Aderson Cesar waited nine months before the US Immigration and Naturalization
Service (INS) approved the removal of a sand dollar-sized disk of flesh from
his back. The lump was sore to touch, caused pain to run down his back, and
prevented the 30-year-old Haitian native, who has been in INS custody for 13
months, from sleeping properly. But the INS ignored weekly requests for medical
care from Cesar, a former Boston resident, until the agency received letters
from his lawyer and inquiries from the Phoenix.
INS detainee Wilfredo Rodriguez Blanco says two of his teeth were loosened
when a corrections officer at the Adult Correctional Institutions in Cranston
punched him in the mouth. (Department of Corrections spokesman Al Bucci says
Rodriguez Blanco had to be forcibly restrained after grabbing an officer and
creating a disturbance.) The 45-year-old Cuban immigrant, who has been detained
by the INS for 16 months, pulled one tooth himself and the prison dentist
pulled the other. Rodriguez Blanco, a former resident of Springfield,
Massachusetts, says he was told the INS would pay only for extractions, not
false teeth.
Basel Zakkari's identification badge says the 39-year-old former Worcester, Massachusetts, resident is a
relatively slim 176 pounds, but he now weighs more than 200 pounds. As a
diabetic, the Palestinian immigrant receives insulin at the prison, but he
isn't served a diabetic diet, despite repeated requests, he says. Detained by
the INS for 16 months, he says he's now experiencing cold and tingly sensations
in his feet and lower legs -- a common complication of poorly controlled
diabetes.
Cesar, Rodriguez Blanco, and Zakkari were not imprisoned at the ACI's Intake
Service Center for violating the law. They are not awaiting trial for any
crime. Held by the INS after completing sentences for crimes, these
non-citizens are awaiting -- and in most cases, fighting -- deportation to the
countries of their birth. As INS detainees, they remain at the ACI with poor
medical care, no chance of bail, and almost no opportunity for recreation or
education.
Nationally, the number of people detained by the INS on a typical day has
increased in the last five years from 8200 to 20,000, according to the
Harvard Law Review. The detainees are held at more than 900 facilities
around the US, including the ACI's Intake Service Center, which usually houses
about 100 INS detainees (Rodriguez Blanco has since been moved to a jail in
Greenfield, Massachusetts). Another 400 are held are at some 10 other jails in
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, including the Bristol County
Jail and House of Correction in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, according to
Iris Gomez, an immigration lawyer on the staff of the Boston-based
Massachusetts Law Reform Institute.
The INS doesn't have its own detention center in New England, so it pays the
State of Rhode Island $75 day, or approximately $2.7 million a year, to jail
these detainees. But detainees who have spent time in several jails say
conditions at the ACI's Intake Service Center are the worst. "The complaints
about the ACI exceed those of any other facility," says Gomez, who handles many
INS cases.
Most INS detainees can trace their problems to the 1994 Republican takeover of
Congress and the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma
City, which killed more than 150 people. Although American right-winger Timothy
McVeigh was convicted of the crime, initial suspicions blamed Arabs for the
attack and Congress moved to qualm American fears of foreigners by passing the
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.
The new law greatly expanded the list of crimes that trigger the deportation
of non-citizens to include many non-violent offenses, such as theft, forgery,
and receipt of stolen property, with at least one-year sentences. Over INS
objections, Congress also required the nearly automatic mandatory detention of
non-citizens after they complete prison sentences for these crimes (Cesar was
convicted in 1992 of assault and battery with a deadly weapon; Zakkari and
Rodriguez Blanco say they were convicted, respectively, of assaulting a police
officer, and assaulting a police officer and receiving stolen property). As a
result, non-citizens who serve time in such cases are usually detained now
immediately after their release from prison. And they remain imprisoned until
the completion of the often-lengthy deportation process.
Conditions at the ACI haven't worsened since September 11 and the accompanying
heightened suspicion of immigrants, detainees say, although some guards
occasionally call them terrorists and tell them to return to their native
countries. Rushed through Congress as part of the war on terrorism, the USA
Patriot Act expands the US Department of Justice's power to detain immigrants
with alleged terrorist connections and broadens the definition of deportable
offenses to include donations of food, money, or even blankets to a group
designated as "terrorist" by the State Department. Civil libertarians have
criticized the Patriot Act. But Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the
American Immigration Lawyers Association in Washington, DC, says the act has no
effect on the most typical INS detainees -- like those who are subject to
deportation because of criminal convictions and have been imprisoned at the ACI
for months, even years, waiting for the disposition of their cases.
