Carolina Fulecio Hernandez,
immigrated from Guatamala to the United States at the age of four
speaking at a Virginia detention center. Carolina was recently deported
and she is now living in Guatemala City. Her son is still here in the US
and will turn three this month.
Carolina Fulecio Hernandez, on the line from Guatemala City.
Debi Sanders, executive director
of the Capital Area Immigrant Rights Coalition and a member of the
Detention Watch Network.
Who also look at the case of Sharon Nyantekyi. She recently spent several days in a detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She was taken into custody after she applied for a green card application and it was discovered that she had been brought to this country as a child under a fraudulent visa. Sharon is originally from Ghana.
Sharon Nyantekyi, immigrant from Ghana and
Rutgers University student who was detained for 10 days in March. She is
currently awaiting a deportation hearing scheduled for May 9.
________________________________________
RUSH
TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: We go to a Virginia detention center.
A detainee who was held there, her name was Carolina, 23 years old. She
entered the U.S. without papers at the age of four years old. In
January, Carolina was arrested while filing for legal status with her
husband, who is a U.S. citizen, arrested for what the government said
was ignoring a deportation order when she was 12. Carolina's father is a
U.S. citizen. She has no criminal record. This is Carolina.
CAROLINA FULECIO HERNANDEZ: I went to school here, graduated
here. I've made my whole life here. And -- I'm sorry. After I graduated,
I got married with my husband, who -- we've dated since we were in high
school. And a year later, I had my baby. And so, two years later, I
filed a petition, I-130. When I got the letter for the interview, it
said that the reason for the interview was for the petition that I made.
So I show up to the interview with my husband and my son and
my dad. And they did the interview. They asked me a couple of questions,
and then immigration, two guys came in. And then they took me to another
room, and they pulled out my file, and everything showed up, that I had
deportation nine years ago. Then they asked me if I went back to my
country at all, and I said, "No" -- if I ever went to a court with a
judge or anything, and I told them, "No," that I don't remember, because
I was little. I don't remember ever going with a judge or anything.
And then, one of those guys said that they were going to ask
somebody in there if -- they were probably going to take me in custody,
but they were going to ask somebody, because I have my baby. But he came
back in, and he said they were going to take me in custody, because I
had deportation and I broke the law, and all this stuff. And they took
me in that day.
CAIR INTERVIEWER: How did you feel when they
told you they were going to take you?
CAROLINA FULECIO
HERNANDEZ: The whole world came down, to me. I felt like I was going to
die. Still that I miss my son. I miss him so much. Every night I pray
that I get out of here. I pray every night. I pray that I get out of
here, because of my son, because my son needs me. He's too little. He's
only two years old, and he needs me. Nobody can replace my love. Nobody.
AMY GOODMAN: Carolina Fulecio Hernandez, speaking from a
detention center in Virginia. Soon after this video was made by the CAIR
Coalition, the Capital Area Immigrants Rights Coalition, she was
deported. She was deported to Guatemala City. Her son is still here in
the United States -- he'll turn three this month -- with her husband.
Carolina now joins us on the phone from Guatemala, and we're joined in
studio in Washington, D.C. by Debi Sanders, executive director of CAIR,
the Capital Area Immigrants Rights Coalition. We'll start with Debi. How
unusual is this case?
DEBI SANDERS: A few years ago, this
case would have been very unusual. Unfortunately, what's happening more
and more is when people try to do what everyone thinks they should do,
which is to do it right, to file the papers, that that's actually when
they come out of the shadows, when they apply, when they put themselves
at risk.
Actually, Carolina wasn't really coming out of those
shadows, because she didn't know that she had been ordered departed as a
child or that she had even entered illegally as a four year old. She
was, in fact, in high school, had volunteered at the police department.
She was like a model student, a model citizen, doing the right thing,
marrying her husband, having a child and then filing the papers for her
interview.
