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From ColorLines - When an Immigrant Mom Gets Arrested -
By Julianne Ong Hing and Seth Wessler
BEHIND THE THICK GLASS THAT RUNS THE LENGTH of the Yuba County Jail’s visitation corridor, Tatyana Mitrohina’s eyes glisten, and then fill with tears as she recounts the last time she saw her son. “During the visit, he climbed into my arms and fell asleep with his head on my shoulder while I walked around with him,” she remembers. Two months after that visit, Mitrohina was sent to the Yuba County Jail in Marysville, California, hours away from her 2-year-old son, who is in foster care. She was convicted on charges that she had hit him. While she does not deny the charges, she does say she had expected to be released from jail and to get counseling and start to rebuild her life with her child. But with the increasing collaboration between local authorities and federal immigration officials, Mitrohina found that she would not get that second chance. The government had slated her to be deported to Russia, the country she left as a teenager.
“When I first got here, I would break down crying once a week, just thinking about everything that’s happened,” says Mitrohina, who is 30 years old.
Immigration and child welfare advocates say that Mitrohina’s story—the loss of her child, her incarceration and detention, and her struggle to care for her child—represents a new and dangerous terrain at the intersection of three government systems—deportation, incarceration and foster care—that are tearing apart poor families and families of color.
While rates of detention and deportation have increased exponentially in recent years, what is happening to immigrant families is not a new story. It has been played out time and again in the lives of Black families who, in the past 20 years, have faced an increase in drug-related arrests and sentences that place Black parents in jail and their children in foster care. As immigrant families find themselves targeted by a combination of public policies, it is becoming clear that their experiences and those of Black families, women and children are troublingly similar.
The Detention Watch Network (DWN) today released the next generation of its interactive map of the U.S. Immigration Detention System. http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/dwnmap
Designed to increase awareness about the hidden and rapidly expanding detention system, the map includes in-depth information about the far-flung network of 350-plus detention centers, private prisons, and local jail facilities that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) uses to detain immigrants.
“It is incredibly difficult to find someone once they have been detained.Family members, lawyers and friends will now be able to use this map to locate their loved ones. It will also be a critical resource for advocates and provide a strong visual tool to educate the U.S. public and policy makers about this hidden system,” said Andrea Black, Network Coordinator.
As recent media reports and congressional hearings on deaths in detention have highlighted, the U.S.immigration detention system is vast, constantly changing, and shrouded in secrecywith isolated and remote facilities scattered across the country.
It is extremely difficult to get even basic information from the government about which facilities are in use, the numbers of people being detained and the locations of individuals swept into the system.
“It is heartbreaking to see families struggle to find a loved one in detention, frantic to learn which detention centers are nearby. And it is challenging to advocate for detention reform and hold the government accountable for its capricious policies without a clear understanding of the vast system in place and its proposed expansion.” said DWN member Bob Libal of Grassroots Leadership.
In April 2007, DWN created the first national map of the U.S. immigration detention system. The response was overwhelmingly positive and has proven extremely useful to families searching for detainees as well as reporters and Congressional offices.
However, it only scratched the surface of needed information. The new mapcreates a multi-faceted visual representation of the immigration detention world. In addition to a navigable national map, each detention center has its own page with contact and visitation information as well as links to resources and related media.
“I documented thirty-one cases from across the country of US citizens, eight born here, incarcerated as aliens for one month to five years. Fourteen were deported. Five remain in detention.”
A headline in the San Francisco Chronicle screams, 900 Nabbed in State on Immigration Charges. The Seattle Times reports, Feds Combing Jails for Illegal Immigrants. An AP article declares, Immigration Raid in Iowa Largest Ever in US and reports 390 arrests. In 2007, more than 276,912 US residents were deported. Thanks to a recent Bush Administration crackdown, the net cast by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) is wide–so wide, it turns out, that some of those being deported are US citizens.
Is ICE an efficient law enforcement agency? Or, in the words of Robert, 38, a US citizen twice deported to Mexico, is ICE “just throwing us out for nothing”?
Consider what happened to Peter Guzman. Last year Guzman, a US citizen born in Los Angeles in 1977, drove onto the tarmac of a regional airport in his hometown of Lancaster, about eighty miles northeast of Los Angeles, boarded a charter plane without a ticket and refused to get off. Guzman was arrested and sentenced, and served forty-one days in a Los Angeles County jail. According to his lawyer, Mark Rosenbaum of the Southern California ACLU, Guzman was excited about being released in time for his brother’s July wedding in Las Vegas. “It was a big deal to Peter. He was going to be the best man.” It never occurred to Guzman that in July he’d be eating garbage and bathing in the Tijuana River.
But on May 11, 2007, he called his family and said he’d been deported. According to the ACLU lawsuit, before his sister-in-law could find out exactly where he was and give him instructions, the line was cut. She overheard him ask, “Where am I?”
Mexico, similar to other countries across the globe, has restrictive migration policies to address regional security, irregular migration, and the rule of law. The most stringent policy relates to transit migrants trying to reach the United States.
Existing reports on detained women migrants in Mexico show they are vulnerable to sexual harassment and abuse.
This article analyzes the situation of women migrants held in detention centers in Mexico. It explains the detention system’s structure and some of the recurring problems, highlighting the latter with information from women interviewed in the Mexico City Detention Center.
