-American Republican members of Congress -- Reps. Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart, and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen -- sent a joint letter to Obama requesting TPS for Haitian nationals, along with immediate humanitarian aid for Haiti. They have organized a news conference on Thursday to talk about the issue. ``How much does Haiti have to suffer before Haitians in the United States are granted TPS pursuant to law?'' said Lincoln Diaz-Balart Wednesday. ``The reason TPS exists in the statute as an option for the president is precisely for moments such as this in Haiti.'' The Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition, a group of Haitian-American activists, will hold a news conference on the TPS issue at the Jean-Jacques Dessalines Community Center, 8325 NE Second Ave. Later, the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, led by Cheryl Little, its executive director, has organized a news conference to call attention to TPS. Accompanying her will be renowned Haitian author Edwidge Danticat, Catholic Charities Legal Services executive director Randy McGrorty and a collection of Haitian family members who would benefit from TPS. ``We appreciate that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has halted all deportations to Haiti,'' Little said in a statement. ``Now it's time to provide immigration relief so Haitians here can help Haiti recover from yet another natural disaster.'' She said that granting TPS to Haitians here would allow thousands of Haitians to work legally and send remittances to loved ones in Haiti, and discourage illegal immigration to the United States. ``These remittances are a vital lifeline, particularly in times of disaster -- the money goes directly to Haitians on the island, encouraging them to stay and rebuild their country,'' she said. ``We ask President Obama to immediately grant TPS as part of U.S. efforts to aid Haiti and Haitians who are suffering. To do less is unacceptable,'' she said.
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TAKE ACTION to protect immigrant wages!	January 8, 2010 Printable version
Tuesday, January 12, 9:30 a.m. – Public Hearing on Miami-Dade Wage Theft Ordinance – a Model for Change
The South Florida Wage Theft Task Force, which includes FIAC’s Workplace Justice Project, combats “wage theft.” Wage theft occurs when employers do not pay their employees the wages they promise to pay and are legally obligated to pay. When individuals are not paid the wages they are owed, the individual suffers humiliation; the family suffers a loss of income that can create a crisis in housing or food, can interrupt education, and can provoke stress; honorable employers are hurt by unfair competition; and the community suffers because the tax base is reduced while the need for support services increases. Nonpayment or underpayment of wages hits immigrant workers particularly hard, because many immigrants are unaware of their rights or afraid to speak out. On Tuesday, Jan. 12, the Miami-Dade Government Operations Committee will hear public testimony from workers, advocates, unions, faith leaders, researchers, and others in support of a new wage theft ordinance that would create a county ordinance against wage theft and establish a process for recovering unpaid wages. This ordinance is one of the first of its kind nationally and would create an accessible local process for recovering unpaid wages. Commissioner Natacha Seijas is proposing the ordinance, and Commissioners Carlos Gimenez, Pepe Diaz, Audrey Edmonson, Joe Martinez, and Rebeca Sosa will hear from the public and make a decision about whether the ordinance should go in its current form for a second reading before the County Commission later this month. Please join the Task Force at the hearing! The hearing will be held in the Commission Chambers on the Second Floor of the Stephen P. Clark Center, 111 N.W. First Street, Miami, Florida.
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Haitian woman reaches settlement in ICE lawsuit	December 18, 2009 Printable version
By JENNIFER KAY Associated Press Writer MIAMI -- U.S. immigration officials have paid $47,500 to a Haitian woman who was denied treatment for uterine fibroid tumors while she was held in immigration custody for seven months in Florida, her attorneys said Friday. The woman, identified only as "Rosemarie M." in court documents for privacy reasons, had suffered from daily bleeding and pain for months before ICE detained her in April. Medical records provided to ICE showed that she needed surgery, but detention medical staff trivialized her complaints and denied her access to her doctors' records, said Tania Galloni, an attorney at the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. FIAC sued U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Glades County sheriff and Armor Correctional Health Services on her behalf in September. The lawsuit alleged deliberate indifference to a serious medical need. The woman underwent surgery Dec. 1. She was released from ICE custody on Dec. 11 after reaching a settlement with ICE. The federal agency agreed to pay her $47,500 in damages and attorneys' fees, and in exchange she agreed to drop the lawsuit, her attorneys said. ICE also stopped deportation proceedings against her. She will not be detained as she seeks a visa granted to victims of violent crime in the U.S., said Galloni, who would not offer details about the pending application. "In light of all the facts and circumstances of this case, ICE has determined that it is appropriate to release Rosemarie M. to pursue any relief that may be available to her," ICE spokeswoman Nicole Navas said. The 40-year-old Miami woman left Haiti for the U.S. in the mid-1990s. Her condition was diagnosed in the summer of 2008 while she served a sentence on a felony theft conviction at a Homestead jail, where she was held until she was released into ICE custody. She had been receiving treatment and doctors recommended surgery, but she was detained, then transferred in May to the Glades County Detention Center, before they could operate, Galloni said. "Coming into ICE custody, Rosemarie had medical records that showed she was sick and she needed surgery," Galloni said. "She told anybody who would listen to her that she was sick and needed help." Instead of scheduling the surgery, detention medical staff provided basic care such as Tylenol for pain and iron for blood loss, authorized diagnostic tests and denied her access to a lawyer during medical appointments, according to the lawsuit. An immigration judge alerted FIAC to the woman's case in June. That month, detention officials denied the woman access to her medical records, saying the documents were confidential and she had no safe place to keep them, according to the lawsuit. Dora Schriro, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's detention adviser at the time, told FIAC on Aug. 27 that the woman would be examined by a surgeon and that any treatment the doctor recommended would be immediately authorized, according to the lawsuit. The woman was examined Sept. 2 and the doctor recommended surgery "as soon as possible," according to the lawsuit states. But the surgery was not scheduled. On Nov. 19, U.S. District Judge John E. Steele ordered ICE and detention center staff to provide the medically recommended treatment "without further delay." The woman was admitted to a hospital on Nov. 30 and had surgery the next day. Earlier this year, FIAC and Human Rights Watch issued separate reports concluding that U.S. immigration authorities routinely delay, deny or botch medical care for detained immigrants in poorly equipped facilities nationwide. The reports blamed the problems on unskilled or indifferent staff, overcrowding, bureaucratic red tape, language barriers and limited services available to ICE detainees. "This case shows that seriously ill detainees like Rosemarie simply should not be detained pending resolution of their civil, immigration cases," Galloni said. In October, Napolitano and ICE director John Morton said providing "sound medical care" was one of the core principles guiding efforts to overhaul the detention system. Within six months, ICE would implement a medical classification system to support detainees with "unique medical or mental health needs," officials said.
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It's time to help Haiti - Miami Herald Editorial	June 23, 2009 Printable version
The Editor
OUR OPINION: Donors who pledged $300 million in aid must deliver on promises As of last week, when Haitian Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis visited Miami and this editorial board, Haiti still had not received a penny of the $300 million in hurricane aid promised to the storm-ravaged island by the international community at a donors conference in April. This is an unacceptably slow response to Haiti's critical needs. With June almost over, the most dangerous part of the hurricane season will soon be upon us. If aid is not received soon, it will be too late to prevent a repetition of the series of disasters that occurred last year when Haiti was hit by four consecutive storms within a matter of weeks, inflicting death, misery and enormous economic damage. Haiti has barely begun to recover from the trauma of last year's punishing storms, but its needs are vast and its resources are scant. Without international help it cannot reasonably hope to be ready for this year's Caribbean storms, which strike with regularity at this time of year on Hispaniola and other islands in Hurricane Alley. Ms. Pierre-Louis rightly expressed frustration with the international community's failure to deliver on its promises. This is not just about building up the nation's infrastructure, but about enabling Haiti to make reasonable plans for a viable economic future. It's time for the donors to pony up. A promise made should be a promise delivered, particularly for a country where the needs are great and millions live in poverty. Meanwhile, five U.S. members of Congress from South Florida made a worthwhile trip to Haiti on Monday to underscore the need for the United States to grant temporary protected status to Haitians already in this country. It makes no sense whatsoever for this country to be offering aid and economic support for Haiti and at the same time deporting Haitians who don't meet the proper immigration requirements. These are the very people whose money transfers to friends and family on the island provide the most direct source of aid. They should remain here while Haiti rebuilds. Here, they can work and help family back home. In Haiti they would only add to the ranks of the needy.
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South Florida lawmakers call for granting special status to Haiti - Miami Herald	June 23, 2009 Printable version
Jacqueline Charles
A bipartisan group of South Florida congressional lawmakers reiterate a call to the Obama administration to grant Temporary Protected Status to Haiti after a visit to the country. While progress is being made in a hurricane-ravaged Haiti, the country remains in need of assistance, including temporary relief from deportation for thousands of undocumented Haitians living in the United States, a South Florida congressional delegation said Monday after a day-long visit to the Caribbean nation. Led by Miami Democrat Kendrick Meek, the group met with President René Préval, key Haitian business leaders, U.S. embassy personnel and U.S. Coast Guard officials. It included Weston Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz, along with Republicans Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart. ''There are so many wonderful things that are happening in Haiti,'' said Ros-Lehtinen, who highlighted the University of Miami's Project Medishare Program that is training Haitian doctors and health professionals in the country. ''There's a lot that we can do. There's a lot that we can do together. Haiti's problems must be paid attention to. We can be part of that solution,'' said Ros-Lehtinen, ranking minority member of the foreign affairs committee. REVISING WARNINGS Lincoln Diaz-Balart said in addition to granting an estimated 30,000 Haitians Temporary Protected Status, the Obama administration can further help Haiti by revising the State Department's travel warning to American citizens. Haitians and U.S. business owners have long complained that the travel warning is an impediment to attracting critical investments to the country. ''It's a beautiful country, Haiti, with an extraordinary history and one of the ways in which they are going to lift themselves up from poverty is with tourism,'' he said. ``I would urge and I will, the Obama administration, the State Department to review that policy because security -- the lack of security that has been at the cause of the warning to U.S. tourists -- has been improved. The [Haitian] government has made tremendous strides in improving security.'' The brief, but historic visit from the South Florida delegation came a day after Haiti held runoff elections for 11 out of 12 vacant Senate seats. It also came two days after Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis ended her first official visit to South Florida where she called on Haitians in the Diaspora to invest in their homeland despite its difficulties. Delegation members said they discussed a myriad of issues during their visit, including the need for TPS, the 11,000 jobs created under a U.S.-congressional back HOPE II legislation and the efforts of the U.S. Coast Guard in curtailing illegal smuggling operations. Wasserman Schultz said after visiting the U.S. Embassy, she wants to assure Haitians that there is a legal way to migrate and that the waiting time has now been seriously reduced. The one disappointment, Wasserman Schultz said, was Sunday's low voter turnout for the elections. ''The political strife that seems to have existed in Haiti for quite some time, still seems to exist. That appears to be a major obstacle to Haiti's progress. It's one thing for us to be able to provide aid and to pass wonderful legislation like the HOPE legislation . . . but if Haiti isn't able to get their political act together, then it's sort of gotta get out of its own way first before others around the world will be able to effectively help them,'' she said. ``That is the message we brought to President Préval and the leadership.'' Meek, who shares the concerns, said at the same time he was happy Haiti's long-delayed senate elections took place. They are critical, he said, for the country to move forward and get the international assistance it needs. CALL FOR INQUIRY Meek also said he plans to ask for the appropriate Haitian authorities to look into the death of a mourner attending Haitian community activist Gérard Jean-Juste's funeral last week in Port-au-Prince. Peacekeepers with the U.N. Stabilization mission in Haiti, known by the French acronym MINUSTAH, are accused of firing into the crowd and killing a mourner. South Florida activists have asked Meek to demand answers. ''It's an international issue because the U.N. was involved . . . but I think it's very, very important for the future of security and also relations between MINUSTAH and the Haitian people that there is some conclusive evidence to show what really happened,'' Meek said.
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The illegal vs. the hospital - Palm Beach Post Editorial	June 21, 2009 Printable version
The Editor
Nine years ago, a drunken driver sent an illegal immigrant to Martin Memorial Medical Center, where he ran up more than $1 million in bills. Today, Luis Jimenez, a former landscape worker who was left with the IQ of a 10-year-old, lives with his mother in a Guatemalan village. Meanwhile, doctors and lawyers in Florida are preparing for a three-week trial - set to begin Tuesday in Stuart - that will highlight holes in and raise questions about U.S. immigration and health-care policies. Mr. Jimenez' legal guardian, Montejo Gaspar Montejo of Indiantown, alleges that Martin Memorial administrators falsely imprisoned Mr. Jimenez when they put him on a plane - against Mr. Montejo's wishes - and returned him to Guatemala because they no longer wanted to pay for his care. The hospital, which had a court order allowing the transfer, denies the allegation, saying that treatment close to family was better for Mr. Jimenez. Mr. Jimenez spent three years at Martin Memorial, far longer than he needed to, but the hospital had nowhere to send him. As an undocumented immigrant who had no insurance and was ineligible for Medicaid, he couldn't pay a rehabilitation facility. Martin Memorial, like all providers that receive Medicare and Medicaid payments, can, under federal guidelines, discharge patients only to a facility that will provide the next level of appropriate care. So the hospital asked a circuit court judge for permission to move Mr. Jimenez to a hospital in Guatemala. In June 2003, the judge agreed. In May 2004, the 4th District Court of Appeal overturned that decision, ruling that the judge had no authority to order what amounted to a deportation. But Martin Memorial had sent Mr. Jimenez out of the country. Just as Mr. Montejo had predicted, that hospital kicked him out when he couldn't pay. As did the next hospital. Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, said the hospital was right. "We don't have an uninsured crisis. We have an immigration crisis," said Mr. Krikorian, noting that one-third of the 47 million uninsured in the U.S. are immigrants. "The long-term goal has to be reducing immigration of people who are going to end up in a hospital unable to pay. We need less legal immigration and better enforcement against illegal immigration." However, a 2005 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that while immigrants comprised 10 percent of the U.S. population, they accounted for only 8 percent of U.S. health-care costs. According to the study, the primary reason immigrants use the health-care system less is lack of insurance. Susana Barciela, policy director for the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, said the current system forces hospitals to absorb the costs of treating illegal immigrants and make decisions outside their purview. "What we need is an immigration system that works for this country, not against it," she said. "You've got to have immigration reform to legalize the people who are here, so you don't have this problem." This case will highlight two of this country's biggest unresolved problems. Whatever the result in court, the solutions to those problems must come from Washington. Find this article at: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/search/content/opinion/epaper/2009/06/21/a20a_leadedit_martinmem_0621.html
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Wage theft victims fight for rights - NPR-Marketplace	May 18, 2009 Printable version
Dan Grech
Click here to listen to this Marketplace report on NPR. Kai Ryssdal: Everybody tries to save money in a recession. That's kind of a given. It's one thing, though, if consumers cut back on their weekly expenses. It's entirely another when employers intentionally shortchange their workers. That's known as wage theft. And it's on the rise. From the Americas Desk at WLRN in Miami, Marketplace's Dan Grech reports. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DAN GRECH: Housekeeper Silvia Cubides worked long days cleaning some of Miami's toniest hotels: the Mandarin Oriental, the Intercontinental, the Four Seasons. She says her employer, Niagara Cleaning Services, had a policy against paying time-and-a-half for overtime. Such a policy would violate federal wage and hour laws. But Cubides says she learned that only after nearly two years of work. SILVIA CUBIDES: I felt exploited. In every aspect. They mistreated all us, verbally and in our paychecks. I would work 90 hours, and they would pay me for 60 or 70. If you brought it up, they got angry. Wage theft can mean shaved hours, withheld tips or pay below the minimum wage. It's estimated to cost American workers $10 billion a year in lost wages. Attorney Jennifer Hill is with the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. She says wage theft can be found across industries and income classes. But it's often most egregious in low-wage work, such as construction, food service and farming. JENNIFER HILL: It's a business model. It's a business model of taking advantage of vulnerable people who don't necessarily know their rights, don't necessarily have a lot of options, and even if they're confronted with the problem, they don't know how to solve it. The Department of Labor is supposed to punish employers who violate federal wage and hour laws. But a recent audit by the Government Accountability Office found the department ineffective. GAO official Gregory Kutz says complaints made to the Labor Department weren't followed up. GREGORY KUTZ: We made over 100 calls, and in many cases the calls weren't returned, they went right to voice mail. And really only one of the 10 undercover calls we made we believe was properly investigated. In this undercover call, a fictitious complainant says his employer refuses to pay him, and he asks for the Labor Department's help. EMPLOYEE: So you really have no power to do anything? All you did was call and ask her to pay me. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR: I explained the law to her. She knows that she needs to pay you. She just says she doesn't have the money to. I can't wring blood from a stone. The new Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, has promised a crackdown on wage theft. Shelby Hallmark is an acting assistant secretary in the Department of Labor. SHELBY HALLMARK: This administration wants to make sure that there will be an emphasis on finding those violations and doing something about them. Secretary Solis says she's hiring nearly 500 new investigators and support workers, increasing the staff by more than a third. Kim Bobo heads Interfaith Worker Justice and is author of "Wage Theft in America." KIM BOBO: The problem is, she's facing the wild wild West of wage theft. There are employers that have been allowed to run amok for a decade and perhaps longer. And she's got a mess to clean up. Bobo says undocumented immigrants are the most vulnerable, because they're the least likely to speak up when an employer rips them off. Silvia Cubides, the housekeeper who complained of not being paid overtime, is undocumented. But she went ahead with a lawsuit against Niagara Cleaning Services, claiming $10,000 in back pay. CUBIDES: I feel I am a warrior. I am not afraid. I fight for my ideals and to help others. When I start something, I take the fight to the end. Niagara Cleaning Services' lawyer, Michael Pancier, declined to be interviewed on air. Pancier said the company has payroll records that show it routinely pays OT. Still, he says it's often cheaper to settle than to fight in court. Niagara agreed to pay Cubides what she said the company owed. Since her lawsuit, six other Niagara workers followed with a case of their own. In Miami, I'm Dan Grech for Marketplace.
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Haitian Activists Urge President Obama To Do More - CBS 4	May 14, 2009 Printable version
Jim DeFede
Click here to view the video report. A day after nine Haitians drowned while trying to make it to the United States, Haitian-American activists said they were frustrated the Obama Administration hadn't done more to help Haiti and they called on the President to make good on his campaign promise to allow Haitians who make it to the United States to remain. "We are truly disappointed by the slowness of the process," said Marlene Bastien, one of the leading Haitian activists in South Florida. "We believe that one of President Obama's first acts would have been to sign the executive order to give TPS for Haitians." TPS – or Temporary Protected Status – would allow Haitians to remain in the country until the crisis in their country lessens. Currently the United States grants TPS to refugees from Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras because of earlier incidents of civil unrest and natural disasters in those countries. But Haitian activists correctly point out that Haiti – which suffered four major hurricanes last year alone – is in far worse shape than any of the current countries that the United States recognizes for TPS status. Additionally, they note, Cubans are automatically granted residency as soon as they set foot on American soil. "Despite rallies, letter campaigns, email campaigns, we're still waiting," Bastien said. "The wait has been too long. So our message to our president is the time is now." Lucie Tondreau, another Haitian activist, vowed Haitians would take to the streets to demand change in the coming days. "At this point the Haitian-American community is in shock with what happened yesterday," she said. "They are getting their thoughts together and they will be taking to the streets to denounce the inequity that has been in the United States for the past 60 years." But the debate over TPS is of little comfort to the 16 Haitians who survived the perilous journey and were rescued at sea. Five are in local hospitals and the remaining eleven are being held on a Coast Guard cutter waiting to be returned to Haiti. Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, said the best chance those Haitians have of not being sent back is if the federal government classifies them as witness to a crime. Coast Guard officials have said they believe the Haitians were brought here as part of a smuggling operation. "If U.S. government officials have any reason to suspect that this was a smuggling operation, then the Haitians on board that boat should be brought to the United States because there is no way they are going to get really good reliable information on board a Coast Guard cutter in the middle of the sea," Little said. "It's just not going to happen. I'm sure these people are terrified. The victims of the smuggling operation I'm sure are terrified. So the only way to do it is to bring them to dry land, give them access to attorneys, and then let the investigation move forward." In the meantime, Little has asked federal authorities to allow her agency to send its attorneys to the cutter to meet with the Haitians. So far, their request has been denied. (© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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9 Die as Haitian Immigrants' Boat Sinks - NY Times	May 13, 2009 Printable version
Damien Cave
MIAMI — The Coast Guard pulled 27 people out of the waters off Boynton Beach on Wednesday, at least 9 of them dead, after a boat packed with Haitian immigrants capsized and sank. Survivors told rescuers that the boat flipped around 2 a.m., but it was not discovered until 10 hours later, when a person passing by in a boat called the Coast Guard to say he had fished three people out of the water about 15 miles offshore. He said dozens of others were in need of help. Petty Officer Barry Bena, a Coast Guard spokesman, said the group included men and women, mostly from Haiti, with a few from the Bahamas. Later reports from the Coast Guard said children and a pregnant woman were among the passengers. They appeared to be trying to reach the United States from Bimini in the Bahamas. In late springtime, the waters off Florida are more calm, and many migrants use the Bahamas as a jumping off point for Florida. But details on their identities, time of departure or what led the boat to capsizing were not known Wednesday night. “We have not located any vessel,” Petty Officer Bena said. “We’re only getting information from people who were on it.” Coast Guard officials said the rescue effort was among the largest in recent years. It included two large Coast Guard boats from Lake Worth, Fla., along with two HH-65 helicopters and an HU-25 Falcon jet from Miami. At least five people were flown from the scene to area hospitals. An ad hoc trauma center, complete with a portable morgue, was set up at Phil Foster Park along the Intercoastal Waterway in Riviera Beach. Around 7:30 p.m., several paramedic trucks surrounded a mobile command unit and officials from local police agencies, Customs and Border Control and other law enforcement agencies milled about, as a Coast Guard ship returned with survivors and the dead bodies in silver bags. “It makes you wonder what people go through to get here,” said Betty Moore, 49, who works at a drug treatment center overlooking the park. “For people to go through such extremes, there must be something horrible going on in their home country.” Indeed, the incident promises to renew debate over immigration policy for Haitians. Haiti has long been the poorest country in the hemisphere, and it is still reeling from storms that killed an estimated 1,000 people last year and led to food shortages. Since the fiscal year started in October, the Coast Guard said it has apprehended 1,377 Haitian immigrants, up from 972 in the same seven-month period last year. In March, the Department of Homeland Security said it would continue deporting illegal Haitian immigrants, despite appeals by the Haitian government, which said returnees could destabilize a country where food, water and housing are scarce. Cheryl Little, a lawyer with the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, said the roughly 30,000 Haitians currently facing deportation — a group Wednesday’s survivors are likely to join — should be allowed to stay in the United States until the situation in Haiti improves. “What we’re encouraging our government to do is grant some kind of temporary legal status to Haitians already here,” Ms. Little said, “so they can have work permits, and be able to send desperately needed money to their loved ones in Haiti.” Carmen Gentile contributed reporting from Riviera Beach, Fla.
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Annual immigration reform rally educates residents in Fort Pierce - TC Palm	May 1, 2009 Printable version
Susan Burgess
FORT PIERCE — Teresa Pulido, 29, sat in a windy Rotary Park picnic pavilion with her 3-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter Friday evening hoping to learn something from one of the speakers who would help her husband, deported to Mexico in 2005, return to the United States. Between speakers from the Latino-American Coalition during their annual rally for immigration reform, she read over the draft of a letter she was writing to President Barack Obama, asking for his help in changing current immigration law. One of her reasons for attending was to find someone who could help her improve her letter. Born in California, Teresa and her children are U.S. citizens. Her husband, who had his seven-year permit to live and work in the U.S., had had a minor skirmish with the law that resulted in his deportation. “I miss my husband so much,” she said. “He’s a wonderful husband and father, and the children miss him so much too. I am thinking of going to Mexico just to be with him, but I am afraid for our safety there. I don’t know what to do.” Afterward she sought help from Angelina Castro, an attorney who is the director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center on Virginia Avenue in Fort Pierce. “We need to keep families together,” Castro said. “It is good for the people, good for the economy and good for America not to have families separated.” Castro talked to the crowd of about 75 about what they could do to speed immigration reform and learn the status of bills now making their way through the Senate and House. The DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) would allow perhaps 3.5 million children age 15 or younger who had been in the United States most of their lives to eventually obtain citizenship regardless of the immigration status of their parents. The children would have to either attend college or serve in the military, under the Senate version of the bill. “Educators want to see the children of immigrant parents going to school and giving back to America,” Castro said. In the shadowy world of illegal immigrants, parents are afraid to take their children to school because they cannot get driver’s licenses, and if they are pulled over, they’ll be deported, said Irma Cabriales, president of the Latino-American Coalition. “Employers sometimes don’t pay even after people have put in three weeks of work because they know the employee will be afraid to make a complaint,” she said. “The IRS gives these immigrants illegal alien numbers so they can pay taxes, and they do, so they are contributing to the U.S. economy. They just want to be paid the same and pay the same taxes as everyone else and have a chance to become citizens.”
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White House May Alter Haitian Immigrant Policy - NPR	April 24, 2009 Printable version
Morning Edition - Renee Montagne & Greg Allen
National Public Radio Morning Edition April 24, 2009 Edition: 10:00-11:00 AM Click here to listen to the NPR report. RENEE MONTAGNE, host: Now that the Obama administration has said it will allow Cuban Americans to visit Cuba freely, there are signs the administration may soon change U.S. policy toward illegal immigrants from Haiti. The Haitian community here says it’s hopeful there will be at least a temporary stop in deportations. From Miami, NPR’s Greg Allen reports. GREG ALLEN: Among Haitians in south Florida, it’s just called TPS. That’s short for temporary protected status, a designation that halts deportations. It’s been granted to immigrants from many nations in the past, including Hondurans, Nicaraguans and Salvadorans, after natural disasters in their countries. Haitian Americans and immigrant rights groups have fought for five years to have it extended to Haitians. That effort gained new urgency last fall after four hurricanes and tropical storms battered Haiti, destroying hundreds of thousands of homes and wiping out most of the nation’s food crops. Marlene Bastien of Haitian Women of Miami says seven months later, the island nation is still reeling. Ms. MARLENE BASTIEN (Haitian Women of Miami): As we speak today, we have villages that are starving. We have children who are dying - basically dying of hunger. And we have diseases, you know, are spreading, are rampant in some areas. ALLEN: When Barack Obama took office in January, Haitian American and immigrant rights groups immediately began pressing the new administration to change the policy on deportations. The first sign that things had changed came in early February, when at the last minute, a Haitian woman had her deportation delayed. Fialene(ph) Jean Paul had been in the U.S. for 17 years and was being forced to decide whether to leave behind her 7-year-old daughter, a U.S. citizen, or take the girl back to the storm-ravaged country. Shortly afterward, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department said they were reviewing Haitian immigration policy. In a recent interview with the Miami Herald, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the review would not change the policy of intercepting and returning Haitian migrants trying to reach the U.S. by sea. But she suggested that the Obama administration is not interested in deporting Haitians who are working in the U.S., and who are sending money back to their home country. Secretary HILLARY CLINTON (State Department): We know what a great source of income the remittances are that flow from, not just the United States, but principally the United States, back to Haiti. And we also know what a tremendous burden it would be on Haiti if all of a sudden, they were forced to accommodate thousands of people who were otherwise working in our country. ALLEN: Privately, those familiar with the situation say they’ve already seen a change in how Haitians are being handled by federal immigration authorities. As an example, they say that more Haitians who are charged with immigration violations are being released than they’ve seen in years. Cheryl Little, with the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, has discussed the policy review with top Obama officials and calls herself very encouraged. There are currently more than 30,000 Haitians facing deportation. In immigration terms, those aren’t big numbers, but giving them temporary protected status, Little says, would make a big differences. Ms. CHERYL LITTLE (Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center): Those Haitians would be able to get work permits, reside here legally in a temporary basis, move on with their lives. I mean, right now, Haitians in our community are deathly afraid that they’re going to be sent back. You could face homelessness. You’ll have nothing to eat. And in the worst-case scenario, I think your life - your very life could be at risk. ALLEN: To advocate for a change in the policy, Haitian American groups are planning to bring busloads of activists to Washington next month. Haitian Women of Miami leader Marlene Bastien says if there’s a positive change in U.S. policy before that, instead of protesting, she’ll be dancing in the streets. Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami. MONTAGNE: This is NPR News. Copyright ©2009 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission. For further information, please contact NPR's Permissions Coordinator at (202) 513-2030. Record Number: 200904241105
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College Board steps into the immigration debate - LA Times	April 22, 2009 Printable version
Ben Myerson
Trustees of the association that administers the SAT vote to support the Dream Act, which would offer some undocumented youths a path to citizenship through college or the military. Reporting from Washington -- The College Board is supporting legislation that would offer some undocumented youths a path to citizenship through college or the military. The association best known for the SAT and AP tests it administers is stepping into the contentious issue for the first time, just as President Obama is signaling that he may encourage lawmakers to overhaul immigration laws this year. The board's trustees have voted unanimously to support the legislation, known as the Dream Act. "These are students who have gone through our K-12 system and have achieved in a very high manner," said James Montoya, a vice president of the College Board. But Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said the Dream Act allows illegal immigrants to take scholarship opportunities away from native U.S. residents. It's unfair, he said, to reward those who violated the law to get to this country. "If you ask any illegal alien why they came to America, the answer, invariably is, 'Well, I wanted to do better for my family,' and this gives them precisely what they broke the law to achieve," Mehlman said. The bill would allow students who illegally entered the U.S. when they were 15 or younger to apply for conditional legal resident status if they have lived in the country for five or more years and graduated from high school or received a GED. If they attended college or served in the military for two or more years, they could be granted citizenship. Conditional legal status could make the immigrants eligible for in-state college tuition, depending on local laws, and would allow them to compete for some forms of federal financial assistance. A 2007 UCLA report estimated that 65,000 undocumented students graduate from U.S. high schools every year. The Senate voted on the Dream Act in 2007, winning a majority but lacking the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster. The measure was then folded into more comprehensive immigration legislation, which died. It was reintroduced in the House and Senate last month. California is one of 10 states that currently provide in-state tuition to certain undocumented students and other non-residents who attended California high schools. bmeyerson@tribune.com Times staff writer Gale Holland contributed to this report.
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Time to Deal with Haiti - Foreign Policy In Focus Commentary	April 21, 2009 Printable version
Paul Farmer and Brian Concannon
Editor: Emira Woods and Emily Schwartz Greco When President Barack Obama went to Trinidad for the Summit of Americas, he brought the promise of "change" to a Latin America policy that has brought suffering to our neighbors while reducing U.S. influence and moral standing in the hemisphere. Change would be especially welcome to Haitians, who have suffered their usual unfair share of political and economic instability from these policies. But Haitians are still waiting to see whether the promised change will extend beyond ending the illegal and destructive policies of the last eight years, and include a shift away from U.S. policies that have failed both our oldest neighbor and our highest ideals for over two centuries. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a down-payment on the promise of change shortly before the summit. Speaking at the Haiti Donors' Conference at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Washington, Clinton pledged $50 million in aid to Haiti, including $20 million to cover Haiti's expected 2009 debt service to the IDB and the World Bank. The debt relief measure rights a longstanding wrong: Over half of the loans Haiti is repaying were given to prop up dictators friendly to the U.S. but brutal to their citizens. Until recently, Haiti was repaying these loans at a clip of $1 million a week, diverting funds from urgent priorities like health care, education, and economic development. This money isn't in the bank yet. The aid package needs congressional approval, and if Haiti is unable to jump through all the hoops of the World Bank's debt relief program by June, its debt service this year will increase. But the announcement itself is a welcome departure from the Bush administration's policies. Bush's Approach In 2001, the Bush administration imposed a development assistance embargo on Haiti because it didn't like the economic policies of Haiti's democratically elected government. The embargo stopped urgently needed government programs — a Partners In Health study found that canceling IDB water projects in just one city (Port de Paix) had a devastating impact on health in the area. In 2004, U.S. officials forced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide aboard a clandestine flight to Africa and placed a Bush supporter from Florida at the head of Haiti's government. Thousands were killed in the ensuing political violence. Years of hard-won progress toward democracy were erased overnight. But U.S. mistreatment of Haiti started much earlier. As soon as Haiti became independent in 1804, we refused to even recognize the new republic run by former slaves who fought to emancipate their island. In 1915, the United States invaded Haiti to ensure repayment of a debt to the First National Bank of New York (now Citibank) and stayed until 1934 — this was the longest Marine occupation ever in the Americas. Democrats and Republicans propped up ruthless dictators in the name of fighting communism. In the 1980s, the United States decimated Haiti's agricultural base by forcing subsidized U.S. rice on Haitian markets. These policies failed Haitians terribly. They cost thousands of lives lost in political violence. Millions more suffered because Haiti's governments couldn't or wouldn't provide clean water and basic healthcare. The policies have also failed the United States by requiring us to mount expensive military interventions, respond to repeated waves of refugees, and deal with the drugs that transit easily through an underdeveloped Haiti on their way from South America. Haitians' hopes for better treatment from the United States are grounded not just in Obama's promise, but in their own country's brief but successful experiment with democracy from 1994 to 2004, and in the strategic U.S. policies that contributed to that success. Haiti's democratic interlude showed that democracy does work, even in difficult situations. The period did have contested elections and the government struggled to provide basic justice, education, and health care — the predictable challenges of a poor, emerging democracy. But that interlude also included Haiti's first transfer of power from one elected president to another in February 1996, and the second successful transition in February 2001. Democratic progress included extending AIDS retroviral therapy to rural areas that had never before had a simple clinic. It included two historic trials that brought powerful figures from Haiti's former army and current police force to justice, showing the power and potential of an independent judiciary. These successes were due, in part, to U.S. government efforts. U.S. troops intervened to restore the constitutional government in 1994. USAID helped craft Haiti's successful application for financing from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. U.S. judges, prosecutors and police officers trained their Haitian counterparts, and also brought basic legal resources and materials into Haitian courts. Historic Opportunity Obama now has a historic opportunity to build a stronger, more prosperous Haiti. "Shovel-ready" policies could make an immediate impact. The Obama administration could grant Haiti's request for Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, a special immigration status that allows visitors from fragile countries to remain in the United States and work after their visas have expired. This would allow the 30,000 Haitians with final deportation orders to stay here and send money home to their relatives in Haiti. Obama could facilitate Aristide's return — he's still exiled in South Africa and remains the country's most popular political figure, hastening the return of normalcy to Haitian politics. In the long run, the United States will need to persistently invest in Haiti's democracy. Money is notoriously short these days, but Haiti's small scale makes it a relative bargain: Three days' spending in Iraq or two weeks' interest on the U.S. bank bailout could fund Haiti's entire government for a year. Prudent, depoliticized investments in Haiti's democracy will yield dividends of prosperity and stability to Haiti, and will save U.S. taxpayer dollars in the long run by reducing the flow of refugees and drugs to our shores. Perhaps most importantly, by helping rebuild a better Haiti, the United States can recover our lost prestige and influence and demonstrate to all of Latin America that we are ready to be a good neighbor. Paul Farmer, MD, is Presley professor of social medicine at Harvard Medical School and a co-founder of Partners In Health; Brian Concannon Jr. is director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. They are Foreign Policy In Focus contributors. ________________________________________ Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, online at www.ips-dc.org). Copyright © 2009, Institute for Policy Studies. Recommended citation: Paul Farmer and Brian Concannon, "Time to Deal with Haiti," (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, April 21, 2009). Web location: http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/6062
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Haitians worthy of temporary protected status - San Francisco Chronicle Editorial	April 20, 2009 Printable version
The Obama administration needs to reassess U.S. policy toward refugees from Haiti. Good fortune rarely comes to this impoverished island nation. For years, it has been the poorest country in our hemisphere and one of the poorest countries in the world. Last year's food riots left the government teetering on the edge - and then the country was swamped by four devastating tropical storms. The storms left some 1 million people homeless and caused about $1 billion worth of damage, about 15 percent of Haiti's GDP. One of the few bright spots for Haitians are the remittances they receive from their brethren who work in the United States. These remittances provide the country with about one-fourth of its GDP and prevent countless families from succumbing to starvation. Unfortunately, America's policy has been to deport undocumented Haitians back to this devastated country. There are an estimated 30,000 Haitians in the deportation pipeline right now - unless the Obama administration does the only sensible thing, which is to offer them temporary protected status in this country. Offering TPS to these Haitians would be a protective measure for both countries. For Haiti, it would ensure that the country continues to have access to those crucial remittances. For the United States, we are helping to prevent not just abject suffering but also the grave possibility of a failed, chaotic state close to our borders. That's why all 13 commissioners for Miami-Dade County - the single area of the country that will be most affected by this change - unanimously support offering the Haitians temporary protected status. One of the most powerful arguments against offering temporary protected status to Haitians is that, in practice, there's nothing "temporary" about it. Nationals from Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and other countries who received the designation many years ago have had their status extended over and over again. Once you offer the status to a group of foreigners, they tend to become permanent residents. But this fact makes the Haitians' case less about immigration and more about fairness. If immigrants from Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador - all countries that have done better in recent years than Haiti - if these immigrants are worthy of temporary protected status, then why not Haitians? The Bush administration consistently failed to answer this question, resuming deportations mere months after the storms passed. Fortunately, it seems as if the Obama administration is more sensible. Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the Haiti policy is "under review" and that she understood not just the importance of remittances but also "what a tremendous burden it would be on Haiti" to be forced to accommodate an influx of newly homeless deportees. Haitian advocates in the United States were ecstatic, and so are we. Temporary protected status is only offered to immigrants who are already in this country and who have no criminal record. It's not just the humane choice - it's the smart one for strengthening U.S. influence in the region. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/20/EDCI173PHU.DTL This article appeared on page A - 10 of the San Francisco Chronicle © 2009 Hearst Communications Inc. | Privacy Policy | Feedback | RSS Feeds | FAQ | Site Index | Contact
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Protection for Haitians - America The National Catholic Weekly	April 20, 2009 Printable version
The Editors
Thirty thousand Haitians in Florida face deportation back to the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. The United States should grant them temporary protected status—which allows people from a designated nation to reside here legally and qualify for work authorization—until the country recovers from four back-to-back hurricanes and tropical storms that ravaged it last summer. These killed 800 people and left nearly one million homeless, with crops wiped out and an estimated $1 billion in damages. Increased costs for food and fuel led to riots a year ago. For children, the consequences have been especially dire. Many eat so-called mud cookies, made from dirt, salt and vegetable shortening. According to Unicef, Haiti has the highest rates in the Western Hemisphere of mortality of infants, children under 5 and mothers. Suspending the deportations, moreover, would allow remittances to continue to flow from Haitians in the United States. Remittances account for approximately a quarter of Haiti’s gross domestic product. After the storms, Haitian president René Préval asked President George W. Bush to grant temporary protected status. Congress approved this in 1990 for foreign nationals fleeing in the wake of civil war and natural disasters like Hurricane Mitch in 2004. Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador have all received regular 18-month increments of this status, and now Haiti should receive it too. Writing on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Francis George said in a letter to President Bush dated Oct. 8, 2008, that “Haiti meets the standards of T.P.S. because it had experienced political turmoil, four natural disasters and severe food shortages in the previous eight months alone.” The letter also pointed out that conditions there were comparable to or worse than those in countries that received the designation. In mid-March the cardinal wrote again, calling temporary protected status “a mantle of protection...the United States can make toward alleviating the suffering of the Haitian people.” Fears that granting T.P.S. would bring a large exodus from Haiti to U.S. shores are groundless. It would be available only to people who are already here. Nevertheless, the former Homeland Security Department secretary, Michael Chertoff, denied Mr. Préval’s request, and the new secretary, Janet Napolitano, has not addressed the Haitian deportation issue apart from a Feb. 25 letter from the department’s director of policy, Susan Cullen, stating that the department planned “to continue to coordinate the removal of Haitian nationals to Haiti.” Deportations also lead to the breakup of families. One recent example concerns a 35-year-old undocumented Haitian mother, Vialine Jean Paul. She married a U.S. citizen in the United States and had a child who, being born here, is also a U.S. citizen. The case is on appeal. Family breakup has long been a major concern of the U.S.C.C.B. and is a major motivation for immigrant advocates’ efforts toward comprehensive immigration reform. Over the past decades, people on Haiti’s neighbor island, Cuba, received far more generous treatment from the United States. Through a lottery program, 20,000 Cubans receive visas annually to emigrate here through the Special Cuban Migration Program of 1994. Other Cubans who manage to reach U.S. shores by sea can remain if they touch land—the so-called wet foot, dry foot policy. Once on U.S. soil, Cubans are automatically eligible for asylum. By contrast, the policy toward Haiti has been harsh, marked by mandatory detention and lack of access to counsel. There is a double standard, with Haitians treated as economic migrants and generally deported back home in a blatantly exclusionary manner. Cheryl Little, an attorney who is executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, told America that the inequity “represents the two extremes of our immigration policy.” She added, “I don’t know of any other group that has been singled out for discriminatory treatment decade after decade.” To its credit, Canada has imposed a moratorium on the deportation of Haitians. So far, Haiti’s plight has not appeared on Mr. Obama’s radar screen. Until it does, members of families like Ms. Jean Paul’s will continue to face separation. Temporary protected status is the humane way to prevent deportations that would not only unravel family bonds but would also create an influx of Haitians back into a desperately poor country that even before the four disastrous storms of last year was unable to provide basic food and shelter for its people. The new administration ought to show its humanitarian side by granting Haiti temporary protected status, sparing Haitians in the United States from deportation back to a country ill-prepared to receive them.
