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Local Governments and Guantanamo Bay
Wednesday, August 13th, 2008
Robert Wechsler
Tomorrow, I am going to Guantanamo Bay. To get there, I have to drive
through Guantanamo Bay.
How could that be? For the same reason that you might be sitting in Guantanamo Bay as you read this: because innocent people are being held, and mistreated, in long-term detention all over the United States, including in local government facilities (see map).
Click here to read the rest of this blog entry.
Tomorrow, I am going to Greenfield, Massachusetts, where Hiu Lui Ng was held in a local house of correction. Mr. Ng is the subject of another New York Times article about what happens when American immigration authorities take hold of people who may or may not have broken immigration laws (for other articles on the topic, click here).
Tomorrow, I'll be driving through Hartford, Connecticut, where Mr. Ng was also held in a federal facility. And further north, in St. Albans, VT, he was held in a county jail. In short, local government officials are involved in the long-term, sometimes cruel and inhuman detention of innocent people.
Sixteen years ago, Mr. Ng came to the U.S. from Hong Kong with his parents at the age of 17. He graduated from an American high school, got a job as a computer engineer, married an American citizen and fathered two American citizens. But it took forever to get his green card, and when he arrived for his final green card interview a year ago, he was taken into detention.
A year later he died of cancer after months of excruciating pain, his cancer completely untreated, his family unable to visit him until hours before his death. And he even had a lawyer, who had filed all sorts of suits. If not for that and his death in custody, we would most likely never know what had happened.
And local governments, knowingly or unknowingly, went along. This has to stop. Local governments must refuse to hold any prisoners for the immigration service. They can no longer assume that the immigration authorities are acting according to a law any of us could respect. This is difficult, because they too are government officials. But as with the racial laws of the past, there are laws that must be ignored, and people trying to uphold those laws who must be refused.
Update: Although it easily sailed through the House and the Senate Judiciary Committee, which added immigrant detention centers to its purview, renewal of the Deaths in Custody Act was stopped singlehandedly by Okalahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn, according to an article in yesterday's New York Times. Coburn said that local and state governments should not be forced to report deaths in their prisons and jails.
Well, Sen. Coburn, then why should local prisons and jails be forced to hold immigrants who do not even have charges against them? Another argument for local governments to refuse to hold immigrants for the federal government.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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How could that be? For the same reason that you might be sitting in Guantanamo Bay as you read this: because innocent people are being held, and mistreated, in long-term detention all over the United States, including in local government facilities (see map).
Click here to read the rest of this blog entry.
Tomorrow, I am going to Greenfield, Massachusetts, where Hiu Lui Ng was held in a local house of correction. Mr. Ng is the subject of another New York Times article about what happens when American immigration authorities take hold of people who may or may not have broken immigration laws (for other articles on the topic, click here).
Tomorrow, I'll be driving through Hartford, Connecticut, where Mr. Ng was also held in a federal facility. And further north, in St. Albans, VT, he was held in a county jail. In short, local government officials are involved in the long-term, sometimes cruel and inhuman detention of innocent people.
Sixteen years ago, Mr. Ng came to the U.S. from Hong Kong with his parents at the age of 17. He graduated from an American high school, got a job as a computer engineer, married an American citizen and fathered two American citizens. But it took forever to get his green card, and when he arrived for his final green card interview a year ago, he was taken into detention.
A year later he died of cancer after months of excruciating pain, his cancer completely untreated, his family unable to visit him until hours before his death. And he even had a lawyer, who had filed all sorts of suits. If not for that and his death in custody, we would most likely never know what had happened.
And local governments, knowingly or unknowingly, went along. This has to stop. Local governments must refuse to hold any prisoners for the immigration service. They can no longer assume that the immigration authorities are acting according to a law any of us could respect. This is difficult, because they too are government officials. But as with the racial laws of the past, there are laws that must be ignored, and people trying to uphold those laws who must be refused.
Update: Although it easily sailed through the House and the Senate Judiciary Committee, which added immigrant detention centers to its purview, renewal of the Deaths in Custody Act was stopped singlehandedly by Okalahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn, according to an article in yesterday's New York Times. Coburn said that local and state governments should not be forced to report deaths in their prisons and jails.
Well, Sen. Coburn, then why should local prisons and jails be forced to hold immigrants who do not even have charges against them? Another argument for local governments to refuse to hold immigrants for the federal government.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
---
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