Finally, it discusses some of Mexico’s new procedures for migrant detention, why they may further jeopardize due-process guarantees, and what they mean for women requiring protection
Over 30,000 people are housed within detention centers across the United States and last year, over 276,000 immigrants were deported.
Since the American government has failed to comprehensively reform the failed immigration system, it has placed pressure on ICE to ramp up its deportation activities. This is being played out in the rash of recent raids terrorizing communities.
Among the many prisons where immigrant families are housed is the T. Don Hutto “residential center”. Many families (including women, children and infants) are subjected to inhumane conditions during detention. Check out this video from The Real News Network detailing detention and its impact thousands of families and their loved ones.
And you thought you didn’t live in a police state?
The US is joining France in rounding up its work force and ripping apart hardworking families. Detainee numbers are at record highs in California and across the country. How long can we abuse the very people that are helping build the strength of our country without feeling dire reprecussions?
The US dollar is failing, but few Americans know that because foreign companies refuse to raise their prices to what they should be in order to maintain their share of the American market. People continue to die and struggle not only in Iraq, but in Darfur, the Congo, and countless other countries, but few Americans know that because our media refuses to lift up these stories and we often refuse to look. Drug wars continue to devastate countries throughout Latin America (Afghan and other countries), but Americans (many of whom consume these drugs) don’t know that, because it’s just too far away. Our schools continue to fail our children, but few Americans are aware of real alternatives to education policy in large part because our government is unable to come up with anything.
If the American worker is suffering, it isn’t because of immigrants. It is because our government and society are engaging in practices and are entangled in struggles that we refuse to acknowledge and address. Targeting the immigrant worker with raids on their homes won’t make our schools better, it won’t make our streets safer, and it won’t raise wages. Sound education policy, better international trade agreements, and improved oversight of our economy just might.
But that’s not what the candidates are talking about, that’s not what Lou dobbs is talking about, that’s not what we are talking about around the water cooler.
It’s time we wake up before it’s just too late. Sound immigratio policy isn’t about amnesty- it’s about a healthy community, a healthy economy, healthy families, and a better future. Fear and anger fueling raids on homes and businesses is a cancer that will spread, and leave in its wake only devastation.
To cope with the numbers, federal officials speed up deportations, transfer more people between facilities and use more private jails.
By Anna Gorman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 5, 2007
Aggressive immigration enforcement has led to record numbers of detainees in California and around the nation, prompting the federal government to speed up deportations and increasingly rely on transfers and contracts with local jails and private companies.
The detainee population jumped to nearly 27,900 nationwide in fiscal year 2007, up from about 19,700 the previous year, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In California, the population increased to more than 3,700, up from a little more than 3,200 last year. Continue story
After a detention center holding about 450 immigrants in California was shut down for repairs, detainees were moved to new prisons - WITHOUT NOTIFYING their lawyers! Imagine if you own mother were incustody in a jail, and you visited her everyday to keep her strong, and one day you showed up and no one was there- no warning, no way for you to find out where she was.
ICE is playing with fire when they continue to impinge on the rights of immigrants in this country. No detainee should be moved without notifying the proper attorney and family, so that people can keep track of where their loved ones are, and keep on top of their case. If you miss a deadline on your courtcase, you can be in big trouble- and if you’re lawyer can’t find you, the possibility for setbacks is even greater.
If ICE is going to close detention facilities for repair, they must make the proper arrangements, ensuring the rights of all detainees are met.
That’s right- we brought you the story last week of Tam Tran, a grad student in the US that was invited by Zoe Loefgren to testify before congress in support of the DREAM Act.
Just two days later ICE was raiding her home, and is on its way to deporting Ms. Tran and her entire family back to Vietnam.
A nightmare: your own government invites you to speak, and then silences you with deportation. some lawmakers are gathering together to try to stop the Tran family from being deported to Vietnam. But is it too little too late for our democracy?
It’s a little piece of paper. Just a warrant. I’ve really only seen one on law and order….
And for most of us who have never really been arrested before, a warrant is pretty meaningless. But it is one of the major CORNERSTONEs of our criminal justice system.
Our government can’t hunt us down and jail us without due cause. Well, most of us.
The agents had rousted American citizens and legal immigrants from their beds in the night, complained Lawrence W. Mulvey, the Nassau County police commissioner, and arrested suspected illegal immigrants without so much as a warrant.
“We don’t need warrants to make the arrests,” responded Peter J. Smith, the special agent in charge in New York for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, the agency that conducted the raids. [from the NY Times 10/15/07]
In raids on homes, schools, and worksites ICE officers are able to search and arrest individuals in our country without a warrant.
“WELL! We should, they’re illegal!” Except, often they’re not.
In raids in New York and countless other regions, legal permanent residents, citizens and citizen children are swept up by ICE, held in custody - terrified, their lives disrupted.
For the same exact reasons we don’t want the government wiretapping our homes, reading our email, or peering in our mailboxes- we don’t want them arresting and detaining us without warrants. It’s an invasion of privacy and liberty, and it puts all of us at the risk of abuse from our government.
Right-wing extremists, and anti-immigrants alike often forget, if you infringe on the rights of some, you ultimately infringe on the rights of us all.