What's happened is there's been so much pressure on
the local offices to get up their numbers of detained individuals and
get up their numbers of deported individuals, that more and more, the
people we see in jail -- five years ago we saw a hundred people held by
the Washington immigration office, now we see more than 600. They're
going after people that have really minor violations, minor issues.
Clearly Carolina was not a flight risk, was not a danger to anybody. She
didn't need to be arrested. She did not need to be deported.
AMY GOODMAN: Carolina, you're in Guatemala City right now?
CAROLINA FULECIO HERNANDEZ: Yes, that's right.
AMY
GOODMAN: And have you seen your son?
CAROLINA FULECIO
HERNANDEZ: No, not at all.
AMY GOODMAN: Since when?
CAROLINA FULECIO HERNANDEZ: Since I was arrested.
AMY GOODMAN: And you were arrested when you went in with your
husband and child to apply for citizenship, do the route of -- since you
were married to an American citizen?
CAROLINA FULECIO
HERNANDEZ: Yes, that's right. That was January 19, 2006.
AMY
GOODMAN: And they took you at that moment.
CAROLINA FULECIO
HERNANDEZ: Yes, they took me that same day.
AMY GOODMAN: What
day were you deported?
CAROLINA FULECIO HERNANDEZ: It was
about two weeks ago.
AMY GOODMAN: And do you know people in
Guatemala? You came here when you were four.
CAROLINA FULECIO
HERNANDEZ: Well, no, I'm staying with my aunt. But no, I mean, I
basically don't know nobody here at all.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you
have any hope of coming back?
CAROLINA FULECIO HERNANDEZ: I
do, yes. I do, yes. I do have hope to go back, yes, over there.
AMY GOODMAN: Did they explain why they deported you? Did you
understand the risk you were taking when you interacted with ICE, with
the Immigration and Customs Enforcement?
CAROLINA FULECIO
HERNANDEZ: No. No. They didn't explain to me at all. They didn't tell me
why I was being deported or anything at all.
AMY GOODMAN: Did
you go in with a lawyer?
CAROLINA FULECIO HERNANDEZ: No.
AMY GOODMAN: Why did you decide? You were not in any trouble.
You had lived here since you were four years old. You were married to an
American citizen. Why did you bother going in?
CAROLINA
FULECIO HERNANDEZ: Well, because, you know, I decided, you know, because
I have a U.S. son. So I decided that I should, because, I mean, my son
is American, and so I want to make my life there in the United States,
you know, because I grew up there, and basically I've made my whole life
there in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: And what were the
conditions like in the detention center?
CAROLINA FULECIO
HERNANDEZ: The conditions were very, very bad. I mean, the food was very
awful. I mean, the food made me sick almost every single day. And I had
to be with, you know, women that were very mean. Very, very mean. And
then I had to see fights almost every single day. Almost every single
day there were fights. And then the officers, they treated immigrants
really, really bad. And then it was very, very awful being in jail. You
know, basically I didn't -- I didn't do anything to be arrested.
AMY GOODMAN: And what is the process you go through right now
to try to come back?
CAROLINA FULECIO HERNANDEZ: Right now,
we going -- we're starting everything again with the petition. That's
what my lawyer told me, that we're starting everything again, first with
the petition, I-130, to see, you know, if they approve it again, if
immigration approves it again.
AMY GOODMAN: We are joined by
another woman in the studio, who was also detained: Sharon Nyantekyi.
She has recently spent a number of days in a detention center in
Elizabeth, New Jersey, taken into custody after she applied for a green
card application. It was discovered she had been brought to this country
as a child on a false visa. Sharon originally is from Ghana. Welcome to
Democracy Now!
SHARON NYANTEKYI: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us what happened to you?
SHARON NYANTEKYI: Well, on March 9, -- well, February 16,
actually, my husband and I went to the I.N.S. building in Newark to
adjust my status, because he's an American citizen. Although I've been
in this country since I was six years old, I didn't actually find out
that I was undocumented until sophomore year in high school, driver's
ed.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean?