In April, 28 detainees at Intake sent INS Commissioner James Ziglar a
three-page letter complaining about poor health-care, a lack of recreational
and educational opportunities, excessive searches and lockdowns, high phone
charges, dirty uniforms, and a substandard law library. Some detainees have
also filed lawsuits in federal court over conditions.
Meanwhile, immigration lawyers have been attacking mandatory detention in
court. As a result, three federal appeals courts have declared that mandatory
detention, without the possibility of a hearing or bail, violates the due
process guarantees in the US Constitution. The US Supreme Court agreed to hear
these cases this fall. Unless the law changes, Interpreter Releases, an
immigration law journal, estimates that the INS will ultimately need up to
35,000 beds to handle just the additional detentions triggered by the 1996
law.
In May, an American Bar Association (ABA) delegation toured Intake. Delegation
member Chris Nugent, director of the Washington, DC-based Immigration Pro Bono
Project, refuses to comment on the group's findings, citing a news blackout
negotiated with the INS in return for the tours and ongoing INS-ABA talks about
detention conditions.
Denis Riordan, acting district director for the INS' Boston office, says he is
investigating after having received the detainees' petition in June. "We do
care about conditions there," Riordan says. "We do want people to be treated
with respect. We do care about their safety." Riordan adds that he finds it
surprising that the detainees did not complain to an INS officer who is
stationed at the ACI for four hours every weekday.
Detainees, however, produce an avalanche of copies of complaint letters and
assistance requests to support their cries for help.
"INS officers don't care about any one of us," says Trevor Neverson, who has
been detained for 28 months. "Their intention is to keep you detained until
they have a plane to your country. They don't care about wives, fathers, kids
at home." Adds Angel Garcia, a 45-year-old Cuban immigrant who formerly lived
in Springfield, Massachusetts, "Nothing happen. Absolutely nothing happen."
EVEN WHEN detainees can get into an INS hearing room, they must overcome major
disadvantages. Immigration violations are civil, not criminal offenses, so
detainees are not entitled to a public defender or court-appointed lawyer.
Consequently, many poor immigrants who don't speak English well are forced to
represent themselves in immigration courts. Detainees lucky enough to have
lawyers often find themselves transferred from jail to jail in different
states, making it difficult to meet with their lawyer and prepare their case.
Detainees at the ACI's Intake Service Center are awoken close to midnight for
hearings and transported in shackles to a US Coast Guard facility in Boston.
There, relates detainee Cesar, a dozen or more people must sleep together on
the floor of a seven-by-10-foot cell with no beds. When a detainee enters the
hearing the next day, after being served a frozen Pop-Tart for breakfast, "You
look like somebody ran over you," Cesar states, making a successful hearing
outcome more unlikely.
Although uncertain about the frozen Pop-Tart, INS district office spokeswoman
Paula Grenier confirms the other elements of Cesar's account. "We're looking
into that to see if that process can be made easier," Grenier says
The INS hasn't responded to a May 10 request by the Phoenix for a tour
of the Intake Service Center and a subsequent request for a joint interview
with INS officials and some of the detainees at the ACI. The Phoenix,
however, did interview eight detainees held at Intake, most of whom are
fighting deportation, hoping to stay in the US, and remain united with their
wives and children.
Detainee Steve Morris, who left Jamaica with his family at 14 and attended
high school in New Jersey, has abandoned hopes of living in the United States.
Morris, 28, is merely waiting for Jamaica to process the paperwork for him to
return. He expects his family will be broken apart because his wife of seven
years, his five-year-old daughter, and his two-year-old son want to remain in
the US.
Living in Framingham, Massachusetts in 2000, Morris says, he was sentenced to
two years of probation for distributing cocaine. One of the urine samples
required during his probation subsequently tested positive for marijuana and he
was ordered to serve six months in prison. When Morris finished his sentence in
September 2001, the INS picked him up to begin the deportation process. "I make
one mistake, now they want to deport me," he says with despair.
The process moves slowly and Morris has spent 11 months in prison awaiting his
removal -- almost twice as long as the sentence for his drug offense. "I'm
getting treated like I've done some charge, but I've served my time," he says,
echoing a common complaint of many detainees.