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Heightened security at U.S.-Canada border catching few terror suspects - Seattle Post-Intelligencer	April 19, 2009 Printable version
Nadja Drost
Agent calls it 'immigration dumpster diving' HEARST NEWSPAPERS ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- Two Border Patrol agents board a bus in upstate New York, asking everyone "What's your nationality?" Prove you're allowed to be here. A canine barks at a knapsack. Its owner is a legal Chinese refugee with fear in her eyes. Border Patrol agents have found her with a marijuana cigarette. Hours later, she's still being detained. This is the face today of the U.S. Border Patrol in the North. Operating up to 100 miles from Canada with a federal mandate to catch terrorists, agents now crouch in the Vermont snow, ride horseback in Montana and patrol ferry terminals in Washington state. For thousands of working immigrant families, it is a frightening specter. Public data obtained by Hearst Newspapers show the U.S. government, despite a massive injection of resources and staff to guard against terrorists crossing the Canadian border, is mostly catching ordinary illegal immigrants -- creating a backlog of court cases and a flurry of protest from the public about random highway stops and bus or train inspections. "The muddling of counter-terrorism and immigration enforcement is the single biggest mistake we've made since 9/11," said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations. Nationwide, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has seen its budget almost double in the last 5 years to $11 billion in 2009. Prior to 9/11, there were 340 border patrol agents watching over 5,000 miles of border with Canada. Today, there are 1,530.Critics decry what is happening. "Don't tell me that putting more people on the ground is going to prevent terrorists from coming," said Randall Larsen, director of the Institute for Homeland Security and author of "Our Own Worst Enemy." Post 9/11 changes The CBP took on both border and immigration enforcement when it was created in 2003 under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. It includes both customs and inspections agents at ports of entry, and border patrol responsible for areas between those ports. The CBP's top goal: prevent terrorists and their weapons from entering the country, as well as illegal immigrants, criminals and drug smugglers. Following 9/11, the government looked northward toward the porous border with Canada, considered by CBP and FBI officials more vulnerable to terrorist infiltration than the southern border. Its immensity and terrain present a challenge."A person looking at the border thinks, 'How can you protect it?'" said Azel Price, public affairs officer for CBP's Buffalo sector. "You can't." Price said the CBP has increased intelligence, manpower and technology. It collaborates more with Canada. Air and Marine operations are more frequent. Motion sensors, remotely operated cameras and unmanned aerial vehicles detect crossings. "The first priority should be information and intelligence and it should be before anyone reaches the 49th parallel," said Frank Cilluffo, head of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University. John Pikus, Special Agent-in-Charge for the FBI's Albany division, which covers 400 miles of border south of Montreal, said increased intelligence and information-sharing has made the northern border safer since 9/11. That's the hidden face of border security. Visible are the border agents in olive uniforms. Northern illegal crossings are less than 1 percent of those on the southern border, leading critics to accuse the Border Patrol of overzealously targeting southbound immigrants who don't pose a threat to society. Border Patrol officials say train stations, airports and transportation hubs like the Rochester bus station along the Syracuse-Rochester-Buffalo corridor are productive because they are gateways for people traveling from New York to the Midwest. Last year, Rochester's Border Patrol station made 1,523 apprehensions, but 87 percent were for misdemeanors and only 0.05 percent led to successful criminal prosecutions. Azel Price, public affairs officer for CBP's Buffalo Sector, acknowledged that most apprehensions are of illegal immigrants. "If you look at our apprehensions, a small percentage have anything to with terrorism," Price said. A Hearst Newspapers analysis of records provided by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a public interest research group, found that of all the national security and terrorism charges filed in federal district courts along the northern border since 2001, only three were based on referrals made by CBP. In other words, there is scant record of northern border enforcement catching terrorists. That isn't to say the effort doesn't produce results. Steve Cribby, spokesperson for the Border Patrol, said border agents, as opposed to customs inspection agents, turn apprehensions over to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which can in turn lead an investigation or hand it over to another agency such as the FBI in cases of terrorism. Still, ICE referred only 16 such prosecutions since 2001. Officials at the FBI, Border Patrol and ICE say terror suspicion cases can easily originate with a referral or phone call from Border Patrol, but there are no records that indicate how often this may happen. An examination of all Department of Justice press releases since 9/11 revealed only one terrorism case in northern border states where CBP was credited assisting in the investigation. In fact, 90 percent of prosecutions filed by CBP last year were for ordinary immigration charges, mostly for violations such as re-entering the country following deportation or entering illegally. "They may be catching an impressive number of folks, but are they really catching the people that should be high on their priority list?" asked Wally Ruehle, director of the immigration program at Rochester's legal aid clinic. On Valentine's Day in New York, Chet Childers, 36, married Tetyana Tsymbal, 26, of Ukraine. Tsymbal's work visa had expired, and the couple wanted to wait until they arrived in Childers' native Washington to file her paperwork for permanent residency. But on their westbound Amtrak train three days after their wedding, border patrol agents boarded the train in Syracuse and took Tsymbal off the train. The next morning, she called her husband from the county jail. "That minute and 20 seconds was spent reassuring her that I would do everything I could to help her," said Childers four days later over the phone from Chicago. "That was the last time I talked to her." Tsymbal spent almost a week in jail until her husband paid a $5,000 bond. They are now in Washington awaiting her hearing in immigration court. Almost all cases seeking the court removal of a non-citizen go through immigration court, which is a central means for Border Patrol to deport unwanted immigrants. Agent: Most apprehensions "absurd" Data provided by TRAC showed that suspicion of a criminal violation -- which include those not normally thought of as 'criminal' such as re-entering following deportation -- was the reason to seek removal in only 16 percent of individuals charged in immigration courts along the northern border between 2004 and 2006. Only two out of over 75,000 charges were terrorism-related. Barbarah Brenner, an immigration attorney in Colonie, N.Y., questioned "the value of devoting scarce money and personnel to people who have simple immigration violations, meaning they have no criminal record." Groups who work with immigrants accuse the Border Patrol of targeting immigrants who have come here to work and lead a commendable life. Cribby, at Border Patrol's national office, said that is untrue. "Our intention is to stop any type of illegal entry between the ports of entry." But a Border Patrol agent in upstate New York who did not want his name used due to concern he could lose his job said most of the immigrants he apprehends haven't come over the border recently -- they are traveling domestically and have lived here for years in many cases. "We hold everyone; it's absurd," the agent said, adding Border Patrol in upstate New York commonly describe their work as "immigration Dumpster-diving." But other agents say it's worth it. "If through the whole year, we get one [terrorist], we've done our job," said Adrian Cotsworth, head of Rochester's Border Patrol Station. And if they don't, that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't being effective, agents said. It's difficult to measure how many people are deterred from trying to enter the country because of increased border patrol presence, they said. Olympic Peninsula In 1999, Ahmed Ressam boarded a ferry from British Columbia with a car trunk full of explosives meant to blow up Los Angeles International Airport. He was caught at a routine customs inspection when he docked in Port Angeles. "That person gives the reason or the excuse to do all of this," said Lisa Steiffert, an immigration attorney in Seattle. In 2008, Border Patrol started inland checkpoints on the highway joining the towns of Port Townsend, Forks and Port Angeles. Agents patrol the streets of Forks and Port Townsend and board buses to Seattle. Their presence on this bucolic corner of the country has grown from four agents in 2005 to 25. Needra Reed, the mayor of Forks, said Border Patrol activity has generated fear among legal and illegal immigrants alike. She said thousands of community members rallied unsuccessfully to save two teens who had lived in the U.S. almost their whole lives -- a high school valedictorian and the wrestling team's star -- from being deported to Mexico after they were stopped at a roadblock. Father Thomas Nathe has seen Sunday mass attendance at his Forks parish -- half of whose members are immigrants -- plummet when the checkpoints started because immigrants feared crossing streets to church. In parishes in nearby Port Angeles and Squim, undocumented immigrants share pews with the border agents they fear, separated by their opposing roles of fugitive and captor, but protected by their faith. "It creates for an interesting parish dynamic," said Nathe. Need said her American constituents find the checkpoints offensive. "This is America," she said. "This is not Poland or Russia where you have to be questioned six miles from the home where you live about your citizenship." The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that between February and December of 2008, the Border Patrol stopped 24,524 vehicles, and checked 1,912 people in those vehicles at 53 roadblocks on the Olympic Peninsula. The result: 81 undocumented immigrants and 19 people turned over to other agencies for state crimes. Ruffling the feathers of local police Late last year, Jeff Sullivan, U.S. Attorney in Seattle, told the Border Patrol to stop bringing cases of minor marijuana possession to his office that resulted from the roadblocks. Mike Brasfield, sheriff for Jefferson County, refused to accept the terms for generous funding under Border Patrol's "Operation Stonegarden," a $60 million program for local units of government in border states that requires them to detain and send illegal immigrants to Border Patrol. "If the Border Patrol really wants to stop illegal immigration or terrorists or drugs, they have 30 miles of open water to do that," said Brasfield. Brasfield called the checkpoints an "an inefficient use of an awful lot of human and financial resources" that have managed to arrest a handful migrant workers who pick the peninsula's native salal bush. "They're getting $60 million to keep terrorists out of the U.S. and they're using that 60 million to apprehend brush pickers," he said. The focus on immigration enforcement exacts a tremendous emotional price for families where some or all members lack legal status, say groups who work with immigrants. In Schenectady, N.Y., an Ecuadorian who has been in the United States for the last nine years saw his father deported after stopping at a Border Patrol checkpoint last year south of the border on the I-87 after making a delivery in Plattsburgh, N.Y., for a medical supplies company. His father had over-stayed a tourist visa by several years. "Our lives have changed 360 because it's so tough to be without him, and we have tons of bills," said the 22-year-old, who lives with his mother and two brothers. Half the family is here legally. Last year, Brian Brown-Cashdollar, executive director of VIVE, an organization in Buffalo that helps families emigrate to Canada, estimates his staff saw between 20 and 40 families apprehended by either Border Patrol or ICE while they were waiting for their appointments with immigration officials in Canada. "ICE decided at great taxpayer expense to detain them while they were in the process of voluntarily deporting themselves," said Brown-Cashdollar. "If you're applying for paperwork in Canada, it doesn't matter," said Cotsworth of Border Patrol. "We treat everyone the same." Price of CBP gets frustrated when critics blame CBP agents for simply carrying out their job and enforcing the law. "If people don't like what they see, they should be writing to their representative in Congress to change the laws," said Price. Border towns adapt to a different way of life Five winters ago, Raymond Vicknell of Vermont and his wife were snowshoeing south of the Canadian border. "I came over a rise and there's a guy pointing a gun at me, telling me to stop," said Vicknell. A Border Patrol agent waiting in the woods for a potential drug or person smuggler handcuffed them and demanded identification. "I was scared, I just didn't have a clue," he said. Since then, Vicknell has seen plenty more Border Patrol agents in Derby Line, his sleepy town adjacent to Stanstead, Quebec. He lives on Canusa Ave., which runs parallel to the Canadian border. When American residents walk out of their homes on to the streets, they enter Canada. Not that anyone's bat an eyelid over it. For generations, residents of Derby Line have strolled across the border to attend church in Stanstead. The two towns share a water and sewage system. Audience members at the Opera House can sit in the U.S. watching performers on stage in Canada. As a kid, Vicknell used to bike down the street to visit friends in Canada. But that unique and carefree way of life has changed. "Every street corner it seems like there's a border patrol," said Vicknell. "They're driving all over the place." Today, when he pulls out of his driveway he has to show documentation at a border inspection station down his street. Cameras and sensors populate the streets. The towns hold meetings to negotiate changes like where border gates will be installed. "I'm alarmed by it, we're living in a police state," said Vicknell. Many observers agree that border enforcement will continue to focus on apprehending non-dangerous immigrants unless the immigration system is reformed. "Give people a way to (legal) status, and you can focus resources," said the anonymous border patrol agent in New York. The agent said he's frustrated by the focus of his work on apprehending non-criminal immigrants who could be on a path to citizenship. "Am I here to do border enforcement? Not at all. Am I here to do immigration enforcement? Absolutely," he said. "Are we making the border safer? No." ________________________________________ Nadja Drost, a recent Hearst intern in Albany, N.Y., and graduate of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, is currently a correspondent for Global Post, the new online international news service, and Time magazine. She can be reached at ndrost@timesunion.com. © 1998-2009 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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Arizona hosts border-violence talk - The Arizona Republic	April 19, 2009 Printable version
Jahna Berry
Officials seek federal support on issue Arizona makes its case Monday for tougher laws and more money for law enforcement to prevent drug-cartel violence in Mexico from further spilling across the border. Members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs come to Phoenix as the White House promises Mexico more collaboration to fight the drug war and as local law enforcement agencies ramp up efforts to seek federal money. The hearing, sponsored by committee chairman Sen. Joe Lieberman, is one of several being held in Washington and other cities during the past few weeks, in part to ease fears over border violence. Arizona is a main corridor for human- and drug smuggling, and Phoenix now ranks second in the world in kidnappings for ransom. In 2008, Phoenix reported 366 abductions, mostly tied to Mexican human smugglers and narcotics gangs. Some of those testifying Monday have been sounding the alarm about the rising level of violence out of concern that drug-cartel violence, which has already claimed the lives of 10,000 people in Mexico since late 2006, could further spill into the U.S. "You fight organized crime with . . . the carefully honed ability to interrupt the most important thing for organized crime, and that's the money," said Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, who plans to ask at Monday's hearing for better laws and more federal support to help reduce cartel money laundering. Monday's lineup also includes Gov. Jan Brewer and top law enforcement officials from Arizona border communities. While border-related crime is a longstanding issue in Arizona, the cartel threat has prompted the Obama administration to step up federal action. In his first official trip to Mexico on Thursday, President Barack Obama backed Mexico's efforts to stop the illegal flow of U.S. guns across the border. Obama also has signaled immigration reform talks could begin later this year. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano visited the border last week and named a new "border czar," Alan Bersin. Many political players in Arizona see the recent flurry of interest in border violence as a golden opportunity to press Congress for a range of wish-list reforms: from more money for law enforcement to more human rights protection for immigrants. "With this new interest from the federal government, we have a glimmer of hope that the fight will become much better coordinated, much better funded and frankly has a chance to be successful," Goddard said. Money and violence Lieberman wants more federal money to help local law enforcement stem the flow of drugs coming into the U.S. and prevent U.S. guns from ending up in the hands of Mexican cartels. Local police departments and sheriffs also are eyeing federal funds. For example, the Phoenix Police Department has applied for a $7.2 million federal stimulus grant, to expand a unit that investigates kidnappings and home invasions tied to drug- and human smuggling. Immigrant rights groups want the new focus on organized crime to lead to more nuanced border policies. "What we have seen in the past (is) that there has been a one-size-fits-all militarized approach to the border," said Jennifer Allen, executive director of Border Action Network. Unregulated immigration, organized crime and terrorist threats are separate issues that need different solutions, she said. "We don't need to treat . . . a woman crossing the border to reunite with her family like she is a member of a drug cartel," Allen said. Meanwhile, the Mexican government wants Washington to turn up the heat on weapons smugglers. It's a thorny political issue because Americans are reluctant to tighten rules for gun shows and for gun owners, said Consul General Carlos Flores Vizcarra, the top Mexican diplomat in Arizona. "I think the public in the U.S. needs to be more educated about how this is not only a Mexico problem," Vizcarra said. "This is a problem that, of course, crosses the border so there has to be some responsibility on this side." Listening to Arizona Monday's hearing is a good fact-finding tool, but don't expect the homeland security panel to pitch new border legislation anytime soon, an immigration expert said. Any new bills from Congress would probably be linked to immigration reform talks later this year, said Marc Rosenblum a senior policy analyst at Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan Washington, D.C. think tank. And typically, the Senate Judiciary Committee addresses immigration issues, he added. Reporter Michael Ferraresi contributed to this story.
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In New Jersey, Bills Offering In-State Tuition to Illegal Immigrants Face a Fight - NY Times	April 19, 2009 Printable version
Kirk Semple
Champions of a proposal to allow illegal immigrants in New Jersey to pay in-state college tuition could be forgiven for believing, after years of frustration and defeat, that their cause may finally have momentum. A blue-ribbon panel convened by Gov. Jon S. Corzine to study immigration matters unanimously supported the proposal in a report issued last month, and the governor has also endorsed the idea. Meanwhile, a new, more liberal wind blows in Washington. But even the most hopeful immigrant advocates in New Jersey concede that these developments may not be enough to push the proposal, which is outlined in several bills, through the State Legislature, particularly during a recession and in a year in which the governor and the entire Assembly faces re-election. Choosing his words carefully, Shai Goldstein, executive director of the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network, said, “We’re cautiously optimistic.” He paused, then added: “There’s been pushback on this.” The bills, versions of which have languished for years in the Legislature, would allow an illegal immigrant who had attended a New Jersey high school for at least three years and graduated to be eligible for in-state tuition at a publicly supported college or university. (College tuitions and fees paid by out-of-state students are on average more than 90 percent higher than those for New Jersey residents, the panel said.) Illegal immigrants, advocates argue, should not be penalized for their parents’ actions. Also, they say, allowing students access higher education will encourage more immigrants to excel in high school, multiplying the state’s intellectual capital and empowering its work force. “Maintaining a well-educated work force is integral to New Jersey’s economic vitality as demand for high-skilled labor begins to outpace supply,” the immigration panel’s report said. Ten other states, including New York, have granted in-state tuition to illegal immigrants. Of the six states with the largest foreign-born populations, only New Jersey and Florida have not passed legislation providing the benefit. Similar measures were defeated in recent weeks in Colorado and Arkansas. By some estimates, according to the immigration panel’s report, there are about 28,000 illegal immigrants enrolled in New Jersey’s high schools. Ronald K. Chen, New Jersey’s public advocate and the panel’s chairman, said it was hard to calculate how many students each year might take advantage of the in-state tuition, but he said they might number in “the very low four figures.” Marisol Conde-Hernandez, 22, is the kind of New Jersey resident the legislation is designed to help. She was born in Puebla, Mexico, and was brought to the United States by her mother when she was 18 months old. Ms. Conde-Hernandez excelled in school, graduating from South Brunswick High School with a 3.5 grade-point average and a résumé filled with extracurricular activities, even while she was working full time to help support her family. She enrolled at Middlesex County College and then at Rutgers University, where she is a junior majoring in sociology. Since she is not a legal resident, she pays full tuition and fees at Rutgers, and works full time as a waitress to cover what she expects will total more than $20,000 for two years’ worth of credits. She has become politically active, joining the lobby for immigration reform and pushing for the passage of the in-state tuition bills. She decided to speak publicly, in spite of her family’s illegal status, in order to help future students and ensure “that their dreams don’t get completely crushed,” she said. Immigrant advocates say Ms. Conde-Hernandez is a rare exception. When faced with few prospects for affordable higher education, they say, most illegal immigrants underperform in high school or drop out. Opponents say that the measures could result in illegal immigrants taking college slots from legal residents and would cost the state money that could otherwise be used to benefit citizens. Christopher J. Christie, the leading Republican challenger to Governor Corzine in this year’s election, called the governor’s support of the measures “astonishing.” “We need to focus our efforts on providing tax relief for middle-class New Jerseyans,” he said in a statement. The bills’ supporters acknowledge that this may not be the most opportune political climate in which to push for passage. Anti-immigrant sentiment is high, they say, particularly during a recession that has made many Americans even less tolerant about providing jobs and public education for illegal immigrants. Moreover, Governor Corzine faces a tough re-election battle, and few think he will expend much political capital on the proposal. Democratic assemblymen may also shy away from the issue to help shore up support among more conservative voters. Indeed, some legislative offices have been swamped by e-mail messages and phone calls railing against the proposal. “It’s dead; it’s going nowhere,” declared William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration, a North Carolina-based organization that opposes benefits for illegal immigrants and has been lobbying against in-state tuition measures around the country. But immigrant advocates in New Jersey say they are going to press hard for passage of the bills. “People demagogue this for ideological reasons,” said Mr. Goldstein of the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network. “We’re talking about simple fairness.” A version of this article appeared in print on April 20, 2009, on page A20 of the New York edition.
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Haiti deserves TPS designation - Miami Herald Guest Editorial	April 18, 2009 Printable version
Thomas Wenski, Bishop, Diocese of Orlando
Since the early days of the Carter administration, the United States has detained Haitians who arrived by sea and overwhelmingly denied them asylum. Haitians on the high seas have often been interdicted and returned to Haiti. Requests to grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Haiti -- a status that would give Haitian nationals here legal status and work authorization during times of civil strife or natural disaster -- have been denied by both Democratic and Republican administrations. Despite this, 30,000 Haitians at risk of being deported have looked to the new administration with hope. Early signs, however, indicate that Haitians may continue to endure discriminatory treatment. Renewed requests to the Obama administration to grant TPS for Haiti have poured in. If any country deserves TPS, it is Haiti. The U.S. State Department warns visitors that there are no ''safe areas'' in Haiti and that ''kidnapping, death threats, murders, drug-related shootouts, armed robberies, break-ins and car jackings are common.'' In August and September 2008, Hurricanes Gustav and Ike and Tropical Storms Fay and Hanna passed through Haiti, causing severe damage and the deaths of close to 700 persons. Massive flooding from the storms destroyed homes, crops, bridges and schools with tens of thousands of persons displaced. To date, there has been no response from the administration except for Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano repeating the old canard that thousands in Haiti would head for Miami. This is unfounded. Many Haitians have little means to set off, as their water craft were destroyed by the storms. It is also well known in Haiti that the U.S. Coast Guard patrols not far from the Haitian coast, ready to return anyone who attempts to leave by sea. In Congress, the Haitian Protection Act of 2009, a bill to grant TPS to Haiti, has attracted 42 cosponsors, but three Republican cosponsors of the same bill last year -- Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart -- are missing. By adding their names to the bill, they could give the administration the bipartisan signal of support needed to move ahead. Haiti continues its downward spiral. Hundreds of thousands of Haitians suffer from shortfalls in food and basic services, and many schools, hospitals and bridges remain too badly damaged to function. The least we can do is give 30,000 Haitians the right to remain here temporarily to work and send money home until conditions in Haiti improve. It is the poorest nation in our hemisphere. That's what the Bush administration did for Honduran and Salvadoran nationals in September of 2008 when it extended TPS for the ''lingering effects'' of Hurricane Mitch, which hit Central America more than 10 years ago. President Obama can put his words of change into action by doing the same for Haitians and ending a long-standing unjust policy. Yes, he can. THOMAS WENSKI, bishop, Orlando Diocese, Orlando ________________________________________ © 2009 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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Impoverished Haiti Slips Further as Remittances Dry Up - Washington Post	April 17, 2009 Printable version
Mary Beth Sheridan
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, April 16 -- The U.S. economic crisis touched down recently in the dusty town where Marie Rosita Simon ekes out a living selling sandals. Her brother, a New Jersey cabdriver, slashed his monthly $400 transfer to her by half because his business was off. For Simon, that amounted to a 40 percent plunge in income for her family of five. Coming after a horrendous year in which food prices soared and hurricanes washed away her plantain and bean crops, the 43-year-old street vendor decided something had to go: dinner. And sometimes she can't provide breakfast for her children. "They're hungry," she confessed. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton flew to Haiti on Thursday, en route to a summit with hemispheric leaders concerned that the global economic crisis could push Latin America and the Caribbean into another "lost decade." Haiti, a Maryland-size nation in which 80 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day, offers perhaps the most worrisome example of how the recession could worsen poverty in the region's vulnerable countries. Clinton told reporters Thursday that because of Haiti's dire economic situation, the Obama administration is considering granting temporary legal status to Haitians who have come to the United States illegally, so they could still keep sending money home. And she promised to continue helping Haiti rebuild its shattered economy, after the United States and other countries and organizations at a conference in Washington this week made pledges of $324 million in aid, far less than the $900 million sought by the Haitian government. "Haiti deserves our help," Clinton said at a news conference in Port-au-Prince, the capital. Shrinking remittances are one of the main ways the crisis could harm Latin America and the Caribbean. The cash sent home from immigrant nannies, hotel workers and gardeners from Los Angeles to Bethesda has ballooned to a $69 billion-a-year lifeline in the region in the past decade. It is particularly important for small countries such as Haiti, which received about $1.65 billion last year -- more than a quarter of the country's annual income. These transfers have dropped 13 percent in the region in the first few months of the year, according to Luis Alberto Moreno, president of the Inter-American Development Bank. In Haiti, the reduction in remittances can have dramatic long-term consequences. Most schools are private, and students are often kept home when parents can't pay the tuition, returning months or years later. Jimmy Pierre-Sant, a 25-year-old in Cabaret, a plantain-growing town about 30 miles north of Port-au-Prince, is one of the indirect victims of the U.S. recession. Several months ago, his aunt in Winter Haven, Fla., was laid off from her factory job. Short of cash, she and other relatives have cut their bimonthly payments to Pierre-Sant's family from about $200 to $50. That meant he had to quit school yet again. "I felt very bad about it. I'm the only one in my family who got to 11th grade. I was ahead of everybody. I loved school," Pierre-Sant, in a Bugle Boy T-shirt and plaid shorts, said as he sat on the concrete patio of his grandmother's shack, where he sells soft drinks from a cooler. Simon, the sandal seller, who also lives in Cabaret, has managed to keep her two children and the niece she is raising in school. But at times there is only enough money for one meal a day. "Sometimes I let them suffer in order to pay the school tuition. I never had to do that in the past," she said. Clinton said the Obama administration was "looking carefully" at whether to suspend deportation of Haitians in the United States illegally and allow them to work temporarily. The Haitian government has requested that its immigrants abroad be awarded such a status, but the Bush administration had declined. "We are going to be considering how best to help the people who are here continue to have those resources" sent by relatives in the United States, Clinton said at the news conference. She warned, however, that any such program would apply only to Haitians who had moved to the United States before Obama took office. "We don't want to encourage other Haitians to make the dangerous journey across the water," she said. The crisis has shattered a period of economic improvement in Latin America and the Caribbean, which benefited from international growth and booming trade in recent years. Even Haiti had started to inch forward, after years of political turbulence and violence involving street gangs. But then global food prices soared last year, setting off riots across Haiti that toppled the government. While prices have eased, they have not returned to their old levels. Rice is still about 30 percent more expensive than in August 2007; cooking oil costs 50 percent more. And residents are still trying to recover from four hurricanes that pounded Haiti last year, killing 800 people and causing $1 billion in damage. In a sign of how strained family budgets are, many Haitians can't even afford to spend 12 cents to buy a mud cookie, a snack consumed by the poorest. "There's no money," said Mona Pierre, as she mixed clay, water and shortening to make the cookies in a market near the impoverished Cite Soleil slum in Port-au-Prince. Anne Hastings, director of Fonkoze, the biggest micro-credit institution serving the poor in Haiti, said she is turning away new borrowers for the first time since she began running the agency 13 years ago, since her bank credit tightened in the international financial crisis. The combination of high food prices, the hurricane damage and the economic crisis could create a combustible situation in a country that is still so fragile that a 9,000-member U.N. peacekeeping force keeps order, said Hastings, a former management consultant in Washington. "Everyone thinks we're going to explode any day now," she said. A series of high-profile figures, including former president Bill Clinton, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and rap artist Wyclef Jean, have been trying to focus global attention on Haiti to ensure it is not ignored by nations focused on their own economic problems. Haiti's best chance to emerge from crisis, they say, could be a special trade preference granted by the U.S. Congress that will allow this impoverished nation to export garments duty-free to the United States for nine years. On Thursday, Clinton strolled through a huge factory in Port-au-Prince where rows of young men and women ran jeans and khaki slacks through sewing machines. Clinton noted that the nearly 500 workers earned two to three times the $2-a-day minimum wage. "This is a direct result of actions taken by the U.S. Congress," she said. The trade preference program had created 11,000 jobs in Haiti so far, she said. Clinton announced more than $50 million in additional funding for Haiti at the international conference Tuesday, including money for new roads to help get products to market. The Haitian capital is full of reminders of what could happen if Haiti's economy continues to contract. In Petionville, a relatively upscale neighborhood, businesses still have spider-webbed windows that were attacked during food riots last year. Mathias Pierre, 42, who grew up in a poor neighborhood but now runs a $2.5 million-a-year computer business, was stunned when protesters shattered the windows of his firm in Petionville. "It created the fears we have today, that anything can happen," he said. "The level of poverty is too high."