SHARON
NYANTEKYI: I didn't know I was undocumented at all. So, after I passed
the driver's ed examine in class, I asked my mom for the necessary
paperwork to get my permit, and that's when she informed me that I had
no documentation.
AMY GOODMAN: Was your mother from Ghana?
SHARON NYANTEKYI: Yes. She's from Ghana. So, well, years went
by, and I got married. And I've been married for three-and-a-half years
now. So, my husband and I went over to try to adjust my status. And we
went to the interview. Everything went well, and they told us they would
actually issue me the green card, but they would have to do like a
criminal background check and all like that. And when the officer came
back, he informed me that there was a deportation levied against me, and
it had been filed in 1999, when I was 16 years old. And I didn't know
what was going on. And next thing I knew, they were putting handcuffs on
me and sending me to Norfolk's county jail. And I have no criminal
record whatsoever.
AMY GOODMAN: And what happened in jail?
SHARON NYANTEKYI: Well --
AMY GOODMAN: How long
were you held?
SHARON NYANTEKYI: I was held in the jail for
seven days. My treatment got so horrible in the jail that there were two
officers there who were from Internal Affairs, and they were actually
the ones to place a call to I.N.S. and get my transported from there to
the detention center in Elizabeth. While I was in the jail, I was
initially processed by male inmates. They --
AMY GOODMAN: You
were processed by prisoners?
SHARON NYANTEKYI: Yes. They're
the ones who took my fingerprints. They are the ones who took my mug
shots. At that point in time, I didn't even know that they were inmates,
because I've never been in trouble before. They were just men in green.
But when they started making sexually explicit comments and gestures to
me, that's when I knew that these people have to be inmates.
AMY GOODMAN: Did you know for sure that they weren't guards?
SHARON NYANTEKYI: Eventually, I found out when they put me
into general population, and everybody in there was wearing the same
thing as the inmates, and yeah. And then, after a while they were being
ordered around.
AMY GOODMAN: So, they were making lewd
comments to you?
SHARON NYANTEKYI: Oh, absolutely,
absolutely. Every lewd and just --
AMY GOODMAN: Now, in the
general population, you were together with the men?
SHARON
NYANTEKYI: No, in the general population, I was with the women. Yeah,
but initially when you go into the jail, it's the males that process
you.
AMY GOODMAN: So then they sent you to another jail?
SHARON NYANTEKYI: Well, yeah, after being there for seven
days in general population. It was just horrendous. I was being
harassed. It was just horrible. So, I got through to my attorney, Eric
Darko, and my husband. He's been going crazy, going to the courthouse
every day, trying to get me moved out of there, because I'm a
non-criminal, you know. So, from there, they took me to the Elizabeth
Detention Center, where I spent 14 more days.
AMY GOODMAN:
And what happened there?
SHARON NYANTEKYI: Well, there, I
mean, I didn't have to worry about criminals coming after me. I didn't
worry about, you know, my life being in danger. But there were a whole
bunch of gross human rights violations there, as well.
AMY
GOODMAN: Like?
SHARON NYANTEKYI: You name it. Lack of medical
care. Lack of privacy. You have no walls around you when you shower.
You're to shower in front of 29 other people. The guards just belittle
and just -- every worst thing you can imagine, like every worst-case
scenario.
AMY GOODMAN: Is it a private or a public jail?
SHARON NYANTEKYI: Private.
AMY GOODMAN: Who ran
it?
SHARON NYANTEKYI: C.C.A., Corrections Corporation of
America.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we're going to talk more about
the privatization of the immigrant prisons and the overall immigrant
detention center system in this country when we come back. We are
talking in the wake of these mass immigrant protests.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We're joined in our Firehouse studio by Sharon
Nyantekyi. Sharon recently spent a number of days in a detention center
run by Corrections Corporation of America in Elizabeth, New Jersey,
taken into custody after applying for a green card, married to an
American citizen. We are also joined in the studio by Judy Greene, an
analyst with Justice Strategies, and by Mark Dow, who is the author of
the book, American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons. We welcome
you to Democracy Now! Judith Greene, C.C.A. and immigrant detention --
first, the overall prison system, and then, the specific subset of
immigration prisons.
