The Pink Flamingo :: ICE Tries to Deport Americans, Guards Rape Illegals Avoid Prosecution

I don’t mind admitting the following post is over the top and melodramatic. I intended it to be. We have a problem in this country with the process involved in immigration reform. The greatest problem is the fact that the reformers have somehow seemingly sold their soul and their humanity for a series of strict laws that do nothing but harm the country. In many ways it is quite tragic.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. There are always unintended consequences with those reactions. When you give an agency like ICE almost unlimited and dictatorial powers, complete with a disregard for the Constitution, you are asking for trouble. Of all the issues conservatives should be promoting, a strict enforcement of the Constitution. Strangely, as long as immigration is involved, these people, these lovers of a strict interpretation of the Constitution of the United States of America do not seem to give a rip. The Bill of Rights can be thrown out the window for all they care. Nothing matters but the agenda of emptying the country of every illegal alien, and it really doesn’t matter how it is accomplished.

There is no thought to morality.
There is no thought to process.
There is no thought to civil rights.
It really doesn’t matter.
Nothing matters as long as the nativist hand-wringers get their way.
They will destroy anyone who gets in that way.
They will lie, cheat, and steal (reputations).
All that matters is the agenda.
Nothing, nothing else matters.
Nothing else matters except the abject destruction of anyone who opposes the FAIR version of immigration reform.

THE REIGN OF TERROR HAS BEGUN
I like to think of the anti-immigration conservatives as the same people who were propelling the French Revolution. Nothing mattered but the massive crowds getting their abject way. They did not care who they destroyed. Midnight raids on unsuspecting households are acceptable. It doesn’t matter if there is no warrant. Holding a person without access to legal council is fine. Denying people who claim to be American citizens their most basic Constitutional rights is acceptable. Destroying families is fine. Signing onto bills that make a mockery out of everything we fought to prevent during World War II is not a problem as long as even one illegal alien is caught.

The end does not justify the means. Millions of good people died to protect these rights that conservatives, the very people who claim to treasure them, are throwing into the swill of hate and white supremacist allies. In order to justify this behavior there is this kill the messenger philosophy. Anyone who disagrees with status quo on anything, any subject, it doesn’t really matter, must be destroyed.

I now know Naturalized American Citizens who will not even leave the house without copies of their birth certificate, voting cards, social security, passport, and their insurance papers. Hispanic Americans (good Republicans) now live in fear. I thought freedom from fear is one of our basic freedoms. But, our good nativist conservatives must have their way, no matter how many lives are destroyed in the process.

ICE CANNOT LEGALLY HOLD US CITIZENS
Greg Siskind’s Blog

“…I don't have a copy of my birth certificate from Ohio, and millions of other Americans don't have their birth certificates. If I didn't have a US passport, I would have a hard time "proving" that I am a citizen. Keeping people in custody until ICE gets around to verifying their birth status is absurd, particularly because ICE has no authority to detain US citizens. Also, the comments being left on that article are scary to read. Simply because the reporter truthfully reported on ICE errors in detaining and attempting to deport US citizens (and primarily US born citizens at that) most of the commenters are railing against the slant of the article, and claiming that this is somehow "pro illegal"….”

AMERICANS DEPORTED
Unfortunately, now that we live in a climate of fear due to the constant anti-immigration fervor of nativists, Americans – people born here – are sometimes deported to countries they’ve never before seen.

“…Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he's never seen. His jailers shrugged off Warziniack's claims that he was an American citizen, even though they could have retrieved his Minnesota birth certificate in minutes and even though a Colorado court had concluded that he was a U.S. citizen a year before it shipped him to Arizona. On Thursday, Warziniack was told he would be released. Immigration authorities were finally able to verify his citizenship. "The immigration agents told me they never make mistakes," Warziniack said in a phone interview from jail. "All I know is that somebody dropped the ball."

The story of how immigration officials decided that a small-town drifter with a Southern accent was an illegal Russian immigrant illustrates how the federal government mistakenly detains and sometimes deports American citizens. U.S. citizens who are mistakenly jailed by immigration authorities can get caught up in a nightmarish bureaucratic tangle in which they're simply not believed.

An unpublished study by the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York nonprofit organization, in 2006 identified 125 people in immigration detention centers across the nation who immigration lawyers believed had valid U.S. citizenship claims.