Other detainees at Intake face similar circumstances. Trevor Neverson, a
Trinidadian native who formerly lived in Springfield, Massachusetts, served
nine years and eight months for a manslaughter conviction. Neverson says he's
been detained for 28 months while seeking to have the manslaughter conviction
overturned.
Aderson Cesar came to the US from Haiti with his family as a teenager. In
April 2002, he convinced Immigration Judge Leonard Shapiro to let him remain in
the US, despite a 1992 conviction for assault and battery with a deadly weapon.
But under immigration law, Cesar must remain at the ACI while the INS appeals
Shapiro's decision, says his lawyer, Iris Gomez. Cesar and Neverson might have
once been candidates for release with bail while awaiting the outcome of their
cases, but the 1996 law eliminated bail for non-citizens with convictions for
most deportable crimes.
Like many detainees, Cesar and Neverson might also be happier living overseas
while they fight to remain in the US, but reversing a deportation order becomes
more difficult once they leave the US, explains Gomez. Reentering the US, even
to visit wives and children is "extremely difficult," she says, for people
deported because of a criminal conviction.
So with no immediate prospect for release, Neverson and Cesar sit at the
Intake Service Center, waiting for the judicial process to grind to a
conclusion. After having served out their original sentence, wanting to live in
America is their only offense.
BEING IMPRISONED at Intake has been especially painful for Cesar. The
30-year-old earned a bachelor of arts degree from Salem State College while in
a Massachusetts prison and he speaks English without an accent. His wife and
two-year-old daughter live in Boston's Charlestown section. Cesar was detained
by the INS immediately after he completed his sentence in July 2001, and he has
remained imprisoned ever since.
During a June interview in a holding room at the ACI, Cesar sat hunched over,
holding his handcuffed hands between his knees. Sitting upright would press the
mass on his back against his plastic chair, he explained. The mass was next to
his spine and sore to touch. An April 2002 review of medical records performed
for Cesar by Dr. Karen Lasser, an internist at Cambridge Hospital, indicates
that the mass has grown in size since first being documented by Massachusetts
prison doctors in April 2000.
The mass also causes lower back pain and makes sleeping difficult, Cesar says.
Citing the possibility that it may be cancerous, Lasser wrote the INS, "The
mass should be excised immediately."
Cesar's repeated complaints about the mass were apparently ignored for months.
He showed the Phoenix copies of 10 separate requests for medical
attention that he submitted at Intake, starting in October 2001, plus letters
to the INS and the US attorney's office. Despite his pleas, the INS maintained
surgery was unnecessary.
On May 14, Cesar says, he was finally seen by a doctor at Rhode Island
Hospital, who recommended that he immediately schedule surgery. Once they left
the doctor's office, however, Cesar relates, the guard accompanying him refused
to make the appointment and, as a result, surgery was delayed more than six
weeks, until July 3.
On July 8, apparently unaware of Cesar's surgery five days earlier, INS Acting
District Director Riordan still insisted in an interview that Cesar's back
problem was cosmetic. "There is no medical need to remove it," Riordan said.
Informed that the mass was causing Cesar pain, Riordan responded, "If he's in
pain and can't sleep, that's troubling to me." Cesar was slated to return to
Rhode Island Hospital on August 6 to learn whether the growth that the INS
ignored for months is cancerous.
He is not the only INS detainee with medical complaints.
Domingos Araujo, formerly of New Bedford, Massachusetts, has been at Intake
just more than a year, detained by the INS following a narcotics possession
conviction. At the time, the 34-year-old says, he was wearing a fiberglass
brace on his right knee following anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) surgery.
Guards at Intake, Araujo says, confiscated the brace, and, despite his
objections, assigned him a top bunk without a ladder.
His knee became painful, and on August 6, 2001, according to a copy of a
medical request form, Araujo formally asked for the brace to be returned.
According to medical records, it took almost two months before an ACI doctor
assigned Araujo a bottom bunk and ordered a knee brace. But despite medical
request forms filed in mid-October, November, and December, Araujo was not
provided a brace -- a cloth model that he describes as inadequate -- until late
December.
Araujo continued to request additional medical attention for his knee,
speaking with an INS officer stationed at Intake and writing then-INS District
Director Steven Farquharson. On June 28, Araujo says, he was finally taken to
Rhode Island Hospital, where a doctor gave him new pain medication and ordered
a brace for him. Interviewed in mid-July, almost a year after his brace was
taken, Araujo says he has yet to receive a proper knee brace. "They just do
what they want with you basically," he says.