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Working women worse off in Dade - Miami Herald	April 17, 2009 Printable version
Cindy Krischer Goodman
While the entire nation is struggling financially, it's worse in Miami-Dade County for working women, according to a report released Thursday. Most of them are struggling to stay above the poverty level and earn enough for basic necessities. The lack of economic security for women began before the financial collapse and threatens the entire community, according to findings of a report released Thursday by the Womens Fund of Miami-Dade. The report, A Portrait of Women's Economic Security in Greater Miami, combines census information with findings from focus groups of low-wage workers to uncover for the first time the obstacles that are keeping women and families from thriving. ''Until now, we didn't know just how bad it was because there wasn't data,'' said Sophie Brion, Women's Advocacy Project director. Much like the rest of the nation, many women in this region live paycheck to paycheck, turning to friends and family for help with loans to survive rough patches. Nationally, women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. Locally that number is 72 cents for every dollar a man earns. There are more low-wage jobs here and more women in them, lessening their ability to get jobs that offer higher wages, according to the report. SINGLE MOMS Under particular strain are single mothers, whose families make up the largest group of people living below the self-sufficiency standard in Miami-Dade County: $38,627 per year for a mother and one child. And while women are earning less, they also struggle to collect what they earn. The report says wage theft, or the nonpayment of money owed for work, is rampant in Miami-Dade County. This may be because immigrant women make up 63 percent of the female workforce, the report shows. ''Every possible way that these women can get scammed is happening,'' said Jennifer Hill, an attorney with the Workplace Justice Project at the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. ``It's even more of a problem with the downturn because they can't get second jobs to make up for the lost wages.'' Another major hardship for women is lack of benefits. Fewer women who work full time in Miami-Dade County have healthcare coverage from their employers than the national average. Paid sick leave is an issue, too. Only 46 percent of Florida workers have paid sick leave benefits, making it difficult for the large number of single moms in Miami-Dade. SOLUTIONS Brion says her report recommends four key strategies for improving women's economic security: help women build assets by teaching them financial skills, give them tools to fight for their rights, train women to enter high growth industries and invest in children and early care. ________________________________________ © 2009 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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Hastings to nation: Don’t deport Haitians - SunSentinel	April 16, 2009 Printable version
William Gibson
In a nationwide radio broadcast on Friday, South Florida Congressman Alcee Hastings will make a pitch for granting Temporary Protected Status to undocumented Haitians so they are not deported to their homeland. Hastings, a Democrat from Miramar and a long-time champion of Haitian immigrant causes, will make the case for TPS in this week's radio address by the Congressional Black Caucus. Hastings, a member of the Caucus, will deliver the message in a broadcast set for 5:10 p.m. Eastern time on Friday via affiliates of the American Urban Radio Network and again on Monday during the Bev Smith show between 7 and 8 p.m. Hastings is renewing his long-standing plea for sheltering Haitians just as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits their homeland today. Over the years, U.S. officials have been reluctant to grant temporary shelter for undocumented immigrants for fear it would encourage illegal migrations to Florida and other states. Hastings and other members from South Florida contend that Haitians should not be forced back to a nation in turmoil. “Lying just 600 miles from our shores, the small nation of Haiti has suffered through years of extreme poverty, political instability and environmental destruction,’’ Hastings plans to tell listeners. ``As if things couldn’t get any worse, this past year Haiti was ravaged by four natural disasters just as it was recovering from a devastating food crisis.’’ Hastings called upon President Obama -- “by simply the stroke of a pen’’ -- to allow Haitians already in this country to remain and work here legally and send money to their impoverished families. “TPS is the most immediate, least costly form of aid the United States can provide,’’ Hastings contends, ``and it has been granted to several other nations under similar circumstances.’’ Here is the full address as prepared for delivery: “Hello. This Congressman Alcee Hastings from Florida’s 23rd Congressional District. I am honored to join you for this week’s Congressional Black Caucus Message to America. “Lying just 600 miles from our shores, the small nation of Haiti has suffered through years of extreme poverty, political instability, and environmental destruction. As if things couldn’t get any worse, this past year, Haiti was ravaged by four natural disasters just as it was recovering from a devastating food crisis. “Now, as we usher in this new administration with its promise of responsible leadership and rational diplomacy, the United States has an extraordinary opportunity to provide meaningful assistance to our struggling neighbor. “By simply the stroke of a pen, President Obama has the ability to improve the lives of thousands of Haitians and allow the Haitian government to invest all of its limited resources in the rebuilding and redevelopment of this devastated country. “Temporary Protected Status would allow undocumented Haitians currently residing in the United States to temporarily stay and legally work to contribute to their nation’s recovery. TPS is the most immediate, least costly form of aid the United States can provide, and it has been granted to several other nations under similar circumstances. “Last year, the U.S. provided $235 million in aid to Haiti. However, this amount is dwarfed by the nearly $1 billion in remittances sent by Haitians back to Haiti each year. The deportation of Haitian nationals only increases the burden on this small nation’s already stressed economic and political system. “The damage that Haiti suffered as a result of last summer’s storms is estimated to be the equivalent of eight to ten Hurricane Katrinas hitting the United States in just one month. As President Obama reaches out to nations across the globe, I ask myself, when will it be Haiti’s turn? How dire must the crisis in Haiti become before the U.S. government is willing to take notice and finally take action? “As Haitians continue to live under ever worsening conditions, it is only a matter of time before a humanitarian crisis becomes a political one threatening the stability of Haiti and our entire region. Granting Haitian nationals TPS is therefore not only a morally sound policy, it is also in our nation’s best interest. “The people of Haiti have been victimized by our country’s double-standard immigration policies for far too long. As we wait for humanitarian relief to trickle into the hands of Haiti’s starving population, the United States has the power to provide this devastated nation immediate, substantial relief. “On April 8th, I sent a letter to President Obama urging him to make a decision on TPS, the people of Haiti cannot afford to wait. President Obama must act now. “Once again, this is Alcee Hastings. Thank you for listening.”
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Hillary Clinton: Haiti, Cuba policies are under review - Miami Herald	April 15, 2009 Printable version
JACQUELINE CHARLES
BY - jcharles@MiamiHerald.com Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday the Obama administration is reviewing a U.S. policy of deporting undocumented Haitians and left open the possibility of expanding travel to Havana beyond the families of Cuban exiles in the United States. Clinton made the remarks in an interview with The Miami Herald days ahead of the Fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago and days after the White House revamped Cuba policy by lifting all travel and gift restrictions for Americans who have relatives on the island. It is the most significant Cuba policy change in decades. Clinton even offered a sharp reply to Fidel Castro's criticism that the Obama administration moves were insufficient: ''Well, we would welcome him releasing some political prisoners,'' she said. She travels Thursday to Port-au-Prince and the Dominican Republic, then links up with President Barack Obama in Port of Spain to bring a message of engagement and collaboration. Clinton made clear that the United States would retain its policy of interdicting Haitians trying to reach Florida's sun-drenched shores but said the administration was looking at its deportation practices involving Haitians, who help support their impoverished country with remittances. UNDER REVIEW ''We are reviewing the policy, and we know what a great source of income the remittances are that flow from . . . principally the United States back to Haiti,'' she said. An estimated 30,000 Haitians are currently in the deportation pipeline, and immigration advocates argue it would be cruel to send them back to a storm-ravaged country struggling to recover from four back-to-back storms that left nearly $1 billion in damage. Clinton said the administration was sympathetic to ``what a tremendous burden it would be on Haiti if all of a sudden they were forced to accommodate the thousands of people who were otherwise working in our country. ``So we expect that we will be able to look closely at this and try to come up with some appropriate responses to the challenges posed.'' Haitian advocates want the Obama administration to add Haiti to the list of nations whose citizens here receive Temporary Protected Status. That would permit undocumented Haitian migrants to stay and work in the United States temporarily. Clinton noted that the White House announcement Monday to lift travel restrictions on Americans with family in Cuba was the first step in an ongoing policy review. ''We're continuing to explore ways to further democracy in Cuba and provide the Cuban people with more opportunities but we haven't made any further decisions yet,'' she said. Asked specifically whether it was not preferential treatment to permit only Cuban-American exiles to travel to Cuba, she replied: ``That's part of our policy review. Our first goal was to reverse the Draconian rules imposed by the Bush administration, which took away privileges that had been available for a long time. ``And obviously we think Cuban Americans have special roles to play as serving as ambassadors of freedom and helping the Cuban people understand the opportunities that democracy would bring.'' Clinton's trip to Port-au-Prince Thursday follows a donors conference held Tuesday in Washington in which nations and financial organizations pledged $324 million to Haiti. Clinton stressed that the U.S. pledge of $57 million was focused on enhancing security in Haiti, investment in job creation and helping the Haitian diaspora contribute their talent to their homeland. ''The United States will be investing in jobs around infrastructure. The road system in Haiti needs both expansion and maintenance, and we're going to emphasize the use of our aid to those purposes,'' she said. Clinton will meet with Haitian President René Préval, visit a factory and talk to people who could benefit from the financial aid. She has asked for a review of all foreign aid going to Haiti. She will also promote the benefits of the U.S. Congress-approved duty-free access HOPE II textile legislation and other partnerships. ``We want to do more on alternative clean energy. . . . If we can get investment looking at Haiti as a realistic money-making opportunity along with aid and trade, I think that the mother in Cité Soleil will see more jobs for her and hopefully a better future for her children.'' Haiti Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis met with both Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday and welcomed the renewed interest. ''It's up to us Haitians to make sure we understand what is at stake,'' Pierre-Louis said. ``Haiti has a chance. We have to seize this opportunity.'' `GOOD PARTNER' Clinton told The Miami Herald the White House would not be going to Trinidad with a ''one-size-fits-all'' program to forge partnerships in energy, the economy and trade. Nor would it seek to dictate solutions, she said. ''Part of what we're going to do at the Summit of the Americas is actually listen, which has been in somewhat scarce supply over the last eight years,'' she said. ``We are really looking to be a good partner and a reliable friend and neighbor.'' -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2009 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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Study Says Police Misuses Immigration-Inquiry Rule - NY Times	April 15, 2009 Printable version
Nina Bernstein
Many police officers in New Jersey are misusing a 2007 directive by the state’s attorney general by questioning the immigration status of Latino drivers, passengers, pedestrians and even crime victims, reporting them to federal immigration authorities and jailing some for days without criminal charges, according to a Seton Hall Law School study. “The data suggests a disturbing trend towards racial profiling by the New Jersey police,” said Bassina Farbenblum, a lawyer with the law school’s Center for Social Justice, which gathered details of 68 cases over the past nine months in which people were questioned about their immigration status for no apparent reason, or after minor infractions, like rolling through a stop sign. None involved drunken driving or the use of false documents. David Wald, a spokesman for the attorney general, Anne Milgram, said on Tuesday that she would look into the cases cited, after asking the center — which did not provide names in its report — to identify the individuals involved. “We welcome the center’s input, but we question their conclusions,” Mr. Wald said. “We don’t believe that New Jersey police are arresting individuals just to enforce federal immigration laws.” As the Obama administration pushes for a legislative path to legal status for millions now vulnerable to deportation, the report underscores a disconnect between the changed tone on immigration in Washington and what is happening on the ground. In one case it cited, police officers questioned a man at the Camden train station after asking to see his ticket. Unable to show one, he was arrested and held for seven days before being turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (The Camden police did not return calls for comment.) Elsewhere, another man was transferred to immigration agents after being held for four months, cited only for driving without a license. And a woman who showed her Argentine license at a “car checkpoint” was detained, then turned over to federal immigration agents even though a judge told her there were no charges against her. The New Jersey directive ordered the police to inquire about immigration status when arresting someone for an indictable crime or for driving while intoxicated. The directive is silent on lesser offenses, but forbids the authorities from questioning the victims or witnesses of crime about their immigration status. Issued in the aftermath of the murders of three young people in a Newark schoolyard in August 2007, it was spurred by TV and radio talk-show outrage that one of the suspects was an illegal immigrant who had been released on bail for an earlier offense. Critics, including some police chiefs and many immigrant advocates, called the directive a recipe for racial profiling — a public issue with an ugly history in the state, and one state law enforcers had worked for years to overcome with the help of a federal monitor. Last year, as complaints accumulated about immigrants unfairly detained, advocates called for modification of the order. But the attorney general, saying that the directive helps keep dangerous criminals in custody, dismissed the criticism as speculation based on anecdote. She called for the advocates of modification to supply “real evidence that the directive is being abused.” The Seton Hall report was an effort to answer that challenge, Ms. Farbenblum said. Of the 68 cases, collected from immigration lawyers across the state, 65 involved Latinos; the others were from Spain, Haiti and Kazakhstan, according to the report. It also listed seven incidents in which Latinos who sought police help were questioned about their immigration status, in direct violation of the directive. One woman told the center that she had called the police to her Plainfield home to protect her from domestic violence, but that they threatened to call the federal enforcement agency. A man told of going to the Mount Holly police station to report that his passport had been lost, only to be detained for 16 days after police found some unpaid parking tickets, and turned over to immigration agents. The police in Mount Holly did not respond to questions about cases involving the directive. Ms. Farbenblum said the cases in the report are “the tip of the iceberg,” since many noncitizens are reluctant to come forward or never see a lawyer, and the police are not required to report their questioning of immigrants in such cases. Police resources are being diverted from serious crime prevention, breaking down the trust necessary for effective policing in a state with the nation’s third highest immigrant population, the report contends. In the first six months after the directive was issued, the police referred 10,000 people to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but only 1,417 of them were charged with immigration violations, government data shows. Many others were legal residents or United States citizens. A current case identified by Maria Juega, a board member of the Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund, is the April 2 arrest of Eber Gonzalez Mazariegos, who made a U-turn in Mount Holly. Stopped by the police, he showed his Guatemalan license. Though he has neither a deportation order nor any criminal record, and though his family paid a $300 fine, Ms. Juega said, Mr. Gonzalez was held over the weekend, then transferred to immigration custody in the Middlesex County Jail. He is still waiting to see an immigration judge. A spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Harold A. Ort, said the agency had not yet seen the report. He noted that the agency prohibited racial profiling, and that Secretary Janet Napolitano had ordered a review of all recent immigration enforcement initiatives.
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Immigration Reform and Hard Times - NY Times Editorial	April 14, 2009 Printable version
Editorial
The Obama administration said last week that it would begin a major push for immigration reform this year. The country’s two big labor federations just announced that they are joining forces to support that effort, which includes a path to citizenship for undocumented workers. That’s double good news. The administration is saying that it will keep its promise to fix the broken system, even if it means pushing the hottest of hot buttons: legalization, the dreaded “amnesty” that sets the Republican right wing ablaze and makes many Democrats quiver. We are also heartened that American labor is speaking with a united voice in hard times, rejecting the false claim that fixing the immigration system will somehow hurt American workers. Even in a bad economy — especially in a bad economy — getting undocumented immigrants on the right side of the law only makes sense. Administration officials said President Obama planned to speak publicly about the issue next month and would convene working groups this summer, à la health care, to begin discussing future legislation. Immigrant advocates were ecstatic, though it is important to note that this was not a promise to move a bill, only to start the debate. Even that is not going to be easy. Reform was thwarted in the last two Congresses by obstructionist Republicans committed to the delusion that expelling 12 million people amounts to a realistic policy. The country has suffered mightily in the meantime. American workers and businesses continue to be undercut by the underground economy. The economic potential of some of the country’s most industrious workers is thwarted. Working off the books — and living in constant fear of apprehension — they earn less, spend less, pay less in taxes and have little ability to report abuses or to improve their skills or job prospects. The ingredients of reform are clear: legalization for the 12 million, to yield bumper crops of new citizens, to make it easier to weed out criminals and to end the fear and hopelessness of life in the shadows; sensible enforcement at the border that focuses resources on fighting crime, drugs and violence; a strengthened employment system that punishes businesses that exploit illegal labor; and a future flow of workers that is attuned to the economy’s needs and fully protects workers’ rights. The last point has been a sticky one with some unions. The agreement between the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and Change to Win — a rival federation that includes service employees, the Teamsters and carpenters — will center on a new approach to future immigration, a compromise in which an independent national commission calibrates the size of temporary-worker programs each year, based on conditions in labor markets. It may not be a perfect plan, but after years of vitriol, it’s encouraging to hear calmer voices outlining smart reform. We expect to hear more from Mr. Obama soon. It will take courage to defend the wisdom and necessity of fixing the immigration system. It will take even more courage to engage in the serious fight to do so. It is what the country needs and what American voters elected Mr. Obama to do.
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The Medical Crisis in Immigration Detention - New American Media	March 25, 2009 Printable version
Commentary by Cheryl Little
Editor’s Note: As Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee population booms in the U.S., medical care in detention has become a critical issue. Some recent cases of immigrant deaths while in custody might be just the tip of the iceberg writes NAM contributor Cheryl Little. Little is executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, a non-profitagency that promotes immigrants’ rights. IMMIGRATION MATTERS regularly features the views of immigration advocates. Hiu Lui Ng suffered cruel and negligent medical care while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lock-ups. He died last year from a cancer that went undiagnosed for four months despite his repeated complaints of excruciating pain. A recent ICE investigative report describes his brutal treatment. In one videotaped incident, Ng was forcibly dragged by detention officers while he cried and screamed in pain. Detention officials denied him medication, medical care and a wheelchair when he was too weak to walk. They cursed at him and accused him of faking his illness. This is no way to treat a human being. Yet increasingly we are seeing such medical abuse among ICE detainees nationwide. While Ng’s case may be extreme, instances of botched, delayed or denied medical care are all too common. Many examples are documented in two new reports by the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center and Human Rights Watch. Both describe systemic problems in ICE detention. Among the top concerns is the lack of independent oversight needed to ensure the quality and effectiveness of care. Within this oversight vacuum, ICE tolerates a culture of cruelty and indifference to human suffering. The U.S. now has the world’s highest incarceration rate, and ICE detainees are its fastest growing prison population. ICE expects to detain 440,000 people this year – four times the number in 2001 – with taxpayers paying the $1.72 billion tab. Some two-thirds of the detainees will be held in more than 300 local jails with widely differing conditions and medical practices. Others will land in 15 large facilities run by ICE or private contractors. Given the explosive growth in detainees and patchwork of detention facilities it’s no wonder that oversight is a problem. To its credit, ICE ultimately removed all its detainees from the Donald W. Wyatt facility where Ng was mistreated. Had ICE taken similar action at the Piedmont Regional Jail in Virginia after a death there in 2006, Guido Newbrough might still be alive. Instead, Mr. Newbrough died in November 2008 from a heart-valve infection that three out of four people survive when properly treated. In his case, the infection ravaged his organs as jail staff ignored his complaints. When he finally pounded on the door of the lunchroom crying for medical help, jail guards threw him on the floor, dragged him, and put him in isolation. He died five days later. Two years before, another detainee had died at the same jail. An ICE investigation concluded with a damning assessment: “Detainee health care is in jeopardy.” Yet the ICE failed to take corrective action or to remove detainees. Now ICE is conducting another investigation at Piedmont. Deaths are not the only problem. Staff shortages and denials of care lead to life-threatening conditions. Miguel Bonilla, a FIAC client, complained of increasingly intense abdominal pain for a week and repeatedly asked for a doctor. Nurses gave him Pepto-Bismol and salty soup. No doctor was available. A ruptured appendix almost killed him. He spent 11 days in a hospital while his family was denied visits, phone calls and information about his condition. Other concerns abound. Instead of being treated, mentally ill detainees are maced, Tasered, and placed in isolation as punishment. Detainees are misdiagnosed or go untreated because of incompetent or nonexistent interpreters. Physically disabled detainees suffer without accessible facilities. Sick detainees are shackled going to the hospital and placed in criminal wards. Women in detention struggle to get potentially life-saving services such as Pap smears and mammograms. Even basics such as sanitary pads and breast pumps for nursing mothers are in short supply. Perhaps most troubling is the culture of cruelty. Detainees routinely are accused of faking their illness and treated like criminals when the when the vast majority have no criminal history and pose no threat. We don’t know if this occurs because they are foreign, imprisoned, have no lawyer to defend them or all of the above. We do know that ICE is not fulfilling its moral and legal responsibility protect the welfare of detainees who have no other recourse for medical care. Department Of Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano has appointed Special Advisor Dr. Dora Schriro to look into these concerns and other detention issues. We are hopeful that the new administration is serious about providing ICE detainees proper and humane medical care and look forward to collaborating in the effort. For more information please check out • Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center report, “Dying for Decent Care: Bad Medicine in Immigration Custody,” is at: www.fiacfla.org • Human Rights Watch report, “Detained and Dismissed: Women’s Struggles to Obtain Health Care in United States Immigration Detention,’’ is at www.hrw.org/node/81430 The Medical Crisis in Immigration Detention - NAM http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html
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Treat detained immigrants with dignity - Miami Herald	March 19, 2009 Printable version
Daniel Shoer Roth
She spent days lying in the jail cell's cot ''stiff as a corpse,'' with pain in her joints that demanded medical attention. The symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis were unbearable, but the prison guards gave her no pity. Several weeks passed at the Monroe County Jail and Lourdes wasn't given any of the nine medications she needs to treat her severe arthritis. Her jailers justified it by saying that they had to get permission from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As far as they were concerned, Lourdes was just another immigrant to be deported. ''I felt humiliated, trampled, because apart from not providing the treatment, the officials treat you with cruelty, inhumanely, and that affects you more than the pain,'' recalled the 49-year-old Hispanic woman, between sobs. Lourdes, who lives in Miami, asked that her real name not be used because her case is pending. Her testimony is part of a report released Tuesday by the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center about the precarious -- and often inexistent -- medical services provided to immigrants at federal detention centers, state prisons and county jails. ''ICE tolerates a culture of cruelty and indifference to human suffering,'' states the FIAC report. ``Detainees routinely report being treated as criminals, being accused of faking illnesses and having painful symptoms ignored.'' The United States stands up for human rights throughout the world. What if we started leading by example and treated detained immigrants with dignity? Right now, they are not even extended the same rights conferred to criminals in state and federal prisons. Lourdes arrived over 20 years ago from Latin America and was given political asylum. A year later, she became a legal resident. She was followed by her husband and children. Her grandkids are U.S. citizens. She worked tirelessly, cleaning hotel rooms and offices, leaving for work at 7 a.m. and returning at midnight, barely time to speak to her kids. A few years ago, she was convicted of minor infractions that did not warrant jail time, her lawyers said without elaborating. But last year, while returning from a trip to her homeland, she was detained at Miami International Airport. She was given a summons to appear at the ICE office. That day, she was detained. For three years, she had been taking nine medications for arthritis and could walk with only slight pain. Three months after her ICE detention, she was released in a wheelchair and had lost 60 pounds. Today, she still relies on a walker. She is swollen and her feet are atrophied. Her rheumatologist at Jackson Memorial Hospital says her current condition is ``potentially irreversible.'' Lourdes says it wasn't until she was unable to walk or bathe that her jailers provided her with a wheelchair. Only then was she given ''medicine:'' folic acid and iron. ``I felt that I would die, because they didn't pay me any attention. I had to swallow my pain.'' Lourdes isn't a terrorist, but this wife, mother and grandmother was mistreated as if she deserved death. Newly appointed Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, whose agency oversees ICE, should read the findings of this latest report and insist on humanitarian treatment for people waiting for their cases to be resolved. Otherwise, we mock the human rights that we demand the rest of the world to uphold.
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Indiferencia imperdonable - El Nuevo Herald	March 19, 2009 Printable version
Daniel Shoer Roth
Levaba días tumbada en la cama de su celda, ''tiesa como un muerto'', con dolores en las articulaciones, clamando por la atención de un médico. Los síntomas de la artritis reumatoide estaban a flor de piel, pero ni eso despertaba la piedad de los carceleros. Habían transcurrido varias semanas y a Lourdes no le daban ninguno de sus nueve medicamentos en la cárcel del Condado Monroe. Los celadores se justificaban diciendo que tenían que recibir permiso del Departamento de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas (ICE). Para ellos, Lourdes era sólo una inmigrante con un caso de posible deportación. ''Me sentí humillada, pisoteada, porque aparte de no suministrarte el tratamiento, los funcionarios te tratan de una manera cruel, inhumana, que te afecta hasta más que los dolores'', recordó entre sollozos Lourdes, un hispana de 49 años que reside en Miami y que no se identifica con su verdadero nombre porque su caso sigue abierto. Su testimonio forma parte de un informe divulgado ayer por el Centro para la Defensa del Inmigrante de la Florida (FIAC) sobre los precarios --y a veces inexistentes-- servicios médicos que reciben los inmigrantes en los centros de detención y cárceles condales y estatales. Es un informe que debería leer cuanto antes la nueva secretaria del ICE, Janet Napolitano, para ver si fomenta más los valores morales en su agencia. ''ICE tolera una cultura de crueldad e indiferencia ante el sufrimiento humano'', afirma FIAC. ``Los detenidos cotidianamente reportan que los tratan como criminales, que son acusados de falsear enfermedades y que no les prestan atención a sus síntomas de dolor''. Estados Unidos siempre es abanderado de los derechos humanos alrededor del mundo. Qué tal si da el ejemplo tratando con dignidad a los inmigrantes detenidos bajo su custodia, a quienes no les respetan los derechos que incluso se les confieren a los condenados por verdaderos crímenes. Lourdes emigró a Estados Unidos hace más de 20 años y recibió asilo político. Al año se hizo residente legal. Le siguieron su esposo y sus hijos, que hoy son padres de niños norteamericanos. Como muchos otros, trabajó agotadoramente, desempolvando hoteles y oficinas. Salía a las 7 a.m. y regresaba a la medianoche, a veces casi sin hablar con sus hijos. Hace unos años fue convicta de varios delitos menores por los que no fue condenada a prisión. Pero el año pasado, regresando de su país de origen, fue detenida en el Aeropuerto Internacional de Miami. Le dieron una cita para que se presentara en las oficinas de ICE. Ese día la arrestaron. La mujer llevaba tres años tomando nueve medicamentos para la artritis; podía caminar y tenía poco dolor en las articulaciones. Tres meses después de ser detenida, salió en libertad en una silla de ruedas, con 60 libras de menos. De hecho, todavía hoy se vale de una andadera, está hinchada, tiene los pies entumidos y aparenta de mayor edad. Su reumatólogo en el Jackson Memorial sostiene que su condición es ``potencialmente irreversible''. Lourdes dice que no fue hasta que entró en crisis, inflamada y sin poder caminar ni bañarse, que le entregaron una silla de ruedas. Sólo entonces le dieron ''medicina'': ácido fólico y hierro. ``Sentía que me iba a morir porque no me prestaban atención. Les pedí muchas veces que mejor me deportaran y tuve que comerme mi dolor''.
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Ill Migrants Left to Languish Behind Bars - International Press Service News Agency	March 18, 2009 Printable version
Ben Case
NEW YORK, Mar 18 (IPS) - Clinical staff at U.S. immigration detention centres systematically abuse detainees in their charge, according to two reports by Human Rights Watch and the Florida Immigration Advocacy Centre (FIAC) that describe the medical care system in these facilities as "dangerously inadequate". The reports, released Tuesday, detail the callous treatment of detainees, especially women, who are in need of medical attention. "Death rates in detention appear to be worsening," said FIAC executive director Cheryl Little. "Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) needlessly detains people with severe illnesses and those who pose no harm to U.S. communities." The 78-page FIAC report exposes the exceedingly poor healthcare available to people in custody at immigration detention centres as well as the lack of official accountability. It identifies wide-ranging problems with the medical care provided to detainees, including some as severe as improper care of physically and mentally disabled patients, "cruel and abusive behaviour" by clinic staff, overcrowded and unsanitary facilities and even isolation or transfer of patients as punishment for medical complaints. According to FIAC, "detainees routinely report being treated as criminals, being accused of faking illnesses, and having painful symptoms ignored." The accompanying HRW report, also 78 pages, focuses on the treatment of women in immigration detention. "Women in detention described violations such as shackling pregnant detainees or failing to follow up on signs of breast and cervical cancer, as well as basic affronts to their dignity," said Meghan Rhoad, a researcher in the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch. The HRW report found that problems in medical services in detention centres are acutely felt by female detainees, and described a long list of grievances including "unwarranted denial of services", long delays in potentially life-saving services, and unavailability of basic female hygiene supplies. Both reports were researched through extensive interviews with detainees and staff at detention facilities as well as immigration officials and attorneys, and include many victims’ personal accounts of abuse. For example, one woman who was forced to take the wrong medication in a California detention facility told researchers: "Immediately, my body started shaking. I felt so cold that I thought I was freezing to death, but at the same time I was sweating... Within minutes, I had a seizure and my body began to shake so violently that I fell off the bed onto the floor." But these reports might not even show the worst of it. "Because we went through legal providers, all of the women we spoke to had access to counsel," Rhoad told IPS. "Eighty percent of detainees have no lawyer, so it is possible they also have even less access to care." The HRW report interviewed 48 women in nine detention facilities in Florida, Texas and California because these states have a particularly high concentration of female detainees, but ICE has many immigration detention centres in every state. "Because immigration detention is the fastest-growing form of incarceration in the United States, these abuses are especially dangerous. They remain largely hidden from public scrutiny or effective oversight," said Rhoad. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement department was founded in 2003 and is a branch of Homeland Security. The ICE website describes its mission as "protecting national security and upholding public safety by targeting criminal networks and terrorist organizations". "ICE has prosecutorial discretion, they say they prioritise criminals, but that is not really the case," Rhoad told IPS. "The majority of these detainees are out of step with some minor administrative law, they do not have criminal records." There were more than 300,000 people in immigration custody in 2008, most of them in state and county jails. The average stay in custody is 38 days, according to the FIAC report, but some detainees are held for months and even years. "Only independent, external scrutiny of detainees’ medical care will ensure that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE carry out their moral and legal responsibility to provide for the health and safety of detainees entrusted to their care," the FIAC report says. "Given the dramatic increase in detainees, the need for proper scrutiny of medical care is more critical now than ever." The FIAC is a not-for-profit legal organisation that works to protect and promote the human rights of immigrants to the United States. HRW was formed out of the merging of several groups in 1988 and is a leading non-governmental organisation monitoring compliance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights all over the world. (END/2009)
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Healthcare at lockups for migrants decried - Miami Herald	March 17, 2009 Printable version
Carol Marbin Miller
Calling the medical care provided to detained migrants ''poor and sometimes appalling,'' immigrant advocates Tuesday called on the U.S. government to halt the jailing of non-dangerous migrants, dramatically improve care to those who are jailed and employ better oversight of medical care at all detention centers. Advocates with both the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center and Human Rights Watch released detailed reports on the provision of medical care at U.S. migrant detention centers and more than 300 county jails that routinely incarcerate migrants whom the government wishes to deport. The Human Rights Watch report deals primarily with the plight of women in detention, who, the report says, often receive substandard care for pregnancies, breast cancer and even routine gynecological matters. Women often have trouble just getting sanitary napkins, advocates said. ''Unfortunately, oversight of [Customs and Immigration Enforcement] detentions conditions, including detainee medical care, is sorely lacking,'' said the FIAC report, titled Dying for Decent Care: Bad Medicine in Immigration Custody. ``In such an oversight vacuum, ICE tolerates a culture of cruelty and indifference to human suffering. ``Detainees routinely report being treated as criminals, being accused of faking illnesses and having painful symptoms ignored. They also face retaliation for demanding better medical treatment or complaining about the medical abuse of fellow detainees.'' Barbara Gonzalez, an ICE spokeswoman, said newly appointed ICE Secretary Janet Napolitano will be working with other federal agencies and stakeholders ``to improve the scope, the services and the system of healthcare delivered to ICE detainees.'' To that end, Napolitano appointed a prison management expert, Dora Schriro, to be a special advisor on detention and removal. Before joining ICE, Schriro was director of the Department of Corrections in Arizona, where Napolitano was governor. Schriro, Gonzalez said, `` exclusively on the significant growth in immigration detention and ways of improvement as we move forward.'' In budget year 2008, ICE spent $128 million to provide medical and mental health care to detainees, Gonzalez said. ''We recognize that there is a real opportunity for measurable, sustainable improvement,'' she added. ''Secretary Napolitano recognizes the importance of ensuring that all ICE detainees receive appropriate medical treatment,'' Gonzalez said in a prepared statement. The need for reform, said FIAC director Cheryl Little, is especially acute as the number of migrants detained by the U.S. government has been growing in recent years. In 2007, 311,000 migrants were detained in U.S. centers or jails. The number is expected to reach 440,000 this year. The cost of such detentions, Little said, is expected to increase from $1.65 billion in 2008 to $1.72 billion this year. Among the reports' findings: • Women have great difficulty receiving gynecological care, and some have lost babies or suffered permanent injuries, such as the loss of a fallopian tube following corrective surgery, while in detention. • Life threatening illnesses, such as cancer, often go untreated. One man, Francisco Castañeda, died of penile cancer at a San Diego detention center after immigration officials declared ''elective'' diagnostic procedures that could have saved his life. • Detainees with severe psychiatric disorders often are ignored, or placed in segregation, where their symptoms worsen. An Algerian asylum seeker, Hassiba Belbachir, committed suicide in a suburban Chicago jail that ICE administrators ''knew . . . consistently failed'' to provide basic mental health care. Marlene Jaggernauth, 43, who entered the United States U.S. 32 years ago as a lawful permanent resident from Trinidad, was arrested by ICE agents in 2003 because of an old shoplifting charge. Little said immigration agents labeled her an ''aggravated felon'' and jailed her. She was separated from four children, including 6-year-old twins and a 14- and 15-year-old. With the help of FIAC attorneys, Jaggernauth won her right to remain in the United States in 2007. Jaggernauth, who had a full-time job at Florida Atlantic University as an administrative assistant, said she witnessed deplorable conditions while detained, including an elderly German woman who appeared to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia. ''She was hearing voices,'' Jaggernauth said. ``Rather than help her, the guards joined in making fun of her.'' ''I saw a great deal of suffering, and it was very heartbreaking,'' Jaggernauth said. ``We felt truly helpless and frightened. Often our requests for care would be ignored.'' ________________________________________ © 2009 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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Reports: Health Care For Potential Deportees Poor - NPR	March 17, 2009 Printable version
Greg Allen
Click here to listen to the NPR report. Two new reports document something that has emerged as a serious issue for federal immigration authorities: a lack of adequate health care for detainees. With some 400,000 people held by immigration authorities last year alone, stories about detainees receiving inadequate health care abound, and sometimes the consequences are fatal. A recent case in Virginia involved a 48-year-old man, originally from Germany, named Guido Newbrough. He was being held in a county jail last year in Virginia when he became sick with a severe bacterial infection. Susana Barciela of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center says it was a death that could have been prevented. "Seventy-five percent of the people who are treated for this disease properly survive," she says. "But he was given no treatment whatsoever, even though he'd been complaining for weeks." Since 2003, advocates say, at least 80 people have died either in immigration custody or shortly after their release. The exact number is difficult to know, they say, because Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is not required to make that information public. 'You Had To Suffer Through The Pain' Some of those cases — and many others that didn't end with fatalities — are detailed in two reports released in Miami by the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center and Human Rights Watch. The Human Rights Watch report focuses on the plight of women held in immigration custody. Researcher Meghan Rhoad says that while only about 10 percent of detainees typically are women, they're held by a system that in many cases ignores basic needs. "It is a system that needlessly shackles pregnant women with no criminal background or history of violence," she says. Human Rights Watch says it interviewed dozens of former and current detainees and visited nine facilities in three states. The group found many stories like that of Marlene Jaggernauth. Jaggernauth lived in the U.S. for 27 years as a permanent legal resident until 2003, when she was picked up by immigration officials because of a seven-year-old shoplifting charge. In the two years she was in custody, Jaggernauth says, she was held in four different facilities — all county prisons. She says detainees are often housed with the criminal population and treated like criminals. And in her experience, requests for health care were usually ignored. "In the meantime, you had to suffer through the pain," Jaggernauth says. "In some desperate cases, other detainees actually had to have their family members call 9-1-1 from the outside." Angling For White House Attention The findings, while shocking, are hardly new. Many of the issues have been raised by news organizations and by the immigration agency's own inspector general. But the reports aim to focus attention on the issue at a critical time: A new administration has arrived in Washington and is reviewing past budget decisions and policies. A spokeswoman for ICE says officials there are reviewing the reports and can't yet comment. Last week, in a letter to Human Rights Watch, an official with ICE said the agency was "grateful" for the work the advocacy group was doing in this area and said it would consider the recommendations.
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Healthcare For Immigration Detainees Derided - CBS4	March 17, 2009 Printable version
Jim DeFede
Click here to read and listen to Jim DeFede's report on CBS4.
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Immigration Agency Is Criticized on Health Care - NY Times / AP	March 17, 2009 Printable version
The Associated Press
MIAMI (AP) — Immigration authorities routinely delay, deny or botch medical care for detained immigrants in poorly equipped facilities nationwide, according to separate reports released Tuesday by two advocacy groups. Human Rights Watch and the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center say the problems are the result of unskilled or indifferent staff, overcrowding, bureaucracy, language barriers and limited services available to detainees of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The groups contend that many medical problems could be avoided if the agency, known as ICE, did not lock up people who are elderly, have health issues or lack criminal records. Advocates argue that alternatives to detention, like requiring people to check in by phone or in person, are “more humane” and cost taxpayers as little as $12 a day, compared with $95 a day to keep someone in custody. “ICE needlessly detains people with severe illnesses and those who pose no harm to U.S. communities,” said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. “Doing so drives up ICE costs, even as the agency provides increasingly inadequate medical and mental health care to those in its custody.” The agency detained more than 300,000 people in the 2007 fiscal year, with a daily average of nearly 30,000 in custody. Most were held in state and county jails under contracts with the bureau. Some detainees are held for months, even years, though the agency says the average time is 31 days. The agency responded that its health services division gave detainees general, emergency, dental, chronic and mental health care. Current and former detainees said members of medical staffs routinely violated their own standards in areas like continuity of care, quick response to medical complaints, explanation of the availability of services, and medical screenings and follow-up care. Women particularly suffered because routine reproductive care did not get adequate attention in a system that emphasized emergency care and treating conditions that might affect detainees’ deportation status, according to the Human Rights Watch study.
