☠️HE SURVIVED 22 YEARS IN CAL STATE PRISONS — 2 YEARS IN DHS DETENTION “BROKE” HIM, DESPITE WINNING HIS CASE BEFORE AN IJ! — Welcome To America & Biden’s Gulag, Where Asylum Seekers Get Treated Worse Than Convicted Felons!🤮

 

Gulag
Inside the Gulag
In the fine tradition of Josef Stalin, like US Presidents before him, President Biden finds it useful to have a “due process free zone” to stash people of color.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/I-ve-done-time-in-12-California-prisons-Yuba-16804293.php

Carlos Sauceda writes in the SF Chron:

In 2017, after serving 22 years in prison for a gang-related murder I committed as a teenager, the California parole board granted me early release due to my rehabilitation and leadership while incarcerated. I was incredibly fortunate to get what I thought would be a second chance at life, and I committed myself to using my freedom to improve the world around me.

But I had to put those plans on hold. Because I was undocumented, I was immediately transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody at Yuba County Jail. The two years I spent there awaiting a decision on my immigration status were far worse than the over two decades I spent in 12 different prisons serving out my sentence.

Yuba County Jail is the last county jail under contract with the federal government to hold immigrant detainees in California. For the two years I fought my immigration case, I was psychologically, emotionally and physically abused by the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department. Some of the cells I lived in had no drinking water, others did not have working toilets and others had no lights, leaving me and other detainees in the dark all day long. My stress increased and my blood pressure became dangerously high. In 2018, after a year at the jail, I finally won my immigration case. But Department of Homeland Security attorneys appealed the judge’s decision, keeping me separated from my family, fueling my depression and suicidal thoughts. After another year of fighting the appeal, I had to make an impossible choice: Die inside Yuba County Jail or risk imminent death in my native land. After two years of inhumane treatment, I chose the latter. I signed the paperwork for self-deportation and went back to my home country.

My story is just one of thousands playing out in federally contracted county jails and privately operated ICE detention centers across the country. Despite President Biden’s campaign promise to end the use of private prisons for immigration detention, for undocumented people being held at Yuba County Jail, no relief is coming.

Yuba County Jail has a long history of violating national detention standards. From 2010 to 2021, ICE’s own detention office conducted at least eight inspections at the jail and found 171 violations. Among those violations, inspection officials determined that a sergeant, who was involved in two use-of-force incidents at the jail, participated in his own reviews. As a result of the findings, 24 members of Congress wrote a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas demanding that the department terminate ICE’s contract with Yuba County. At the state level, California legislators passed SB29, forbidding local governments to enter into new detention agreements with ICE. But as The Chronicle’s reporting pointed out, in 2018, the same year SB29 took effect, ICE and Yuba County officials “quietly extended their contract” to 2099.

Why would Yuba County officials establish an indefinite contract with ICE as the rest of the state moves to end the use of its jails by federal immigration authorities? Follow the money. The contract with ICE earns the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department a minimum of just under $24,000 a day, whether or not any detainees are being held in the jail, totaling about $8.66 million per year.

When the pandemic hit, conditions inside the jail worsened. Following an April 2020 class-action lawsuit, court orders led the jail to decrease its detainee population. Thanks to the work of human right advocates and formerly detained undocumented people like myself, and others, the jail went from having 127 detainees in May 2020 to zero in late 2021. For those of us who had fought, staged hunger strikes and protested, both inside and outside the jail, it felt like we were finally seeing the end of immigrant detainment.

But our celebrations were brief. In the two months that the jail had no detainees, the county’s contract with ICE was still in place, earning it an estimated $1.4 million. And in December, ICE transported its first detainee back into the jail. As of this week, three people are now detained there under ICE custody.

The repopulation of the jail by ICE only means we will fight even harder for liberation and the termination of the contract. Over the past year, and despite being thousands of miles away, I found ways to raise my voice. I connected with others who were detained alongside me and who were also deported and encouraged them to join the fight. My wife, along with other mothers, sisters, and family members joined us as well. We hosted Instagram live videos as a space for storytelling. For weeks, I met with congressional offices and shared my story and the story of others, which ultimately led to their support.

At a recent Yuba County Board of Supervisors meeting, newly named Chairman Randy Fletcher said that the claims made in a letter sent by the ACLU to the Yuba County sheriff and Board of Supervisors about the multiple violations and unlawful conditions at the jail were not true. “They make a lot of accusations. … It’s not true. It’s just not true,” he said. But I and the other undocumented people who were detained there know what we suffered through is true. And it needs to stop.

. . . .

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Read the rest of the story at the link.

Coercion and punishment have long been part of the plan. That’s because the Supremes have fabricated the concept that “civil” imprisonment isn’t “punishment.” Pure balderdash!

Also, how does a jail get paid $1.4 million by taxpayers for nothing? Sounds like a “fleecing of America.”

