INS detentions: No crime
needed
By LESLIE WIRPSA
NCR Staff Lancaster, Calif.
Livinus Mbanefo spoke softly in mid-June from behind the bolted
doors, barbed wire and electronic surveillance systems of the Mira Loma
Contract Detention Center in this desert city about 90 miles north of Los
Angeles.
For all practical purposes, Mbanefo (pronounced Mmm-ba-nay-fo) is
in prison, but he has committed no crime. In fact, he was a victim of crimes
against humanity, he said. He was seized in 1996 by government thugs in his
homeland, Nigeria, for distributing posters that said, Lets
struggle for a democratically elected government and Fight against
corruption and human rights abuses. His captors, he said, worked for the
late dictator Gen. Sani Abacha. They imprisoned him for nine months and
tortured him. He managed to escape and flee through Ghana, South Africa and
Malaysia to the United States.
Once again, however, Mbanefo is in captivity. As a result of
strict immigration laws passed by the U.S. Congress in 1996, Mbanefo is being
held at Mira Loma instead of receiving parole -- as would have occurred more
easily under the old laws -- while he appeals an asylum claim denied him in
February.
Mbanefo is one person in a swelling population housed in detention
facilities contracted out or run by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
Service. As controversial legislation passed by Congress in 1996 has begun to
take effect -- primarily the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant
Responsibility Act -- INS officials have found themselves scurrying to
find as much bed space as we can to detain all of the aliens we are required by
law to detain, in the words of Leonard Kovensky, assistant director for
the INS Los Angeles district, in a June telephone interview with
NCR.
Ive never stayed in a place like this. Ive never
lost my freedom. I love to express myself, Mbanefo, an athletic man clad
in bright orange prison fatigues, said. I now have no choice. If Im
to go back to Nigeria it means more torture and death. But here, its
almost the same thing because I am detained.
Mbanefo, while visibly discouraged, said two things give him hope
-- his friendship with Fr. Robert McChesney of the Jesuit Refugee Service USA
(http://www.jesuit.org/refugee/jrs.html) and contact with the Ibo
community in Los Angeles, a link that occurred thanks to McChesneys
pastoral efforts.
It was hell before I met him. He is a father, a brother,
everything to me, Mbanefo said. And the Ibo organization, they do a
lot. It has changed my life. Its a different ball game when these people
are interested in your problems. Ibos are a Nigerian tribal community
(NCR, March 27.)
The 1996 laws, Kovensky said, have considerably increased the
number of those who must be detained and deported, especially in the case of
noncitizens with criminal records. A limited number of detainees with records
of minor crimes may be released under bond while awaiting judges
decisions. The legislation also restricts parole opportunities for asylum
seekers like Mbanefo. According to his lawyer, Carolyn Perkins of the Catholic
Legal Immigration Network (http://www.nccbuscc.org/mrs/index.htm), it
would have been easier for Mbanefo to seek parole under the old system.
Congress says this was not their intention, but the policies
are extreme, said James Haggerty, special projects director for the
Immigration Networks New York office. There are asylum cases where
there is no parole even after people pass credible fear tests. And once they
are in detention, they are treated as criminals.
Perkins said that because of the backlogs, asylum seekers -- even
those with very strong claims -- may spend six months behind bars
waiting for a hearing. Many of these people could be active in their
communities if paroled.
A study by the New York-based Vera Institute of Justice, a
research and public policy organization, showed that 85 percent of parolees
participating in the institutes supervised program showed up for their
hearings to complete their legal procedures.
Expensive policies
The combination of more detentions -- many through dramatic
workplace raids by INS officials -- and fewer channels for relief means that
INS facilities are filling up fast. Deportations increased 178 percent during a
nine-month period last year; bed capacity at facilities such as Mira Loma is
expanding with projections that it will double before long.
These policies are expensive to implement. Massive roundups
of people are expensive, the Catholic Networks Haggerty said.
This is very political legislation. It is not [the result of] a reasoned
discussion of immigration policy. ... They dont even know all of the
consequences or all of the problems with implementation.
One collateral effect of the rise in demand is the boost it
provides some county and city budgets and the increased business it creates for
private security companies with INS contracts. An example of the former is Mira
Loma, a county jail that closed in 1993. The INS now contracts for the services
of the facility through the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department, an
agreement that has provided employment in the small town and income for the
county.
This is a way counties and cities are balancing their
budgets, said McChesney, who heads a Jesuit Relief Service pilot project
that ministers to INS detainees in Los Angeles.