Vera initially focused on six facilities where most of the cases surfaced. The organization later broadened its analysis to 12 sites and plans to track the outcome of all cases involving citizens. Nina Siulc, the lead researcher, said she thinks that many more American citizens probably are being erroneously detained or deported every year because her assessment looked at only a small number of those in custody. Each year, about 280,000 people are held on immigration violations at 15 federal detention centers and more than 400 state and local contract facilities nationwide.

Unlike suspects charged in criminal courts, detainees accused of immigration violations don't have a right to an attorney, and three-quarters of them represent themselves. Less affluent or resourceful U.S. citizens who are detained must try to maneuver on their own through a complicated system."It becomes your word against the government's, even when you know and insist that you're a U.S. citizen," Siulc said. "Your word doesn't always count, and the government doesn't always investigate fully." Officials with ICE, the federal agency that oversees deportations, maintain that such cases are isolated because agents are required to obtain sufficient evidence that someone is an illegal immigrant before making an arrest. However, they don't track the number of U.S. citizens who are detained or deported….”

WHEN IS RAPE ACCEPTABLE
If you are “illegal” and are an inmate in one of the private detention centers like T. Don Hutto “Family Prison” in Texas, and you just happen to be raped by one of the highly trained and very compassionate security guards, just grin and put up with it. Why? Because you’re screwed, literally and figuratively. Doesn’t matter if you have evidence. Doesn’t matter if rape is against the law. You’re in the country illegally so the guards can do what they want – and get away with it. In May of 2007 a female detainee at T. Don Hutto Family Residential Center was raped by a guard. Because ICE is in a certain loop-hole, the guard managed to avoid prosecution.

A Pink Flamingo report on T. Don Hutto.

This is America. Oh, I forgot, Michelle Malkin wrote a book legitimizing the forced detention of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps during World War II. We have a precedent for this sort of thing.

From the Austin Chronicle

“…According to a far-reaching report – "Locking Up Family Values: The Detention of Immigrant Families" – published by the Women's Commission for Refugee Women & Children and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Hutto staff and providers may have crossed the line numerous times. In an interview, the report's author, Michelle Brané, said the report addresses only the more serious documented incidents. In the medical wing, for example, pregnant detainees were X-rayed with no lead screen; detainees received dental work without anesthesia; pregnant women were not allowed milk and were shackled when taken outside the facility for checkups. Additionally, the report reveals that overheated water scalded children at times. To punish children deemed unruly, guards "would turn up the air conditioning so that the room became very cold" and would turn off hot water for bathing, the report states. But the worst offense was that so-called errant parents and their children lived under the threat of being separated.

Concerning the alleged sexual assault of a detainee, the question remains: Why was the guard not arrested or prosecuted? No one at the Oct. 9 commissioners' meeting seemed to know or care. CCA Senior Vice President Damon Hininger said the county was investigating the case, but Sheriff James Wilson said he didn't know the whereabouts of the case file and that District Attorney John Bradley had decided to forgo prosecution. FBI spokesman Erik Vasys said a subsequent federal inquiry was scrapped, too, but concurred that guard-on-detainee sexual contact is a felony in Texas and generally regarded as official oppression. Neither the sheriff's office nor the FBI has jurisdiction in the case, officials from both agencies said. Carl Rusnok, spokesman for ICE's Office of Professional

Responsibility, said that the county's investigation "clearly established it was not sexual assault, after evidence and statements from the CCA employee and detainee indicated and established that the encounter was consensual." ICE believes the county should have the case file, since it served as the primary investigative agency. ICE also referred the case to the FBI for any potential federal charges. Ultimately, on June 12, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Austin declined to prosecute the case. Two days later, ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility closed its case….”

ICE, the ugly Americans.
ICE agent rapes Jamaican woman in his custody in Miami in November.
ICE agent charged with assault on minor.