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Immigrants in jail get poor care, 2 groups say - St. Petersburg Times	March 17, 2009 Printable version
David Adams, Times Latin America Correspondent
Detained immigrants, many of them held at Florida jails, are often denied proper medical care, sometimes leading to death, according to two reports released Tuesday in Miami by leading advocacy groups. In numerous cases officials working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement "botched, delayed or denied medical care," according to a joint statement by the two groups, Human Rights Watch and the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. At one Florida facility, Glades County Detention Center, a mentally handicapped Haitian died after suffering seizures and a Honduran man nearly suffered the same fate after failing to receive treatment for acute appendicitis, both within a month of each other. The Human Rights Watch report focused on female detainees, describing pregnant detainees being shackled and failure to follow up on signs of breast and cervical cancer. Conditions were often so humiliating that women were not given access to sanitary pads, the advocates said. "ICE needlessly detains people with severe illnesses and those who pose no harm to U.S. communities," unnecessarily driving up costs, said the report by the Miami-based advocacy center, titled "Dying for Decent Care." A Washington Post investigation last year found that 83 detainees have died in ICE custody nationwide since its creation in 2003. At least four more questionable deaths have occurred since then, according to the advocacy center. "What happens nationwide in ICE detention, we see in Florida every day," said Susana Barciela, policy director for the advocacy center. "All too often detainees who need medical care are accused of faking illness and are treated like criminals. We need more independent oversight of medical practices to stop the abuses and ensure adequate health care in immigration custody." Human Rights Watch released a letter from ICE's director of policy, Susan Cullen, stating that ICE does consider the special needs of female detainees, but that most immigrants are held for short periods of up to 17 days and thus do not require medical procedures such as pap smears. In December 2008, ICE revised its medical care standards. Congress also has ordered the agency to spend $2 million this year on a thorough review of its medical care. Among the victims cited in the reports was Valery Joseph, a mentally handicapped Haitian who died in June 2008 after suffering repeated seizures while detained at the Glades County Detention Center, west of Lake Okeechobee. A U.S. resident, Joseph was detained for deportation after serving a short jail sentence on a robbery charge. The Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center said the detention facility staff repeatedly cleared Joseph for "confinement" despite his medical condition. Haitian author Edwige Danticat told a Miami press conference how her 81-year-old uncle, the Rev. Joseph Danticat, died in detention in Miami in 2004. He was accused of faking illness and denied medication despite being a throat cancer survivor and longtime sufferer of high blood pressure. His niece published an award-winning book last year about the incident, titled Brother, I'm Dying. Others barely survived lack of medical care in detention. Often they were residents of the United States for many years, sometimes married to Americans and with U.S.-born children. Yong Sun Harvill, 52, a Korean immigrant from Plant City, spent 15 months in ICE custody without receiving medical care despite a history of cancer and liver disease. A U.S. resident for 30 years, she was arrested for buying stolen jewelry a decade earlier. She was held at a Palm Beach County jail before being transferred to Arizona for medical treatment, 2,000 miles away from doctors, family and friends. She was released in July 2008 after she sued ICE with help from the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. Immigration advocates are planning to take their report to Washington to lobby Congress and the Obama administration. "All we are asking for is reasoned decisions," said Cheryl Little, director of the advocacy center. "Don't treat everyone as the worst of the worst." © 2009 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times 490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111
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Report: Women Horribly Neglected in Florida's Immigration Jails - Miami New Times	March 17, 2009 Printable version
Tim Elfrink
Marlene Jaggernauth had been a legal U.S. resident for 27 years when the ICE agents came knocking on her door in 2003. They arrested the Trinidad native on a shoplifting charge from six years earlier, took her from her four young children, and moved her from county jail to county jail around Florida for a full year while her case was adjudicated. Her situation was terrible enough, but she couldn't believe what she saw during her time in Florida's ICE prisons: mentally ill women denied medicine for weeks and mocked by guards as they suffered terrifying visions; women routinely denied basic supplies like sanitary pads; medical service for seriously ill prisoners maliciously denied. " I saw a great deal of suffering and it was heartbreaking," Jaggernauth, a slight, well-dressed 43-year-old said today. She spoke this afternoon at a Midtown press conference Riptide attended where two advocacy groups released reports detailing a systemic lack of health care for immigrants detained by ICE at prisons in Florida and elsewhere around the United States. Many of the 400,000 immigrants who spent time in ICE custody last year were charged with no crimes other than overstaying a visa or entering the U.S. illegally, yet were treated with a lack of basic human care that even the worst U.S. felons are guaranteed, the reports assert. Even those with health care are dependent on ICE for basic treatment and daily medicine -- both of which are routinely denied. Edwidge Danticat, the Haitian born author of "Brother I'm Dying," a National Book Prize finalist last year, also attended the meeting and recounted one of the events that inspired her book. Her 81-year-old uncle Joseph, a pastor and throat cancer survivor, fled political violence in Haiti in 2004 for Miami. When he landed at MIA, he told ICE officials that he planned to seek asylum. They arrested him and placed him in the Krome Detention Facility, where he was accused of faking his illnesses and denied his daily medications. He died five days later at a Miami hospital. Such events are shockingly commonplace, Cheryl Little, the executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, said. Her group authored one of the reports, which includes the stories of immigrants who suffered ruptured appendixes and late-stage cancers in ICE care and were denied treatment. "In many ways, ICE detention is a secret world outside American's view," Little said. "They do these things with impunity, shielded by the fact that the vast majority of these women don't have lawyers." Human Rights Watch, a New York-based NGO, released an independently researched report at the meeting that reached similar conclusions. The two groups called on ICE to change their policies limiting access to emergency care, stop the detention of pregnant women and those who had suffered obvious abuse, and to speed the review process for immigrants with serious medical conditions. A call to ICE regarding the reports was not immediately returned. If and when the agency responds to the reports, we'll update our entry. ICE spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez just responded to Riptide in an email. She says that new Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has made immigrant detainee health care a priority and has appointed a "special advisor on detention and removal." Below is the response in its entirety. Secretary Napolitano recognizes the importance of ensuring that all ICE detainees receive appropriate medical treatment. In light of her commitment to the safe and humane treatment of all ICE detainees, she has appointed Dr. Dora Schriro to serve as her special advisor on detention and removal. Prior to joining ICE, Dr. Schriro served as the Director of the Arizona Department of Corrections in Governor Napolitano's administration. Dr. Schriro has also held numerous public service positions to include serving as the Missouri Department of Corrections Director; the Assistant Commissioner of the NYC Department of Corrections, and Warden and then Commissioner of the St. Louis City jails. Secretary Napolitano has asked Dr. Schriro to focus exclusively on the significant growth in immigration detention and ways of improvement as we move forward. · While ICE spent $128 million in FY 2008 to provide medical and mental health care to its detainees, we recognize that there is a real opportunity for measurable, sustainable improvement. · All ICE detainees, regardless of location, should expect to receive a medical screening within 12 hours of admission; a physical exam within two weeks of detention; timely and appropriate responses to emergent medical requests, and timely medical care appropriate to the anticipated length of detention. · The FY 2009, appropriation provided $2 million to ICE to undertake an immediate review of the medical care provided to individuals detained by DHS. ICE will continue working with other agencies and stakeholders to improve the scope, the services and the system of health care delivered to ICE detainees.
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Groups accuse government of poor health care for detained - South Florida Sun-Sentinel	March 17, 2009 Printable version
Luis F. Perez
Medical care provided to immigrants who are held by federal authorities is "dangerously inadequate," according to two advocacy groups that are calling for sweeping changes. The Florida Immigration Advocacy Center and Human Rights Watch each released reports at a Tuesday morning press conference outlining what they're calling wide-spread failures in the health care provided to immigrants held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The reports detail dozens of cases where it's alleged that immigrants suffered or died due to medical care that was botched, delayed, or denied. Edwidge Danticat wrote a book about her uncle, the Rev. Joseph Danticat, 81, who died in 2004 after not getting needed heart medication while at Krome Detention Center near Miami. "When one has a loved one die in this situation, what you hope for, what you pray for is that it never happens to another family, another child, another loved one," she said at the press conference. "But it keeps happening again and again." ICE spokeswoman Nicole Navas said she couldn't respond to the reports until she saw them. Susan Cullen, the director ICE's Office of Policy, said in a letter responding to the Human Rights Watch report that the agency would review some of the recommendations and that it already had started to implement others. The reports come two weeks after two Brazilian migrants held at the Broward Transitional Center filed a federal lawsuit against ICE, contending that they weren't getting prescribed medication. The same week, a top Homeland Security official said that in cases where detainees died, the medical care they received was not up to ICE standards. The 78-page report by New York-based Human Rights Watch documents several cases where it says women who showed signs of breast or cervical cancer couldn't get needed Pap smears or mammograms. Others didn't receive pre-natal care or even an adequate supply of sanitary napkins, the report says. Among FIAC's findings: a shortage of qualified medical providers; no independent oversight of medical care; improper care for mental health problems and for those with disabilities; and problems with medications and medical records. Marlene Jaggernauth was held by ICE for about a year as she fought her deportation to Trinidad. While in detention at six Florida county jails, she needed to see a gynecologist but she had to wait while jail officials got permission from Washington D.C., she said. By the time she got the OK, she was moved to another detention center and had to start the process over again. "Many women were afraid to complain because they thought it would affect their immigration case," Jaggernauth said. The groups' recommendations include establishing a medical care oversight commission; strengthening medical care standards; improved training, and requiring an investigation into any detainee death. An organization that is pushing for tighter immigration controls criticized the reports. The two groups want to make medical care in detention so expensive that it becomes untenable to deport undocumented immigrants, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. "What advocates want is full medical care for illegal aliens," he said. /Luis F. Perez can be reached at lfperez@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4553./ Copyright © 2009, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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Reporte denuncia descuido en atención de salud de inmigrantes - El Nuevo Herald	March 17, 2009 Printable version
Ketty Rodriguez
La muerte de un anciano haitiano de 81 años que pidió asilo apenas llegó a Miami, fue detenido y aparentemente no recibió la atención médica adecuada hasta morir esposado en la cama de un hospital, es uno de los ejemplos que activistas utilizaron para denunciar las negligencias que se comenten contra personas detenidas por inmigración. El martes, El Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center (FIAC) y Human Rights Watch presentaron dos reportes en los que denuncian la falta de servicios médicos, descuidos, crueldad y humillaciones que sufren las personas detenidas por inmigración. Las dos organizaciones criticaron en sus informes al gobierno, y solicitaron la creación de sistema de cuidado de salud "mas humano'', para los inmigrantes detenidos, en particular para las mujeres. La sobrina del anciano, Edwidge Danticat una novelista que ha recibido reconocimiento nacional, publicó en el 2007 el libro Brother I'm Dying donde describe la trágica muerte de su tío, Joseph Danticat, poco después de ser detenido por inmigración cuando llegó en el 2004. Su tío era ministro bautista y fue víctima de las gangas en Haití por lo que decidió venir a Estados Unidos y solicitar asilo. Según el testimonio de la escritora, su tío era sobreviviente de cáncer, pero inmigración lo despojó de sus medicinas para la próstata y presión sanguínea, cuando fue trasladado al Centro de Detención de Krome. Al parecer, los funcionarios de la cárcel creían que estaba fingiendo y aparentemente no le brindaron la atención médica que necesitaba. Sus familiares no tuvieron acceso para verlo en el Hospital Jackson donde finalmente murió. "El único crimen es que estaba buscando asilo. Se lo podían haber negado, pero esto no es excusa para torturarlo y dejarlo morir'', dijo la escritora. Meghan Rhoad, una de las principales autoras del reporte, señaló que "las mujeres en detención describen violaciones como esposar a mujeres embarazadas, o no atender casos de cáncer...". La activista indicó que las detenciones del Servicio de Inmigración, Aduanas y Deportación (ICE) eran cada vez mayores, y que este tipo de "abusos eran peligrosos y generalmente están ocultos del escrutinio público y de la supervisión del gobierno'', acotó Rhoad. ICE envió una carta a Rhoad el pasado 13 de marzo donde se compromete a revisar el reporte y anuncia que en abril comenzarán a implementarse nuevos estándares en los centros de detención poseídos por la agencia. Al respecto, Susana Barciela,, directora de Política de FIAC señaló que "únicamente a través de una revisión externa e independiente de los servicios médicos, el Departamento de Seguridad Territorial puede llevar a cabo su responsabilidad moral y legal de ofrecer salud y seguridad a los detenidos''. Algunas de las peticiones de FIAC y Human Rights Watch son: * Asegurar que personas enfermas, embarazadas, que están amamantando o buscan asilo, no sean detenidas * Evitar la detención de mujeres víctimas de persecución o abuso. * Eliminar el límite para que los detenidos tengan acceso a otros servicios médicos, fuera de los de emergencia. * Prohibir esposar a mujeres embarazadas. Los activistas indicaron que las violaciones de las leyes de inmigración son civiles y no criminlaes, y por lo tanto, antes de detener a una persona en la cárcel deben buscarse alternativas menos costosas, como la "detención supervisada'' que obliga al inmigrante a reportarse regularmente ante las autoridades sin tener que permanecer en una cárcel. Para ver el reporte de FIAC visite: http://www.fiacfl.org y el reporte de Human Rights Watch visite: http://www.hrw.org/node/81430.
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Colombian brothers Alex and Juan Gomez avoid deportation -- again - Miami Herald	March 6, 2009 Printable version
Jose Pagliery and Lesley Clark
Alex and Juan Gomez, two Colombian-born brothers who faced possible deportation while attending Killian High School in 2007, have gained more time to push for legal residency in the United States. A bill filed by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., will give the Gomezes, who were both detained by immigration authorities, at least another 18 months in the United States. Both brothers, who were raised in the United States, were threatened with the possibility of being sent back to their native country after their parents were deported by immigration officials. Their 2007 detention led to a widely publicized grass-roots campaign -- mostly led by fellow Killian students -- that garnered support from two high-profile congressmen: U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, and Dodd, who filed private bills seeking to keep the pair in the United States. Dodd this week filed another private bill on the brothers' behalf, allowing them to stay in the country until the close of the current Congress in late 2010. Immigration advocates said the bills stave off a planned March 15 deportation. And it gives them more time to push for passage of the Dream Act, a bill that would offer students who grew up in the United States a path to legal residency. ''Juan and Alex exemplify why Congress should pass the Dream Act,'' said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, the nonprofit law firm that represents the Gomez brothers. ``The United States cannot afford to lose talented, multicultural students like Juan and Alex who have a demonstrated commitment to high achievement and hard work and are poised to make vital contributions to our country.'' Juan -- whose story was recently recounted in a cover piece in the Washington Post's Sunday magazine -- is currently studying finance at Georgetown University in Washington. Alex is a student at Miami Dade College. The Gomez case gained national attention because it symbolized the legal quandary affecting thousands of young immigrants across the country who are threatened with deportation because they were brought to the United States by their undocumented parents. ________________________________________ © 2009 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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A South Floridian is tapped to help shape immigration policy in D.C. - Miami Herald	February 24, 2009 Printable version
Carol Marbin Miller
Florida immigrant advocates looking for possible clues to the direction President Barack Obama will take his new administration may need to look no further than the appointment this week of a woman whose name is familiar to virtually all immigration advocates and attorneys in Miami: Esther Olavarria. The lawyer and policy wonk held jobs with the Florida Immigration Advocacy Center, the Haitian Refugee Center, and Legal Services of Greater Miami before moving to a bigger stage in Washington, D.C. Both supporters and opponents of more open borders in the United States say Olavarria's appointment as deputy assistant secretary for policy within the Department of Homeland Security likely augurs greater opportunities for migrants in the U.S., a theme that is consistent with Obama's stump message when he was on the campaign trail. ''The fact that they chose her signals to me that the Obama administration is very serious about looking at the immigration system, and then finally coming up with a viable solution for redress,'' said Marleine Bastien, executive director of Haitian Women of Miami. Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank in Washington that supports tighter immigration controls, said Olavarria's appointment can be seen as a sign Obama will work toward some sort of amnesty for undocumented migrants -- often viewed as the third rail of immigration policy. ''He clearly has to give the pro-amnesty side something,'' Krikorian said. ``He believes in it himself, but he knows it's politically very dangerous.'' The daughter of Cuban nationals, Olavarria and her four siblings left Cuba when she was 5. Olavarria was raised in West Miami, and her mother, who raised the children alone after losing her husband, ran a small business on N.W. 27th Avenue, said Juan Gomez, a Miami attorney and friend of Olavarria's who worked with her in the 1990s. Olavarria graduated cum laude in 1983 from the University of Florida, and earned a law degree at UF three years later. She told the New York Times in 1994 that she largely molded her identity as a Cuban American debating with classmates in Gainesville. She also took a trip to Cuba, which helped her realize she was more American than Cuban. ''I probably will never feel completely American,'' Olavarria told the newspaper. ``But I think visiting Cuba really crystallized for me the fact that I didn't belong there anymore. I would be a stranger.'' Formed in the crucible of Miami exile culture and politics, Olavarria developed a keen identification with the less fortunate that she later honed as a staff attorney for the Haitian Refugee Center, an epicenter for organizing around Haitian diaspora causes in the 1980s, Gomez said. ''She has a real sense of fairness for the underdog because of the situation of the Haitians,'' Gomez said. That sense of fairness, said Marcia Cypen, the longtime head of Legal Services of Greater Miami, may lead Olavarria to spearhead the cause of Haitian migrants, who continue to be deported or repatriated to their homeland while Cuban migrants are permitted to stay so long as they reach dry land. ''She is a champion for immigrant's rights,'' said Cypen, who headed the legal services group in the 1990s when Olavarria worked there. ``She has devoted her life and career to representing immigrants and trying to help them be treated fairly.'' Bastien worked with Olavarria when the two represented Haitians seeking aid at the Haitian Refugee Center. She recalls Olavarria as a kind of Energizer bunny who didn't seem to have an off switch. The two women would work for 14 hours interviewing Haitians at the Guantánamo camp who were seeking refuge in the U.S., and then go out to dinner. ''You would think she would be eating dinner,'' Bastien said. ``But she was also working. She never stops. She just keeps going and going and going.'' Olavarria worked in the late 1990s at the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, where she kept a large caseload of indigent court cases, supervised other lawyers, and did training. Cheryl Little, the group's founder and head, said Olavarria can be expected ''to fight tooth and nail'' for a reform package that will lead to more normal lives for immigrants. ''You have someone who knows her way around complex immigration laws, has tremendous experience in terms of trying to get fair bills passed in Congress, and who is aware of the challenges that immigrants face on a daily basis,'' Little said. After leaving Miami, Olavarria worked from 1998 to 2007 as general counsel to Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, and observers on both sides of the aisle credit her with essentially drafting the 2007 immigration reform bill sponsored by Kennedy and Sen. John McCain of Arizona. ''She wrote the bill,'' said Krikorian, whose group does favors greater restrictions on immigration. ``She was Kennedy's main immigration person. She was really driving the bus.'' ________________________________________ © 2009 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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Immigrant College Student Fights To Remain In U.S. - National Public Radio	February 23, 2009 Printable version
Michel Martin
MICHEL MARTIN, host: And now we're taking our weekly look inside the pages of the Washington Post Magazine where we go every week for interesting stories about the way we live now. This week, the magazine tells the story of an exceptional young man. He's attending Georgetown University after earning top grades at a competitive urban high school, as well as high SAT and advanced placement scores and the respect and regard of his friends and family. In fact, he is the kind of young man any school would want, who has done everything right - except for one thing. Juan Gomez arrived in the U.S. with his family in 1990 from Columbia with a six-month tourist visa and never left. The U.S. government denied the family's appeal for political asylum, and eventually, his parents and grandmother were deported. But Juan and his brother are still here, the beneficiaries of intensive lobbying by their classmates, intense media coverage, and efforts by members of Congress. And now Juan is living in a kind of middle world - accepted, admired, but not legal, making a life but a life that may not be his for long. Juan Gomez is here with me in our Washington, D.C. studios - in full Georgetown regalia, I should mention. His attorney, Cheryl Little, is also on the phone. She may or may not join in the conversation. I welcome you both. Thank you for speaking with us. Mr. JUAN GOMEZ: Well, thank you for having me, Michel. MARTIN: Juan, in the article, which was written by Phuong Ly, it mentions that you used to joke with your brother about immigration raiding your home, but when you were growing up, what did your parents tell you about your status? Did you all talk about this? Mr. GOMEZ: Well, actually, growing up, from a very young age I understood that we were going through a legal process, applying for political asylum. It took, you know, a matter of 13 years just for them to give us a decision. So you know, from 1990 on to 2003 we were renewing our work permits, going through that whole process, just trying to figure out, you know, whether we'd be staying here. So it was always in the back of our minds, like, yeah, there was a legal process. I sort of took the route that I was going to concentrate on the things that I can control in my life, such as my academics, my friends, my lifestyle in America, and then hopefully things would resolve themselves. MARTIN: So you grew up with this kind of uncertainty, but I get the sense that it was always kind of in the back of your head... Mr. GOMEZ: Right. MARTIN: But you didn't really put it front and center. You grew up like an American kid. Mr. GOMEZ: Exactly. It's - the best way to explain this is at that young of an age, you really have like no recollection of your memory. So they could have told me when I was four or five, Juan, we came from Mexico, Juan, we came from this country - and I would have believed them. MARTIN: Your parents were detained by immigration authorities. Were you and your brother detained along with them? Mr. GOMEZ: Right. Actually, I still remember the date, it was July 25th, 2007. You know, I'm sleeping, in my pajamas and everything. And I wake up, and my dad is running around saying, oh, immigration is here. And so, six in the morning, I look outside the windows and there's flashlights peering through my house. You know, I'm worried. I pretty much know what this means for our family, so I get my stuff, I try to get - all I have time for us to get my wallet, to get my dearest possessions, which is like my cell phones and everything. And they come in our house with couple of police officers. You know, it seems like a raid for a family of criminals when, you know, you look back at my whole family, we've never committed a crime. So that was the hardest part pretty much, just being treated in that manner, you know, getting - them placing handcuffs on my brother, my father and myself, going to detention center... MARTIN: They didn't put a handcuff on your mom? Mr. GOMEZ: No, they didn't. It was actually harder for her to see them putting it on us, you know, something your mom never - never wants to see. And so, also going to the detention center, wearing orange jumpsuits, pretty much feeling like you're a criminal but failing to realize where you committed a crime. MARTIN: When your family was detained - you know this now - that there was this intensive lobbying campaign going on by your friends. Did you know this was going on, your friends were calling the media, they were calling, you know, anybody they could think of, members of Congress - did you know about any of that? Mr. GOMEZ: Well, actually, that was the difficult part just because there wasn't much I could do about it. But I was at the detention center, there was TV, and I remember - I think it was the second day after I had been detained - I go and check the news and I see a picture of myself in the local news station, and I'm just like, wow, what's going on? And so then they fill me in. They're telling me, we're launching this huge media effort. Soon thereafter, I got in contact with FIAC, the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, and my lawyer, Cheryl Little and Kelleen Corrigan, so they started sort of guiding my friends, telling them what the best effort would be, just pretty much this whole like grassroots movement to sort of help my brother and I and help my family. MARTIN: How did that feel? Mr. GOMEZ: Well, I felt, you know, just to have those type of friends, you feel sort of special just to realize that you've surrounded yourself with these type of people and to realize that although some may believe you don't belong in this country, a small few are going to fight just as hard to make sure that you stay here. MARTIN: The hope was that the Dream Act, which was designed to allow children like yourself - you're a young man now, you're 20 years old - but people who were brought here as very young children, have gone to American schools, have essentially made a life here, would have a chance to become legal permanent residents, the point being that, you know, you didn't make the decision to come here and that you've kind of done what you're supposed to do. But in 2007, the same year your family was detained, the Senate considered and rejected it. Do you remember that and how that made you feel? Mr. GOMEZ: Actually, a couple of things around that time. One, the day before I had just figured out that my parents would be leaving in a week or so, their case had been decided, and then two, it was on my birthday that the Dream Act was actually rejected. So, yeah, I was definitely on top of things, definitely helping with calling campaigns, pushing for senators and representatives to hopefully vote for it. And then I just remembered it pretty much put me in a spot where my parents would be leaving in a week, but Senator Chris Dodd had introduced the Private Bill, which gave my brother and I until 2009, actually, until March. It gave us that leeway, but still, I knew I was going to have to deal with it without my parents and with the same as level of uncertainty that I've had for the last 18 years of my life. MARTIN: If you're just joining us, this is Tell Me More from NPR News. I'm speaking with Juan Gomez. He's featured in this week's Washington Post Magazine. The story is called "The Outsider," and we're talking about his experiences as a young man who was raised in this country, although his parents came here and have since been deported. Can I ask you - and it must be hard to talk about - but the story describes the day that your mother, father and grandmother were ultimately deported back to Colombia. Can you talk about it? Mr. GOMEZ: It's very difficult for me to talk about it. I'll try. Leading up to that day, we had about, you know, a week or so for my parents to figure out how to get most of their possessions back to Colombia. I never had a driver's license, so I had to learn how to drive in a matter of three days, figure out how to pay bills, how to run a household pretty much because there was just going to be my brother and I living in a house. So that was the hard part, so the thing I miss the most was that I never really got a chance to say a really good formal goodbye, like have a good - spend a lot of time with my parents. And then just the day of, it was really devastating, to say the least. I remember waiting in the airport terminal. It's one of those moments in your life where it doesn't really matter what you say or what you do at that point, it's not going to make the situation better. So all you've got to do is just cherish the last moments you have with your parents and your grandmother, not knowing when's the next time you're going to see them. MARTIN: And you did wind up going to Georgetown. You were accepted as an international student. Do I have that right? Mr. GOMEZ: Right, right. I was actually - I spent a year at Miami-Dade Honors College, and towards the end of the year, I decided, you know, my time here may be limited, why not take a chance? And May comes in and I got the admission letter, and it really made a problem in my life just to realize that, you know, even if I couldn't afford the school, I had gotten accepted, which is enough for me. MARTIN: Can I ask why you and your brother didn't go back to Colombia? Was that ever discussed? Mr. GOMEZ: Well, it definitely was, and what my parents decided, and you know, what we thought was it's almost like going back to a foreign country for us. As much as we know we were born in Colombia, we've grown up in the United States. We understand the opportunity we have here, and why am I going to go back and just give up after this country has invested so much to educate me? You know, I see it as better my education in order to better this country. MARTIN: What do you say to those, though, who argue that - I know you said earlier in our conversation that you didn't do anything wrong. Mr. GOMEZ: Right. MARTIN: But there are those who would say by definition you did or your parents did. Mr. GOMEZ: Right. Right. MARTIN: What would you say to that? That... Mr. GOMEZ: Well, what I would say is - I'm not going to go into the details of why my parents were here, why they stayed, but whatever their opinions are of my parents, they've paid for it. It's something where my brother and I never made the decision to come here. We did grow up here, and as much as they want to deny it, only pieces of paper are going to say that I'm not a true American in my heart. I've felt that I've devoted myself to this country, and then hopefully, I'll have the chance to continue to do so. MARTIN: But what do you say to those who argue that pieces of paper are what civil society is all about? There have to be boundaries. Mr. GOMEZ: There are boundaries, but you know, if we're ever going to tackle this issue of immigration in this country, I see the Dream Act as pretty much the stepping stone. You know, if we're going to go into arguing over whether certain individuals who made the conscious decision to come here should be punished or not or should be granted some sort of legalization, why not begin with those who didn't make the decision, those who can benefit this country, those who are looking for an education, looking to work in this country in high paying jobs? If we can't start there, then we're never going to be able to solve this issue. MARTIN: If the Private Bill sponsored by Senator Dodd of Connecticut doesn't pass, what then? Mr. GOMEZ: Well, the passage of the Dream Act is a long shot, but my lawyers are working extensively in order to have my brother get some sort of extension, and hopefully in that way we'd be able to prolong our stay here. MARTIN: What do you dream about? We talked about the Dream Act. What's your dream? Mr. GOMEZ: It's simple American dreams. You know, I've never lived a very ostentatious lifestyle. I've always - my family, we've been very - you know, we've had a very modest upbringing. You know, the dreams are pretty much hopefully to see my family again, but this time on good terms, not in the way that it ended. Hopefully, well, they can come back or where I can go visit after I've established myself, I've gotten my degree, I have an education, and just hopefully, in that way, just living the American dream. MARTIN: Juan Gomez is a student at Georgetown University. He is featured in the story, "The Outsider." It's in this Sunday's Washington Post Magazine. If you want to read the piece in its entirety, you can find a link on our Web site at npr.org/tellmemore. The piece was written by Phuong Ly, and Juan Gomez is here with me in Washington. Good luck to you. Mr. GOMEZ: Thank you. Copyright ©1990-2005 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission. For further information, please contact NPR's Rights and Reuse Associate at (202) 513-2030.
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ICE delays deportation of sick girl's mom - S.FL. Sun-Sentinel	February 9, 2009 Printable version
Luis F. Perez
MIAMI - In a last minute reprieve, ICE delayed the deportation of a Haitian mother whose sick 7-year-old daughter is undergoing medical treatment advocates say she can only get here. Vialine Jean Paul said she was driving to turn herself in to authorities when an immigration officer called to tell her that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had decided to temporarily halt her removal from the United States. Her attorneys said the officer gave no reason for the change. "I'm just really grateful," Jean Paul said. Jean Paul had asked to stay to help care for her daughter, Angela Timot, who suffers from severe headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, and pains in her legs, knees and abdomen, along with other symptoms. For the last year, Jean Paul has been driving the girl to doctor appointments, making sure she takes her medications and racing her to the hospital emergency room. Doctors at Jackson Memorial Hospital haven't been able to diagnose the little girl's illness yet and more tests are pending. Her attorneys and doctors argued that the child could not get the proper medical care in Haiti, so Jean Paul was prepared to leave her daughter behind. The girl's father, the advocates said, could not provide the care she needs because he works two jobs. Both the daughter and father, Journel Timot, are U.S. citizens. Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, Reps. Kendrick Meek, and brothers Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart all asked ICE to stay Jean Paul's deportation on humanitarian grounds, but immigration authorities let their initial decision stand until less than an hour before Jean Paul was due to report. "What we thought was going to be a really sad and tragic day for this family, has turned out to be a wonderful day," said immigration advocate Cheryl Little.
