Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 11:41:44 -0700
From: EMAIL WITHHELD
Subject: Re. My story: Not enough prosecution…….
To: josieg6
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
My children are born in the USA. All they knew before being deported ever so zealously from ICE was the American way of living. My oldest son was an excellent second grader and my youngest a kindergartener. They were living a happy life in America until forced out into a world of doom, despair and uncertainty.
THE ARREST
-For six hours I was almost out of air with hands cuffed back sitting in the pitch black darkness at the back seat of a locked ICE SUV(I still got the scars in my wrists),worried sick about the condition of my wife who was held in a different car. I spent a day and a half in a holding cell full of human hair and feces no shoes on, my feet sticking on the dried urine on the floor at the Dearborn Police Station and after a total loss of human dignity, after being transported handcuffed and shackled like the most wanted of criminals, after the prison check-in (getting totally undressed, bending over and coughing while bent so that a guard can look in your rectum and determine if there’s something hidden in there),after the initial orientation where I learned that I might get an incurable deadly contagious disease while in prison I was thrown into a world of hate, total degradation, injustice, abuse, constant hunger and insults.
THE IMPRISONMENT-CALHOUN COUNTY CORRECTIONAL CENTER MICHIGAN
– One of the toilets is back flowing continuously and the bathroom floor has sewer water for days. We walk on it and there’s no way of washing our feet. Plumbers show up one day but soon after the toilets are back flowing again. The water from the water fountain tastes rusty and warm and there is a foul smell coming from the drinking fountain drain.
It also backflows when the toilets flush.
– I was not given new underwear and was not allowed to keep mine ‘cause it was not all white so for two weeks all I had on me was the orange jail issued uniform which after I washed at the bathroom sink I dried on my body heat. Only after I bought underwear and socks from commissary (two weeks after) I was able to send my orange uniform to the jail laundry and it came back smelling worse and with unrecognizable stains and smell so I washed my underwear, my towels and uniform by hand during all my stay in jail for fear of contagious infection and disease.
– Every day inmates wake up with blood and snot in their noses, and sores. The air vents in the cells are very dirty. Dust is blown around, with particles clearly visible. There are two ten foot brown stains on the ceiling corresponding to the two air ducts on the upper part of the wall. There is asbestos on the cell. The dirty air is making everyone sick. The temperature of the holding pod is extremely low for weeks on end. Most of the inmates are staying in the corners and lying in their beds covered head to toe and wearing all of the issued clothing which is far from enough to keep warm. One night I was hit with the flashlight from a guard during head-count because I was covered head to toe with my thin blanked. I was so cold shaking with high fever and on terrible pain. A large blister has developed on my upper lip and nose as I had high fever for ten days. I complained to the guards about the air temperature and was sent to segregation for 24 hours.
– Inmates are given different types of cleaning solutions as well as bleach to refill the spray bottles used for cleaning the dayrooms and the cells. The bottles of chemicals listed as ‘Henry Cabay and Sons, IL’ clearly state ‘if the contents come into contact with your skin, wash with cold water for 20 minutes and call the poison control center’. No gloves were given to inmates.
– Detainees are brought straight from the airport and put into the general population with no quarantine. Medical testing is done after the fact, several days later, or not done at all. Some people have large reactions, nothing is done. My first physical happened ten days after my arrest and although I complained of strong pain in my body and continuous headaches nothing is done. I had lost 16 lb on ten days. I barely slept because of stress. Suicide was constantly on my mind. I was diagnosed with a severe form of PTSD in 2001 and during medical I requested anti-stress medicine. None was given.
– The food trays are extremely dirty; my orange colored plastic spoon/fork has so many black scratches, bite marks and stubborn filth one would think it was used to dig in the ground. The food is unrecognizable, malnutritive and full of impotence drugs Everybody has constant hunger, diarrhea is rampant and I am still covered in an unknown lumpy rash from my neck down my throat, back, chest, and arms. Commissary food is lowest quality pepperoni, candy and popcorn some of it expired. The guards would sometime show to our pod’s door chewing on big chunks of fried chicken and poke fun at what might have been the look of poor, starving skeletons drooling at the sight of real food.
– I had developed a rash on my throat, neck, shoulders, back, chest, lumps with white pus-filled heads, bursting, white spots on my skin front and back. I had regularly seen a Doctor before my arrest and detainment; I had none of these medical problems. Even at present time I am still covered in these lumps and white spots with new ones coming up.
