There is more evidence that, however unjust and dysfunctional the administration of Australia’s immigration laws was in our recent past, it is being outstripped by what has been happening in the USA.
There are more and more examples coming to light in the USA that have echoes of the Cornelia Rau and Vivienne Alvarez debacles of the Howard era in Australia. The reasons these things are happening are similar to causes of the same gross injustices that occured in the adminstration of Australia’s immigration laws. A government wanting to look tough, an attitude that migrants have fewer rights, deliberate efforts to prevent access to legal advice or other communication and detention centres run by private providers.
From the New York Times:
One toxic remnant of one of the Bush administration’s failed wars — the one on illegal immigrants — is immigration detention. Wanting to appear tough, Bush officials cobbled together, at great speed and expense, a network of federal centers, state and county lockups and private, for-profit prisons.
The results were ugly. As we learned from reports on the secretive system, detainees were locked up and forgotten. They were denied access to lawyers and their families. They languished, sickened and died without medical attention.
On Tuesday, the National Immigration Law Center issued the first comprehensive report on abuses in a system that holds about 30,000 on any given day and more than 300,000 a year. It found “substantial and pervasive violations” — ignored for years — of the government’s own minimal monitoring requirements.
From the San Francisco Chronicle, there’s this:
When Brian Lyttle got word on April 22 from the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala that his brother Mark had been deported to Mexico and bumped around Central America for three months, he was floored. The family had been searching for 31-year-old Mark and feared he was lost or dead. Mark Lyttle was born in Rowan County, N.C., and had never left the United States. He speaks no Spanish and has no Mexican ancestry.
But Mark Lyttle suffers from mental illness. He has bipolar disorder, which requires medication, and is also mentally disabled.
He had been living in a group home when he got into trouble for inappropriately touching an employee. Lyttle pled guilty to a misdemeanor and served 85 days in jail. Instead of being released, he was turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) because a jail form listed his place of birth as Mexico. ICE did not investigate his citizenship. He spent two months at an Atlanta detention center just miles from his mother, who didn’t know where he was.
and this:
Houston chef Leonard Robert Parrish, 52, wasn’t locked up by ICE or deported, but he did run afoul of a law intended for illegal immigrants. The Brooklyn-born Parrish went down to the Harris County sheriff’s office in September to clear up a problem over a couple of bounced checks. He wound up in jail on immigration charges. He was strip-searched and spent 12 hours in custody.
“The deputy told me I had a foreign accent,” Parrish recalled. “I told him I had an East Coast accent. He said, ‘It sounds like a foreign accent to me.’ “
Hundreds of U.S. citizens have been detained and, in some cases, deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement….
Cesar Ramirez Lopez, a San Pablo truck driver, won a $10,000 settlement in 2007 after he was held for four days by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents even after his lawyer convinced ICE investigators that he was a citizen.
“When ICE came and detained me, I told the officer I was a citizen,” said Ramirez Lopez, 25. “They told me they didn’t want to hear it, that I was going to get deported.”
Others – detained for months or years and in some cases even deported – are suing for much more. Among them are:
– Pedro Guzman, a mentally disabled man born and raised in Southern California, who was deported in 2007 to Mexico, where he survived by eating out of garbage cans for three months while his frantic mother searched for him.
– Rennison Castillo, a Washington state man who was born in Belize but took his oath of citizenship while serving in the U.S. Army in 1998, who spent seven months in an ICE prison in 2006.
“Part of the problem goes back to a system that locks people up when they’re placed in deportation proceedings and then doesn’t provide them with legal representation,” said Matt Adams, the legal director at the project.
…
Some longtime observers of the immigration agency say that, while citizens make up a tiny fraction of the roughly 400,000 people who pass through ICE custody each year, such cases occur with some regularity. The problem is exacerbated, they say, by the fact that immigration detainees, unlike those in the criminal justice system, lack the right to legal counsel and other due process protections.
More information here.