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Tougher Florida bill intends to rein in human smuggling - S.FL. Sun-Sentinel	February 7, 2009 Printable version
Luis F. Perez
State authorities would be allowed to make arrests for federal officials Under a proposed state law, a family of Americans traveling to Disney World with an undocumented aunt from abroad could face charges. A minister crossing the state line with someone in the country illegally could be arrested. State and local police could jail anyone found in car with a foreigner who had overstayed a visa. Such are some of the scenarios painted by immigrant advocates after reviewing a bill on human smuggling now working its way through the Florida Legislature. "This bill, I'm sure, is well intentioned," said Susana Barciela, policy director at the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center in Miami. "But there's already a federal statute to arrest people in human smuggling cases. And at the same time, in the way it's written so broadly, it could lead to a host of unintended consequences that could be terrible." Florida has no state law outlawing the smuggling of people, a practice that sometimes leads to injury or death for the vulnerable human cargo. So Rep. William Snyder, R- Stuart, who had a 33-year career with Miami-Dade police and Martin County Sheriff's Office, has introduced a law to close what he calls a loophole. The state Senate's Criminal Justice Committee approved the measure 7-1 Wednesday, but it has to clear two more Senate committees. Last month, the House Public Safety & Security Policy Committee passed it unanimously, but three more House panels must review it. "The law is clearly designed to stop the smuggling of illegal aliens," Snyder said in an interview. Sheriff's deputies and police officers understand the proposal's intent, he said, and if passed, it would not be used to target families with foreign-born relatives who lack proper documents. "I don't believe the law will be applied that way," Snyder said. At present, when state or local law enforcement officials come across human smugglers on the beach or on the water, they can detain them for a time. But they must wait for customs or immigration agents to arrest them on federal charges. Snyder's bill would empower state and local authorities to make the arrests. The proposed law would make it a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, to knowingly bring undocumented immigrants into Florida. Smuggling a minor would be a second-degree felony that could result in up to 15 years' imprisonment. If someone were hurt or killed while being smuggled, it would also be second-degree felony. Coastal police departments called the proposal another law enforcement tool, even if they don't report many smuggling cases. Most of the time, local police add, federal authorities promptly respond. "For us, it's about protecting people, and smugglers put people in danger," said Lt. Scott Pardon, a Hollywood Police Department spokesman. Luis F. Perez can be reached at lfperez@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4553. Copyright © 2009, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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Immigration agents accused of seeking out 'easiest targets' - Miami Herald	February 4, 2009 Printable version
Susannah A. Nesmith
As federal immigration officials ramped up efforts to catch and deport dangerous criminals who are in this country illegally, the percentage of people rounded up who had no criminal records increased, according to a report released Wednesday. The report, issued by the Migration Policy Institute and written by members of the Worker and Immigration Rights Advocacy Clinic at the Yale University law school, concluded that the National Fugitive Operations Program ``has succeeded in apprehending the easiest targets, not the most dangerous fugitives.'' That conclusion echoes complaints by South Florida migrant advocates who say people with simple visa problems are being rounded up and deported at alarming rates by teams that are supposed to be catching dangerous criminals and terrorists. ''Routinely we're meeting with immigrants who have been picked up in roundups and no criminal history,'' said Cheryl Little, of the Miami-based Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. Officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement dispute both the findings and conclusions of ''Collateral Damage: An Examination of ICE's Fugitive Operations Program,'' which covers the fiscal years 2003 through 2007. ICE officials objected to conclusions in the report that suggested immigration officers shouldn't bother arresting people who had violated deportation orders so long as they hadn't also been convicted of crimes. ''As you may recall, the 9/11 Commission recognized that the growing population of fugitive aliens represented a vulnerability to our national security and reported that abuse of America's immigration system and a lack of interior enforcement were among the many problems exposed by the 9/11 hijackers,'' ICE spokesman Ivan Ortiz said in an e-mail response to questions. 'ICE's Fugitive Operations Program was created in response to Congress' mandate that all fugitives must be identified, arrested and removed from the United States,'' he said, noting that for the first time in history, the number of fugitive cases is going down. FLORIDA RAIDS The report came out the same day the agency announced the results of a fugitive operation in Florida. The five-day ''targeted'' fugitive enforcement operation last week in Miami, Broward and three other Florida regions resulted in the arrest of 117 foreign nationals accused of various immigration violations including evasion of deportation orders. During the operation, which concluded Friday, officers arrested 89 people who ignored removal orders and 28 other immigration law violators. Of the 117 people taken into custody, 30 had criminal histories ranging from assault to battery to various drug convictions. ICE's official policy is to arrest and move to deport anyone officers encounter who is in the country illegally. Little said the policy has been felt in the homes of hard-working people across South Florida, and that she has been seeing more and more people in immigration lockups who haven't committed any crimes -- or even been ordered deported. ''The vast majority have lived here for years, worked hard, paid taxes and have U.S. citizen children,'' she said. The report, first addressed in The New York Times, blames a policy change in 2006 for the shift in immigration enforcement. That year, ICE Fugitive Operations Teams were each given a quota of 1,000 arrests a year. Before that, each team's target was 125 arrests per year. Meanwhile, the number of teams was increasing every year, from just 17 in 2005 to 101 this year. RULE CHANGES The policy memo that established the new quota also lifted a requirement that 75 percent of all arrests the teams made be ``criminal aliens.'' Instead, the teams were told to prioritize their arrests, targeting people who were considered dangerous to national security or their communities and people with criminal records first. The policy was further tweaked later in the year, putting people who have been ordered to leave lower on the list of priorities, and people who are in the country illegally, but who haven't been ordered out, at the bottom of the list. After the policy change, the report found that the percentage of people arrested by the teams who weren't fugitives, had no criminal histories and hadn't been ordered deported rose to 35 percent, from 22 percent from 2003 and 2005. In fiscal year 2007, the percentage of noncriminals among the people arrested by the teams rose again, to 40 percent, the report found. The report also found that the percentage of people arrested who had criminal convictions went down after the policy changed, from 32 percent in fiscal year 2003 to just nine percent in fiscal year 2009. ICE NUMBERS ICE officials disputed the numbers in the report, though the trend identified in the report shows up in numbers ICE provided to The Miami Herald, just not as dramatically. According to ICE numbers, the percentage of so-called collateral arrests rose from between 10 and 13 percent from 2003 to 2005 to 23 percent in 2006. The same percentage rose again in 2007, to 31. The percentage of collateral arrests went down to 18 percent in 2008 and stands at 16 percent so far this year, ICE officials say. Those numbers weren't available when the report was being prepared. Little questioned how deporting the proverbial ''maids and landscapers'' of the immigrant population serves to protect national security. ''I would argue that the immigrants who are being targeted in these raids, are not for the most part causing us any harm in this country and have no criminal histories,'' she said. ``They're costing us precious resources.'' Miami Herald staff writer Alfonso Chardy contributed to this report. ______________________________________ © 2009 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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Deportations slide under Obama radar - Miami Herald	January 27, 2009 Printable version
Myriam Marquez
Barack Obama becomes president, and Haitians with deportation orders are put on notice: You're outta here! Louiness Petit-Frere, a 31-year-old baker with no family left in Haiti and whose mother and siblings have legal U.S. status -- including a U.S. Marine brother who served two tours in Iraq -- was put on a flight on Friday. Vialine Jean Paul, 34, married to a U.S. citizen and with a 7-year-old American-born daughter being treated for a chronic viral infection, was notified that she needs to buy her plane ticket back to Haiti this week, having lost her appeal for asylum in 2001. Her choice: Leave behind her little girl or take the sick child to a storm-ravaged country where polluted flood waters have left thousands at risk of malaria, hepatitis and cholera and 300,000 children facing malnutrition. Immigration spokeswoman Nicole Navas points out that the agency is simply enforcing the law: ``Individuals of all nationalities, who have had due process and who have been ordered deported, shouldn't be surprised if they receive notices advising of their need to comply with their orders of removal.'' PLAYING POLITICS Advocates for Haitian immigrants say there has been an uptick since Obama's inauguration to deport Haitians without a criminal record, many of them married to U.S. citizens or who have American-born children. The numbers provided by immigration officials Monday (41 Haitians deported since December) do not show an uptick. Just business as usual. It's no secret that the Bush administration played politics with the Haitian diaspora wracked by four deadly storms last summer. Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff rejected a request by Haitian President René Préval to allow undocumented Haitians to stay here until their homeland recovers. He rejected granting temporary protected status, or TPS, so that Haitians can live and work legally here -- just as tens of thousands of Central Americans legally do thanks to TPS. Are bureaucrats moving swiftly before Haiti comes up on the policy radar of the new president and his Homeland Security chief, Janet Napolitano? ''They lifted the halt of deportations in late December,'' noted Randolph McGrorty of Catholic Legal Services. ``We heard about a handful of people who had been deported. Now there's this flurry of activity. . . . There are too many signs to deny it.'' Marleine Bastien, who runs Haitian Women of Miami, says her office has been swamped with calls. ''It's not only the number but the type of people who they are deporting, people who qualify for relief -- either for adjustment of status or because they are married to U.S. citizens,'' she said. PROTECTED STATUS After the devastating storms, Obama noted that ''the Haitian-American community is doing its part by supporting family and friends in Haiti in their time of need.'' That's precisely why TPS makes sense -- for humanitarian reasons and U.S. national security. TPS would not open the floodgates. When the Clinton administration halted deportations to Haiti in the 1990s because of civil strife, there was no mass migration. What TPS will do is help Haitians rebuild their country with remittances from relatives here who are at risk of being deported, as Cheryl Little of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center noted in a letter to Napolitano this week. South Florida's congressional delegation should push the White House to act quickly. Bush left Obama a ticking time bomb by reinstating deportations -- one that could explode any day now on our shores. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2009 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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U.S. denies Haitians protected status - Miami Herald	January 6, 2009 Printable version
Jacqueline Charles
The Bush administration has rejected a request by Haitian President René Préval and others to allow tens of thousands of undocumented Haitians living in the United States to stay until their homeland recovers from a string of deadly summer storms. ''After very careful consideration, I have concluded that Haiti does not currently warrant a TPS [temporary protected status] designation,'' Michael Chertoff, secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, wrote in a letter last month to Préval. Since the resumption of deportations last month -- after a three-month reprieve -- some 28 Haitians have been returned to Haiti, Michael Keegan, a DHS spokesman said. ''We are consulting with the Haitian government to see how much they can take back within their capabilities at this time,'' Keegan said. The denial of TPS and resumption of deportations have outraged Haitian advocates, who say they plan to take their request for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama. TPS was approved by Congress in 1990 for foreign nationals fleeing civil war and natural disasters. After Hurricane Mitch in 1998, Washington granted several Central American countries TPS, and the designation was recently renewed. Chertoff said he was aware of the ''tremendous damage'' the storms had caused Haiti. In the letter, he described ''various actions to help mitigate the effects of the storms'' on Haiti including the delivery of humanitarian relief supplies by the U.S. Coast Guard and the temporary suspensions of deportations. He also mentioned several immigration-related measures that Haitian nationals and others can take to extend their stay legally in the United States. Chertoff said that he arrived at the decision not to grant TPS after evaluating recommendations by the U.S. Department of State and the USCIS on conditions in Haiti following the four back-to-back storms that left almost 800 people dead, tens of thousands homeless and caused $1 billion in damage. ''It's incomprehensible to me that the conditions don't warrant TPS for Haiti,'' said Randy McGrorty, executive director Catholic Legal Services. ``They are not basing it on the reality of the situation on the ground but other considerations when applying the law to Haiti. But frankly, after eight years of dealing with this administration and their policy toward Haiti, one of those considerations is racism.'' ''According to independent reports, the successive storms destroyed 15 percent of Hait's GDP. That's the equivalent of eight to 10 hurricane Katrinas hitting the United States in a month's period of time,'' McGrorty said. ``That is a massive blow and we are saying Haiti doesn't qualify for TPS? It just doesn't add up.'' ________________________________________ © 2009 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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Inhumane to deport Haitians - Miami Herald Guest Editorial	December 29, 2008 Printable version
U.S. Representative Alcee L. Hastings
This past summer, only months after deadly food riots, Haiti was hit by four back-to-back hurricanes and tropical storms. Thousands lost their homes, many were left starving and isolated from humanitarian assistance, nearly 800 lives were taken and as of last month, over 300 people remain missing. Though recovery efforts have slowly commenced, much of Haiti remains in a state of destruction. Up to 40,000 people are in shelters, and severe malnutrition concerns have arisen throughout rural areas. It, therefore, came as an utter shock to hear that our government recently decided to restart deporting people to this fragile nation. Deportation flights of Haitian nationals back to Haiti had been suspended in the immediate aftermath of the storms after considerable pressure from congressional offices and local immigration advocates. Many of us hoped that this was a sign that the Department of Homeland Security and this administration were finally taking note of the struggles facing Haiti and recognizing that it would be dangerous and inhumane to send people back to Haiti given the country's current state. Yet once again, this administration has turned its back on our hemisphere's poorest nation by pursuing this dangerous and irresponsible course of action. While the resumption of deportations is troubling enough, the way in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) went about implementing this change is further disappointing. When deportations were initially suspended, ICE assured me and other congressional members and community organizations that we would be adequately notified should deportation flights resume. Yet, when the decision to resume flights was made, Democratic offices were never contacted about the change while Republican offices were -- though those notifications did not come until after deportations had already resumed. Even now, ICE has refused to provide an adequate explanation as to what prompted this sudden change in policy and who made the decision. Throughout South Florida, hundreds of our constituents are shocked and confused by this abrupt and unexpected announcement. Many are concerned for the physical safety of loved ones who may very well be dropped into life-threatening conditions. Instead of endangering the lives of Haitians, the United States should be working to help Haiti help itself. We should not only suspend deportations to Haiti but also grant Haitians currently residing in the United States Temporary Protected Status (TPS). TPS allows certain foreign nationals to remain temporarily in the United States when any of the following conditions exist in their home country: there is ongoing armed conflict posing a serious threat to personal safety; it is requested by a foreign state that temporarily cannot handle the return of nationals due to environmental disaster; or when extraordinary and temporary conditions in a foreign state exist that prevent aliens from returning. Haiti has long met the requirements for TPS, and it is now more vital than ever that the United States extend this helping hand to Haiti, as it has done for other nations in similar situations. The United States has provided $235 million in aid to Haiti in the past year. This amount is dwarfed, however, by the nearly $1 billion in remittances sent by Haitians back to Haiti, totaling approximately one third of the country's GDP. The repatriation of Haitians will only further hamper Haiti's recovery efforts. The decision to resume deportations and the process by which ICE went about alerting those who will be most directly impacted has once again shown poor judgment and outright carelessness by President George W. Bush and his administration. Although we are hopeful that the Obama administration will pursue a more rational and just approach to our nation's policies toward Haiti, the people who are being taken into harm's way cannot afford to wait until Jan. 20. Deportation flights must be stopped immediately, and Haitians must finally be granted TPS. U.S. Rep. Alcee L. Hastings represents the 23rd District of Florida. ________________________________________ © 2008 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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Senseless, deadly U.S. policy on Haitians persists - Miami Herald	December 28, 2008 Printable version
Myriam Marquez
Two years ago, Louiness and Sheryl Petit-Frere were newlyweds celebrating their good fortune. Both from Haiti, they had found love and one another in Miami. Today, Louiness, a 31-year-old baker, waits at the Glades detention facility in Central Florida to be sent to a country he hasn't seen in a decade, where no one waits for him. His 27-year-old bride in Miami tries to make sense of a senseless immigration law that would deport an otherwise law-abiding, working man because he had an old asylum petition denied. Never mind that he is married to a U.S. citizen, that he had, in good faith, filed for legal status and had shown up for the interview at the Citizenship and Immigration Services office when he was hauled away like a common criminal. Petit-Frere's mother and five siblings are all permanent U.S. residents, including his brother, Sgt. Nikenson Peirreloui, a U.S. Marine with a war injury to show for his two tours in Iraq. But none of that matters. ACTIONS FALL SHORT The U.S. government deems it imperative to deport Petit-Frere, who has no criminal record, to a place decimated by four back-to-back storms this summer, with thousands of starving, dehydrating children left homeless and adults facing no prospects for jobs. ''It seems terrible,'' his mother, Francina Pierre, told me Saturday while she waited for her daughter-in-law to get off work as a grocery store clerk. ''He has nobody left in Haiti,'' she said. ``My mom died, my dad died, my sister died. And my two brothers live here. One is a U.S. citizen and the other is a permanent resident. We have no more family living in Haiti, no more.'' The Bush administration had sensibly put deportations to Haiti on hold after a succession of hurricanes and tropical storms destroyed parts of the island, leaving thousands without work or home. But the president stopped short of granting temporary protected status, or TPS, to Haitians living in the United States without proper documentation. Natural disasters generally qualify for TPS consideration -- as Central Americans with TPS can attest. But Haitians can never seem to catch a break. U.S. immigration officials decided recently that it would be just dandy to deport Haitians while recovery efforts on their part of Hispaniola proceed in spurts and stops, as children die of malnutrition and mudslides continue to impede reconstruction. `TERRIBLE CONDITIONS' ''How can this nation in good conscience send children and families to face the terrible conditions that exist in Haiti?'' Cheryl Little, the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center's executive director, said in a statement. ``People could die because of this decision.'' She's not crying wolf. The conditions in Haiti, as superbly detailed by Miami Herald reporter Jacqueline Charles the past few months, cry out for solutions -- not asinine deportations that only exacerbate an already untenable situation. As President Bush looks through his list of pardons to wipe the slate clean for criminals, he should move to do more for the common man, people like Louiness Petit-Frere. Why not grant TPS for Haitians who have no criminal record, so they can stay and work here until conditions improve in their country? Those who do have family in Haiti can send money and goods back to help the reconstruction and rev up the economy. TPS was designated for catastrophic situations like Haiti's. There's no reason to deny Haitians TPS. Only racist excuses. ________________________________________ © 2008 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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Call Off the Immigrant Hunt - NY Times Guest Editorial	December 28, 2008 Printable version
Jorge G. Castañeda
THERE are myriad claims to Barack Obama’s attention, and the list will only grow before Jan. 20. But immigration reform and, more immediately, putting an end to the outgoing administration’s unfortunate and inhuman immigration enforcement policy should be high on the president-elect’s list. Mr. Obama can learn from his predecessor. President Bush wanted comprehensive immigration reform in 2001, but 9/11 got in the way. He started over in 2004, but did little given the imperatives of re-election. He pushed it gently in 2006 and failed, and then went all out in 2007 but failed again. Immigration reform is the sort of complex and costly project that, as a rule, presidents accomplish only at the peak of their power — when their term begins. If Mr. Obama decides to postpone immigration reform until later, he runs the risk of no longer possessing the leverage to convince his party’s legislators to brave the furies of the extreme right wing. But even without comprehensive reform, Mr. Obama can make a huge difference in the lives of millions of undocumented migrants in the United States today. Since late 2006, the Bush administration has been carrying out the “tough love” side of immigration reform without the generous and open-arms side, which would mean legalization for those in the United States today, and a migrant worker program for those it will need tomorrow. It has pursued a humiliating and hostile policy of persecution and harassment of illegal Mexicans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Hondurans and many others. It changed the rules of the game without any warning or empathy, nor with the traditional understanding the United States has shown, more often than not over the past century, in regard to those who cross its borders without papers. The Social Security Administration has sent “no match” letters to employers to detect unauthorized workers, while federal agents have conducted innumerable raids on immigrants’ homes and day-labor hiring sites, and even outside schools where migrants’ children are enrolled. The raids are followed by immediate deportation, or, in one case at an Iowa meatpacking plant, by a shameful plea-bargaining agreement. Drawn up by the courts, federal prosecutors and the Department of Homeland Security, the plea agreement forced hundreds of Guatemalans, including 16-year-olds, into a deal they could not understand, with six-month jail sentences. Mothers and fathers are being forcibly separated from their children — husbands from wives, brothers from sisters, all in the name of a crackdown whose only futile purpose is to terrorize immigrants into leaving, and to deter more from arriving. Money has been appropriated for the construction of a border wall that has become a symbol throughout Latin America of this hateful stance. Environmental and local objections have been shunted aside, even though everyone knows the wall is not really being built, would not be effective if it were, and contradicts everything the United States stands for. After his inauguration, Mr. Obama could put an end to all of this by suspending the raids, detentions and deportations. He should return to the approach followed by all of his predecessors until 2006: stop illegal entrants at the border when possible, but refrain from hunting them down once they cross the border. Mr. Obama should halt construction of the wall until its effectiveness can be determined, and until the United States resolves how many gates it wishes to place in that wall — and how wide they will be. He cannot, obviously, erase aggressive local ordinances in states like Arizona and Oklahoma. But he can initiate or hasten the federal government’s challenge to their constitutionality. By taking these actions, Mr. Obama would send three powerful messages. First, he would signal his gratitude to the nearly 70 percent of the Latino electorate who voted for him. Second, he would indicate his desire for improved relations with the nations of Latin America, who joyfully welcomed his election and for whom the Bush administration has made the United States more unpopular than at any time in recent memory. And he would say to the rest of the world that, on his watch, the United States will not build fences, deport mothers without their children, nor persecute foreigners. He can do all this with just a stroke of his pen. Jorge G. Castañeda, a professor of politics and Latin American and Caribbean studies at New York University and the author of “Ex Mex: From Migrants to Immigrants,” was Mexico’s foreign minister from 2000 to 2003.
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FIAC files amicus brief on behalf of asylum seeker - PB Post	December 22, 2008 Printable version
John Lantigua
Miami nonprofit joins effort to make deportations harder MIAMI — A legal services center that represents many immigrants throughout South Florida has entered a U.S. Supreme Court case on behalf of a Baltimore man who wants to make it harder for immigration officials to deport some individuals seeking political asylum. The Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, a Miami nonprofit, has prepared a "friend of the court" brief on behalf of Jean Marc Nken, who is battling deportation to Camaroon. His case is scheduled to go before the Supreme Court on Jan. 21. That case could result in national standards for the treatment of individuals who have been denied asylum by regional immigration courts, but who have appealed to U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal. "These can be questions of life and death," said attorney Tania Galloni of the advocacy center. Miami immigration judges deny more political asylum cases than any of the 54 immigration courts in the nation. An applicant can appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals in Washington, which rejects the vast majority of petitions it reviews. The board then issues a deportation order. But an asylum applicant can then petition the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. Traditionally, if judges there considered the case worthy of review they issued a stay of deportation allowing the applicant to remain in the United States while the case was decided. But in 2002 those judges began to deny stays of deportation even in cases they considered worthy of review. The judges argued that applicants for asylum could continue their cases from outside the U.S. The 11th Circuit was the first circuit to take that step. All other circuits continued to allow applicants to remain in the country. But immigration courts in the 4th Circuit - which serves Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia and the Carolinas - recently have attempted to adopt the same standard as courts in the 11th Circuit. In the case accepted by the Supreme Court, Nken, originally from the African nation of Cameroon, claims he is a known opponent of the dictatorial government of Cameroon and faces torture and possible death if he is forced to return there. "They say a person like him can fight his asylum case from there if he is deported," said Lindsay Harrison, a Washington attorney representing Nken, "but he can't win his case if he's dead." In Nken's case, Harrison is asking that stays of deportation be given to those persons whose petitions for review have been accepted. It is not uncommon for federal appeals courts to reverse decisions made by immigration judges. Some appeals judges have been highly critical of the work of immigration courts, where judges often have backlogs of hundreds of cases and work is often done at breakneck speed. Galloni says forcing an applicant to fight his or her case from outside the country makes it much more difficult for them. "And then if they win, it can be really difficult to get back into the United States," she said. Immigrant advocates say people in danger of serious human rights abuses, including torture, and even death, have been ordered deported. "We have had cases of Chinese women who were facing forced abortion and sterilization if made to go back to China and also individuals from Colombia who faced assassination at the hands of ... guerrillas," Galloni said. ~ john_lantigua@pbpost.com Find this article at: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/state/epaper/2008/12/22/a1b_immigration_1223.html
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IDB helps, ICE hurts Haiti - Miami Herald Editorial	December 17, 2008 Printable version
Editorial Page
KUDOS TO IDB The decision by the Inter American Development Bank to offer Haiti an additional $50 million in assistance next year may be the best news that beleaguered Caribbean country has received in a long time. In a nation as poor as Haiti, that extra aid should make a difference in the lives of some of the neediest people. ''Haiti is the most fragile of our member countries,'' said IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno when he announced the grant last weekend. ``No other nation in Latin America and the Caribbean is as vulnerable to economic shocks and natural disasters. As such, it requires extraordinary assistance from the international community.'' He's right. Simply giving Haiti more money won't put it on a stable footing, but the level of destitution is such that the country can't even begin to think about stability or rebuilding until it can improve its ability to feed and house its people and restart the economy. That requires foreign aid. Other nations and international organizations should follow the IDB's example. ICE: THUMBS DOWN If the IDB is part of the solution for Haiti, the U.S. government agency that enforces immigration is part of the problem. By any measure, Haiti is ill-prepared to care for more destitute people, yet Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- ICE -- has resumed deportations after a brief respite because of the devastation wreaked by this year's storms. This wrongheaded decision makes no sense at all. The country remains in dire straits, a nation suffering from hunger, misery and a host of associated ills, yet ICE cited ''the circumstances in Haiti'' as the basis for resuming deportations. Six South Florida members of Congress -- three Democrats and three Republicans -- have appealed to the White House to adopt a more compassionate position. ''Sending Haitian nationals back to Haiti is both inhumane and unsafe,'' Republican lawmakers Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said in their joint letter. Mr. President, are you listening?
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Tactics Used in U.S. Raids Draw Claims of Brutality - NY Times	December 10, 2008 Printable version
Damien Cave and Yolanne Almanzar
MIAMI — Advocates for immigrants here demanded an investigation Tuesday into a series of federal raids last month that they said left at least six Guatemalan men bloodied and bruised in a roundup of nearly 100 people. Immigration and Customs Enforcement denied all accusations of misconduct by agents in the raids on Nov. 19 in three South Florida counties, noting that the operation focused on sex trafficking and led to charges against seven people and the release of several women. But lawyers working with other detainees said they were concerned that the agency was using human trafficking laws as a front for broader operations, and a cover for harsh tactics. “There is a way that these operations should be conducted,” said Jose Rodriguez, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Miami-Dade County. “And this is not it.” At a news conference, Mr. Rodriguez and others said agents had relied on vaguely worded warrants to invade people’s homes and arrest nearly anyone who looked Hispanic. In all, according to the federal agency, 77 illegal immigrants were detained in the operation, and only a handful appear to have been charged with a crime. In the case involving the accusations of beatings, none of the men have been charged with sex trafficking. Lawyers working with the men said the agents used excessive force: bursting into their home in Homestead about 8:30 p.m., pulling their guns in front of a 4-year-old girl, then forcing all 10 or 11 men inside onto the floor in handcuffs. No guns or drugs were found. All the men were Guatemalan immigrants, and the advocates said at least six of them arrived at a nearby detention center with bruises and cuts. The wife of one detainee, the mother of the 4-year-old girl, said she saw agents kick her husband and others while they were on the floor. She declined to give her name because she feared retribution. Agency officials, in a statement denying the accusations of abuse and the display of a weapon near a child, said they were required to arrest anyone found to be violating immigration law, regardless of the circumstances. The statement also said the accusations would be forwarded to the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility for review.
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U.S. resumes deportations to Haiti - Miami Herald	December 9, 2008 Printable version
Trenton Daniel
U.S. immigration authorities have resumed deportations to Haiti, ending a three-month-plus reprieve of sending Haitians back to their storm-battered country. ''We determined that it was appropriate to resume based on the circumstances in Haiti,'' Nicole Navas, a spokeswoman with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said, declining to comment further. ``The individuals being returned have final orders of removal and the necessary travel documents.'' The move to deport Haitians comes at a time when Haiti is still trying to recover from back-to-back storms that heaped wide scale devastation. The tempests -- two of them full-fledged hurricanes -- left at least 800 people dead, tens of thousands homeless, and caused about $1 billion in damages. Aside from the clearing of roads, little has improved in Haiti. ''The decision to resume deportations to Haiti shocks the conscience,'' said Randolph McGrorty, executive director of Catholic Legal Services, Archdiocese of Miami. ``Deportations at this time are simply inhumane, sending people to conditions of famine and disease. The change in policy is unwarranted by reports on the ground which confirm that the humanitarian crisis in Haiti continues and worsens.'' McGrorty added: ``It is incomprehensibly counter-productive to the U.S. government's objective of avoiding mass migration, and so cruel and misguided that I cannot explain it by any other way than to condemn the policy as racist.'' Immigrant advocates found hope in the suspension, issued in September. They said the halt could pave the way for temporary protected status, or TPS, a program that temporarily suspends deportations and allows undocumented Haitians to obtain work permits. Immigrant advocates expressed further relief when authorities allowed more than 50 Haitians to be released from a Broward detention center. Ankle bracelets were used to monitor their whereabouts, they said. But on Monday, immigration attorneys and Haitian authorities expressed frustration with the resumed deportations. Lawyer Randolph McGrorty sent out an urgent e-mail. ''It's an outrageously inhumane act,'' said Cheryl Little, executive director of Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center in Miami. ``We are attempting to do whatever we can to convince [U.S.] government officials to change their minds on this.'' In an e-mail from the Department of Homeland Security requesting travel documents for 43 noncriminal Haitians, Haitian Consul General Ralph Latorture found out about the resumed deportations. ''We still have thousands of cubic meters of mud being removed from Gonaives,'' Latortue said about the hard-hit seaport of Gonaives. ``There are still people in shelters, and of course people know children are suffering from malnutrition in Haiti. These are all circumstances that put the country in a difficult position struggling to recover.'' Even before this fall's halting, Latortue and other Consuls General had stopped issuing travel documents. On Monday, he said he wasn't sure how his government would handle the response. It was also not clear on Monday when the first flights would start carrying Haitian nationals back to their homeland. ICE spokeswoman Navas declined to say, citing security reasons. Miami Herald staff writer Jacqueline Charles contributed to this report. ________________________________________ © 2008 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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Miami lawyer lauded for immigration work- Miami Herald	November 24, 2008 Printable version
Jennifer Lebovich
A prominent Miami immigration advocate has received the 2008 Morris Dees Justice Award. Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, accepted the award Thursday in New York. The award is given yearly to a lawyer ''who has devoted his or her career to serving the public interest and pursuing justice,'' according to a news release about the award. ''It's a great honor,'' Little said Thursday. ``I tend to get awards, but it's the FIAC staff that generally does the heavy lifting. I think it's recognition of all the work that the staff at our agency does every day.'' The University of Alabama School of Law gives out the award along with the law firm of Skadden, Arps. ''She's built up an amazing record, and the selection committee was absolutely amazed with her credentials and the fights that she's waged on behalf of immigrants,'' said Aaron Latham, a spokesman for the law school. Said Vaughn Williams, a partner at Skadden, Arps, who is member of the award's selection committee: ``She's had a distinguished career beginning right after the University of Miami Law School representing immigrants trying to come to the U.S., particularly immigrant children.'' Little co-founded the advocacy center in 1996. Her organization has monitored conditions at federal detention centers and documented cases of detainees being abused. She has also testified before Congress on the treatment of immigrants. ________________________________________ © 2008 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
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New program speeds the decision for immigrants facing deportation - South Florida Sun-Sentinel	November 19, 2008 Printable version
Luis F. Perez
Immigrants facing deportation learn whether they have the right to stay It saves time and millions of taxpayer dollars, and it has just arrived in South Florida Immigration court's Legal Orientation Program, which kicked off last month at Miami's Krome Detention Center, shaves an average of 13 days off the time it takes to process cases. That means immigrants get a quicker decision on whether they're getting deported or set free. And that translates into millions in savings on detention costs and a more efficient immigration court system. For immigrants, the benefits go beyond money. "The cards tend to be stacked against immigrants seeking relief from deportation," said Cheryl Little, executive director of Miami's Florida Immigration Advocacy Center. Many face forced separation from family. Some face the threat of death if they're returned to their native country. Some have a legal claim to stay and don't know it. The orientation gives detainees an overview of their rights and the legal process, helps find pro-bono lawyers for some and allows others to better represent themselves. It also convinces some immigrants they have no legal right to be in the country, so it's best for them to cut the court proceedings short and go home. "This program is extraordinarily important because there are people in the detained setting that are giving up their rights" to stay in the country, said Linda Osberg-Braun, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association's South Florida chapter. The government expanded the program, which it launched in 2003, from 13 sites to 25 across the country in October, bringing it to Krome for the first time. If successful, it might come to the Broward Detention Center next year. New York City-based Vera Institute of Justice contracts with the immigration court to run the $3.7 million program nationally. Vera, in turn, sub-contracts with local organizations, including the Advocacy Center and Catholic Charities Legal Services, to conduct orientation sessions. As part of its contract, the court required Vera to conduct a program evaluation, which found those who went through the program had their cases processed in 27 days versus 40 days for those that didn't. Since its inception, more than 130,000 detainees have gone through the program. Federal immigration officials estimate it costs $97 a day to house a detainee. Luis F. Perez can be reached at lfperez@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4553. By the numbers - 13 days Average number of days the Legal Orientation Program shaved off the time to process immigration cases. $3.7 million Cost of the program nationwide
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Past year saw record deportations - Miami Herald	November 7, 2008 Printable version
Ketty Rodriguez
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported a record number of undocumented immigrants and foreign criminal convicts in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, in a bid to reduce the number of illegal migrants in the United States. Nationwide, the agency removed 349,041 foreign nationals, or 20 percent more compared to the 288,663 people deported in fiscal year 2007. A third of those expelled in fiscal year 2008 were criminal convicts. The increase is all the more remarkable compared to the 116,460 removals carried out in 2002. In Florida, the number of deportations undertaken by ICE also hit a record, with the removal of 12,753 foreign nationals. The number of Florida deportations in fiscal year 2007 amounted to 9,105. ''We made a commitment to the American people to embark on an ambitious enforcement strategy aimed at securing our borders and strengthening our nation's immigration system,'' said Julie L. Myers, Homeland Security assistant secretary for ICE. The official went on to say that the record number of removals nationwide ''reflect significant, steady progress toward'' the goal of securing the border. The government's strategy of increasing deportations through raids, arrests and detentions has been widely criticized by immigration advocacy groups, which seek comprehensive immigration reform aimed at legalizing undocumented workers who have no criminal records. ''Instead of investing in the integration of immigrants, reducing delays in processing immigration document requests and improving service, Congress chose to invest in deportation programs and did not invest in the future of the country,'' said Ali Noorami, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, referring to money assigned to enforcement operations in 2009. ICE's budget for next year is almost $5 billion, an increase of $254 million over 2008, along with an increase of 1,400 new beds in detention centers. ''Almost $1 billion will be used to identify foreign criminals, which will be very good, if that is what is really happening,'' said Noorami, who criticized raids to detain undocumented immigrants because they disrupt working families. A recent study by the Pew Hispanic Center noted a decline in the number of undocumented immigrants. The study said that the flow of undocumented immigrants had gone down by an annual average of 800,000 in 2004, to 500,000 between 2005 and 2008. The study did not cite reasons for the decrease, but noted the economic slowdown and tougher enforcement of immigration laws. ICE, for its part, has three priorities that have assisted the agency in increasing the number of deportations: • Locating foreign criminals in jails serving sentences, and finding immigration law fugitives who have final orders of deportation. • Discouraging the employment of illegal workers. • Dismantling the infrastructure that supports illegal immigration such as identity theft rings and networks that sell forged immigration documents to workers who have no proper immigration papers. In 2008, ICE arrested 1,625 people linked to those crimes, compared to 1,531 in 2007. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2008 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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No good reason not to give Haiti TPS - Miami Herald Editorial	October 30, 2008 Printable version
Editorial
It defies logical comprehension that the U.S. government refuses to grant Temporary Protective Status (TPS) to Haitians living in this country, as it has done for residents from other countries torn by political turmoil or natural disaster. Haiti was ripped apart by three storms in four weeks this summer and faces a Herculean challenge merely to feed and house the tens of thousands of people who lost everything they had in the devastation. Haiti had not even recovered from Tropical Storms Noel in 2007 and Jeanne in 2004, which together killed 2,566 people when this year's storms hit. Plea to administration Haiti President Rene Preval, Catholic bishops, members of Congress and international leaders, among others, have pleaded with the Bush administration for months to provide TPS to Haitians -- to no avail. The only thing left to do is to continue to make the pleas in hopes of finding a spark of compassion. If the administration thinks that granting TPS to Haitians would set off a mass exodus from the impoverished island, it could not be more wrong. TPS would have the opposite effect. TSP would allow undocumented Haitians already in this country to remain here for up to 18 months without fear of being deported. Last year, Haitians living here and elsewhere sent $1.8 billion to relatives back home. Allowing them to stay and work here would ensure that the dollars keep flowing. That kind of direct aid, coupled with other relief efforts, would help Haiti recover quicker. In South Florida, it is impossible to observe that other immigrant groups have been given TPS -- and deservedly so -- without being disheartened by the contrasting gross unfairness to Haitians. Recently, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that it was extending TPS to Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador because of the ''lingering effects'' of a terrible earthquake in 2001 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Progress made In a recent letter to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, South Florida lawmakers made the case for TPS for Haitians: ''TPS is the least expensive, most immediate form of humanitarian assistance we can provide Haiti, as it allows the Haitian government to invest all of its limited resources in the rebuilding and redevelopment of its struggling economy,'' they wrote. It is hard to imagine that the situation in Haiti can get more desperate than it is now. Before this year's storms, Mr. Preval's government -- with help from the United States, United Nations and others -- had made impressive progress in bringing violence under control and in creating economic and political stability. Without massive amounts of help, including TPS, Haiti could easily slip back into chaos and instability. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2008 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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Help for Haiti - NY Times Editorial	October 13, 2008 Printable version
This year has been especially cruel to Haiti, with four back-to-back storms that killed hundreds of people, uprooted tens of thousands more and obliterated houses, roads and crops. A far richer country would have been left reeling; Haiti is as poor as poor gets in this half of the globe. Those who have seen the damage say it is hard to convey the new depths of misery there. The Bush administration promised Haiti $10 million in emergency aid and Congress has since authorized $100 million for relief and reconstruction. The United Nations has issued a global appeal for another $100 million. We have no doubt that Haiti will need much more. There is something the United States can do immediately to help Haitians help themselves. It is to grant “temporary protected status” to undocumented Haitians in the United States, so they can live and work legally as their country struggles back from its latest catastrophe. This is the same protection that has been given for years, in 18-month increments, to tens of thousands of Nicaraguans, Hondurans, Salvadorans and others whose countries have been afflicted by war, earthquakes and hurricanes. While the Bush administration has temporarily stopped deporting Haitians since Hurricane Ike last month, it has not been willing to go the next step of officially granting temporary protected status to the undocumented Haitians living here. Haiti’s president, René Préval, and members of Congress have urged the administration to change its mind. We urge the same. There is very little that is consistent in the United States’ immigration policies toward its nearest neighbors, except that the rawest deal usually goes to the Haitians. Cubans who make it to dry land here are allowed to stay; those intercepted at sea are not. Hondurans and Nicaraguans who fled Hurricane Mitch 10 years ago have seen their temporary protected status renewed, as have Salvadorans uprooted by earthquakes in 2001. Haiti, meanwhile, more than meets the conditions that immigration law requires for its citizens here to receive temporary protected status, including ongoing armed conflict and a dire natural or environmental disaster that leaves a country unable to handle the safe return of its migrants. If Haiti is ever going to find the road to recovery after decades of dictatorship, upheaval and decay, it will take more than post-hurricane shipments of food and water. Haiti desperately needs money, trade, investment and infrastructure repairs. It also needs the support of Haitians in the United States, who send home more than $1 billion a year. What it does not need, especially right now, is a forced influx of homeless, jobless deportees.