Other detainees complain of waiting for weeks to see a doctor and dental care
that consists merely of having teeth pulled. They say they've been told that
INS will not pay for fillings, bridges, and other more complicated dental work.
The state, which is reimbursed for detainees' medical expenses by the INS, does
not make dental bridges, says Bucci, the Corrections Department spokesman, but
it does fill cavities.
DETAINEES ARE KEPT at the Intake Service Center, rather than one of the seven
other prisons at the ACI, because federal law, enforced in the 1980s by US
District Court Judge Raymond Pettine, prohibits mixing those awaiting trial
with convicted criminals. Some 16,000 people go through the 1100-bed Intake
Service Center every year, Bucci says, as they await their trial or spend a
month going through the classification process that determines where they will
serve their sentence.
But in a catch-22 situation, separating INS detainees makes prison life worse
for them. Because Intake serves a largely transient population, it offers fewer
services than the other prisons within the ACI. Drug and sex offender
counseling is provided, explains Bucci, but Intake provides no educational
courses or self-help programs, like Alcoholics Anonymous and anger management.
In addition to helping detainees improve their lives, detainee Araujo
comments, educational or personal improvement programs demonstrate to
immigration judges that detainees are trying to better themselves and are
therefore worthy of being permitted to stay in the US. No courses means
deportation is more likely, he says.
Recreational opportunities are also few. Other Rhode Island prisons have pool
and ping pong tables, and weight rooms, Bucci relates. Some allow inmates to
play horseshoes, handball, and softball. But none of these are offered to the
largely transient population at Intake. "All you can do is play cards and some
guys go to the yard and play basketball," says Neverson.
Being at Intake also means living with some scary people, detainees say,
including some of Rhode Island's worst criminals. "They have nothing to lose,"
says Cesar, referring to prisoners awaiting long sentences for violent crimes.
"That alone, that thought in your mind," he says. "You don't want to come out
of your cell."
When police arrest an unusually large number of people, like a recent round-up
of 70 fathers for non-payment of child support, conditions get worse and more
crowded. Mattresses are hauled out and placed on cell floors as inmates and
detainees are forced to "triple up" in cells.
There are other problems, detainees say. The INS' own detention standards
require detainees to get a fresh dark blue prison jumper twice a week, to wear
over their underwear. But clean outer clothing is provided only once a week at
Intake. The prison is temporarily short of clothing, explains acting INS
district director Riordan, adding that INS wants two clothing changes per
week.
Riordan also agrees with detainees that telephone charges are "excessive."
High phone fees discourage detainees from maintaining contact with their wives
and children and contribute to the weakening of their families. Cesar's wife,
Shivon, produced a bill, for example which shows that his weekly calls to
Charlestown, all made after 8 p.m., cost an average of $1 per minute. "That's
totally ludicrous," comments Brian Kent, telecommunications analyst for the
Rhode Island Division of Public Utilities and Carriers. But because the rates
are part of a contract between the Department of Corrections and New
Jersey-based Lucent Technologies, he says, "We don't have any control over
that."
In state rates are cheaper ($2.15 for a seven-plus minute call, for example),
but since most detainees are from other states, they pay the much higher
out-of-state rates. Bucci says the Department of Corrections is powerless to
correct the problem because the rates are part of a 10-year contract with
Lucent. Negotiated in 1997, the cleverly devised agreement gave Lucent high
fees for collect calls by inmates -- the only kind they can make -- and in
return, the state received a new phone system for $1, plus an annual payment of
$470,000.
Detainees have other complaints. Day-long lockdowns, when detainees are barred
from leaving their cells, are frequent, especially during holidays, they say,
and non-smokers are forced to share cells with smokers. Bucci acknowledges that
there are 12 to 14 all-day lockdowns a year in all the state prisons to reduce
staffing costs. He adds, "We're in the process of considering going smoke-free
[at state prisons] early next year."
The petition from the detainees also complains about the law library. Federal
case law is not available, the petition charges, and the library has only one
typewriter for 1100 inmates. Riordan, however, claims the library is current
with legal materials and equipment.
That simply isn't true, responds Cesar. The two computers used to access federal case law on disk are broken, he
says, as is the one typewriter. "They assume," he says, referring to top INS
officials. "They don't really know the truth because they're not here."
Issue Date: August 9 - 15, 2002