8 Comments
These poorly-handled cases are the exception, not the rule. No system is perfect, and you will always be able to find fault. Does that mean that any prosperous First World country like Australia or the US should just give up on detaining and deporting illegal immigrants? Of course not. That argument is the tool of bleeding-heart liberals who try to use imperfection in the system as an excuse to eliminate the system altogether and open the door of the country to anyone and everyone who wants in.
Thanks Rex.
I’m pleased to hear that if you were arrested, imprisoned and deported from your homeland without any charge, any access to legal advice or even being able to tell your family – you would happily accept this and spit on any offer of legal assitance as just being a ‘tool of bleeding heart liberals’.
I can’t say I would handle such a situation with such magnaminity, so I congratulate you on your blind faith/fatalism.
I thought a central point of living in a democracy was the benefit of being able to live under the rule of law, which provides some protection for residents & citizens againt the state being able to arbitrarily use their power to do whatever they like.
I can’t say I share your opposition to democracy , equality and the rule of law, but I admire your fortitide and faith in holding to a view that people can still be protected against arbitrary detention, deportation and exile. Presumably apart from those who ‘deserve’ it.
I admire such idealism.
The key point here is that all of the cases highlighted were of people who were citizens or premanent residents.
If you were picked up off the street tomorrow and accused of murder, you’d have access to a lawyer, be able to let your family know, and have the right to seek bail.
But if you were picked up off the street and accused of nothing other than not having a valid visa, you would have none of these righths.
Andrew, I wonder how many citizens of Florida were temporarily deported in November 2000.
It does raise the issue of identity verification. If I got arrested on the street and didn’t have my wallet on me (with drivers license), how can I unambiguously prove I’m a Australian Citizen or have residency?
It’s so tragic to hear that mentally ill people are suffering this kind of appalling treatment. For a sane, stable, rational person it would be a horrendous experience. I can’t imagine the devastating impact sudden deportation to a foriegn country would have on a bipolar individual.
I notice that Mr Bartlett, has taken care not to mention that at its height, there were at least 13 million to possibly 22 million illegal immigrants from Mexico and Latin America living in the US. Even with the recession there are ( conservatively) 11 million of them. So depending on the economy, between 1 in 15 to 1- 25 people living in the Us are residing illegally. It is all wonderful to howl about the gross injustices that supposedly arise from mandatory detention without due consideration of the broader problem of illegal immigration it seeks to address. It is a common tactic of the left to use facts or anecdotes considered in isolation to engender ill informed outrage at the people ( conservatives, white men, Americans etc) they hate whilst avoiding any genuine consideration of the whole as and when the broader scheme of things fails to suit their ideology. One must recognize it for what it is.– a cheap debating tactic and no more. To illustrate this point, I never did get the outcry over Mandatory detention. Isn’t it curious that nearly all of Australia South east Asian Neighbor have much stricter anti illegal immigration practices but only Australia got the self righteous flak? In Singapore and Malaysia there is a mandatory jail sentence, flogging, fine followed by immediate deportation. In Thailand, the unofficial practice is put a slug into the engine and tow everyone back out to sea to drift away. These seem to be standard practices in the region. Why is Australia is being singled out for human rights condemnation when in reality they were the gentlest of the lot when they, having the highest standard of living had the most to lose from illegal immigration. Why the blatent double standard?
So Mr Bartlett, prove me wrong. What would you have the US do about Illegal immigration if you could have it your way? As it stands, the sanctity of the institution of citizenship is damaged less by mandatory detention and more by the fact 1 in 25 of the residents are illegal aliens who are enjoying the privileges of US citizens, burdening the government services paid for by US taxpayers whilst shouldering none of the responsibilities.
Prove you wrong about what Tinian?! All you’ve done is have a wild spray about some tangential issues.
I “took care not to mention” thousands of other things about the USA, because I was writing about on a specific of widespread evidence of major breaches of human rights and in some cases the USA’s own laws and Constitution – in many cases against US citizens. It’s a blog post, not an encyclopeduia. Given your talk of the “privileges of US citizens”, I am surprised that you don’t seem to think it’s a problem that US citizens are being routinely subjected to such things.
