Immigration News Briefs 4/30/99 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit IMMIGRATION NEWS BRIEFS A monthly supplement to Weekly News Update on the Americas Vol. 2, No. 4 - April 1999 (publication date 4/30/99) 1. Protest at California Detention Center 2. Florida Parents on Hunger Strike 3. New Scandals Rock New Jersey Detention Center Immigration News Briefs is a monthly supplement to Weekly News Update on the Americas, published by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York. A one-year subscription (52 issues) to Weekly News Update on the Americas is $25. To subscribe to the Update and Immigration News Briefs, send a check or money order for US $25 payable to Nicaragua Solidarity Network, 339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012. Please specify if you want the electronic or print version. For information about the Update, contact or check out our web site at . Back issues and source materials are available on request. Separate subscriptions to Immigration News Briefs are available free by email by contacting . If you are accessing Immigration News Briefs for free on electronic newsgroups, we would appreciate any financial support you can contribute. We are a small, all-volunteer organization funded solely through subscriptions and contributions. Feel free to reproduce Immigration News Briefs, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us and include our full contact information so that people will know how to find us. Send us a copy of any publication where we are cited or reprinted. We also welcome your comments and ideas: send them to us at the street address above or via e-mail to . *1. PROTEST AT CALIFORNIA DETENTION CENTER Up to 650 detainees of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) staged a protest on Mar. 29 at the Mira Loma Detention Center in Lancaster, California, to demand release on bond and acceleration of their court proceedings. Some of the protesters threw bright orange prison clothing and trash onto razor-wire fences while others unfurled banners made from bedsheets and shouted to onlookers, demanding that they be deported or released on bond. Onlookers included relatives who had received phone calls over the weekend from family members detained at the center; detainees complained that they lack shoes and adequate clothing for cold weather and that personal items such as toothbrushes were taken from them. The prisoners ended the protest six hours after it began, after winning promises on key demands in negotiations with representatives of the INS, the California Department of Corrections and the Sheriff's Department. Authorities pledged to accelerate bogged-down deportation proceedings, and agreed to allow detainees to speak to the media regarding their long- standing complaints. The Mira Loma center currently houses 869 detainees, nearly half of them from Mexico. [Los Angeles Times 3/30/99] *2. FLORIDA PARENTS ON HUNGER STRIKE On Apr. 30, four parents entered the 44th day of a hunger strike they began on Mar. 18 outside the INS Krome detention center in Miami. The four are demanding the release of their sons, Cuban immigrants who have served out sentences for felony convictions but who continue to be held indefinitely in detention by the INS because they cannot be deported to Cuba. Martha Berros, Mireya Cortes, Miriam Alonso and Eladio Alfonso have threatened to stop drinking liquids on Apr. 30 if they don't get a satisfactory response from the INS by then. "We want the INS to commit to making a decision in our sons' cases immediately: we want clearly defined answers and not open-ended promises," said the 53-year old Alfonso. [El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 4/28/99, 4/30/99; Miami Herald 4/23/99, 4/28/99, 4/30/99] INS district directors have the power to release detained immigrants at their discretion, if such people do not pose a danger to the community and if they promise to appear for all future proceedings. INS district directors can also use a more formal hearing process, called Criminal Alien Review Panels, to periodically review the fate of long-term detainees--although these panels are now used rarely. The hunger strikers say their sons pose no threat to society. They are also demanding that the INS review the cases of some 3,700 other detainees being held indefinitely under similar circumstances (they cannot be deported to their home countries and no other country has agreed to accept them). [Seattle Post-Intelligencer 4/6/99; MH 4/23/99] Dr. Antonio Gordon, head of the medical team attending the hunger strikers, warned on Apr. 27 that the four may have already suffered irreversible health damage, and that if they follow through with their threat to stop drinking liquids, they might survive only 3-7 more days. Berros, 57 years old, has cardiac arrhythmia; she started the hunger strike weighing 115 pounds and is now down to 89 pounds. On Apr. 28 and 29 Florida immigration officials completed interviews at Krome with four of the sons of the six parents who originally began the hunger strike. The four--three sons of the current hunger strikers, plus the son of a woman who quit the hunger strike early on for medical reasons--had been transferred to Krome on Apr. 22 from a jail in Hernando County in central Florida. After reviewing their case files, officials will submit a recommendation to INS South Florida district director Robert Wallis. But the hunger strikers say they are deepening their protest because they don't trust Wallis to issue prompt or fair decisions. Officials said on Apr. 22 that Manuel Angel Chiong, son of striker Mireya Cortes, will remain in custody at the Orleans Parish jail in Louisiana, where his case will be reviewed by INS officials in New Orleans. Cheryl Little, an immigration attorney and executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, which is representing the families, said she cannot adequately prepare or argue the case for Chiong's release at such a distance. Little has also asked the INS to transfer two other men being held in Louisiana--the son of one striker and the son of another woman who also quit the strike for health reasons--back to Krome for interviews. The INS said it plans to leave those two men under the jurisdiction of the INS in New Orleans, where they will be considered for possible release. [ENH 4/28/99, 4/30/99; MH 4/23/99, 4/28/99, 4/29/99, 4/30/99] Protesters carrying banners and placards marched toward Krome's front gate in an Apr. 20 demonstration in support of the hunger strikers. The protest became heated when about 50 chanting protesters tried to reach the gate, and insulted the uniformed immigration officers who blocked their path. The standoff ended without