NATIVIST FAMILY VALUES
Cleveland Plaines Dealer, November 20, 2007

“…Sayda Umanzor is an illegal immigrant living in Conneaut with her husband and three children, two of whom were born in America. On Oct. 26, she was nursing her 9-month-old daughter, Brittney, when federal agents knocked on the door of her home on Maple Street and tore her away from her screaming baby. Brittney had never had formula, and refused to eat for the three days she was in county custody. Umanzor's sister finally weaned her to a bottle on the fourth day. During her 11 days of incarceration, Umanzor was sick with worry over what had happened to her children. She was also in physical pain because her breasts had become engorged. Lucia Stone, a breast-feeding advocate who speaks Spanish, brought a breast pump to the Bedford Heights jail after Kate Masley, an assistant health professor at Cleveland State University, called for her help. Stone was not allowed to examine Umanzor, and had to explain how to use the pump by phone, through a visitor's window. Umanzor was clearly in pain, Stone said. "She told me, My breasts are very hard and a little hot.' She also said her heart hurt, her back hurt a lot, and that she was very cold, which I worried meant that she was developing a fever." At first, Umanzor resisted learning how to pump her milk. "She kept asking, Why am I going to take my milk out if I'm never going to see my children again?'"

Stone coaxed her to try. "I told her, First we have to take care of your health and see that your milk gets to your baby.' With that, her eyes lit up." It took more than a half-hour for the 26-year-old mother to express two small bottles of milk. The jail, however, did not have adequate storage facilities, and the milk was dumped, Stone said. "None of the milk got to the baby," Stone said. When she called Umanzor's sister, who was caring for the baby, "I could hear Brittney screaming in the background." Masley wrote a letter of protest that was signed by dozens of concerned women. Cleveland lawyer David Leopold rushed the letter to Julia Myers, assistant secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Myers' response was swift, instructing agents and officers not to jail nursing mothers in the future unless they pose a national security risk. Umanzor and her baby are reunited. For now….”

LIVE AS A DETAINEE
No one should be treated this way in the United States of America. Anyone who legitimizes this treatment because the person is ‘illegal’ is truly disturbed, psychologically. There is no other way to put it. I am sick and tired of hearing people say, “they are illegal”. That’s like saying a woman who was wearing a bikini deserves to be raped. There’s no difference – only conservatives who have surrendered their humanity.

“…These officers are misusing their power. Since we are in custody and not working, our families are having difficulty putting money in our accounts for phone cards, writing material and most importantly snacks. The officers who are working and receiving a paycheck come to us and ask us for chocolate bars, coffee and other snacks. Some officers also bring their personal life to work and take their frustrations out on us. They constantly give us and our family who come to visit us attitudes. They sometimes abuse their power and don’t allow us to practice our religion. Numerous times, inmates had to stop praying because an officer ordered them too. In the middle of the night, the officers congregate in dorms, talk loud and constantly slam doors making it very uncomfortable to sleep. They have no decency.

Another issue here is commissary. Everything is overpriced to the fullest extent. For example, a radio which costs $2-$3 costs us $26 to purchase from commissary. We are not working and our families are suffering and being torn apart because the CCA is trying to make even more money off of us! As for the snacks, most of them are expired or soon to be expired. Not only are we being charged more for items, but they are also expired items! Sixty to seventy percent of the soda, chips and other snacks are already expired before we get them. In many instances, bird droppings have been found on soup boxes and bags of chips. They ban us from having many things, even pencils. Those who are in criminal jails are allowed to have more things than us and WE are not criminals! According to ICE policy for detainees, it states that the facility is required to give us writing material at no cost. It seems that the CCA does not want to follow that rule. They charge us for pens, paper and envelopes. Pens cost $0.30 each, a stamped envelope costs $0.51 and a notepad costs $0.90. What happened to writing material at no cost?

The phones here are a serious issue too. They calls are too expensive and the lines have very poor quality. There are only 2 phones for every 44 people. A lot of us need to call lawyers to discuss our cases and we cannot do so because it is to expensive to make phone calls. Local calls are so expensive, imagine how much they are charging us for international calls! We are paying at least $20 a week just to be able to speak to our relatives or lawyers for only 10 minutes.

As for the food here, the issues vary from day to day. The food is usually overcooked. The trays that we are served in are not clean. The portions are too small. If you are still hungry, they DO NOT ALLOW you to take an extra tray. They would rather throw out all the food than allow us to have a little more to fill us up. If we are in visitation or religious services during meal time, they do not save any hot lunch for us, they just throw it out. We are lucky if we are allowed to get a cold lunch when we come back from visitation.The food has no flavor and they do not give us salt and pepper. It seems that they want us to starve.