But, of course, neither Garland nor Mayorkas bother to look into these questionable practices. Rather curious in light of the recommendation of a “select task force of experts” at the end of the Obama Administration that detention contracts (which frequently make establishing accountability for abuses difficult or impossible) be ended and that DHS phase out unnecessary detention.

Lack of accountability for DHS Detention is a chronic problem. So are defective bond procedures by EOIR that several Federal Courts have found unconstitutional, but which Garland continues to defend! Arbitrary bond procedures, weak internal appellate review, and lack of helpful precedents all feed the system.

Also, EOIR’s brushing aside the intentional coercion, lack of access to counsel, absence of resources, inability to prepare and document cases all contribute to the dangerous dysfunction. New, independent, expert, progressive “real judges” at EOIR would not allow Mayorkas and Garland to keep sweeping these abuses under the carpet!

Perhaps that’s why Garland has been content to allow his “courts” to malfunction using a majority of Trump/Miller holdovers and some notorious “go along to get along” bureaucrats as “judges.” Voices of expertise and reason among the IJs, and there are some, are often “silenced,” “neutered,” or “intentionally frustrated” by a BIA stacked with apologists, sometimes flat-out advocates, for DHS Enforcement and anti-immigrant policies.

Meanwhile, journalists, advocates, and those who have experienced “The Gulag” first hand need to keep it in the headlines, continue to litigate vigorously against it, and make a record of the disgraceful gap between what America claims to stand for and what it actually does! And, they would do well to “keep turning up the heat” on Garland’s “star chambers” and on his own lack of accountability for the daily disasters that unfold under his auspices.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-27-22

U.S. JUDGE IN ARIZONA FINDS THAT REGIME’S BORDER PATROL VIOLATES CONSTITUTION WITH GROSS CONDITIONS IN DETENTION FACILITIES! – Putting Humans In “Iceboxes” Is “Punitive” – Duh!

Raphael Carranza
Raphael Carranza
Mexican Border Reporter
Arizona Republic

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/border-issues/2020/02/19/us-mexico-border-patrol-judge-sides-migrants-holding-cells-arizona/4812296002/

Rafael Carranza, The Republic | azcentral.com

 

 

TUCSON — A federal judge in Tucson ruled that the temporary U.S. Border Patrol holding facilities for migrants detained in southeastern Arizona, sometimes known as hieleras or iceboxes,”are presumptively punitive and violate the Constitution.”

U.S. District Judge David Bury issued his ruling on Wednesday granting plaintiffs a permanent injunction with additional requirements for Border Patrol.

The ruling follows a seven-day trial last month detailing overcrowding, inadequate food and medical care, as well as prolonged detention for migrants arrested in the Tucson Sector, which covers Cochise, Santa Cruz and Pima counties.

“The Plaintiffs, who are civil detainees in (Customs and Border Protection) holding cells, face conditions of confinement after 12 hours which are substantially worse than detainees face upon commitment to either a civil immigration detention facility or even a criminal detention facility, like a jail or prison,” the judge’s ruling said.

Follow Arizona politics? Our reporters stay on top of it all. Subscribe now to azcentral.com.

Bury said the “undisputed” evidence showed criminal inmates in jails and even migrants in longer-term civil detention are kept in better conditions than migrants in Border Patrol custody, including “an opportunity for uninterrupted sleep,” a second layer of clothing to keep warm, and a greater variety of food beyond frozen burritos, juice and crackers.

As part of the permanent injunction, the court ordered the Border Patrol to not hold migrants who have already been processed for more than 48 hours after they were initially booked.

The only circumstances under which Border Patrol can hold migrants for an extra 24 hours is “unless and until CBP can provide conditions of confinement that meet detainees’ basic human needs for sleeping in a bed with a blanket, a shower, food that meets acceptable dietary standards, potable water, and medical assessment performed by a medical professional,” Bury said.

By law, the Border Patrol is allowed to hold migrants for up to 72 hours at its holding facilities before transferring them to another federal agency, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

During the trial, Border Patrol officials testified about the challenges they face in meeting that legal standard.

 

The average time in custody for migrants in 2019 was nearly 54 hours, according to the agency. But of the nearly 63,000 migrants processed in the Tucson Sector that year, more than 12,000 were held longer than the 72 hours allowed.

In 2016, Bury issued an injunction requiring Border Patrol officials in Tucson to provide clean sleeping mats and Mylar blankets to migrants held for longer than 12 hours.

The court added requirements forbidding migrants from sleeping around toilet areas of holding cells, noting that “being forced to sleep in a toilet area due to overcrowding offends the notions of common decency; it is unsanitary and degrading for all detainees who either have to sleep in the toilet area or try to use the toilet when others are sleeping there,” the ruling stated.