It costs the INS -- and ultimately taxpayers -- approximately $80
a day to house and feed a detainee at the Loma Mira Center in Lancaster,
according to an INS estimate. Another estimate put the per-bed price at $88.
With 650 beds at Mira Loma, the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department
makes at least $1.5 million a month from that one operation.
The government has spent at least $21,600 so far keeping Mbanefo
behind bars. That sum is minimal compared to lifers -- people
detained indefinitely, although they have final deportation orders, because
their home countries will not permit them to enter.
Chinese national Bi Meng Zheng, for example, has lived in various
INS detention centers for more than three years, costing the INS an estimated
$109,200. In an interview at his current home -- the INS San Pedro Service
Processing Center, about 30 miles south of Los Angeles -- Zheng said he came to
the United States because he and his wife opposed Chinas one child
policy.
We had a daughter, and because of Chinas rules, they
wanted my wife sterilized, he said. My wife was afraid of the
sterilization procedure because her mother got sick from it and couldnt
work for 10 years.
Zheng said he and his wife thought that if he left, the
authorities would not demand that she be sterilized. Zheng entered Hawaii with
a false Korean passport, requested asylum, was detained and paroled. When the
Chinese authorities again pressured his wife, she requested and received asylum
in Switzerland, Zheng said. From there, she planned to sponsor him and their
daughter so the family could be together.
By then, however, Zheng had been detained a second time by the
INS. He had traveled to Maryland to find family members and employment, he
said, and had asked a lawyer to transfer his case from Hawaii. The lawyer did
not complete the procedure, according to Zheng, so he missed his hearing in
Hawaii and was considered in violation of his parole. That was 1993. I
have been looking ever since to resolve my problem, he said.
In 1994, another lawyer advised him to go directly to the INS to
straighten out his papers. I didnt want to mislead
Immigration, Zheng said. He was immediately detained for not showing up
in court in Hawaii, where a deportation order had been issued. Zheng, a
31-year-old auto repair technician, was then assured that within two months he
would be sent back to China. Had he been deported, he said he believes he could
have joined his wife in Switzerland, bringing his daughter with him.
Instead, almost four years have passed since Zhengs
deportation order was issued, and the only places the INS has sent him are to
four different INS centers located in Oakdale, La.; Bakersfield, Calif.;
Lancaster; and now San Pedro. He has not been able to work to support his
family during this time. His said his wife, exhausted by financial burdens and
the impossibility of the situation, recently filed for divorce.
I had a lot of hope for the United States before. But after
this treatment, I feel that the United States has less respect than China for
the human being, Zheng said.
While conditions at INS centers vary, overcrowding is becoming a
problem at some facilities. Other locations may have enough beds, but they are
simply not set up to serve long-term detainees like Zheng and Mbanefo.
As an immigration service, we are not in the business of
doing long-term detention, the INSs Kovensky said. Our
business is to remove, not to keep people a long time. We need programs in
place to provide long-term care.
At one facility, Kovensky said, detainees stay 17 days on average,
not enough time for the environment to fester, for them to get
dissatisfied. But in other facilities, he said, detainees are held for
several months -- and some indefinitely, with no hope of release. They
need programs to give them some kind of hope or to give them something to
strive for, to structure their time while in custody, he said.
Despite the INS scramble to expand, environments have festered.
Two riots occurred within two months earlier this year at the INS center in El
Centro, Calif. In addition, a Los Angeles legal assistance organization has
brought a federal class action suit against the INS for not providing adequate
medical and legal services to detainees.
The legal quagmire behind the rising numbers is extensive. To
begin with, the 1996 laws increased the number of so-called aggravated
felonies for which noncitizen immigrants may be deported or, even after
serving their prison sentences, may be held by the INS without the possibility
of temporary release under bond while their cases are in process. These crimes
-- such as minimum drug possession with intent to sell, domestic violence and
in some cases offenses such as shoplifting or driving under the influence --
can be used against immigrants retroactively. Moreover, deportation on the
basis of such crimes prohibits immigrants from ever re-entering the United
States legally.
Under the new regulations that allow crimes to be considered
retroactively, immigrants who have lived here productively for decades may be
deported for even relatively minor crimes they believed were buried in the
past.
In one case, published in the Los Angeles Times, Colombian
Gerardo Antonio Mosquera was deported in 1997 after 29 years of residency in
the United States for a 1989 conviction for dealing $10 worth of marijuana.