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Federal officials urged to extend work permits for immigrants - Miami Herald	October 7, 2008 Printable version
Ketty Rodriguez
New multi-year work permits and adhesive stickers to extend outdated permits are among the recommendations given to federal officials in order to reduce delays in processing documentation for immigrant workers. Immigrants who have obtained temporary legal status, or those awaiting permanent residence status, are currently required to renew their work permits every year. The Citizenship and Immigration Services ombudsman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in a report issued Oct. 1, said many immigrants have complained that they have lost their jobs or are in danger of losing them due to delays in processing their work permits. Under the law, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services must process permits in 90 days or issue a provisional permit. The ombudsman's report criticized the Citizenship and Immigration Services for not complying with the 90-day limit, and ``not giving sufficient explanation, nor offering alternative solutions to resolve the delays.'' CIS officials pledged to ''immediately'' conduct an audit to determine which cases have been delayed for more than 70 days and to reduce the processing time to 75 days. The agency also pledged to reduce the time taken to process provisional permits to four hours for immigrants who visit local immigration offices and whose wait has exceeded the 90-day limit. The improvements that were announced did little to satisfy pro-immigrant organizations that have criticized the delays and opposed the newly increased processing fees. The fee for a one-year work permit is $340, up from $175 in 2004. CIS said it raised the fees to speed up service, something that the activists say has not happened in many cases. Miami-based Honduran activist Jose Lagos said many immigrants covered by temporary protection status must renew their permits annually, and often don't have the money to do so. With this in mind, the ombudsman recommended creation of multi-year work permits that, according to the report, would help eliminate delays and preserve immigrants' jobs. The ombudsman also recommended adoption of stickers that could be obtained to renew permits and avoid fraud. CIS officials have made no promises to implement the ombudsman's recommendations for multi-year permits and the use of stickers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2008 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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Study finds disparities in asylum rulings - Miami Herald	October 6, 2008 Printable version
Ketty Rodriguez
Immigrants petitioning for asylum in New York are more likely to obtain a favorable ruling there than in Miami, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office. The report by the GAO, an independent agency that serves Congress, identifies a series of disparities in asylum approvals, such as: • The location where the asylum petition is submitted. A petition submitted in San Francisco is 12 times more likely to obtain a favorable ruling from the courts than one submitted in Atlanta. The greatest number of asylum petitions are submitted in New York, where the courts are 420 times more likely to approve asylum than in the rest of the country. • Petitioners that have legal assistance double their chances of being approved, compared with those that do not hire an attorney. • Petitioners who have been detained are more likely to obtain approval. • The gender of the presiding judge is also a factor. Male judges are 60 percent more likely to approve asylum petitions than their female counterparts. ''It is very disheartening that the approval of an asylum petition depends on factors that don't have anything to do with the merit of the case, but rather with the judge and the location of the court,'' said David Abraham, a law professor and immigration expert from the University of Miami. According to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, an independent organization at the University of Syracuse in New York that that collects, analyzes and distributes information about federal government activities, the average of asylum approvals vary depending on the city in which the petitions are filed. The national average of asylum petitions that were denied during the period 2002-07 was 58.8 percent. The average during the same period in Miami was 78.5 percent and 38.3 percent in New York. Even more startling were the difference in approval rates by individual immigration judges. Clearinghouse records showed that in Miami, Judge Sandra Coleman denied 21.3 percent of asylum petitions brought before her between 2002 and 2007, while her colleague, Judge Mark Metcalf, denied 89.7 percent. ''According to this data, in Miami the average for denials of asylum is higher than the national average and depends on the judge that hears the case, which is a great injustice,'' said Miami immigration attorney Jorge Rivera. In order to resolve the discrepancies, the GAO report recommended that the Executive Office for Immigration Review, part of the Justice Department, ``identify the judges that need training.'' ''Our immigration court system is not independent, and is not subject to supervision, which has resulted in the selection of judges for political reasons,'' said Kerri Sherlock, adjunct director of the Washington-based American Immigration Lawyers Association. UM's Abraham said the appointment of immigration judges has become overly ``politicized.'' ''Those that are looking for a safe refuge in our country should be treated with the same consistency and justice if they apply in Kansas or in California. The result should be the same,'' said Sherlock. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2008 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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President Préval: Haiti needs help, not U.S. deportees - Miami Herald	October 4, 2008 Printable version
Jacquleine Charles and Trenton Daniel
Haitian President René Préval said Friday that his storm-ravaged country will no longer be able to accept U.S. deportees and, for the first time, publicly called on the Bush administration to let undocumented Haitians stay in the United States until their homeland recovers. ''Haiti will no longer be able to receive the deported individuals that the United States sends us on a regular basis,'' Préval said in his closing address at the Americas Conference in Coral Gables. ''This is the occasion for the United States administration to put in place for Haitians the benefit of TPS, the Temporary Protected Status, that has already been granted to other countries in the region, such as El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua,'' he said. After Hurricane Mitch in 1998, Washington granted the Central American countries TPS and it was recently renewed. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month temporarily halted deportations to Haiti but said it would review its decision on a daily basis. The relief is not TPS, a designation approved by Congress in 1990 for foreign nationals fleeing civil war and natural disasters. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security declined to comment late Friday on Préval's request. In an attempt to slow deportations, Haitian government officials in the United States have said they stopped issuing travel documents to deportees after last month's Hurricane Ike. After refusing for two years to ask for TPS for Haitians, Préval sent Bush a two-page letter on Feb. 7 requesting a deportation reprieve. Préval said he plans to make another formal written request in the coming days and had made a personal request to President Bush. But Friday's public plea was a first for Préval, who has been criticized for not speaking out to seek help for Haiti. ''Without losing his pride, he needs to reach out and ask for help. He needs to have a plan,'' Miami Haitian activist Marleine Bastien said. ``The conditions the Haitian people are living in right now demand it. ''He needs to be more visible on the international scene. He's the commander in chief. He has the responsibility to bring the pains and suffering of this people forward,'' she said Préval's TPS plea came during a rare appearance in South Florida. The day before, he visited Haiti's northwest port city of Gonaives, which remains encased in mud weeks after Tropical Storm Hanna submerged it. He repeated his call at a meeting Friday night with more than 50 Haitian community activists. He shared firsthand knowledge of the food shortage and other humanitarian issues facing Haiti because of the natural disasters. ''Now we are in an emergency,'' he told the audience. Haitian community activists are planning a vigil for TPS on Saturday evening at Notre Dame d'Haiti Catholic Church in Little Haiti. At the Americas Conference, Préval said that while he had seen TV images and read the reports on the storm damage, nothing prepared him for the sight and smell of the devastation. On Friday, Haitian authorities increased the official toll to 793 dead and 310 missing. Préval called on Haitians and friends of Haiti to assist the country in its reconstruction, saying the four back-to-back storms in three weeks had set the country back several years and ``compromised our chance for development.'' Haiti, he said, doesn't need just financial aid but investments of capital, expertise and desire to help the country. The two hurricanes and two tropical storms collapsed major roads and bridges, destroyed more than $180 million in crops and left hundreds of thousands homeless. ''Haitians are hardworking and they need to be in conditions where they can produce. We need help to create those conditions so that we can return to real production,'' he said. ``We need investments to rebuild our infrastructure through international assistance but also by mobilizing support in Haiti and abroad.'' The United Nations, which issued a $108 million urgent appeal on behalf of Haiti shortly after the hurricanes, has had a hard time attracting support. So far, only 17 percent has been collected, prompting Préval to say that he was worried that ``we will find ourselves alone or almost alone in the face of action.'' ''We need to organize assistance, and I also ask that you take measures . . . to appeal for the TPS and do what you can to push for this flash appeal by the United Nations. . . . Also do what you can to help rebuild Haiti. I know that the Haitian Diaspora can mobilize itself,'' he said. Préval encouraged Haitians living abroad to come back and contribute. ''We are waiting for you,'' he said. In the wake of the U.S. financial crisis, the presidential elections and Hurricane Ike hitting Galveston, Texas, Haiti has struggled to remain in focus. Stressing the need for TPS, Préval said the plea was important for Haiti -- not just for Haitian families living in the United States who send more than $1.6 billion annually to relatives on the island -- an important part of the country's gross domestic product. ''These people come [home] and do not find work,'' Préval said of deported Haitians. ``They would represent too heavy of a burden on the Haitian budget.'' -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2008 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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Legal Immigration? Anybody? - The New York Times	October 3, 2008 Printable version
Editorial
One of the false pieties uttered by anti-immigration politicians is that they love immigrants. If that were true, Congress would not be having so much trouble passing a simple law to smooth out a serious kink in the legal immigration pipeline. Every year Congress authorizes a certain number of permanent-resident visas, or green cards, for immigrants to come to work in the United States or to rejoin their families. And every year bureaucratic delays prevent a certain portion of those visas from being claimed. The result? Every year thousands of potential green cards vanish, like unused cellphone minutes. The huge backlogs in legal immigration, which span years or even decades for applicants from some countries, continue to fester. The myth of Ellis Island becomes more mythical. Teachers, nurses, engineers, researchers and other aspiring immigrants who follow the rules, file their paperwork, pay their fees and wait — and wait — get the chilly message that they are not wanted. Some of them feel great pressure to go illegally around the immigration system, instead of through it, as their wait to rejoin their loved ones becomes intolerable. A House bill that could recapture an estimated 550,000 lost visas, sponsored by Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, has been moving slowly through the committee process despite the best efforts of members like Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, to sabotage it with ridiculously restrictive amendments. One would have granted green cards only to people younger than 40 with college degrees. Another would have eliminated an entire category of family visas, for siblings of citizens. In the Senate, Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, is insisting that a visa-recapturing amendment be added to a bill reauthorizing E-Verify, the federal database program to prevent the hiring of illegal immigrants. For this, he has endured an onslaught of criticism from nativist groups and colleagues, like Jeff Sessions of Alabama. They all have been raising an outcry about a coming flood of new foreigners. That’s a false alarm. Congress has already authorized these green cards, and many would go to highly skilled workers who have already lived here for years on temporary visas. The bill is as much about keeping workers as gaining them. It seems unlikely that a visa-recapture bill would make it through this year. But don’t blame Congress’s focus on the economic mess for that. Recapturing visas is a modest fix that should have been made a long time ago. The country needs to build a smoother path to legal entry and citizenship. The blame for its failure to do that lies squarely with the hard-liners who rage against illegal immigrants, but are strangely uninterested in helping people who “play by the rules” and “wait in line.”
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Haiti - Myriad problems require bold solutions - Miami Herald	September 30, 2008 Printable version
Albert R. Ramdin
Recently, I visited Haiti and witnessed the true scale of the disaster in human terms and physical damage left in the wake of hurricanes Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike. The timing of this string of natural catastrophes -- four hurricanes in three weeks -- could not have been worse. Following a protracted process that lasted more than four months, it was only at the beginning of September that the Haitian Senate fully approved President Rene Préval's nomination of the economist Michele Duvivier Pierre-Louis as prime minister. She was sworn in on Sept. 6, amid this devastating string of hurricanes and tropical storms. The challenges faced by Préval and Pierre-Louis are staggering. The sheer scale of infrastructural destruction, economic devastation and human suffering is enormous, and carries with it both short- and long-term implications for that country's economic and political future. The hurricanes left more than 423 dead, 800,000 people in need of humanitarian assistance, six bridges destroyed and almost the entire agricultural harvest valued at $200 million lost. The international community has responded swiftly to provide much needed short-term aid. The Organization of American States was one of the first organizations to send a high-level mission to assess the damage, offer assistance and join with the Haitian government in appealing to Friends of Haiti to assist with recovery and reconstruction efforts. Aid must be well-coordinated The inter-American community of nations -- Canada, the United States, the Caribbean and Latin America -- has provided valuable relief assistance to the government of Haiti. This effort must continue to address the humanitarian and economic concerns that will confront that nation for years to come. Strong and sustained international support, including from financial institutions, will be essential for addressing the structural and institutional underpinnings that are conducive to long-term economic and social development. But this support must be coordinated if it is to be effective. During this period of recovery, the U.S. government's willingness to consider the halting of deportations to Haiti and grant temporary protected status (TPS) for a limited time is welcome. Some 20,000 undocumented Haitian immigrants would benefit from this status, thereby helping to maintain a significant flow of much needed financial resources and food to the hemisphere's least developed country. Haiti will no doubt benefit from this gesture of support, at once symbolic and substantive -- Haitians abroad sent about $1.83 billion home last year, amounting to about 35 percent of the country's gross domestic product. The solidarity and support from sister countries including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Peru, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela and the Caricom group have been instrumental in fostering a climate of peace and security. This support will be even more important in the months ahead as Haiti works to jump-start its economic development plan. Haiti's private sector and civil society as well as its diaspora communities must also shoulder their responsibility and assume a major role in the country's reconstruction through an injection of human, social and financial capital. Despite its many challenges, Haiti, prior to the ''four-three'' punch was well on the way toward achieving relative political stability and elaborating a plan for development, and had demonstrated significant gains in governance, socio-economic development and citizen security. Haiti will need a major realignment of its infrastructure as well as its strategies to ensure more effective implementation of policies that can eventually mitigate the impact of natural disasters which, reports on climate change suggest, may become more frequent. The time for collective and sustained action is now. Failure to act could result in a major loss of the social, political and security gains of the last two years. From the crippling effects of these disasters, Haiti's government, legislators, private sector, civil society and diaspora (with the support of the international community) must make this tragedy into a transformative moment to engineer a sustainable framework for Haiti's future development. This humanitarian crisis cannot go unchecked. Unless the Haitian government, with the support of the international community, moves forward swiftly with a bold solution, Haiti's progress will be severely hampered and political stability may once more be at stake. Albert R. Ramdin is assistant secretary general and chairman of the Haiti Task Force at the Organization of American States. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2008 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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Storms prompt U.S. to halt deportation of Haitians - Miami Herald	September 21, 2008 Printable version
Trenton Daniels
As Haiti faces a worsening food crisis and deepening poverty, U.S. immigration officials have decided to temporarily halt deportations to the country, rocked by a devastating cluster of storms. ''There are no imminent removals to Haiti,'' Barbara Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Friday. ``We are aware of the situation --no removals are scheduled or planned.'' The deportations could resume at any time, according to the government. Friday's decision comes as Haiti attempts to dig itself out of four consecutive storms that have left at least 425 people dead, tens of thousands homeless, and wiped out more than $180 million in crops. It also comes as South Florida immigration advocates wage a larger battle to help undocumented Haitians earn the right to temporarily stay. ''We're very encouraged by this latest announcement -- that's terrific news,'' said Cheryl Little, executive director of Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. ``We're hopeful that Haitians won't be sent back until the country has had a chance to recover.'' However, the U.S. Coast Guard had not received orders changing its policy of sending back Haitian migrants found at sea. ''We are continuing our operations,'' U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer James Harless said late Friday. ``If the Coast Guard interdicts [Haitian migrants] at sea, we are still repatriating them to their country.'' Haiti's wide-scale devastation has prompted an outpouring of relief from South Floridians as well as requests from the United Nations for an additional $100 million in aid. The country begins three days of official mourning on Monday. In the storm's aftermath, immigration attorneys and allies renewed calls for authorities to provide temporary protected status, or TPS, to undocumented Haitians, a program that temporarily suspends deportations and enables obtain work permits. Friday's decision does not grant temporary protected status. ''We're evaluating the conditions on the ground on a day-to-day basis,'' Gonzalez said. ``When we feel it's appropriate to resume, we will notify members of Congress.'' Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart welcomed the move but also pushed for the authorities to go further. ''I have strongly urged the administration to grant Temporary Protected Status to Haitians,'' he said. He said he recently reiterated his request along with congressional colleagues Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Diaz-Balart wrote in an e-mail. In the wake of the storm, immigration advocates have been scrambling to prevent the deportation of Haitians back to the island nation. For instance, the advocacy center learned Friday that one of its clients was facing imminent deportation, but the woman was granted a two-week stay, Little said. She thought the woman could have been sent back to Gonaives, a port city of 300,000 where most residents were forced to seek refuge on rooftops from rampant flooding. ________________________________________ © 2008 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com
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Brazilian immigrants in Broward County receive threatening letters seeking money - South Florida Sun-Sentinel	September 21, 2008 Printable version
Alexia Campbell
South Florida Sun-Sentinel Fort Lauderdale "Not only do we have your address, but you are also being watched. We know your status in this country..." begins the anonymous letter sent last month to an unknown number of Brazilian immigrants living in Broward County. In the letter, the sender threatens to reveal the reader's undocumented status to authorities unless that person mails $30 a month to an Orlando P.O. Box. The typed message, written in Portuguese, demands the first payment by Sept. 21. "Do not play with us!" it says. Marie Correa, 41, said she was outraged when she read the letter at her Fort Lauderdale home. Correa, a naturalized American citizen, decided not to call police. Instead, she contacted a weekly Brazilian newspaper based in Pompano Beach. "I felt like I needed to do something," said Correa, who works as a waitress and airport ramp agent. "These kinds of people try to take money from Brazilians who don't speak English or who haven't been here very long." Carlos Wesley, editor of the Portuguese-language weekly AcheiUSA, said two people in Plantation and Sunrise told him they received the letter, too. Wesley said he also heard of at least two more people who received the letters, and he suspects many more. So far, available police records in Fort Lauderdale and Plantation indicate that no one has reported the shakedown attempt. Sunrise police on Thursday could not determine if there had been a complaint. That's not surprising, said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. Crooks often con undocumented immigrants, thinking they won't report the crime because they're afraid of being deported. "Many immigrants today live a life immersed in fear," said Little. "They don't know if they can trust their neighbor or their co-worker or even the person sitting next to them at church." The typed letters, sent from Orlando in mid-August, demand two $15 cash payments wrapped in paper and mailed separately to a person or group called O.R.D.S. The U.S. postal inspector who oversees mail fraud cases in Orlando was unaware of the scheme, said agency spokesman Ed Moffitt. Mail fraud convictions can lead to a maximum of $1 million in fines and up to 30 years in prison, he said. Moffitt urges victims not to send money and instead mail the letters to his office. "We're not asking anyone about their legal status," Moffitt said. "If I get around 60 letters, it might be enough for us to get a temporary restraining order" and stop service to that mailbox. Legal action could then follow. Copyright © 2008, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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No deportations to storm-crippled Haiti, for now - USA Today	September 19, 2008 Printable version
Jennifer Kay
MIAMI — No deportations to storm-crippled Haiti are planned, federal immigration officials said Friday, an encouraging sign to advocates who say the Caribbean country needs more time to recover before it can deal with fresh arrivals. No removals from the U.S. are scheduled, and federal officials were evaluating conditions in the country, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez. Haiti is trying to rise from the wreckage left behind by three hurricanes and a tropical storm within a month. "When we feel it's appropriate to resume, we'll notify members of Congress. There are no imminent removals to Haiti," said ICE spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez. Ralph Latortue, the Haitian consul general in Miami, said he stopped issuing travel documents for detainees, but deportations had continued. The halt, even temporary, cheered Haitian advocates. "We're encouraged by reports that our government is reviewing the issue of Haitian deportations and assessing conditions on the ground," said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. Detainees' relatives told Catholic Charities Legal Services in Miami that a group was expected to be sent back to Haiti Friday. That group didn't go, said Randy McGrorty, chief executive officer of the agency. "The fact that they considered doing it is chilling," McGrorty said. "The fact that they might resume this is frightening." The conditions in impoverished Haiti are horrendous, leaders say. At least 425 people were killed and thousands left homeless by severe flooding after the storms. Relief efforts have been hindered by Haiti's neglected infrastructure. Aid agencies and diplomats say mass hunger is a risk because the storms wiped out Haiti's crops and damaged irrigation systems and pumping stations. Even before the storms, skyrocketing food prices sparked violent protests across the Western Hemisphere's poorest country this spring. Haiti's chronic political and economic instability have prompted a U.S. State Department warning against travel to the country of 8.5 million people. Some South Florida congressional members, who represent the largest Haitian community in the U.S., said they were disappointed that Haitians have not been granted temporary protected status. The status allows immigrants from countries experiencing armed conflict or environmental disasters to stay and work in the U.S. for a limited time. It has been granted to a handful of African and Central American countries. Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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Farm bosses in Immokalee plead guilty in slavery scheme - Miami Herald	September 4, 2008 Printable version
Jay Weaver
Five farm bosses have pleaded guilty to a scheme to enslave Mexican and Guatemalan nationals as agricultural workers in southwest Florida, the Justice Department announced Wednesday. Cesar Navarrete, Geovanni Navarrete, Villhina Navarrete, Ismael Michael Navarrete and Antonio Zuniga Vargas were convicted of harboring undocumented immigrants for profit and identify theft in the farming community of Immokalee, authorities said. Cesar and Geovanni Navarrete also pleaded guilty to beating, threatening, restraining and locking workers in trucks to force them to work. They face up to 35 and 25 years in prison, respectively. The other defendants face 10 to 25 years in prison. Previously, codefendant Jose Navarrete had pleaded guilty to harboring undocumented foreigners for profit. He faces up to 37 years in prison. According to prosecutors, the defendants were accused of paying the workers minimal wages and driving them into debt, threatening physical harm if they left before their debts were repaid to the Navarrete family. ''In this case, we are given yet another example of how human trafficking of all kinds victimizes vulnerable human beings,'' said Grace Chung Becker, acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. This case was investigated by agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI, assisted by the Collier County Sheriff's Department. Victim assistance was provided by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. It was prosecuted by the Justice Department and U.S. Attorney's Office in the Middle District of Florida. ________________________________________ © 2008 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
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Once facing deportation, student heads to college - Miami Herald	August 22, 2008 Printable version
Kathleen McGrory and Andres Viglucci
Just a year ago, Killian High star grad Juan Gomez barely avoided a forcible return to his native Colombia, a country he scarcely knows, when classmates, civic leaders and members of Congress rallied to help him stave off deportation. Now he's off -- not to South America, but north to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., alma mater of Bill Clinton, where he has been admitted as an international student on scholarship. Shortly after stepping off an early flight from Miami on Thursday, Gomez, 19, found himself engaged in an all-American activity -- shopping at a Target to outfit the dorm room he will share with a student from California. ''It's been really exciting,'' Gomez said before leaving Miami. For Gomez, the one off-note was the absence of his parents, who were deported to Colombia in October. ''They were a little sad that they won't be able to go up with me,'' Gomez said. Julio and Liliana Gomez brought Juan and his older brother, Alex, to the United States in 1990 with tourist visas in a fruitless bid for political asylum, but the family stayed in the country for more than a decade despite a deportation order. When immigration authorities detained the family last year, Juan and Alex became causes celebres, symbolizing the plight of tens of thousands of young immigrants who are in legal jeopardy because they were brought to the country as children by their parents without authorization. A widely publicized grass-roots campaign led by the teens' friends led to two principal efforts, including a bid to pass the so-called DREAM Act, which would allow young immigrants in their situation to stay by going to college or serving in the military. That effort stalled amid last year's acrimonious debates over immigration. Then came private bills filed by U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Sen. Christopher Dodd that, if passed, would allow the brothers to stay permanently. Immigration officials granted the young men a stay of deportation until Congress takes up the bills sometime early next year. U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen also has backed efforts to let the brothers stay. Opponents of the DREAM Act have said Congress should not reward immigrants who flout the law regardless of their youth or talents. ''We can't solve the problem by encouraging more people to come here,'' said Mike Cutler, a former immigration agent and fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, a group that advocates cuts in legal and illegal immigration. ``Do I feel bad for this kid? Yes. But it comes back to parental responsibility. Bringing a child unlawfully into this country with all of that uncertainty jeopardizes the well-being of that child.'' Supporters say it's foolish to cast away bright, able young people whose education represents substantial public investment. ''To deport them or waste their talents is a terrible brain drain for our country as well as a loss of the tax dollars already invested in their education,'' said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, which represents the Gomez brothers. After their parents and grandmother were deported, Juan and Alex continued to live in the family's Kendall home. Juan took a job at a local Outback Steakhouse to save money for college. Alex, 20, has also been working at a restaurant and will attend Miami Dade College. He hopes to be a firefighter, his brother said. Juan spent a year studying in Miami-Dade's Honors College. ''It was a great year,'' he said. ``I made some good friends. But in the middle of the year, I decided I was going to apply to schools again.'' The acceptance to Georgetown as a transfer student came with a $42,000 competitive scholarship, not quite enough to cover tuition and expenses for a year. Juan will be a sophomore and take courses in business and finance, preparation for a career in investment banking or law. He was accompanied to Washington by Bette Ellen Quiat, the mother of buddy Scott Elfenbein, now at Harvard, who helped organize the campaign for the Gomez brothers. Quiat was helping Juan pick out cool-weather clothes and dorm furnishings as he spoke on a cellphone. ''I'm pretty clueless when it comes to this stuff,'' Juan joked. ``I'm really appreciating this help.'' Otherwise, the unflappable young man said he was not in the least cowed by the new challenge he's taken on. ''Honestly, I'm not nervous at all,'' he said. Nor has he given up on staying for good. He said he will continue to hope for passage of the private bills and push for the DREAM Act. ''I wouldn't have applied [to Georgetown] if I really thought I'd be leaving in a year,'' he said. ``I feel like my best chances of staying in this country are going to a prestigious institution like Georgetown.'' ________________________________________ © 2008 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
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Detainee's death brings fallout - Miami Herald	July 8, 2008 Printable version
Trenton Daniel
Activists are questioning medical conditions in federal detention facilities after a West Palm Beach resident from Haiti died while in the custody of immigration officers. ''Lack of access to adequate medical care is among one of the chief complaints we hear from detainees in South Florida and elsewhere,'' said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center in Miami. Little said an early investigation shows Valery Joseph, 23, died on June 20 while he was being held in the Glades County Detention Center. Officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement picked up the West Palm Beach resident from the county jail on Dec. 28, 2007. An immigration judge indicated Joseph might have been eligible for release from deportation, Little said. A hearing was scheduled for July 3. Since 2000, Joseph had been convicted of several felonies, including robbery and grand theft. In a written statement, ICE spokeswoman Nicole Navas noted: ``This [is] another attempt by advocacy groups such as FIAC to tout emotion over fact from their bully pulpit. While a single death of an ICE detainee is a serious matter, it is important to review the facts. There is no lack of medical care for those held in detention. In fact, quite the opposite.'' The immigration agency spends nearly $100 million annually on detainee healthcare nationwide, which includes preventive dental, chronic and mental health, Navas said. As is standard, the case will go before the agency's Office of Responsibility to see if a probe is warranted. The agency would not comment further. According to Little, this is what happened: Documents obtained by FIAC show immigration officers were delivering medication to Joseph on June 20 when he was found unresponsive. Joseph was pronounced dead at 10:54 a.m. An autopsy was performed on June 22. Preliminary results show Joseph died from a seizure, Little said. A few days later Joseph's mother learned about her son's death, Little said. The mother was told by the funeral home that the body was not suitable for viewing, and she has yet to see the body, Little said. Details about the death will become clearer once the agency hands over Joseph's medical records, Little said. ''We're hoping we're not getting the run around and these records are provided to the family,'' she said. The death in detention recalls the 2004 case of Joseph Dantica, a Baptist minister who was the uncle of Haitian-born writer Edwidge Danticat. Dantica, fleeing gang violence that had engulfed his Port-au-Prince church, died as an 81-year-old asylum seeker at the Krome detention center in West Miami-Dade. The event was chronicled in a prize-winning memoir Danticat wrote, Brother, I'm Dying. The issue of medical care among immigrant detainees has become the subject of Congressional hearings. U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek has asked DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner for an investigation into the Joseph case, which has galvanized Haitian activists. ''We are hoping that a conclusion in the investigation will shed light on the treatment of detainees,'' Jean-Robert Lafortune, chairman of the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition, said Monday. Activists are holding a news conference Tuesday, Joseph's birth date, in Little Haiti. According to ICE, 71 people have died nationwide in detention in the past five years among nearly 1.5 million in detention during that time. ICE notes that the detainee population has increased by more than 30 percent since 2004, but the mortality rate has declined. Joseph's mother described her son as courteous and affectionate. ''He was a very respectful boy he always told me he loves me,'' recalled Jacqueline Fleury, 42. Joseph, who hailed from the Port-au-Prince suburb of Carrefour, moved to the United States when he was 8 years old, Fleury said.
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Lawsuit Leads to Release of Immigrant - The Washington Post	July 3, 2008 Printable version
By Amy Goldstein and Dana Priest
In Jail, She Was Denied Timely Medical Care A South Korean immigrant who was repeatedly denied timely medical care while in the immigration detention system was released from an Arizona jail yesterday. Federal immigration officials released Yong Sun Harvill, 52, as part of a settlement of a federal lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The suit, filed in June, alleged that ICE's top administrator and a half-dozen other officials "deny basic human needs, inflict unnecessary pain and suffering and put Mrs. Harvill at substantial risk of physical injury, illness and premature death." The government insists she received proper care. In May, The Washington Post documented Harvill's struggle to get treatment as part of a series of articles about poor medical care for detained immigrants around the country. The series was based on interviews and thousands of internal government records. Harvill, a legal U.S. resident and the wife of an American citizen, came to the United States as a young Army bride 32 years ago, but never applied for citizenship. Immigration officials were trying to deport her under a provision that allows for the removal of non-citizens who have been convicted of certain crimes -- in her case, buying stolen jewelry more than a decade ago. Under the terms of the settlement, Harvill, in exchange for her release, agreed to drop her suit against ICE, including any future claims if it turns out that her care in the jail contributed to deteriorating health. Harvill will be allowed to remain in the United States for at least two years or until her remaining immigration case is resolved, whichever is later. Then, ICE could decide to deport her or to defer her removal so that she may continue her medical care. Harvill was flown to Miami yesterday after her release from the Pinal County Jail southeast of Phoenix. She will live with her family outside Tampa. "Right now my stomach feels queasy," Harvill said in a telephone interview. "I'm both worried and excited about the whole thing. All I want to do is check into the hospital. There's something happening to me that's not normal." ICE spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said the settlement with Harvill "contains no admission of any liability whatsoever," and she denied that Harvill was ever refused medical care. "Indeed, a careful review of Ms. Harvill's medical records reveals that she consistently received a high level of medical care for myriad pre-existing ailments while she was in ICE custody," Nantel said in an e-mail. "Any claim to the contrary is simply not borne out by the records." Harvill's medical problems are serious and complex: repeated episodes of soft-tissue cancer over three decades, a painfully swollen leg damaged by past radiation treatments, hepatitis, psychiatric problems and -- recently -- a lump growing below her left knee that she was unable for months to persuade her jailers to allow her to get tested. ICE took Harvill into custody in Florida in March 2007 as she finished a 13-month prison sentence on a drug-possession charge. She was held at Palm Beach County Jail, but then was transferred to a federal detention compound in Arizona. ICE officials told her lawyers she would get better medical care there, but several weeks later, she was moved to Pinal County Jail, one of many local and county jails around the country that are paid by ICE to house immigration detainees. The jail does not have a full-time doctor on its staff, so Harvill was taken repeatedly to a public hospital more than an hour away in Phoenix, where she often did not receive proper care, her case documents show. After The Post article, Harvill's case received attention from federal officials, outside advocates and the South Korean Consulate in Los Angeles. Harvill's health, meanwhile, continued to deteriorate. In late May, she was taken to Maricopa Medical Center for surgery that, four months earlier, she had been told she needed to remove uterine polyps. A doctor found a suspicious spot and ordered a biopsy, but Harvill still is not certain of the results. She has developed hearing loss in her one, good ear. In her final days in custody, Harvill became lightheaded, briefly blacking out, and was taken to Maricopa's emergency room. She was taken back to the emergency room again last week after becoming dizzy.
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Ten Sue Feds Over Delays in Approval for Citizenship - El Nuevo Herald	June 6, 2008 Printable version
Helena Poleo
Ten immigrants sued citizenship agencies and the FBI, saying they are having to wait an unreasonable time to become U.S. citizens. MIAMI - In the 2006 elections, Luciano Horna could not vote because he wasn't a U.S. citizen, but his wife and two grown daughters did because they became naturalized quickly. The entire family had sought U.S. citizenship in November 2005. In May the following year, Horna's wife and two daughters pledged allegiance to the United States. Horna continues to wait, but the 60-year-old Panamanian has had enough. He is among 10 South Florida immigrants who have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the Justice Department for having to endure an ''extraordinary'' wait to become a U.S. citizen. The plaintiffs include immigrants from Russia, Cuba, Panama, Guyana, Morocco, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Lawyers for the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, which is representing the 10, said Thursday that all are permanent U.S. residents and all passed their citizenship interviews. However, they've been waiting between two and four years for approval. ''All we want is for them to be given the rights they deserve,'' said Tania Galloni, a FIAC lawyer. U.S. law stipulates that every applicant should get word from the U.S. government about his or her citizenship petition within four months of an interview. It's been years for Horna and the other plaintiffs. ''They just keep saying that it's the name check'' that's causing the delay, said Horna, who has had a green card for nine years. The FBI checks are conducted to ensure that the names don't match anyone on a list of terrorists. That step began in 2002, after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The process can take time, said Paul Bresson, an FBI spokesman in Washington, because in many cases the checks must be done manually, consulting paper files. The process has many critics, including the USCIS ombudsman. They say the checks are wasting resources and are unnecessary. Facing multiple complaints, USCIS and the FBI announced in April a plan meant to reduce the wait. According to the agencies, any name checks that have taken more than three years should have cleared by May. Though Bresson said he could not comment on a pending lawsuit, he said the agency had completed checks that were more than four years old. USCIS spokeswoman Ana Santiago also reiterated Bresson's timeline. ''As we had announced several months ago, all of these cases that were more than 4 years old were eliminated from the waiting list in May, as we specified in the elimination plan. Everything suggests that the names that have been waiting more than 3 years were also eliminated in May,'' Santiago said. Under the government's plan, the name checks should be up to date by 2009. But FIAC lawyers noted that they have cases of people who have waited for six years. ''In South Florida they don't seem to be meeting the parameters they announced,'' said Galloni. ``When we ask about their cases, they only get the same answer they have gotten for years: wait.'' FIAC Executive Director Cheryl Little said her office decided to file the suit because it has been bombarded with complaints about the long waits. ''This is the most effective way to help our clients,'' she said. ``We're sure that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people in South Florida that could join this class-action lawsuit.'' Helena Poleo can be reached at hpoleo@elnuevoherald.com.