JUDY GREENE: Well, C.C.A. is the largest
private prison corporation in the world and in the United States. They
have some 60,000 prison beds that they manage. They house prisoners from
the federal prison system, from state prison systems, and they have an
increasing share of contracts to house immigrants in their detention
centers. The company actually started -- the very first private prison
in the world was an immigrant detention center in Houston, Texas: the
Houston Immigrant Processing Center, which C.C.A. still operates. And
Texas continues to be the ground zero of the immigrant detention
industry.
AMY GOODMAN: And how has it grown? And is it
increasing, the privatization of U.S. prisons?
JUDY GREENE:
In the last decade, with increased emphasis on immigrant enforcement,
the immigrant detention system, the little industry, has tripled in size
to a capacity now of some 22,000 beds. Some of these beds are private.
Some of these beds are operated by ICE. Some of these beds are in jails,
contracted similar to the jail that Sharon was held in. But the private
sector is gobbling up an increasing share of these resources. Now, since
9/11, there's been an increased blurring of the line between immigrant
enforcement and law enforcement. And now, with the hyper-politicized
immigration reform debate, we're seeing bills that would completely
erase that line.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the significance of
this. I mean, you have the situation of Sharon, you have the situation
of Carolina. No criminal charges had been brought against them. What do
you mean by the blurring?
JUDY GREENE: Well, pressure is
increasing on state and local law enforcement to enforce immigration
laws, and some states -- Florida, Alabama, Arkansas -- have already made
agreements with the federal government, so that state and local police
are trained to look for undocumented immigrants and ostensibly to bring
them into the immigrant detention industry or facilities for purposes of
removal.
What we're seeing in Alabama, for example,
immigrants are being stopped at checkpoints or stopped for making
illegal left turns in their cars or even jaywalking. Local police then
inspect whatever documents they may have, and if those documents appear
to be false, they're being taken into custody, charged with felony
fraud, held in jail with no bail, and processed in our criminal courts,
which then, of course, if they're convicted and they go to prison, at
the end of that, they get processed into the detention system for
removal.
AMY GOODMAN: You could have a woman who calls the
police in a domestic violence situation, and the police come and then
arrest her?
JUDY GREENE: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN:
Mark Dow, you've written this book, American Gulag: Inside U.S.
Immigration Prisons. Can you talk about the difference between
immigration prisons and other prisons? Is there a difference?
MARK DOW: Well, there's a difference, in name, and that's an
important question. The reason I use the phrase "immigration prisons" is
because we talk a lot about detention. We're hearing a lot about
detention. But when people are detained, they are incarcerated. They are
prisoners. They're stripped of their clothing. They're given inmate
uniforms. It's not that they're treated like prisoners, they are
prisoners. So even though this is administrative, quote-unquote,
"detention," it has nothing to do with serving time for a sentence.
These people are jailed as prisoners, and they are in jails, they are in
prisons, and sometimes in what are called detention centers or
processing centers, but as a warden once told me, these are all the same
thing.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about some of these
detention centers, from Krome in Miami, Dade County, to others?
MARK DOW: Well, the main thing to realize about them is that
it's a whole network of detention centers and prisons around the
country, so wherever someone is hearing this broadcast right now,
there's most likely a prison or jail or detention center with
non-citizens being held there pretty close to where they are. It's a
decentralized system.
Part of the problem for these
immigration prisoners, like some of the ones that have been talking to
you today, is that they are isolated from families. They're isolated
from legal help. They are often put in rural areas, where there simply
aren't lawyers in the area who can help them. And none of that is an
accident. In fact, often if immigration prisoners are in a big city,
where they might have legal help or family support, the immigration
agency, ICE, will often move them to isolated rural areas to make sure
that they're more cut off and more isolated. So the immigration service
actively works to cut them off from the little due process that's
available to them.