incident after about 45 minutes. [MH 4/21/99] On Apr. 27 the hunger strikers were visited by Cuban-American congressional representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), who promised to keep pressuring immigration authorities to analyze the cases of 2,153 Cuban former convicts who are being held in INS detention indefinitely. "The INS has the power, under current laws, to provide a solution for these victims of unfair detention," said Ros-Lehtinen. A group of human rights advocates, religious workers and immigration lawyers were to travel on Apr. 28 to Washington to lobby Congress for the release of the Cuban prisoners. [ENH 4/28/99] *3. NEW SCANDALS ROCK NEW JERSEY DETENTION CENTER The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is looking into allegations of beatings, verbal abuse, and other violations of the civil rights of asylum-seekers held at the INS detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, according to an expose published on Apr. 11 by the local daily Bergen Record. Immigration authorities say they have also asked investigators to look into a possible cover-up that may include the withholding of information and tampering with videotapes of the incidents. No one with a known criminal record is held at Elizabeth--225 of the 300 beds are for asylum-seekers, who are often detained for months or even years. The rest are for immigrants arrested in workplace raids or for failing to leave the country on a designated date; these detainees are are generally deported fairly quickly. The center is operated by the Nashville, Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)--the largest private prison operator in the US--under contract with the INS. CCA took over the Elizabeth center in 1997 after the INS cancelled its contract with Esmor Correctional Services, the previous operator of the center, following a June 1995 riot by detainees protesting abusive conditions there [see INB 6/98]. The INS reopened the center under CCA promising to create a model for privatization and the detention of asylum seekers. Every other privatized immigration detention center in the country has one on-site INS officer monitoring compliance; Elizabeth has seven. Since February of this year, the center's chief of security has been removed, two supervisors and six officers have been barred from going near detainees, and a guard was fired for refusing to cooperate with an internal investigation into the charges, say immigration officials. In early April, after 11 months in the job, Warden Karen Nicholson submitted her resignation, effective at the end of April--citing personal reasons. In 24 months, the facility has gone through three wardens, three deputy wardens, and two chiefs of security. Two of the top officials were removed at the request of the INS following charges that they were, among other things, creating a destructive atmosphere. A third was fired by CCA. INS officials characterize the various changes in CCA management at the center as "bumps" on a "learning curve." The Department of Justice called in the FBI after hearing of two separate incidents of abuse at the center on Jan. 28: one in which guards beat Palestinian detainee Salah Dafali so badly he required stitches; and another in which two officers kicked and shoved Nigerian detainee Oluwode Aboyade. [BR 4/11/99] Dafali became upset when an INS officer said deportation to Italy was not possible and he would spend the rest of his life in detention; the center's chief of security beat him while guards restrained him, he has charged. He was then kept restrained to a bed for several hours until INS officials arrived and he was taken to the hospital. An employee at the detention center says that an emergency room doctor who treated Dafali called the center to ask: "What happened to this guy? How did he get a footprint on his face?" [BR 4/11/99, 4/27/99] Aboyade, who has been detained for a year, says he was kept in a cell smeared with excrement for six days last fall after he helped organize a hunger strike at the Elizabeth center [see INB 10/98]. In the Jan. 28 incident, Aboyade said a supervisor punched him in the chest and pushed him hard against a wall, and another officer kicked his leg. "This is abuse I experienced in my country," said Aboyade. "I expected it in Nigeria, but not here." CCA officials deny the charges of abuse and excessive force, and question the credibility of Dafali and Aboyade. The officials say their own reviews, which they declined to describe, showed that their employees acted professionally in the Jan. 28 incidents. But INS officials note that the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General found enough evidence to refer the charges to the FBI. Immigrant advocates say detainees often face retaliation for complaining about conditions. Aboyade has been held alternately in segregation and isolation at Elizabeth since the hunger strike last fall. [BR 4/11/99] On Apr. 13, just two days after the Bergen Record published its expose, Aboyade was suddenly transferred to York County Prison in rural Pennsylvania, hundreds of miles from his lawyer and those reporting on his abuse. The INS says it moved Aboyade for his own safety. [BR 4/15/99] Dafali was transferred out of Elizabeth following his beating, and he is also being held at the York facility. [BR 4/27/99, 4/11/99] Less than a week after the Record expose was published, officials shut down the controversial seven-bed "isolation" dormitory at Elizabeth, which had been established in October--after the hunger strike--for detainees who officials or staff said might "incite" others. [BR 4/22/99] Immigration detention centers have long been charged with mistreatment and inhumane conditions--problems that critics say are more likely to occur in privately run centers. The United Nations (UN) and Amnesty International (AI) have argued that asylum seekers--who often are forced to flee without travel documents--should not be held in prisons. [BR 4/11/99] Human Rights Watch issued a scathing report on INS detention last fall, and AI has launched a major protest campaign. In late February last year, the UN High Commissioner on Refugees charged the INS with unjust detention policies. [Village Voice 3/24-30/99] END ======================================================================= Weekly News Update on the Americas * Nicaragua Solidarity Network of NY 339 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10012 * 212-674-9499 fax: 212-674-9139 http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/wnuhome.html * wnu@igc.apc.org ======================================================================= ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytrc-05.12.99-01:12:21-6205