© Cecile Pineda 11 22 09
Cecile Pineda traveled to the East Coast to interview Jean Blum who volunteered in the detention centers of Passaic and Monmouth Counties in N.J. Beside documenting prison abuse, physical and verbal, inadequate diet, medical neglect, casual cruelty and disregard of their civil and human rights, Blum initiated one of the first official inquiries into the unrecorded death for lack of medical attention of immigrant detainee Tanveer Ahmad, a New York cabbie, and one of 106 such immigrant detainee deaths for lack of medical attention for which the ACLU and the New York Times obtained evidence through a Freedom of Information Act request. For the first installment of this series, click here.
"Therefore with all humbleness I am seeking your compassion by asking you please, your Honor, allow me a visit with my children. Please, your Honor, I don’t want to abandon my children due to circumstances beyond my control. I am asking you please to grant me one favor to say goodbye and don’t take my motherly rights away from me.” . . . Juliette Tucker was ordered deported without being allowed to see her children.
"DHS/ICE is breaking our families apart”
In immigrant detention, scant attention is paid to “family values.” A summary of grievances by detainees at Monmouth County [NJ] Jail dated January 16, 2006 contains the following: “Over 95% of the detainees here are New York based…. All of our families [reside] in New York. DHS/ICE…never in their minds, have they ever taken the hardship for our families to travel over “3 HOURS” (round trip) to see us. What is even [worse] is that the visit is only “15 MINUTES.”
And behind bulletproof glass, furthermore, a lot of the detainees are getting deported without being able to even hug or kiss our parents, kids, wife, etc...! [They] are being deported on a daily basis, on an unknown date. [Fifteen] minutes just for them to say “goodbye” seems really bad! It is just extreme hardship for our families to travel so far for 15 minutes only. DHS/ICE is breaking our families apart before they even try to deport us!”
Roddy Sanchez in a letter to Blum dated June 11, 2005 states: “A lot of times when night falls, I cry because I have a newborn daughter. I got my whole family out here, but when you go in front of the judge they tell you, take your family back to your country, or the judge will say they can always go on welfare….” But the dreams and hopes of most detainees with families do not include taking them back with them to their country of origin, and in many instances, family members are legitimate citizens of the United States.”
Quoted in the NJCRDC’s