It is all wonderful to howl about the gross injustices that supposedly arise from mandatory detention without due consideration of the broader problem of illegal immigration it seeks to address.
There’s nothing ’supposed’ about it, dude. It is widely documented, despite all the efforts to hide such activities from scrutiny. And if you believe it is all done in an attempt to address illegal immigration, then on your own figures it is obviously totally unsuccessful in that respect, whilst costing the taxpayer a fortune.
In any case, you are wrong to say that non-citizens in the USA are “enjoying the privileges of US citizens”. They quite plainly do not have these privileges, while the USA benefits from the taxes they pay, the services they provide and in some cases the deliberate exploitation of their labour.
As for Australia, there is minimal problem with people seeking to live in the community without a visa. In any case, mandatory detention was not targetted at them when it was brought in, but at refugees and asylum seekers. It is not related at all to what you are talking about, and I haven’t seen any evidence that Australia has ‘lost’ anything by taking in refugees. On the contrary, the country has clesrly benefited hugely.
Illegal immigration is actually widely tolerated in Malaysia, to enable such workers to be readily exploited. It is true that many of them are subjected to semi-random human rights violations, but I can’t see why it would be wise to use that as some sort of benchmark in any case.
Well, I have to agree that what is going on in America with the immigration is totally unjust. It seems that everyone thinks of an illegal immigrant or a deportee as someone from Mexico. My husband and I are 55 years old. He entered the USA legally, We paid well over $10,000 to walk the right path with immigration. However, at the hearing, because 16 years ago, My husband was fined with having less than one ounce of marijuana, in which the time has passed and it is now considered as *spent*. He never received any jail time as it was a misdemeanor. We were informed that because it did occur, we would need a court copy of the record….and….most people can get that information off the internet. The court record was emailed to us and we forwarded it to immigration. He was denied residency because we did as we were instructed….sent the copy from the internet. We then paid two immigration lawyers to advise us on the next step. They both stated we had to wait until we received a letter from immigration and then contact them and they would handle it from there. Well, Well…..my husband was picked up by immigration and is now in federal detention awaiting for deportation which will be this week. No letter ever arrived….and no appeal is being allowed. Not from him nor from me….his wife. So you see…not everyone in the USA tries to stay here illegally, but after what we have been thru and have yet to go thru, I can see why their are so many illegals. How has the truth helped us? Is my husband from Mexico? No, my husband is a born-Australian and has he been treated with respect and dignity? NO! So after being here with me his wife in the USA for two years, he will be returning to Australia. Does anyone care about us and others that are facing the same thing. I wonder!
There are three distinct issues I can see here:
Firstly there is a pressing ecological and survival issue for us all: Overpopulation. Countries that contribute to that problem alone should deal with the situation or perish and stand on their own in that regard, otherwise the earth will be ruined with overpopulation and over consumption.
Since the economy is based on consumption, and the earth is finite, something has got to give in the current age of capitalism.
Next illegal immigration – I believe it is important to fight hard to keep out illegal immigrants, otherwise they will prey on our humanitarian nature and this is what many do these days. Stiff Penalties and a strong message needs to be sent about why you cant just illegally enter ANY country.
Now Legal immigration – that’s a different story. I know how tough it can be but anything worth having is worth a fight right? Sometimes it doesn’t work out either, but to be quite blunt it is essential if immigrating to have something other than your procreative ability to offer the incumbent country.
I don’t like it anymore than the next person (it is what it is) but if we are politically correct we too will perish on our own humanitarian sword….
We need to stop overpopulating the planet – effective immediately! The amount of attention we give to “human rights” when the world is being overpopulated and over polluted is simply not sustainable. The only rights humans really have is the right to clean air, food and water and shelter (and free from abuse of any kind). Any right other than that is artificial and will not lead to a stronger community on the planet as a whole.
If we end up at war and fall back to “Martial Law” many artificial human rights we have seen appear under “Civil Law” will quickly disappear.
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