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Some Detainees Drugged For Deportation - The Washington Post	May 14, 2008 Printable version
Amy Goldstein and Dana Priest | Washington Post Staff Writers
Immigrants Sedated Without Medical Reason The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged. The government's forced use of anti psychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the "pre-flight cocktail," as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane. "Unsteady gait. Fell onto tarmac," says a medical note on the deportation of a 38-year-old woman to Costa Rica in late spring 2005. Another detainee was "dragged down the aisle in handcuffs, semi-comatose," according to an airline crew member's written account. Repeatedly, documents describe immigration guards "taking down" a reluctant deportee to be tranquilized before heading to an airport. In a Chicago holding cell early one evening in February 2006, five guards piled on top of a 49-year-old man who was angry he was going back to Ecuador, according to a nurse's account in his deportation file. As they pinned him down so the nurse could punch a needle through his coveralls into his right buttock, one officer stood over him menacingly and taunted, "Nighty-night." Such episodes are among more than 250 cases The Washington Post has identified in which the government has, without medical reason, given drugs meant to treat serious psychiatric disorders to people it has shipped out of the United States since 2003 -- the year the Bush administration handed the job of deportation to the Department of Homeland Security's new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE. Involuntary chemical restraint of detainees, unless there is a medical justification, is a violation of some international human rights codes. The practice is banned by several countries where, confidential documents make clear, U.S. escorts have been unable to inject deportees with extra doses of drugs during layovers en route to faraway places. Federal officials have seldom acknowledged publicly that they sedate people for deportation. The few times officials have spoken of the practice, they have understated it, portraying sedation as rare and "an act of last resort. " Neither is true, records and interviews indicate. Records show that the government has routinely ignored its own rules, which allow deportees to be sedated only if they have a mental illness requiring the drugs, or if they are so aggressive that they imperil themselves or people around them. Stung by lawsuits over two sedation cases, the agency changed its policy in June to require a court order before drugging any deportee for behavioral rather than psychiatric reasons. In at least one instance identified by The Post, the agency appears not to have followed those rules. In the five years since its creation, ICE has stepped up arrests and removals of foreigners who are in the country illegally, have been turned down for asylum or have been convicted of a crime in the past. If the government wants a detainee to be sedated, a deportation officer asks for permission for a medical escort from the aviation medicine branch of the Division of Immigration Health Services (DIHS), the agency responsible for medical care for people in immigration custody. A mental health official in aviation medicine is supposed to assess the detainee's medical records, although some deportees' records contain no evidence of that happening. If the sedatives are approved, a U.S. public health nurse is assigned as the medical escort and given prescriptions for the drugs. After injecting the sedatives, the nurse travels with the deportee and immigration guards to their destination, usually giving more doses along the way. To recruit medical escorts, the government has sought to glamorize this work. "Do you ever dream of escaping to exotic, exciting locations?" said an item in an agency newsletter. "Want to get away from the office but are strapped for cash? Make your dreams come true by signing up as a Medical Escort for DIHS!" The nurses are required to fill out step-by-step medical logs for each trip. Hundreds of logs for the past five years, obtained by The Post, chronicle in vivid detail deviations from the government's sedation rules. An analysis by The Post of the known sedations during fiscal 2007, ending last October, found that 67 people who got medical escorts had no documented psychiatric reason. Of the 67, psychiatric drugs were given to 53, 48 of whom had no documented history of violence, though some had managed to thwart an earlier attempt to deport them. These figures do not include two detainees who immigration officials said were given sedatives for behavioral rather than psychiatric reasons before being deported on group charter flights, which are often used to return people to Mexico and Central America. Even some people who had been violent in the past proved peaceful the day they were sent home. "Dt calm at this time," says the first entry, using shorthand for "detainee," in the log for the January 2007 deportation of Yousif Nageib to his native Sudan. In requesting drugs for his deportation, an immigration officer had noted that Nageib, 40, had once fled to Canada to avoid an assault charge and had helped instigate a detainee uprising while in custody. But on the morning of his departure, the log says, he "is handcuffed and states he will do what we say." Still, he was injected in his right buttock with a three-drug cocktail. In one printout of Nageib's medical log, next to the entry saying he was calm, is a handwritten asterisk. It was put there by Timothy T. Shack, then medical director of the immigration health division, as he reviewed last year's sedation cases. Next to the asterisk, in his neat, looping handwriting, Shack placed a single word: "Problem." When he landed in Lagos, Nigeria, Afolabi Ade was unable to talk. "Every time I tried to force myself to speak, I couldn't, because my tongue was . . . twisted. . . . I thought I was going to swallow it," Ade, 33, recalled in an interview. "I was nauseous. I was dizzy." As he was being flown back to Africa, his American wife alerted his parents there that he was on his way. His father was waiting at the Lagos airport. It was the first time in three years that they had seen one another. Shocked by how woozy the young man was, his father decided not to take him home and frighten the rest of the family. Instead, he checked his son into a hotel. Ade was in the hotel for four days before the effects of the drugs began to abate. Part of a prominent Nigerian family, Ade asked The Post to identify him by only a portion of his name to protect their reputation. He had come to the United States as a college student in the mid-1990s. Five years later, he was in a car belonging to cousins when police found fraudulent checks in the trunk. He pleaded guilty. After finishing his sentence, Ade was living in Atlanta, and was two semesters away from a telecommunications degree at DeVry University, when immigration officers came looking for him one day in January 2003. They wanted to deport him for the old crime. He called his probation officer to ask whether he could wait to surrender until he took his upcoming final exams. But when he went to the probation office, immigration officers were there to arrest him. His records offer little explanation of why he was sedated. The one-page medical record in his file mentions one condition: chronic nasal allergy. The log of his trip does not mention mental illness; in the space to list current medical problems, a nurse wrote merely that Ade was anxious. His drugging, however, fits a pattern that emerges from the cases analyzed by The Post: The largest group of people who were sedated had resisted attempts to deport them at least once before. One summer day in 2003, deportation officers arrived at the rural Alabama jail where Ade was being held. Pack your bags, they told him. When they reached an immigration office in Atlanta, Ade recalled, half a dozen "big guys came to meet me and said I was there to be deported." "I can't be deported," he replied. "I have a wife I love very much." Besides, he told them, he was still appealing his immigration case. He shouldn't have to leave, he protested, until the judge had ruled. That day, he was returned to Alabama. But he said that immigration officers warned him, "We'll find a way to get you on a plane." A few weeks later, the officers came back and again took him to a holding cell in Atlanta. He was, the medical log says, becoming "increasingly anxious and non-cooperative per flt. to Nigeria." At 1:30 p.m., the log says, "Dt taken down by four" guards. Ade was being held down, he recalled, when he noticed a nurse "with a needle and a bottle with some kind of substance in it." He said he told the guards: "Okay, fine, fine. If it's going to be like this, don't inject me. I will go on my own free will." The nurse went ahead, the log shows, injecting him in the left shoulder with two milligrams of a powerful drug, Haldol, used to treat psychosis, and one milligram of an anti-anxiety drug, Ativan. He was injected with two more rounds, as well as a third drug, in progressively larger doses, during the trip. The Sedation Cocktail More than 250 foreigners without mental illness have been sedated for deportation during the past five years. Most of them have been injected with a cocktail consisting of two or three drugs, although a few were given different medications in the earlier years. During the 2007 fiscal year, ending in October, 53 people were sedated without a psychiatric reason, according to a Washington Post analysis based on government records. Fifty of them were injected with Haldol. All those people also were given Ativan, and all but three were given Cogentin as well. Two deportees received Ativan alone, and one person's medications were not clear from the records. Here is a look at the major drugs in the government's sedation cocktail. The Most Potent Drug HALDOL (a.k.a. HALOPERIDOL) Antipsychotic medication Uses: Schizophrenia, psychosis induced by street drugs or any medical condition, persistent aggressiveness that may be a danger to patient or others, Tourette's syndrome, manic disorder. What it does: For people with severe psychiatric illness, can help them think more clearly, feel less nervous and prevent suicide in those who are likely to harm themselves. Can also reduce aggression and a desire to hurt others. Calming to psychotic people who hallucinate or are delusional. Produces a more "zombie-like" effect in non-psychotic people. Side effects: Dizziness, drowsiness, difficulty urinating, trouble sleeping, headache, anxiety and pain at the injection site. May cause muscle spasms or stiffness, tremors, restless- ness, masklike facial expression, drooling. Recommended daily doses: For aggressive behavior, 0.5 milligrams twice a day to 5 milligrams three times a day, although doses of up to 10 milligrams a day may be used in a hospital emergency room. The Other Drugs ATIVAN (a.k.a. LORAZEPAM) Benzodiazepine Uses: Anxiety, seizures, pre-surgery What it does: Produces a calming effect on the brain and the central nervous system Side effects: Dizziness, drowsiness, slurred speech, unsteadiness COGENTIN Anti-cholinergic agent that relaxes muscles by acting within the brain Uses: Parkinson's disease, involuntary movements due to side effects of some psychiatric drugs, including Haldol What it does: Helps decrease muscle stiffness, sweating and the saliva production, and helps improve walking ability in people with Parkinson's. Side effects: Blurred vision, constipation, decreased sweating, drowsiness, dry nose, dry throat, painful urination, nausea SOURCES: Medscape; WebMD; Philip Seeman, professor of psychiatry and pharmacology, University of Toronto The effects of those injections are what alarmed Ade's father after the plane landed in Lagos. Yet the medical log says Ade arrived "alert and oriented." His family's doctor, who visited him on each of the four days his father hid him in the hotel, had a different view. "He was groggy -- somebody under the influence of drugs or drunkenness, " recalled Olakunle Adigun, a general practitioner. He couldn't figure out what sedatives his patient had been given, so he tried to detoxify him with saline infusions. Ade's pulse was dangerously low, and when he tried to walk around the hotel room, "he leaned on the wall," Adigun said. "He was talking, but a slurred kind of speech." * * * Internal government records show that most sedated deportees, such as Ade, received a cocktail of three drugs that included Haldol, also known as haloperidol, a medication normally used to treat schizophrenia and other acute psychotic states. Of the 53 deportees without a mental illness who were drugged in 2007, The Post's analysis found, 50 were injected with Haldol, sometimes in large amounts. They were also given Ativan, used to control anxiety, and all but three were given Cogentin, a medication that is supposed to lessen Haldol's side effects of muscle spasms and rigidity. Two of the 53 deportees received Ativan alone. One person's medications were not specified. Haldol gained notoriety in the Soviet Union, where it was often given to political dissidents imprisoned in psychiatric hospitals. "In the history of oppression, using haloperidol is kind of like detaining people in Abu Ghraib," the infamous prison in Iraq, said Nigel Rodley, who teaches international human rights law at the University of Essex in Britain and is a former United Nations special investigator on torture. For people who are not psychotic, said Philip Seeman, a University of Toronto specialist in psychiatry and pharmacology, "prescribing Haldol . . . is medically and ethically wrong." Seeman studied the drug in the 1960s and later discovered the brain receptors on which several antipsychotic drugs work. The only circumstances in which small amounts of Haldol are appropriate for non-psychotic people, Seeman said, are when a person comes into a hospital emergency room violent and agitated from an overdose of a drug such as PCP, or when someone with severe dementia is delusional or combative. "You or I wouldn't get it if we were emotionally upset," he said. In addition, Seeman said, typical doses to help psychotic patients accustomed to the drug are perhaps five to 15 milligrams a day. Several deportees were given a total of 30 milligrams, which Seeman characterized as "really high," especially for people who have never taken the drug before. Even when used for its intended patients, people with psychosis, Haldol has drawn warnings from the U.S. government. In September, the Food and Drug Administration issued an alert citing "a number of case reports of sudden death" and other reports of dangerous changes in heart rhythm. It is, important, the FDA warned, to inject Haldol only into muscles, not veins, and to avoid doses that are too high. "Pharma non grata" is the way Emergency Medicine News magazine described the drug after the FDA alert. Beyond the specific drugs used, Rodley said, is a deeper question: "What is the least intrusive means of restraint consistent with the human dignity of the person? . . . I'd be very surprised if the injection of disabling chemicals against somebody's will that affect one's psychological well-being . . . is likely to be the least intrusive means." Asked to explain the reason for using Haldol and other psychotropic drugs with people who are not mentally ill, ICE responded, "The medications used by Aviation Medicine are widely used in psychiatry." Agency officials said that medical escorts administer "the lowest dose possible." Combining Haldol and Ativan "allows you [to] use less of each," they said, and produces a quicker and longer sedative effect. In the years before Ade was drugged, there had been an internal debate within the U.S. government over whether sedating deportees against their will is legal, according to confidential legal memos obtained by The Post. There was agreement that mentally ill people could be forced to take psychotropic medicine on their way out of the country. At dispute were cases in which the detainees were not mentally ill but combative -- known as "behavioral cases." Near the end of the Clinton administration, Health and Human Services lawyers sent around a memo that warned, "[U]sing chemical restraints in cases in which medication is not clinically indicated . . . may put the government at risk of potential liability." Another memo went further, concluding that it could be done only if a federal judge gave permission in advance. "[R]egarding detainees who are not mentally ill," the November 2000 document said, "involuntary medication of such persons for the sole purpose of subduing them during deportation, without a court order, is not supported by any legal authority and raises ethical issues, as well. "After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and after the Bush administration assumed a tough new stance on immigration in its campaign against terrorism, the Justice Department still sounded wary about drugging deportees. In March 2002, a Justice lawyer laid out two options. One choice, he wrote, was to "seek a court order . . . in every case where the alien's medication is not therapeutically justified." The other choice was to create a regulation to grant immigration officials explicit permission to sedate deportees, perhaps including safeguards that would give people a warning that they might be medicated -- and a chance to object. Top immigration officials chose neither. Instead, in May 2003, just after ICE was created, they internally circulated a new policy: "[A]n ICE detainee with or without a diagnosed psychiatric condition who displays overt or threatening aggressive behavior . . . may be considered a combative detainee and can be sedated if appropriate under the circumstances." Under that policy, scores of people have been sedated every year since then, usually with heavy psychotropic drugs. Some countries forbid the practice. The medical files for several deportees recount disputes between U.S. officials, who wanted to inject a subject, and foreign officials, who would not allow it. Immigration guards and a public health nurse ran into trouble in May 2004, during a stopover on a trip from Colorado to Guinea. The deportee had been given the three-drug cocktail at the airport gate before leaving Denver, the nurse wrote in the log. Three "booster doses" followed. The last booster was given shortly before the plane landed in Belgium. "[N]o problem initially with Belgium security," the log says. "[T]hen approached and informed illegal to medicate detainee against their will in Belgium. Informed them pt wasn't medicated in Belgium airspace for which they replied that he is medicated in Belgium." In the end, the security officers let the deportation go ahead. Immigration guards and a nurse had more trouble during another deportation to Guinea in April 2006, as they escorted a 34-year-old man from Atlanta, with a stop in France. He had been given 15 milligrams of Haldol, as well as the two other drugs, by the time the flight reached Paris at 9:45 a.m. According to a nurse's report on the incident, the guards, nurse and deportee were met at the plane by French national police, who accompanied them to an airport police station to await the connecting flight to Africa later in the day. Once at the station, one of the guards asked a French officer "where we could inject the detainee when needed." First, they were shown into a private area. But five minutes later, the nurse's report says, "a superior French police officer approached and informed me that any type of involuntary injection was strictly forbidden in France, and that we would have to wait until we were in the aircraft if we were to inject our detainee." Six hours later, the entourage returned to the boarding area for the flight to Guinea. "When we arrived at the plane, the detainee became very argumentative, refusing to enter plane until [the guards] produced paperwork showing a final deportation order," the nurse wrote. The immigration officers tried to coax him onto the plane. He refused. "I asked the French police if the ramp on the gate would be an appropriate place to medicate," the nurse wrote. "The French police's reply was that it was strictly forbidden." The plane's captain came over to say that he would not allow the deportee onto the flight. The guards and the nurse flew him back to Atlanta. Five weeks later they tried again, and this time, they reached Guinea. By the time they arrived, a nurse had given the deportee nine injections of Haldol totaling 55 milligrams -- nearly four times as much as before. * * * Time in Custody Varies For Detained Immigrants Foreigners detained by immigration officials spent an average of 37 days in custody during fiscal 2007, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Detainees, though, can be held for a much longer or much shorter time, depending on their circumstances. Under a practice that was expanded during the summer of 2006, undocumented immigrants caught within 100 miles of the Mexican border -- and within 14 days of their entry into the United States -- are deported swiftly under an "expedited removal" program. These immigrants usually do not have a hearing before a judge. On the other hand, some immigrants are detained for months or even years if they challenge their deportation in federal courts. Here is a breakdown of time in custody for fiscal 2006, the most recent information ICE could provide. The figures exclude nearly 5,800 detainees who are seeking asylum. Less than three months: 206,325 Three to six months: 10,828 Six to nine months: 2,644 Nine months to one year: 1,269 More than one year: 1,809 One deportee who was sedated last year had convictions for armed robbery and assault. Another kept telling immigration officers, "I am God." But many of those injected with psychotropic drugs, records show, are neither violent nor mentally ill. They simply do not want to go home. "[M]ild anxiety and agitation" is how a deportation log describes Remmy Semakula's state on the afternoon he was taken from his cell in the Middlesex County jail in New Jersey to be deported to Uganda in early April 2007. According to a memo from his deportation officer, he had said earlier that he would "fight with the officers and obstruct the operation of the airline" if guards tried to force him to go home. Semakula, 42, said that he had not tried to thwart his deportation and had not known it was imminent because his immigration case still was before a federal judge. "I never fought violently or physically," he said. "They just grabbed me and injected me with a sleeping drug." The first time immigration agents tried to deport Michel Shango, he slammed his head, hard, against the outside of the van that had come to pick him up at Atlanta's city jail. Instead of being driven to the airport, then flown to the Democratic Republic of Congo, he was brought back to the jail so his wound could be tended to. "I asked him why he feared being returned back to his country," an immigration officer wrote of the incident. Shango, now 42, replied that he had been a journalist and had written articles critical of the Congolese government. "Detainee stated . . . that he might as well die trying to avoid deportation," a second officer wrote, "because they will kill him as soon as he gets to the D.R. of the Congo." Until early 1996, Shango worked in Congo, ghostwriting articles and supplying information to foreign correspondents about the repressive administration of President Mobutu Sese Seko, he said in telephone interviews from locations in Congo, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, where friends are now helping him hide. Eventually Shango was arrested, he and two of his lawyers said, but he escaped to Canada, then settled in North Carolina, where he started a limousine business with a cousin in Charlotte. He married an American, who at first offered to help him become a citizen. The marriage dissolved. He applied for political asylum. He was turned down. He was remarried to a Congolese woman by the time immigration officers came to his house at 4:30 one morning in May 2006. As his wife and their three American-born children cried at the frightening scene, the officers led him away at gunpoint. On Feb. 28, 2007, three months after the first deportation attempt was aborted because of the head-banging incident, seven guards arrived at the Atlanta jail to make a second attempt. Shango glanced at his watch and noted that it was 1:45 p.m. "They pushed me against the wall," he recalled. "They pulled my pants down." His medical log shows that he was given seven shots in his right buttock and right shoulder before he boarded the airplane. The log says his only psychological problem was "anxiety disorder." By the time Shango reached Congo, records show, he had been injected with 32.5 milligrams of Haldol and 7.5 milligrams of Ativan. As he was thrown into a prison after he got off the plane, and even as friends helped him escape, he was so disoriented, he said, that he did not fully know where he was. For two weeks, Shango said, "It was like I was dreaming. . . . I started crying, crying, crying all day long. . . . I was like crazy, because [of] the drugs, knocking me down." * * * Of all the detainees who have been forcibly drugged, only two have drawn much public attention. Neither, in the end, was deported. And compared with other deportees, neither got large doses of sedatives. But publicity about their cases sent shock waves through the immigration bureaucracy. Raymond Soeoth, a Christian minister from Indonesia, had tried and failed to win asylum in the United States. While in custody at an immigration compound near Los Angeles, his medical log notes, Soeoth, now 39, he said he would kill himself if deported -- a statement his lawyers say he never made. On Dec. 7, 2004, he was injected in the left buttock with five milligrams of Haldol and four milligrams of Cogentin before being taken to the airport. As it turned out, his deportation was canceled before takeoff because immigration officials had not alerted airline security in Singapore, a stopover point. Amadou Diouf came to the United States from Senegal as a student in 1996 and got a degree in information systems from California State University at Northridge. He married a U.S. citizen and was trying to change his immigration status when, in March 2005, he was arrested and brought to the same compound as Soeoth. Eleven months later, as he was still appealing his case and, according to his lawyers, had a court order blocking his deportation, immigration officers came for him and took him to the airport for the trip back to Senegal. At first, records show, Diouf, now 32, was calm. He was already sitting in a window seat, 4A, when he demanded to speak to the plane's captain. He "became more agitated, anxious and loud in his dialogue," according to the medical log. A nurse said he would be given "some calming medicine," but when Diouf saw the needle, he lunged. Guards "proceeded to take down the detainee to the ground" in the plane's galley, and the nurse injected him with five milligrams of Haldol, two milligrams of Ativan and two milligrams of Cogentin. At that point, the guards and nurse called off the trip. Diouf was returned to his cell. In early May 2007, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California was drafting a lawsuit on behalf of Soeoth and Diouf and told a local newspaper, the Los Angeles Daily Journal, about their sedations. Across the continent, inside the immigration health division's headquarters in downtown Washington, the publicity's effect was electric. The next day, the chief of psychiatry for the division's aviation medicine branch dispatched a memo. "I have stopped all planned non-psychiatric behavioral escorts, of which 10 are currently planned," he wrote, until government lawyers "have formalized policy in regards to this type of escort activity." A month and a half later, the medical escort rules were changed. Except in psychiatric cases, according to a confidential June 21 memo from ICE, the health division "must have a court order to assist. . . . [ICE in] removal of problematic detainees." In January, the language was made even stronger: "DIHS may only involuntarily sedate an alien to facilitate removal where the government has obtained a court order. There are no exceptions to this policy." The newest rules were issued less than three weeks before the government tentatively settled the lawsuit with Soeoth and Diouf, who are now out of custody. The government is no longer trying to deport Soeoth; Diouf is still fighting to remain in the country. How well the government is following its new rules is unclear. Asked how many court orders the government has sought, immigration officials said that none "have been issued to involuntarily sedate an alien for removal purposes," but they declined to discuss whether any requests are pending. In one known case in which government lawyers sought a court order, they withdrew the request after a congressman intervened. On Oct. 1, a federal judge in Texas was asked for permission to sedate Rrustem Neza. Immigration officers had canceled their first attempt to deport him to Albania because he created a scene at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, screaming, "I am not a terrorist." One week after the government filed its motion, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), a former judge, wrote to the court, saying he had "grave concerns" about the government's desire to medicate his constituent to deport him. "Mr. Neza fled Albania after telling a crowd in Tropoje the names of the men who were seen killing Azem Hajdari, who organized a student movement against the Communist Party. Mr. Neza's cousins were fatally shot while fleeing with him," the congressman wrote. "[S]edating Mr. Neza amounts to a death sentence for an innocent man." Last March, after Gohmert had spoken about Neza's case with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and after he had introduced legislation to block Neza's deportation, the issue was dropped. * * * In at least one instance since the rules were changed, the government apparently drugged a deportee without permission from a judge. Maher Ayoub, now 44, was sent back to Egypt last August. A month later, immigration officials told Congress that they had not yet asked for a court order in any case. Ayoub had thwarted the first attempt to deport him, a few months earlier, by sitting in a van and demanding all the paperwork in his immigration file. He said he spent the next three months in segregation in an Elizabeth, N.J., detention center. The next time they tried to send him home, immigration officers were determined to make sure he would go quietly. His record offers contradictory evidence about whether there was psychiatric justification for the drugs he got, though it seems to suggest that there was not. A one-page "patient summary" for Ayoub says "Med/Psych Alert Documents: None." His medical escort log labels him a mental health case and says he had a "depressed mood" and an "anxiety state." A handwritten note in his escort file, from a psychiatrist who saw him at the Elizabeth center, first says Ayoub was not likely to endanger himself or anyone else -- then, lower on the same page, says he might. On the next page of the file is another note, this one written two days before his flight, from the psychiatrist in charge of aviation medicine. It says that Ayoub's case is a "behavioral escort," not a psychiatric one, and that the nurse "is only to give medications to the patient if he agrees to take them. He will only use involuntary treatment if the patient is at imminent risk of hurting himself or others." That is not what happened. "Detainee tearful and wringing hands," his medical log begins. An hour later, it says: "Detainee increasingly agitated and resisting clothing change. Detainee is now crying and screaming" at two guards. A nurse at the Elizabeth detention center slid two milligrams of the anti-anxiety drug, Ativan, into his left shoulder. Immigration officials said his deportation was "consistent" with the June policy that allows medication only when a detainee "may be a risk to himself or others." "I was feeling my head was leaving my body," Ayoub remembers. "I was losing control over my body." He was groggy but awake when he arrived with guards and the nurse at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and boarded the nonstop flight to Egypt. Before the plane took off, he remembers, he called over a flight attendant and "asked them to tell the pilot I didn't want to leave." The nurse stuck a needle into his right arm this time. That injection put him to sleep. Staff researcher Julie Tate and database editor Sarah Cohen contributed to this report.
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Suicides Point to Gaps in Treatment - The Washington Post	May 13, 2008 Printable version
Amy Goldstein and Dana Priest | Washington Post Staff Writers
Errors in Psychiatric Diagnoses and Drugs Plague Strained Immigration System Peasant farmer Jose Lopez-Gregorio, 32, left his wife and five children behind in Guatemala with two bags of corn, barely enough food for one month, when he decided to find work in the United States. Detained crossing the Mexican border and held in an Arizona immigration center, he felt guilty, he told guards, eating three meals a day. Lopez had been inside one month and eight days when he strangled himself with a bedsheet. Five days earlier, the staff had placed him on suicide watch, only to be overruled within hours by the center's psychologist. Mexican Carlos Cortes Raudel, 22, hanged himself from a tree on the way to breakfast in a California compound. Korean Sung Soo Heo, 51, was on suicide watch, less than a week after leaving a psychiatric hospital, when he hanged himself from a ceiling vent in his New Jersey cell. Geovanny Garcia-Mejia, 27, a Honduran, wrote notes in blood on his Texas cell floor and hanged himself from a ventilation grate while supposedly under 15-minute checks around the clock. "It goes without saying that the incident could have been avoided," the Newton County sheriff noted in an internal review of Garcia's death. While tens of thousands of detainees inside immigration detention centers endure substandard medical care, people with mental illness are relegated to the darkest and most neglected corners of the system, according to interviews and thousands of internal documents, including e-mails, memos, autopsy reports and other medical records, obtained by The Washington Post. Doctors and nurses who often have difficulty detecting and treating physical ailments are having even greater problems managing the nuances of mental illness, documents and interviews show. Treating mental illness is a challenge in any context, but inside this closed, overburdened world, some psychiatric patients undergo months and sometimes years of undermedication or overmedication, misdiagnosis or no diagnosis. The records reveal failures of many kinds. Suicidal detainees can go undetected or unmonitored. Psychological problems are mistaken for physical maladies or a lack of coping skills. In some cases, detainees conditions severely deteriorate behind bars. Some get help only when cellmates force guards and medical staff to pay attention. And some are labeled psychotic when they are not; all they need are interpreters so they can explain themselves. Suicide is the most common cause of death among detained immigrants. It accounts for 15 of 83 deaths since 2003, when the Department of Homeland Securitys Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, took over facilities for foreigners whom the government is trying to deport. Inside these out-of-the-way compounds around the country, suicide attempts seem to be on the rise, according to internal documents: 16 in June, 21 in July, 20 in August. No one in the Division of Immigration Health Services (DIHS), the agency responsible for detainee medical care, has a firm grip on the number of mentally ill among the 33,000 detainees held on any given day, records show. But in confidential memos, officials estimate that about 15 percent -- about 4,500 -- are mentally ill, a number that is much higher than the public ICE estimate. The numbers are rising fast, memos reveal, as state mental institutions and prisons transfer more people into immigration detention. The influx is overwhelming the system, internal documents show. The ratio of staff to mentally ill detainees is out of balance, with far fewer staff members than in other prison settings, according to Dennis Slate, the top mental health official in the detainee system. In an e-mail to colleagues the morning of last May 31, Slate said the ratio in the Bureau of Prisons was 1 to 400. In prisons for the mentally ill, it was 1 to 10. But in the immigration detention centers, it was 1 to 1,142. Immigration authorities contract with a private facility in South Carolina to care for seriously mentally ill patients. They said they are considering several additional options for increasing care for such detainees. Along with the crisis in care, the records also show soul-searching among doctors, nurses and administrators. We need to stop looking for band-aid solutions for these problems, Slate wrote. Step back, take a deep breath . . . It wasnt just patients that Slate and his colleagues worried about. They also worried that trading financial savings for substandard health care would come back to haunt the government. Think about what we are trying to accomplish with limited financial and personnel resources we have, Slate wrote. The little money managed care may save in the short run is going to be dwarfed by the millions that will be paid out by ICE when the lawsuits roll in. None of these problems appeared overnight. When immigration became a national security issue after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the administration decided to increase raids on workplaces for undocumented workers and to round up convicted felons who had served time but were now deportable, no matter how long they had lived in the United States. This, along with a new requirement that political asylum-seekers must wait out their cases behind bars, created a deluge that the system was unprepared to handle. A system set up for quick stays turned into a de facto long-term care center for the most troublesome patients, those whose countries of origin often refused to take them, Slate noted in a confidential e-mail. It was in this context that the basics of sound mental health care, such as proper supervision of suicidal detainees, were often overlooked. On the evening of March 21, 2005, Gene Migliaccio, then director of the immigration health services agency, sent a brief BlackBerry message to colleagues: DIHS is concerned that detainee committed suicide, in medical pod, after being assessed a suicide risk. Hassiba Belbachir, a 27-year-old woman from Algeria, had strangled herself with orange jail-issue socks, which she knotted together and wrapped twice around her neck. Five days before her suicide, Belbachir had a panic attack in her cell in an Illinois jail and was moved to a medical ward. The next day, internal records show, she told a social worker she was hearing parasites and radio waves and that she wanted to die. Death is dripping, drop by drop, she said. But she was not placed on suicide watch. Immigration officials declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation in the case. Belbachir had arrived eight days earlier at Chicagos OHare International Airport. The youngest of seven children, she loved books on religion and dancing the merengue. With a degree in Spanish, she thought of becoming a translator. She wanted to visit the world, said an older sister, Houaria Belbachir, who lives in France. Belbachir had gotten married, and her husband had brought her to Chicago to live. After a month, she learned he had another wife. She fled to Spain, but without a visa, she was turned away at the airport. She flew back to OHare, asked for political asylum and, by federal policy, was taken into custody while authorities considered her claim. Belbachir was sent to McHenry County Jail in the far suburbs of Chicago. The jail already had problems with its medical services: Detainees did not receive the required mental health screening, nor the standard screening for suicide risk, a recent review had found. Untrained staff members often did what screenings there were. During Belbachirs intake screening, jail records show, she said she had tried to commit suicide once by drinking soap. The social worker who interviewed her noted that she had a major depressive disorder and needed to see a psychiatrist for medication. Belbachir was given an appointment for 6 p.m. on March 18. By then, she had been dead for a day. Investigation reports say a guard glanced into her cell at 3:40 on the afternoon Belbachir died. She was lying face down on the floor, but the guard could see only her lower back and legs. He asked a co-worker whether she usually sleeps like that, and was told that she did. Half an hour later, when the guard returned to deliver dinner, he opened the cell door to discover Belbachir unconscious with the socks around her neck, her face purple, her mouth bloody. She left a five-page handwritten poem, in French, on a paper with Visa Waiver Program across the top. It began: Its good, the death. Inside the detainee mental health system, treatment decisions often revolve around money. There are frequent battles, with doctors and nurses in the field on one side and the managed-care administrators in Washington on the other, looking for ways not to spend. The battles often prompt Solomonic choices. One day, Slate and his colleagues engaged in an e-mail debate over a mentally ill detainee who was in the hospital but now well enough to leave. Should they send him to a detention center, where there was a bed available but no outpatient psychiatric care? Or should they keep him in the hospital, at greater cost, until space in a more appropriate immigration compound became available? We can not just leave these detainees in the hospital, insisted Linda Jo Belsito, the nurse in charge of managed-care decisions for DIHS. Dr. Slate is advising leaving these detainees in-patient but I do not agree. Reached by phone, Belsito declined to comment. Down the hall from Belsitos office at headquarters, Matt Kleiman, the head of behavioral health, strongly disagreed. Detainees such as these who are returned to the general prison population will in all likelihood decompensate quickly, he warned, using a term that means to deteriorate psychologically. Belsito and her managed-care associates were withholding treatment for many types of care, saving the agency millions of dollars. For mental health services, four denials for treatment of manic-depressive psychosis saved DIHS $18,145.36, according to an itemized record of the savings over a one-year period ending in August 2006. Two denials for care of unspecified psychosis saved an estimated $11,668.60. Nine denials for treatment of depressive disorder not elsewhere classified saved $43,158.57. An immigration spokeswoman said the vast majority of requests are ultimately approved and the denials are usually because of insufficient information. Money is not the only factor that determines the quality of care. Poor practices, records reveal, created a crisis situation at the South Texas Detention Complex at Pearsall, outside San Antonio. On June 15, Gustavo Cadavid, chief of psychiatry for DIHS, waved a red flag after discovering that Pearsalls clinical director, Erik Johnson, had close to 140 chart reviews pending, meaning 140 patients still needed care. Cadavid had complained to headquarters several times about Johnson. [I]t is becoming clear that there exist a crisis in the mental health care at Pearsall, he wrote in June. Two hours later, Slate gave Cadavid some advice. It is my suggestion that [medical director Timothy Shack] issue a clear order for Dr. Johnson to begin to provide treatment to mentally ill detainees, he wrote in an e-mail. If he fails to follow the order, then this behavior needs to be interpreted as insolence and insubordination and documented as such. Slate titled his e-mail Crisis in mental health care in Pearsall. He copied it to seven top ICE and DIHS administrators, including the interim director of DIHS, Neil Sampson. Immigration officials said the mental health care program at Pearsall meets national detention standards. Reached by phone, Johnson declined to comment. He is still at Pearsall. The case of Junior Bannister, a detainee from Barbados, indicates that problems remain, as evidenced by another e-mail exchange. When Bannister arrived at Pearsall in August, he told immigration officials that he had been taking Celexa, an antidepressant, for five years, since his young daughter died. When he was taken into custody, a top mental health official recommended continuing his medication, but his notes did not get scanned into Bannisters file. Without his medication, he began having auditory hallucinations. He complained often, and staff sent the concerns to Johnson, who never signed off on the prescription. In January, a lawyer working with Bannister inquired about the delay, setting off a heated exchange between Johnson and his bosses, who discovered that the medical staff had seen Bannister 22 times. Jay Sparks, officer in charge at Pearsall, sent a curt e-mail to Johnson on Jan. 11 after examining Bannister's medical records. Now I am further puzzled. While I understand a shortage of medical staff, we evidently were staffed well enough to see this person 22 times, but in the course of all of this unable to get him the medication that had been recommended -- why would this be?" Johnson replied 90 minutes later. "I could not get to him," he wrote. ". . . There are many things we are not able to get to." Sparks e-mailed up the chain of command. "I believe this case illustrates that we need something more efficient," he wrote. ". . . If we need more medical staff, then they need to be deployed, but regardless of what the solution is, it needs to occur rather quickly, as access to adequate medical care for our detainees is a rather critical issue." In a recent telephone interview, Bannister said he would try to get Johnson's attention whenever he saw him, without success. Johnson, he said, would dismissively "just wave his arms" every time. After eight months of asking, Bannister recently received his medication. Isaias Vasquez was not as lucky. Three mental health workers at Pearsall misdiagnosed him and refused to allow him to continue taking medications that he had been prescribed much of his life. Immigration officials declined to comment, citing pending litigation. Vasquez had come from Mexico to the United States legally with his family when he was 2 years old. He served in the Army for two years until psychiatric problems ended his military career. Years later, when he was convicted on a drug-possession charge, he served the 1 1/2-year sentence at a Texas state psychiatric hospital. The government said the crime made him deportable, and immigration officers picked him up from the hospital and sent him to one detention center, then another. Records chronicle his paranoid delusions and auditory hallucinations. He had been diagnosed with chronic paranoid schizophrenia in the early 1990s and had been hospitalized 18 times before he landed in Pearsall. But the staff ruled that he was not schizophrenic and cut off his medication. Instead, on Nov. 29, 2005, they diagnosed him with an "unspecified personality disorder." Vasquez "insisted throughout session he was paranoid schizophrenic and needed medication," a social worker wrote in his medical file. But the evaluation team concluded that "his thought process and content was normal, logical and coherent." They suspected he was faking to keep his Social Security disability benefits. They decided to take him off a drug for schizophrenia, and another for depression, and cut his dose of a second antidepressant in half. The effects were swift. A week later Vasquez was placed on suicide observation. He "smeared feces throughout the suicide observation room," his medical chart shows. The next day, "he announced in the dormitory that either he killed himself or God would do it for him, and he took all of his clothes off. Then he got down onto the floor and licked it." The staff's response: They eliminated the last of his psychotropic medicine. "Mental health visits will cease at present time," says a Dec. 15 note in his medical file. Two months later, another note warned, "DO NOT PLACE YOURSELF WITHIN GRABBING OR SPITTING DISTANCE OF THIS DETAINEE." After another month, he was found sitting on his bed with only a blanket around his waist, reading a Bible aloud and screaming, "The world is coming to an end, but not until I finish using my red tape!" He refused his other medications for diabetes, high blood pressure and suspected tuberculosis. In mid-March, Johnson stuck a handwritten note on Vasquez's cell window: "If you keep refusing to take your . . . medicines . . . YOU put YOURSELF at risk of BLINDNESS, AMPUTATIONS, HEART ATTTACKS, KIDNEY FAILURE, STROKES and EARLY DEATH." Vasquez "covered that area of the window with spit," Johnson wrote in his medical file. "I slid another copy under the door, and he turned it face down and slid it back out, and then he blocked the door with his clothing so I could not slide it under again." On March 24, "[H]e had saved up 6 empty peanut butter jars and had some sort of yellowish liquid in them. . . . [T]he guards told him to give them up. He refused." The guards subdued him with tear gas. They gassed him again two weeks later when he refused to give the guards the broken eyeglasses he had "tied to his head with an undershorts waistband. . . . When the room was repeatedly sprayed, he stood stoically." Unable to persuade Vasquez to take his medicine, the staff discontinued it in late April. A final note on his behavior, from May 1, five days before his release, says he had "smeared feces on window to cell and threw water and feces under door of cell." Even then, the staff did not reconsider its assessment that he was not schizophrenic or its decision to take away the psychotropic drugs. Their assessment of his problem: "Ineffective individual coping." Vasquez had won his immigration case. When his common-law wife picked him up, she found him raving and gaunt. Gloria Armendariz drove him straight to the VA hospital. On the way, she recalled, "I had to cut the [car] speakers and put them in the trunk because he kept saying they . . . would listen and videotape him." At the hospital, guards had to subdue him. He was admitted to the psychiatric ward, "which is where he needs to be," said his lawyer, Lee Teran. The next day, he was started on antipsychotics. Helped by his medicine and no longer facing deportation, Vasquez, now 49, did something that, in his nearly five decades in the country, he'd never bothered to do: He applied to become a citizen. At the citizenship ceremony last fall, he wore a jacket, a tie and a broad smile. While Vasquez had been denied crucial medicine, Amina Bookey Mudey had the opposite problem. Records show that she was diagnosed with psychosis she did not have and given medication she did not need. Alone and speaking little English, the Somali woman arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on April 11, 2007, seeking political asylum. With no interpreter to question her, immigration agents shackled her ankles, wrists and waist, and put her in a van. Exhausted, hungry and frantic about being tied up, Mudey collapsed on the way to a windowless converted warehouse in Elizabeth, N.J., where she would remain for five months. The Elizabeth compound also had no interpreter. Nonetheless, an intake officer wrote in her medical records that Mudey said she was epileptic. A doctor there diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and, incorrectly, with psychosis. He prescribed the potent antipsychotic Risperdal. Mudey, 30, was a member of an outcast Muslim clan and, according to her political asylum application, had been tormented by dominant groups throughout her life. When she was 10, she said, an old woman cut off her genitals with a razor blade. As a teenager, she was clubbed and beaten by girls with status. When she was 19, armed men shot and killed her father and two brothers at home. At 22, five men with guns gang-raped her mother and sister, who screamed so much the men killed her. Then they attacked Mudey with a knife and bashed her head with a gun butt. Soon after taking Risperdal at the Elizabeth detention center, she found herself in the throes of its worst side effects. Her arms and legs shook uncontrollably. Her tongue thickened and thrashed around in her mouth, which she was unable to close. She drooled constantly, vomited often and began to lactate. "I said, 'Maybe I am going mad,'" Mudey said. "'Maybe I am going to die in here.'" When she lactated, her cellmates accused her of lying. "'You must have killed your baby or had a late abortion,' they told me. 