According to newspaper reports, his 17-year-old U.S.-born son, bereft by his
fathers absence, committed suicide. Mosquera, because of the prohibition
on even his temporary return, could not enter the United States to attend his
sons funeral.
The worsening of the situation of INS detainees has prompted the
Catholic church to expand ministry in this area. While Catholic prison ministry
has a long and strong track record across the country, INS detainees constitute
a hidden population, according to McChesney, whose National
Immigration Detention Project in Los Angeles, supported by the Jesuit Refugee
Service, is breaking new ground.
Numbers are soaring
We need the church to be aware of the needs of this
population, said McChesney, who with others has begun to fill that need.
The pilot program he heads is duplicated in Elizabeth, N.J., the location of
another INS detention center. The need is obvious enough, McChesney
wrote in a statement of purpose for the project. Though prior to 1980 it
was rare for the INS to detain immigrants and refugees, last year the number
soared to over 100,000. McChesney and volunteers attempt to provide basic
ministry services, focusing on the San Pedro facilities, for 500 detainees.
The outreach is culturally complex: On a typical day,
approximately 60 countries will be represented, two-thirds [of the detainees]
being Hispanic and criminal alien. There are significant numbers of Chinese,
Vietnamese and Filipinos. Sometimes McChesney works through traditional
religious outreach, saying Mass, for example, in the recreation area of the
facility, with soccer balls bouncing off the altar.
In the case of Mbanefo, McChesney served as a vital link to the
Ibo Catholic community. Members of the community visit Mbanefo regularly and
advocate for his asylum and parole. One member of the Ibo community came from
the same village as Mbanefos family in Nigeria.
The Catholic Legal Immigration Network, meanwhile, has shifted its
focus and resource allocation in the past two years to expand services to INS
detainees nationwide, opening or expanding offices in five locations. Founded
in 1988, the network, a subsidiary of the National Conference of Catholic
Bishops and the United States Catholic Conference, provides support services,
including training and mentoring, to a network of diocesan immigration
offices.
In June, network attorney Perkins initiated an innovative project
at the Los Angeles San Pedro facility to better inform immigrants of their
legal rights. On week nights, Perkins, Loyola Law School intern Ruth Jimenez
and immigration attorney Ruth Lupash give a bilingual overview presentation of
immigration relief procedures to approximately 30 detainees. They then meet
with detainees individually to sort out the particulars of their cases.
To meet demand for these services, the Catholic Legal Immigration
Network office in Los Angeles has added administrative personnel and will add
two more full-time attorneys in the fall. Like Perkins, whose post is sponsored
by St. Marys Law School in San Antonio, both attorneys will be paid
through fellowships from Catholic law schools -- Loyola in Los Angeles and
Georgetown in Washington. The program attracts interns from Loyola.
During one of the Immigration Networks June sessions, many
detainees showed visible relief as they received help to sort through the legal
procedures in preparation for their hearings the next morning. Many, who had no
reprieve possible, shuffled out of the room after a general information session
to await deportation. Others, however, discovered ways they could attempt to
remain in the United States. Without the help of the Catholic Legal Immigration
Network, most of the detainees would have no access to legal assistance and
limited information about the immigration procedures.
Through the information sessions the Immigration Network has
discovered people who should not be in detention. One 16-year-old youth, for
example, was found housed in the adult San Pedro center. Immigration Network
staff believe he is a citizen. When he was picked up in an INS sweep in East
Los Angeles, his mother, a Mexican woman whom he says was naturalized, was in
Mexico caring for his grandmother, who was in a coma. The boy had no papers and
could not prove his citizenship. Immigration Network advocates immediately
obtained his transfer to a juvenile facility. They are working with his
neighbors and a pro bono attorney to find his mother and verify his claim to
citizen status. Without the Catholic groups help, the boy may have been
deported to Mexico.
The INSs Kovensky complimented the work of the Immigration
Network and the Jesuit Refugee Service. I think its great. he
said. We know we are telling the unbiased, unvarnished truth [to
detainees]. But we know they dont believe us. If someone from a
nongovernmental or religious organization tells them the same thing, they are
more credible than we are.
They dont know the culture, he said. Kovensky said he
hopes an organization with the global reach of Jesuit Refugee Service could
eventually set up guidance houses in home countries, places for these
people to go when they get out of the airplane, so we could give them at least
a phone number to call.
National Catholic Reporter, July 17,
1998
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