AMY GOODMAN: The number of people who are
immigrants, who are now detained?
MARK DOW: Something like
22,000 right now. And the important thing to remember about that number
is that a lot of people think that immigration detention appeared after
September 11th, and people think that, 'Okay, well, even if there are
some problems, it was September 11th, so we had to detain people.' But
on September 10, 2001, there were already some 20,000 to 22,000
immigration detainees around the country.
AMY GOODMAN: You're
saying there aren't more.
MARK DOW: Well, we don't know the
exact numbers, but -- and there's a lot of turnover. But what I'm saying
is that this immigration detention system didn't just start recently
because of a national emergency. It's been in place since the Reagan era
in its current form, although it's expanding exponentially, particularly
since the 1996 anti-immigrant laws.
AMY GOODMAN: With the
legislation that's being debated right now in Congress, what applies to
the jails?
MARK DOW: Well, it's not clear what the increase
in bed space will be yet, but one of the provisions that's being talked
about could increase the number of detention beds by the tens of
thousands. 20,000, possibly. So we're talking about additional
expansion, renting more beds in local jails, increased opportunities for
the private prison companies that Judy is talking about.
AMY
GOODMAN: And the difference in access that immigrants have to lawyers in
immigrant jails versus regular prisoners?
MARK DOW: So-called
administrative detainees, people in immigration detention, do not have a
right to counsel. This is very important to realize, because they're
subject to an adversarial system. They go into a courtroom where there's
an immigration judge, where there's a prosecutor who works for the
immigration service. But those immigration prisoners do not have the
right to counsel.
Now, Michael Chertoff, Secretary Chertoff,
during his confirmation hearings, seemed to imply that in retrospect,
the post-September 11th detainees should have had lawyers. Now, I think
he basically said that to escape from some questioning from the
congressmen, but it's something that he should be held to, and I think
the issue of counsel for any detained immigrant is something that should
be on the table. And frankly, it would solve one of the problems that
immigration complains about, which is that if you release people from
detention, that they tend to abscond, because some statistics seem to
show that if an immigrant who has to fight his or her case has a lawyer,
then they're more likely to show up for any proceeding. So, giving them
a lawyer will make the system work better all around.
AMY
GOODMAN: Sharon, did you have access to a lawyer?
SHARON
NYANTEKYI: Yes, I did have a lawyer at the time.
AMY GOODMAN:
And how did you get out?
SHARON NYANTEKYI: Well, the lawyer,
along with Rutgers University and my husband, had all been petitioning
the judge and writing letters. The provost even wrote letters, all my
professors wrote letters to the judge, you know, explaining my
situation, and he decided to reopen my case. So that means I got out on
bail, and I go before the judge again on May 9.
AMY GOODMAN:
I wanted to turn back to Debi Sanders of CAIR, the Capital Area
Immigration group. And ask you in Washington, if you go encourage people
to go to ICE, to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement now, given the
situation of young women like Carolina and what's happened to her.
DEBI SANDERS: If we are representing somebody initially, we
do research on what their case is and what their situation is. And then
we would want to accompany them and make sure all their papers were in
order. Unfortunately, Carolina went alone. And then was arrested alone.
And now, we obviously, once people knew her story, two fabulous law
firms are representing her. And we hope to bring her back through
processing. But that can take many, many months because of those delays.
But I think what's really important on the show this morning, we've
heard from so many mothers and wives, to show that people like Carolina
obviously she's not a security risk. She doesn't have anything to do
with national security. Were she to have been released, to be here
during her hearing, she clearly wasn't a flight risk. She has a husband,
she has a child. This is exactly the kind of person that would stay here
during her hearing. And to follow up on the Washington immigration
office, for example, holds the majority of the people that they arrest
in two jails. One is 150 miles from D.C. And the other is 206 miles from
D.C. making it hard to get lawyers and family to help them.