- At Orientation the first day at Calhoun County Correctional Center all detainees are informed of deadly, incurable and contagious diseases that exist on this facility’s population and all one can do is just hope and pray that does not get infected.
-Abuse is constant: a detainee was kicked several times by a guard for failing to stand up (he has a long history of kidney stones and at the moment and was laying on the floor in acute pain).Being the only literate and fluent English and Spanish speaker on a group of 40 detainees I was warned by a guard to “be careful and not try to be a hero” for helping others to fill out court paperwork and translations. When I still helped other detainees I was targeted by the guards. .Mr.Burraj was verbally and physically threatened by the deportation officer when he did not sign the deportation papers. One inmate went on hunger strike to protest the horrible conditions and was dragged way from the guards to the “hole”. A few days later he was found unresponsive in a solitary cell. The Guards used divide and conquer manners (having a group of usually two” privileged detainees” which did the necessary dirty work including starting fights or harm other targeted inmates).There was a strip search and we were woken in the middle of the night and made to undress and line up on the wall with the guards yelling at us. For long minutes we stood naked on the freezing temperatures while the guards were having fun commenting on our genitals. From other immigrants that have been there a long time I hear stories of a detainee’s death early in ’08.The guards yell constantly and their sentences to us usually and with “f***ing immigrants” and other insults. Our lives are at the mercy of the guards’ mood.
–Never saw the Law Library or the Gym (if there was any) and our recreation time never exceeded 45 minutes a day with the exception of one day when the guard completely forgot and left us locked out for almost three hours. There was no posting of detainee rights anywhere in the holding pod and no legal advice. Three of the detainees that I filled paperwork for had a claim to citizenship yet were deported. Many others had the right to file for asylum and fight their case in Court but were told to pick the fast deportation option so that they would be on their way home soon. Another detainee has spent over 60 days in jail because he did not have the $180 application fee and his hearing kept being postponed.
-My mail was read continuously and from 30 or more letters that I sent out only two were actually received. A few envelopes that make it thru to me are open.
THE DEPORTATION-
I was arrested a very decent, well dressed young men and when I was escorted to the airport I looked like a starved zombie fresh out of the grave. We were a party of seven people flying out of the States of which four were US citizens (two escorting ICE officers and both my kids) all expenses kindly taken care of from ICE. In Budapest I was handed a ten year ban of return and told to sign it.
THE RESULT
I came to America convinced that I was persecuted and looking for freedom. My political asylum claim was also motivated in no small part from my first immigration attorney and my then ignorance of the English Language and therefore the Immigration Law. After a long legal battle and well over $35 000 in legal fees, my asylum case was denied for “not having enough prosecution” the real reason being incompetent counsel (my attorney did not even communicate me the date of the hearing of my appeal in the Seventh Circuit Court so I was not present on the most important Court hearing of my family’s life. I was totally in the dark of the outcome and only learned about it and just after a routine call to her four months after the fact when any possibility of appeal or motion to reopen was inexistent).I hired a different attorney to attempt a Motion to Reopen (Ineffective Counsel being the reason) My attorney could not even get a copy of my case from the BCIS although he filed under the FOIA. (In aunt Zeituni’s case the Service was much more cooperative). So the unfortunate folks that go through the abyss of the asylum process which are by far the most prosecuted, mistreated and forthcoming part of the whole undocumented immigrant population totally exhausted mentally, emotionally and financially are the primary target for deportation and subjected to yet another nightmarish ordeal.
I loved America, I still do and I always will. I would fight for America given the chance. I tried to enlist in the Army in late 2001 but I was turned away because of my immigration status. But love for my children’s country which I consider my own and which I contributed for 10 years of my life does not convert to any form of relief.
At the end, after considering what I went through in America’s Jails without ever being accused of any wrongdoing, no criminal record, not even having a parking ticket while paying all my taxes (I still pay although deported), after enduring sheer madness (I will never be able to erase the painful images off my mind and the marks and lumps off my body) I can definitely state that I totally agree with the Immigration Judge in his thoughtful decision regarding my asylum case:
I really did not have enough prosecution!
Ms.Gates please let me know what you think and whom should I send it to. I would really appreciate any comments or ideas. Best regards E.E.
P.S I could not remember the guard’s names; I was in so much stress and despair.
Josie Gates – this was sentto me by E.E. who wishes to come home with his children.It is his words. The similarities to my confinement, exposure to chemicals and treatment by ICE are remarkable.