'You must be lying to us.' . . . Something was wrong. My breast was full of milk. They said to me, 'Are you sure you didn't leave a baby behind?'" Mudey's symptoms were classic side effects of Risperdal, said doctors consulted by The Post. But when she complained, the detainee doctor only increased the dose. ICE initially declined to comment because of privacy issues. Last night, after those issues were resolved, the agency said it did not have enough time to prepare a response. In her stupor, Mudey had her first court appearance. It did not go well. Her mind was a thick cloud; she was disoriented and unresponsive to questions. The judge was not impressed. In June, Mudey was introduced to Ann Schofield Baker, a Park Avenue lawyer who specializes in high-stakes intellectual-property litigation and had volunteered for pro bono duty. After much haranguing, Schofield Baker managed to get an interpreter, psychiatrist and gynecologist into the compound to examine her client. They determined she had been misdiagnosed, according to court affidavits. "She clearly has very severe PTSD and she is clearly depressed, but there is no evidence of psychosis," wrote Katherine Falk, the psychiatrist and a consultant for Physicians for Human Rights. The two doctors wanted Mudey off Risperdal. "They just drugged the crap out of her," Laurie Goldstein, the gynecologist, said in an interview. "They just kept her slogged." The doctors told her to refuse the pills. The compound's doctor scolded her when she did. She defied him. "I told him that the other doctors says this other medication has been hurting me. I am not going to take it," she recalled in an affidavit prepared for court. "The first day I stopped taking it, I noticed I stopped drooling. In two or three days I could close my mouth. I was not as dizzy and confused. My appetite came back. I started feeling almost normal." Her mind regained its focus. Her next testimony was clear and more convincing. But weeks later, Mudey experienced pain in her abdomen and back. She wrote notes to the doctor pleading for help. When she could no longer stand and lay balled up on her bed, her cellmates wrote notes for her. Weeks went by. She believed that the doctor was retaliating against her because she disobeyed him. On orders of the doctor, but without an exam, a nurse gave Mudey Diflucan for a yeast infection, as Goldstein discovered after reviewing the few medical records that immigration officials would give her. After several consultations with Mudey by phone, Goldstein concluded that she was suffering from an acute urinary tract infection, a kidney infection or pelvic inflammatory disease. She tried repeatedly to reach the Elizabeth center's physician, but he would not respond, she said. Schofield Baker prepared a legal injunction to force the Elizabeth compound to take Mudey to a hospital, and immigration officials relented. She got better quickly. She has no idea what was wrong with her or what drugs she was given; federal officials refused to give her the hospital records. On Sept. 18, Mudey won her political asylum case. A guard told Schofield Baker that she could wait for her client in the parking lot across from the compound. Hours later, at 11 at night, Mudey's tiny figure appeared. She wore the same flip-flops and fuzzy coat she had on the plane when she first arrived in the United States. "Seeing her walk out reminded me of a scene from the Holocaust," said Schofield Baker. "I was absolutely shocked and amazed we can treat human beings like this on our soil." Mudey got into her attorney's rented Lincoln Town Car. It carried her down a road lined with barbed wire, past rows of gritty warehouses and hundreds of hulking trucks. Having not seen the sun or a star in the sky in the five months she had waited inside the windowless compound, Mudey was overwhelmed by the lights and motion. She gasped. "My goodness, how beautiful America is!" Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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In Custody, In Pain - The Washington Post	May 12, 2008 Printable version
Amy Goldstein and Dana Priest | Washington Post Staff Writers
Beset by Medical Problems as She Fights Deportation, A U.S. Resident Struggles to Get the Treatment She Needs FLORENCE, Ariz. -- Underneath her baggy jail-issue pants, Yong Sun Harvill feels the soft lump just below her left knee. Sometimes it tingles. Sometimes it is numb. Like her cancer felt when it arrived behind the knee a few years ago. She noticed the lump under the thin, blue cotton in August, five months after federal immigration officers, to her amazement, took her into custody to try to deport her for buying stolen jewelry more than a decade ago. The lump grows slowly. It is now three inches across. And though she keeps asking, no one has done a test to see whether her sarcoma has come back. Her leg is painful and swollen from hip to foot, damaged by past surgeries and radiation treatments. Some nights, liquid seeps through cracks in her distended skin. Her left ankle is three times as big as her right. For years, she relied on a leg pump to boost her circulation and keep the swelling in check. But as an immigration detainee in this desert prison town, Harvill, 52, has been unable to persuade anyone to get her a pump, or to let her family back in Florida send hers from home. Nor has she gotten the biopsy that a doctor has told her she needs to determine whether the spots on her liver might be tumors. And it remains uncertain whether her frequent crying spells are part of bipolar disorder, as some records suggest, or a flare-up of old anxieties -- heightened now by chronic pain, bewildering medical problems, and the fact that, three decades after she arrived from South Korea as a teenage Army bride, she is in a jail far from home with the government trying to eject her from the United States. Harvill is one of 33,000 immigration detainees in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, on any given day. They are locked up in a patchwork of out-of-the-way federal detention compounds, private prisons and local jails. This unnoticed prison system was built for a quick revolving door of detainees -- into custody, out of the country. But often, people linger in detention for months or years. These detainees, like other prisoners, are by law and regulation entitled to medical services if they are sick. But Harvill's journey through immigration detention provides a glimpse into a medical system that often fails those who need it most. It is an upside-down world where patients have no say, doctors and nurses on site have little power to administer timely treatment, and a managed-care system in Washington operates from a rulebook that emphasizes what is not covered rather than what is. Two months after ICE agents seized Harvill in Florida, they transferred her to Arizona last May, saying a federal compound called the Florence Service Processing Center was better suited to handle her medical care. Four weeks later, they moved her, without explanation, a few miles down a cactus-lined highway to a county jail that hasn't had a full-time staff doctor since she arrived. At Pinal County Jail, Harvill is 2,132 miles from her family outside Tampa, and even farther from her Miami lawyers. To see her, they crowd around a closed-circuit TV in an immigration courtroom in Miami, where the judge to whom her case is assigned convenes "video hearings" about once a month. Seated at a scuffed oak table in a small courtroom in Florence for one recent hearing, facing a television screen with a video camera on top, Harvill looked older than her age. Her thick, long hair was streaked heavily with gray. Her brown eyes, sparkling in a 1999 wedding photo, were now dull. Arthritis had bent her fingertips. On days when her hands are too stiff, Harvill dictates as other detainees write her entries in the journal that her lawyers have asked her to keep, as best she can, with the five pieces of paper the jail doles out each week. The entries tell of her leg pain, of missing her husband and her Florida cancer doctors, of wondering whether God still loves her. One entry tells of a dream in which she peered into a coffin and saw herself inside. Her medical records, inches thick, document countless visits to jail nurses and to a public hospital in Phoenix. But many of the visits have been frustrating and unproductive. One morning in late February, she was led from her cell at 5:15 a.m. and driven the 66 miles to the hospital to have an operation to remove polyps that were causing bleeding in her uterus. When she arrived, three workers in green scrubs told her that the doctor couldn't perform the surgery because the hospital was out of hot water. Even with hot water, they said, she couldn't have had the procedure that day: As usual, no one at the jail had told her ahead of time that she would be having a medical appointment, so she didn't get the instructions not to eat or drink after midnight the day of surgery. When the guards woke her at 5 a.m., she ate a honey bun, a treat she had been saving from the jail canteen. In response to questions from The Washington Post, ICE officials said last week that, "based on standard medical protocols," Harvill's records document that she has been "appropriately diagnosed and treated." "I feel like I'm on a merry-go-round, round and round and you don't really get nothing done," Harvill said, her voice husky with just a trace of an Asian accent, during one of three interviews she gave The Post by telephone and in person, without the knowledge of federal officials. "I feel like an animal in a cage here. Sometimes I'm afraid I'm not going to wake up." At night, to anyone driving southeast from Phoenix through the dark Sonoran Desert, the sky over Florence glows white with prison floodlights. This county seat, once a center of copper mining and cotton, greets motorists today with road signs that say "State prison. Do not stop for hitchhikers." Every February, motorcyclists roar through town for the Hells Angels Florence Prison Run. And the first business along Butte Avenue, the main street leading into the small downtown, is E&E Outfitters, with its "UNIFORM" sign in the window and, inside, racks of guards' outfits in khaki, black and olive green. "Detention polo shirts from $28.50," says the sale sign over one circular rack. Of the 25,500 people who live in Florence, about 17,000 are behind bars. The incarcerated included an average of more than 700 immigration detainees in fiscal 2007, divided among a federal compound, two private prisons and the county jail. An additional 1,500 were housed nearby in a compound outside the town of Eloy, giving Pinal County the largest concentration of foreign detainees in the nation. At the town's northern edge, just beyond an RV park for retirees, rows of concertina wire surround the federal Florence Service Processing Center. During World War II, it was the site of a prison camp for Italian and German POWs. Now it is a tidy brown-brick compound with cactuses and giant crests of the Department of Homeland Security out front. This is where Harvill arrived last May after a flight from Florida, panicky, her nose bleeding, her stomach upset, an officer on each side. The day after she arrived, Harvill saw a nurse and a doctor for a checkup that all new detainees are supposed to have, but don't always get. "Numerous issues," they wrote in her medical chart. History of sarcoma. Hepatitis C. High blood pressure. The nosebleeds. Panic attacks. "Borderline bipolar." And lymphedema, painful fluid buildup in her left leg. Elizabeth Fleming, a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Public Health Service who was Florence's clinical director, showed concern about Harvill. She noted that Harvill needed a leg pump -- a compression device that inflates and deflates -- to help the circulation in her leg. She also requested records from Harvill's longtime cancer doctors in Tampa. And she managed to persuade administrators in Washington to let Harvill have three outside consultations at Maricopa Medical Center, the public hospital in Phoenix. "Will likely need to order . . . pump and may require transfer to [another immigration detention center] with infirmary," the doctor wrote in her patient's chart. The pump never arrived. Still, Fleming saw Harvill a dozen times over the next month, records show. By mid-June, the doctor wrote, her patient was "smiling, cheerful," and her nausea and leg pain were "much improved." Harvill did not know that would be the last time Fleming would treat her. The next day, Harvill was moved down the road to the county jail. The government never explained the move, although she and her lawyers have asked repeatedly. Last week, ICE officials told The Post: "Florence is not well equipped to provide long term medical care for female detainees. Female detainees are transferred from Florence to Pinal because of its better capability to provide long-term medical care to women. Ms. Harvill received appropriate medical care at Pinal with physician oversight." Harvill lives in Cell 323 in Pod E300, part of a wing built for an eventual 600 detainees whom the federal government pays the county to house. Her isolation at the county jail is almost complete. Her lawyers cannot call. Family members, if they came to visit, would not be allowed to see her in person, not even through plexiglass. The jail allows only "video visits," with visitor and detainee in separate parts of the building. Harvill, while longing for her family, has told them it is not worth the trip. She hasn't seen her husband in a year. Most of her moments outside come when immigration officers take her in a white van on a three-minute ride to a little courtroom at the Florence federal compound for video hearings with her Miami immigration judge, and when they take her to the public hospital, an hour and 20 minutes away, where, as likely as not, little will get done. Harvill gets shuttled back and forth to the hospital in Phoenix because the jail does not have a doctor on its staff. There is no hospital within 30 miles of Florence, despite its thousands of prisoners. The Central Arizona Medical Center, on the city's outskirts, has been closed since 1999, and the small hospital building is empty. On a white sign out front, the blue lettering that says "clinic" has almost faded away. One morning last summer, Harvill was taken up the road to the Florence compound for a repeat session to take photographs and fingerprints that immigration officers told her had gotten lost. Before she went inside, she later put in her journal, she noticed Fleming, the doctor who had treated her when she first arrived, going by "in a little golf cart." I was glad to see her I had so much to ask her. Nurse here says that she is still my doctor and that all that happens to me goes to her. . . . I asked to talk to her for a minute. She told me that she was very busy, that she would try to talk to me later. I knew she wouldn't talk to me because she has not seen me for the last 2 months I was so sad. . . . Actually I felt as though she was angry with me. I stood there with tears in my eyes, but I had to go with the officer to get my fingerprints done. The fleeting encounter with Fleming disturbed Harvill. The closest thing to a doctor she has seen at the jail during her 11 months there -- apart from a psychiatrist who has prescribed lithium and other drugs, but has not really diagnosed her -- was a physician assistant. Fleming resigned days later. According to internal government documents, one-third of the 29 medical positions at the Pinal County Jail were vacant as of February. The jail, the Florence compound and the large compound in nearby Eloy each had no full-time doctor. In such an environment, complaints sometimes surface about the shortages and their effects. Last summer, two Eloy nurses sent a memo to headquarters in Washington, laying out the working conditions that were leading them to resign. The checkups required for all arriving detainees were "never staffed with enough people," wrote the nurses, Catherine Rouse and Patricia O'Brien. Nurses would be told to expect five new arrivals, "but that could easily change to greater than 100 non-English speaking sick and injured frightened people," they wrote. The nursing shortage was particularly severe on nights and weekends. And one pharmacist and an assistant "process over 4,000 prescriptions a month. They try their best to have thing[s] complete before they leave on Friday. However, serving 1,500 people is an impossible task." Last year, the Arizona State Board of Nursing heard that nurses at Eloy were being required, without enough training, to take the chest X-rays that new detainees are supposed to get to check for tuberculosis. The board sent ICE a terse, two-sentence letter. "Nurses are not radiologists," it said. "Taking X-rays is out of the scope of practice for a nurse, and a nurse who does so is violating the Nurse Practice Act and will be subject to discipline on his/her license." The response from Washington: "Nurses working in federal government facilities are not subject to state licensing requirements." At first, Harvill would get excited on the mornings of her trips to Maricopa Medical Center, but she learned soon that the visits usually were disappointments. On July 26, she rode in the van to the hospital's cancer clinic. That same day, by coincidence, a doctor from the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, where she had been treated for more than a decade, wrote a letter at the request of Harvill's lawyers, warning that she "will need continued care at a facility familiar with [her] types of tumors, as they will continue to recur and progress. If not treated properly, they can become life-threatening." It was from the Moffitt Center that Fleming had gotten records of Harvill's three previous episodes of cancer and her treatment. But no one had sent copies to Maricopa Medical Center. Starting from scratch, a doctor there ordered a CAT scan of her pelvis and her swollen left leg. The test, according to a radiology report, found a mass in an ovary and a cyst on her cervix, but there is no indication that her leg was scanned. By late July, her records show, another Maricopa doctor had ordered a biopsy to determine whether unexplained "densities" on her liver might be tumors. But when Harvill went for the procedure a few weeks later, the records show, someone in the radiology department did an ultrasound as a first step and, when he saw cysts on her liver, canceled the biopsy. "Liver Biopsy report received. . . . Biopsy not done," says a notation from a few days later in her jail records. A month later, when Harvill saw the doctor who had ordered the biopsy, he asked whether it had been done. I told him no because they told me it was just a cyst not a tumor. He was upset. . . . He still wanted a biopsy, she wrote in her journal. By now, the soft lump had begun to grow under her knee, and her abdomen had started to swell and become hard. As an officer drove her to the hospital one day in mid-August, she hoped the appointment would address one of those problems. As it turned out, she was there to see a gynecologist, who wanted to do a Pap smear. Harvill pointed out that she'd had one a month before. I showed him my stomache, he told me he could not take care of that, that I needed to see a GI doctor. I told him about my leg swollen, and also he told me I had to see another doctor for that. Still another runaround began when a different doctor said Harvill urgently needed a biopsy of her uterus lining to find out why, well after menopause, she was bleeding heavily. In early October, when an immigration officer took her back to the hospital for that test, a receptionist said it had been canceled and rescheduled for a month later. The officer, Harvill put in her journal, was stunned and told the receptionist that he "had the order for today." Instead, hospital workers did a CAT scan of her uterus. She had already had a CAT scan of her uterus. I told them I had a lump on my knee, if they could do a scan on that and they said they didn't have an order for that. . . . We got out of hospital and the ICE officer said he felt bad for me, because he has taken me to the hospital 4 or 5 times and they never do anything for me. It was early November when Harvill had the biopsy of her uterus, three months after it was ordered. She was told to come back for the results in two weeks, although the lab report was ready the next day, according to her medical records. Yet it wasn't until late January that she learned what was wrong: The bleeding was being caused by polyps that needed to be removed. The surgery, she was told, would be within two or three weeks. Four months later, it has not been done. Late last week, after her attorneys gave them authorization to talk about her case, Maricopa hospital officials said that medical privacy law prohibited them from even confirming, without Harvill's personal consent, that she has been a patient. But she could not give consent because neither her attorneys nor anyone else is allowed to telephone her in the jail. Over a weekend in mid-April, Harvill was told not to eat solid food for two days in preparation for a colonoscopy to try to find out why she had blood in her stool. First thing that Monday, she again boarded the van for the 66-mile drive to the hospital, where she was told that the procedure had been rescheduled. Ten days later, she went to the hospital and had the test. It found a growth in her colon. The doctor said there was a chance it is cancerous and sent a sample for a biopsy. She does not know the result. The liver biopsy still has not taken place. And no one has tested the lump below her knee. Whether the gaps in Harvill's treatment are by accident or by design is difficult to discern. Yet it is clear that the obscure federal agency that oversees detainees' medical care, the Division of Immigration Health Services (DIHS), operates with a top priority of limiting care and saving money. Its medical mission is only to keep people healthy enough to be deported. At Harvill's jail, and everywhere else immigration detainees are held, doctors and nurses must get permission from the agency's headquarters before treating patients. Except in emergencies or for the most routine care, they must send written requests to Washington, where, for the entire system of 33,000 detainees across the country, four managed-care nurses in a downtown office building decide what treatments to allow. These care managers rule on what are known in the bureaucratic lexicon as treatment authorization requests, or TARs. In a recent month, they had to rule on 3,000 requests. They work five days a week, not on weekends, and are unavailable to handle requests that come in later than 4 p.m. Washington time, even though many large detention centers are in other time zones. The agency touts this as an efficient form of managed care, similar to health plans familiar to patients in the outside world. But a 36-page manual that describes the "detainee covered services package" underscores how unusual it is, with rules designed to prevent people from getting too much help. The health services division, the manual says, allows treatment mainly for emergencies that are "threatening to life, limb, hearing or sight." If a detainee has medical problems that "would cause deterioration of the detainee's health or uncontrolled suffering affecting his/her deportation status," treatment is not guaranteed. Instead, the manual says, the detainee "will be assessed and evaluated for care." Instead of listing, as most health plans do, the services available to patients, the manual specifies services that are "usually not covered" for allergies, heart problems and other illnesses. Cancer is not mentioned at all. Internal government documents obtained by The Post show that most requests are approved. But the documents also show that, when requests come in for people with serious problems, there can be pressure to cut costs. One chart, covering October 2005 to September 2006 -- seven months before Harvill became an immigration detainee -- is labeled "TAR Cost Savings Based on Denials." The agency, the chart shows, saved $129,713 by denying 17 medical requests for people with HIV, $36,216 by denying seven requests for people with various forms of psychosis, $91,926 by denying 27 requests for people with chest pain and $9,545 by denying treatment for a case of blood in stool, one of the problems Harvill has had for months. Asked about the chart, an immigration spokeswoman said that the vast majority of medical requests eventually are granted. Usually, she said, denials are "due to lack of information." The supervisor of the managed-care nurses who rule on treatment requests sent a note once to a senior official about a 33-year-old detainee seen at a Nashville hospital for a recurrence of sarcoma, the same kind of cancer Harvill has had. "The process of re-diagnosis and treatment will be extensive and costly," that nurse wrote. She said she seconded the idea of releasing the detainee so the government would not have to pay for his care. These sorts of machinations prompted the deputy warden at York County Prison in Pennsylvania, which houses many immigrant detainees, to fire off an angry letter about the health services division. "[I]n my opinion, they have set up an elaborate system that is primarily interested in delaying and/or denying medical care to detainees," the warden, Roger Thomas, wrote in late 2005. "There is nothing easy about working with DIHS. If something can be delayed, it is delayed. If it can be denied, it is denied. If it can be difficult, it is made difficult. Most importantly, if there is some bureaucratic procedure that will delay/deny treatment to a detainee . . . you can be assured that DIHS will do it." Harvill's lawyers have tried to find out how many requests for treatment have been sent from Pinal County Jail on her behalf and how Washington has ruled on each one. They filed a Freedom of Information Act request last summer and, after two months, got an incomplete answer. In January, they left a phone message for the division's medical director. No one has called back. But one page in Harvill's thick medical file hints at an answer. In late August, slightly more than a month before she would arrive at the hospital for a biopsy, only to be told it had been rescheduled, a jail nurse wrote this note: "TARs not approved for endometrial biopsy and lab draws. . . . Will continue to work on approvals and provide additional documentation as needed." Finally, in early February, Harvill had a big week, riding in the van to the hospital three mornings in a row. A cancer doctor told her, yet again, that she needed a biopsy on her liver and one on the growing lump beneath her knee. A gynecologist talked with her about the surgery she needs on her uterus. A gastroenterologist spoke with her about the colonoscopy she should have. Yet, after many months in immigration custody, Harvill understood that doctors' orders do not automatically produce tests. "It doesn't matter what the doctor says," she said in an interview. Back at the jail after her three hospital trips, she asked a nurse what would be done with the doctors' requests. "She said she is going to send it up" to Washington, Harvill recounted at her next court hearing. "But she doesn't know when or how it is going to get approved. She doesn't know if it is going to get approved. She just said, 'Let's hope for the best.' " * * * Leon Harvill sat at his mother's kitchen table in Plant City, Fla., on a Sunday night, cradling the phone to his ear. "Baby, don't cry," he said softly into the receiver. "Come on, baby. Quit crying, all right?" He had gone to an evening service at the Church on the Rock, the first time he had been in months. He hadn't felt much like reading the Bible lately. "I just don't understand it right now," he said. "I just can't understand things that are going on that are hard to believe. Her medical care -- I just can't understand that." The thing that makes perhaps the least sense to him is that his wife is covered under a good health insurance policy that he gets through his union, the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, and she and her lawyers have asked whether she could use that policy to pay for her treatment by private doctors while she is detained. They have been told no. One more problem in a life full of them. Yong Sun Harvill's immigration troubles began in March 2007, as she was finishing 13 months in prison on a drug-possession charge. One day, a prison official summoned her to his office and handed her a phone. On the line was a man who worked in Orlando for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She would not be going home, he told her. She would be handed over to ICE agents, who planned to send her back to South Korea, a place she had not seen for 32 years. Harvill had been barely 19 when she came to the United States in 1975, the new wife of an American soldier who had been stationed in Seoul. Within a year, she had a baby son and her first cancer diagnosis. She divorced her first husband -- who hit her sometimes when he drank, according to Harvill, her lawyers, two friends and her medical records -- and then her second one, who hit her sometimes when he was high on drugs. Nine years ago, she married Leon Harvill, a childhood friend of her second husband. He isn't much of a talker. She is loud and chatty. She felt protected by him. He loved how she cared for children and how her smile lighted up a room. After all her years in Florida, she would still drive to Tampa once a month to buy rice at a Korean grocery, but she also loved collard greens and black-eyed peas, was a die-hard Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan, and knew the lyrics to all of Brooks & Dunn's country tunes. In 2004, while she was riding with a friend, police stopped them for driving with expired tags. The car belonged to her friend, but the marijuana and methamphetamine on the floor were Harvill's. She pleaded guilty to drug possession and served her time. Ordinarily, that would have been that. But ICE had begun scouring jails and prisons nationwide for people it might be able to deport, and a check of Harvill's criminal history turned up a decade-old felony conviction for buying stolen jewelry. Her lawyer insisted she'd had no idea it was stolen. A judge suspended the sentence and put her on probation, which was terminated early for good behavior. A 1996 law had given the government new leverage to deport foreigners, including people living in the country legally as U.S. residents, if they had committed a crime at any time in the past, and the Bush administration was wielding that power aggressively. The law expanded the list of crimes defined as "aggravated felonies" that are grounds for deportation. It also for the first time required people to be locked up during their deportation cases -- including permanent legal residents such as Harvill, who is not a citizen but has had a green card ever since she came to the United States. On March 22, 2007, instead of going home, Harvill was handed an orange uniform at the Palm Beach County jail to await deportation. Her parents are dead. She lost track of her sisters long ago. She has no idea where or how she would live in South Korea, particularly because she has not held a job for years because she cannot put weight on her leg for too long. She has been fighting the deportation with the help of Cheryl Little and Kelleen Corrigan, lawyers at the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center in Miami. They have applied for a visa available to foreigners with firsthand knowledge of crimes -- in Harvill's case, the abuse by her first two husbands. Meanwhile, they have repeatedly asked federal officials to let Harvill go home on bond because she is so ill. Corrigan has a postcard on her office door with the words "Free Yong!" over a photo of a younger, happier-looking Harvill. At church that Sunday night, Leon Harvill did not open the prayer book. But during the silent prayer, he leaned forward, his hands resting on the pew in front of him, and closed his eyes. He prayed for his wife to get medical treatment, to find peace, to come back. He raced home after church, knowing she would call. At 9:14 p.m. the kitchen phone rang. "I love you, too, baby," her husband said. "Things are going to get better. Come on, baby. Something is going to happen soon." Before dawn the next morning, he would leave the house of his mother, Margaret Kersey, with whom he had been staying to save money, for the Tampa airport and a flight to Hawaii, where he had found a welding job with better pay. It had been hard lately to save, with work scarce in central Florida and money flowing out for his wife's phone cards and canteen treats, and for the "Free Yong!" postcards he'd printed so friends could mail them to the government. Most of all, he thought, he needed to save money so he would have some to send her if someday she were deported to South Korea. Deportation had been on Yong Sun Harvill's mind, too. Sometimes, she is so depressed that she thinks about quitting her fight and signing the papers that would let the government send her out of the country. And she has been missing the one real friend she made in a jail, a younger Korean woman who would rub menthol ointment, when she could get some, on Harvill's swollen leg and write the journal entries when Harvill's hands stiffened too much. A few weeks before this January night, her friend was deported. But on this night, Harvill listened to her husband describe the path he would take to Hawaii the next day. "I have a layover in Phoenix," Leon Harvill said into the phone. She told him to look at the desert as he landed. "I'll get a look at it tomorrow," he told her. "We'll be that close." Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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Detention in America - 60 Minutes CBS News	May 11, 2008 Printable version
Scott Pelley
(CBS) Since 9/11 there have been a lot of changes in how the United States deals with immigrants. One of the biggest is the explosive growth of a system of immigrant detention centers that few Americans know anything about. Immigrants who come into the country illegally, or refugees who apply for political asylum, often go into detention, some for many months. Before 9/11, about 100,000 detainees went though the system each year. Today, with stricter immigration rules, that number has tripled to more than 300,000. The surge appears to have overwhelmed the medical care provided to the immigrants. Now, a Washington Post investigation, joined by 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley, has found evidence that immigrants are suffering from neglect and some don't survive detention in America. ________________________________________ In 2004, United Nations troops were fighting militant gangs in the streets of Haiti. Eighty-one-year-old Reverend Joseph Dantica, a Baptist minister, saw his church ransacked during the unrest, so he fled to the United States and asked for political asylum. His niece, Edwidge Danticat (her last name is spelled differently than her uncle's) says he was taken straight to a U.S. immigration detention center. "He was essentially arrested?" Pelley asks. "Yes. I consider it an arrest," Danticat says. "Because . . . he had to ask for special relief for him not to be handcuffed. And they did allow him that, but told him that if he ran, they would shoot him." Rev. Dantica raised Edwidge in Haiti; she moved to the U.S. at the age of 12 and grew up to become a prize-winning author. Danticat's recent book, "Brother, I'm Dying," recounts her uncle's ordeal. She was waiting for him in Miami. Asked what she was thinking when she heard her uncle had been detained, Danticat tells Pelley, "Well, I was horrified. Eighty one years old and, after the ordeal that he had been through in Haiti, I worried about his ability to handle that." Records show that two days later, during an asylum hearing, he became violently ill and collapsed. A detention center physician's assistant failed to recognize that Dantica was in serious trouble. "Help me understand from the records that you've seen precisely what the medic said about your uncle and his condition," Pelley asks. "It appears that he said,'I think he's faking,' or something to that effect," Danticat says. It took four hours to get Rev. Dantica to an outside hospital. His family wasn't allowed to see him. In a day and a half, Rev. Dantica was dead. The medical examiner said it was pancreatitis. Asked what she was thinking in that moment, Danticat says, "Just a series of things.” Crying, she continues, "Of course, you know, a great deal of sadness because he died so alone." "He died without his family," Pelley remarks. "Yeah. And after being treated like an animal," Danticat says. "Someone who was just trying to escape horrible things, who was so old and sick. Just had to die that way." But in one sense, Rev. Dantica was not alone: he's among hundreds of sick or dying detainees inside 22 detention centers, plus some 350 state and local jails. The federal lock-ups range from a former warehouse in New Jersey that houses 325 people, to a desert facility near the Mexican border. The centers are run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known by its initials "ICE." Inside the detention centers, medical care is provided by another federal agency, the Division of Immigration Health Services, or DIHS. Reporters Dana Priest and Amy Goldstein of The Washington Post have been investigating DIHS. "This is not just some deaths or just some sick people anecdotally. If you take them all together, they show poor medical judgments, faulty administrative practices, sloppy paperwork, lost medical records and very dangerous staffing levels," Priest explains. Priest, who contributes to 60 Minutes, and Goldstein have obtained thousands of internal DIHS documents. They include investigations, e-mails, autopsy reports and complaints. What sort of a picture did the documents paint of how DIHS is working? "They show a bureaucracy that offers many immigrants no care or slow care or poor care," Priest says. "And they also show that the employees inside are panicked about this." For example last year, 21-year-old detainee Juan Guevara was complaining of severe headaches. Soon he had died of a brain aneurysm. A staff member wrote in an e-mail "the detainee was prescribed Tylenol. The detainee was not seen or evaluated by an RN, midlevel (physician's assistant) or physician." This internal report from 2007 was written after another detainee died of a contagious infection: "the clinical staff at all levels failed to recognize early signs and symptoms of meningitis." This memo from 2007 sounds an alarm over staffing shortages in Buffalo, written in all caps, "CRITICAL STAFFING SITUATION OCCURRING, SITE IS DOWN TO ONLY 3 FULL TIME NURSES." In Arizona, "CRITICAL STAFFING levels. Site has reached a 48% nursing vacancy rate." While the number of immigrants in detention has tripled since 9/11, the health services budget has grown only by 65 percent. Priest reads from an email from the acting director of DIHS to a senior ICE official in August 2007: “We're facing critical staffing shortages at most every site. While we developed, executed and achieved major successes in our recruitment efforts, we've been unable to meet the demand." One immigrant detained in 2007 was Amina Mudey. She fled Somalia after her father, brothers and sister were murdered. Amina landed in New York and requested political asylum. "The medical treatment that Amina received was absolutely deplorable. Substandard, sanction-able, and flat out malpractice," says Ann Schofield Baker, Amina's lawyer. Schofield Baker says Amina was detained in the former New Jersey warehouse facility and almost immediately was prescribed a powerful anti-psychotic drug called "Risperdal." "How did she come to be on Risperdal to begin with? I mean, was she psychotic?" Pelley asks. "Not even remotely psychotic," Schofield Baker says. "When Amina first arrived at the detention center she hadn't slept in two or three days. She hadn't eaten. She'd never been on a plane before. She was disoriented. They brought her to the facility shackled. She was absolutely petrified. And she collapsed and had a panic attack. From that, someone concluded that she was psychotic." Schofield Baker says on Risperdal, Amina was dazed, drooling and helpless. A human rights group asked her to represent Amina. She got her own doctors, who took Amina off the drug. And Amina was granted asylum. Now Amina is studying computers and English. "What was it like when you walked out of there?" Pelley asks. "Outside was beautiful," Amina says, with the help of a translator. "It was a tough start for you," Pelley remarks. "America is wonderful place. I like it, New York," Amina answers in English. Amina's alleged misdiagnosis isn't an isolated case according to an internal memo from last year, written by the head of mental health at the Division of Immigration Health Services. "The top psychologist worried about mental health,” Priest says, as she quotes from an email he wrote: 'We need to stop looking for Band-Aid solutions for these problems.” "The little money managed care may save in the short run is going to be dwarfed by the millions that will be paid out by ICE when the lawsuits roll in.There have been just a handful of lawsuits so far. But they know they're sitting on a powder keg." DIHS is being sued in the case of 35-year-old Francisco Castaneda, who testified in a deposition some three weeks before he died. By that time, he was bedridden and the cancer had spread to his lungs. His voice barely rose above a whisper. Castaneda told of coming to the U.S. illegally from El Salvador at the age of ten. In 2004, he was sentenced to a few months in jail after a conviction on possession of methamphetamine, and later was sent to a detention center for deportation. "When you look back on how he was treated at the detention center over those months, what do you think?" Pelley asks Castaneda's sister Yanira. "I'm mad, sad," she says. Yanira says her brother went into the detention center with a bleeding lesion on his genitals. There was concern it was cancer, but the DIHS turned down requests for a biopsy. "How long do you believe the DIHS staff in the detention center knew or had a reasonable reason to suspect that he had cancer?" Pelley asks Conal Doyle, who, along with Adele Kimmel of the non-profit group Public Justice, represents the Castaneda family. "The second day he entered the facility, of March 28th, 2006, a physician's assistant, Lieutenant Walker, specifically documented that he needed a urology consult and a biopsy to rule out cancer," Doyle says. But Doyle says Castaneda never got that biopsy during his detention. Castaneda filed grievances with the Division of Immigration Health Services. He wrote, "I am in a considerable amount of pain and I am in desperate need of medical attention." DIHS said the surgery was elective and the government wouldn't pay for it. His request was denied for 10 months. Then, for reasons that aren't clear, he was released. "They released him on February 5th, 2007. And he sought care on his own outside the facility. And had that biopsy on February 8th. Cancer was discovered, his penis was amputated on February 14th," Doyle says. But the cancer had spread and Castaneda died a year later. "The judge in this case in federal district court has entered an order describing the care received by Castaneda as transcending negligence by miles. And, being beyond cruel and unusual," Doyle says. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined an interview, but ICE did send 60 Minutes a letter which states in part, "The number of deaths per 100,000 is dramatically lower for ICE detainees than for U.S. prison and jail populations…." ICE goes on to say that the nation as a whole is "experiencing severe shortages of qualified health professionals." In October, Congress held hearings on immigrant healthcare. Gary Mead, a senior immigration official, told the Congress t