AMY GOODMAN: I should say we invited on ICE, the immigration
customs enforcement and they said they wouldn't come on. Last month,
following the massive raids, the largest enforcement operation in U.S.
history, D.H.S. Secretary Michael Chertoff announced a second component
of the secure border initiative called the interior enforcement
strategy. Mark Dow, can you explain what that is?
MARK DOW:
Well, in general, the Interior Enforcement Strategy is bureaucratic talk
for cracking down on alleged illegal immigrants who are in the interior,
meaning farther away from the borders. So, it's stepped-up raids. It's
trying to round up what immigration likes to call "fugitives," because
it's an evil-sounding word, but could range from any kind of
bureaucratic slip-up in paperwork to someone who really doesn't have a
case. So, it also involves -- we were talking before about the
intersection of immigration detention and the jails. The other part of
the Interior Enforcement Strategy involves looking for non-citizens who
are serving sentences so that their removal, their deportation, can be
expedited.
AMY GOODMAN: And then, Debi, you have people like
Hannah, who is a woman who stole a t-shirt. They serve time, and then
they're held indefinitely. Can you explain why? And we just have a few
minutes.
DEBI SANDERS: Right. What happened -- Hannah was a
lady, she was a cook in a local restaurant. She had a green card for 25
years. She, twelve years ago, stole one shirt from a department store.
The criminal judge, of course, gave her no criminal time, merely
community service. But now, because there's no statute of limitation,
then any-level crime -- more and more, minor crimes can make you
deportable, even if you have a green card. She is now in deportation
proceedings, in detention. Again, someone not a danger, not a flight
risk. So this is the kind of people that the Homeland Security is
arresting.
Before their numbers were smaller; they were
arresting people who truly had more serious issues, who might have been
flight risks, who might have had issues that made them a danger to our
community. But, more and more, we see the numbers going up, and because
the numbers are going up, the time in detention is also going up,
because it used to take a few weeks to be deported, now it's taking
months and months. Even this supreme court has said that ICE can only
hold people in jail for six months before they have to either deport
them or release them. More and more, we see ICE going over even that
six-month deadline set up by our current supreme court.
AMY
GOODMAN: We only have a few seconds, and I wanted to end with Carolina
Hernandez. Your last words from Guatemala City, where you've been
deported to?
CAROLINA FULECIO HERNANDEZ: Well, all I can say,
you know, that - I just, you know -- I just want people to help me to
get back over there, because I want to be with my family again, and I
really miss my son, and I haven't seen my son for almost four months.
AMY GOODMAN: Carolina, I want to thank you for being with us.
We will continue to follow your case. Carolina Hernandez, deported to
Guatemala. She came here when she was four years old. Her son is about
to turn three.
I also want to thank Sharon Nyantekyi for
joining us, who is now out of the Elizabeth Detention Center; Judy
Greene; Mark Dow, author of American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration
Prisons; and Debi Sanders.
Bill of Health Rights for Incarcerated Girls, by Girl Talk and Health & Medicine Policy Research Group
Prison Life: A Day, by Marilyn Buck
Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex, by Angela Davis
The Vermont Women's Prison Project , by Mary Field Belenky and Judy Harden
Disabled in Prison, by Delores Garcia
Mapping The Way Home: Reducing Barriers to Women's Reentry After Prison, by Patricia O'Brien
The Prison Industrial Complex in Indigenous California, by Stormy Ogden
Remarks from "Race, Class, Gender and the PIC" a panel discussion that occured as a part of Voices in Time, Lives in Limbo, by Beth Richie
Reproductive Rights in Theory and Practice: The Meaning of Roe v. Wade for Women in Prison, by Rachel Roth
Women's Rights Don't Stop at Jailhouse Door, by Rachel Roth
Beyond Gender-Specific Intervention: Theory-driven Praxis, by Laurie Schaffner
Living Conditions here in CCWF, by Patricia Wright