According to immigration laws, they can hold people for 90 - 180 days, but for some reason some people have been here for years. Some people in this facility have been here over a year. This facility was not made to accommodate people for over a year. There are no exercise rooms or recreational activities administered here. An hour in a room with 3 holes in the ceiling should not count as outdoor rec. The room is dirty and dusty. Why are we not allowed to have fresh air? Why are we not allowed to see the sun? The air-conditioning system always leaks water on our beds. We have complained many times but they never do anything about it. Some dorms have mold growing which is not healthy for us to breath in. Again, complaints have been made but no one does anything about it. There have also been instances where insects were found. We are the ones who are required to clean our dorms. They make us clean the bathroom, shower area, toilets, mop and dust.

Whenever inspectors, investors, or government officials come to see the facility, they make us clean more so that the rooms can be spotless. They also treat us better in front of these people. Little do they know, it is all a show so that their facility can pass inspection or so that they gain another investor! There have also been times where they have shut down water in dorms for long hours. During this time, we have no water to drink, or to wash up. Some days there is no soap for us to wash our hands or shower with.

The bathroom or dorm has no ventilation. The bathroom is also open into the dorm. Imagine how the room smells when people go to the bathroom! Disgusting! We don’t know how they clean our clothing either. There have been many times when they return our laundry with more stains on it, stains that weren’t there when we gave them our dirty laundry. The razors that they give us seem to be old and reused.

They tell us that they are new but there are times where we have found hair in them before we even use them, this is hazardous to our health. The dorms are always cold. Now that the weather is cooler, they have not turned down the AC. The officers walk around with jackets but as for us, we are not given that. We are always cold, especially at night. They do not allow us to have extra blankets to keep warm.

A major issue here is medical care. The response time is very poor. It take 4 - 5 days to be admitted for medical care. The medical facility is less than 100 feet away from the dorms, why does it take so long to get help? The nurses have attitudes and make judgments on our health without even checking us. It also seems that the nurses or medical staff are not trained. They hand out the wrong medicine. Technically this is considered malpractice which is a serious offense, but i guess that rule does not apply to us. No matter what problem you are having, they always give you aspirin. It seems that is the easiest way to get rid of us.

There is also no way to get dental care here at this facility. If you have a toothache, they resort to giving us pain killers or the option of pulling out the tooth! There was a case where a woman had so much pain from a toothache that she was constantly crying out loud and requesting help. Instead of getting a dentist to help her, the CCA officers put her in the Special Housing Unit (SHU) which is supposed to be used for people with mental health problems or it is used as punishment for those with poor behavior. Was she supposed to be punished for having a toothache?

... Here at the facility, there is one television per dorm which houses 44 people. We are not allowed to control the TV. The CCA officers are the only ones that can change the channel. They always keep it on spanish TV which is unfair to many of us who speak english and are not of spanish descent. They restrict us to having only 3 books or magazines. This is ridiculous. They barely give us recreational time, what do they expect us to do during count time for 30 - 45 minutes when we must stay by our beds. How many times can we possibly read the same 3 books or magazines?

Sometimes they allow us to work in the facility. They pay us $1.00 a day if we work. We can work for hours but they still only pay $1.00 a day. Are we not even allowed to get minimum wage? We can’t even buy a plastic cup or a safety soon with $1.00.

What about our families who come to visit us. The visitation area only has 12 booths for the male detainees and 6 booths for female. There are 300 detainees here, many of which are male, are 12 booths enough for them for visitation? Sometimes there are so many people waiting outside on line to come to see us and they cannot because there is no room in visitation. On those days, we are not given a chance to see our loved ones. In criminal jails, they allow conjugal visits, but as for us, we pose no harm to the public, instead of granting us conjugal visits, they make us talk to our relatives through glass windows and telephones.

The biggest issue here is Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE). People wait for months before they are told the real reasons why they are detained here. Sometimes, deportation officers don’t show up for months to answer some of the detainee’s questions. When we do ask questions, we are given vague answers like “YOUR CASE IS PENDING” or “BE PATIENT”. ICE officers run away when we have questions pertaining to why were housed there, when or if we will be able to go home, or why we aren’t being given custody reviews after our 90 day period has passed. As for information to help us, there are documents posted on walls with phone numbers and addresses to our embassies. Many of this information has not been updated, most of the address and phone numbers are incorrect, making it impossible to get in touch with our native countries embassy….”