One of the witnesses during the trial, a 20-year-old woman from Honduras, described her experience in Border Patrol detention in April 2019. Identified as Witness B, the woman was pregnant at the time and talked about how she was nauseous and vomiting while in detention.

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During the time she was in custody, she slept in a holding room so crowded that the only space to lay down was next to the toilet, she described on Wednesday during a conference call where she was joined by the attorneys who represented her in the case.

“That whole night I was vomiting, I felt really sick. I was very worried because I didn’t know how my baby was doing,” the woman said. “Then they took me to the hospital, there they treated me and they told me that my baby was doing OK.”

After she was released from the hospital, agents returned her to a holding cell, where she said she continued feeling sick. Agents didn’t give her the medication doctors had prescribed until the morning she left the Border Patrol facility, she said.

Bury’s ruling notably found no evidence that Border Patrol’s parent agency, Customs and Border Protection, had purposely created the punitive conditions. Instead, he pointed out that the agency has stretched resources to “provide the best conditions” under current circumstances.

“A presumption, however, exists that the challenged conditions of confinement are punitive because, in the context of CBP operations, there is no legitimate governmental interest for the extended detentions currently occurring at CBP facilities,” the ruling said.

The judge further defined what type of showers Border Patrol needs to allow migrants to take. “A shower is a bath in which water is showered (as in to wet with a spray, fine stream, or drops) on the body,” the ruling said. “A ‘paper-shower’ or ‘shower-wipe,’ by definition, is not a shower.”

Border Patrol officials from the Tucson Sector did not respond to a request for comment.

The legal advocacy groups and private law firms that filed the lawsuit in 2015  celebrated Bury’s decision Wednesday, pointing to potential implications beyond the Tucson Sector.

Ruling BP Conditions Lawsuit by Joshua Ling on Scribd

“What the Constitution requires for individuals who are held in a pre-trial capacity, that has a much broader implication,” said Caroline Walters of the American Immigration Council, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit. “What the judge’s decision did today is sort of lay the groundwork for what these minimum standards should be.”

Walters said the group expects to hear more detail from Bury about implementing his permanent injunction.

“After several years we’re seeing that CBP has not changed the way that it treats people in confinement unless a court orders it,” said Alvaro Huerta, a staff attorney with the National Immigration Law Center. “And so we’re ecstatic that the court has finally recognized and made CBP change the way that it’s going to do its work.”

The Honduran woman who testified in court said she felt good knowing her testimony helped convince the judge to require the U.S. government to improve conditions for migrants like her.

“A lot of people from my country are still coming here because of the situation we are going through in my country,” she said. “So I feel really happy knowing that they will have better conditions.”

Vice President Mike Pence toured a Border Patrol facility in Texas after reports that migrants detained are being held in dangerous conditions. USA TODAY

Have any news tips or story ideas about the U.S.-Mexico border? Reach the reporter at rafael.carranza@arizonarepublic.com, or follow him on Twitter at @RafaelCarranza.

 

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Here’s Judge Bury’s order:

https://www.scribd.com/document/447870402/Ruling-BP-Conditions-Lawsuit#from_embed

So, under Trump we treat asylum seekers worse than convicted criminals. But, don’t worry.  Enabled by the Article III Courts, the regime is reducing the Gulag population and shrinking “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico” by simply abrogating asylum laws and the Constitution and sending folks to Guatemala, a dangerous country with no functioning asylum system, where they won’t get a fair chance to apply for asylum and will either be forced back to the countries they fled or forced to fend for themselves in a failed state. https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/remain-in-mexico-deportation-asylum-guatemala/2020/02/20/9c29f53e-4eb7-11ea-9b5c-eac5b16dafaa_story.html

 

Some might survive, some won’t. But, we don’t really care because it’s “out of sight, out of mind.”

 

I actually think that Judge Bury got part of this case wrong by incorrectly absolving the Border Patrol of intentionally abusing these individuals. Wrong! Essentially, this is the old “Good enough for Government work” cop out.

 

There are always alternatives to unconstitutional and punitive detention. The most obvious being releasing folks on bond if there is no constitutionally compliant alternative. Like other Government employees, Border Patrol Officers take an oath to uphold the Constitution. When tasked by the regime with carrying out Constitutional abuses, they actually have a duty to “just say no” even if that means resigning their jobs.

 

And, on a larger scale, it’s clear that the regime has chosen to waste money on unneeded and unauthorized walls, unneeded detention, frivolous legal actions, and details of Border Patrol personnel to punish cities that won’t go along with some of their unlawful behavior. That money could and should have been used to improve detention conditions to meet constitutional minimums. In simple terms, the regime made a conscious choice to violate the Constitution as part of its illegal and immoral “deterrence” program. It’s time for Article III Courts to stop enabling and papering over false, illegal “choices” by a scofflaw Administration.

Due Process Forever!

 

PWS

 

02-21-20