22766: (Hermantin)Miami-Herald-Free David Joseph (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Mon, Jul. 19, 2004





Free David Joseph

OUR OPINION: DHS SHOULD PAROLE TEENAGE HAITIAN ASYLUM SEEKER


How much is America's national security improved by keeping a severely
depressed Haitian teenager imprisoned for 20 months? What does it say about
the Department of Homeland Security's ability to distinguish between serious
threats and legitimate asylum seekers who ask only for refuge in America?

What has happened to David Joseph reflects how the U.S. government has
mistreated Haitian asylum seekers. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and
DHS chief Tom Ridge are most to blame. Mr. Joseph should be freed
immediately on humanitarian grounds alone.

He fled Haiti after political thugs beat his father and attacked their home.
Mr. Joseph bears physical scars that testify to the trauma. He was only 17
when he landed on Key Biscayne on Oct 29, 2002, with 213 other people. Had
immigration authorities followed the law, they would have released him then
as a minor. They should have done so, too, when an immigration judge quickly
decided that Mr. Joseph could be released on bond, and again when the Board
of Immigration Appeals upheld that judge.

Instead Mr. Ashcroft intervened. Claiming that terrorists were using Haiti
as a ''staging point,'' he prohibited the release of all Haitians pursuing
asylum. So taxpayers get to pay to imprison people fleeing persecution to
deter other Haitians from doing so.

Mr. Joseph, one of the youngest and longest-imprisoned inmates at the Krome
facility, still awaits an asylum decision. Is there any wonder that he was
diagnosed with severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder?

A clinical psychologist also concluded that he would continue to deteriorate
in detention. But DHS denied his attorneys' request for Mr. Joseph's parole
to an uncle in Brooklyn. Krome's own psychologist had found him ''unhappy
and sad.'' This is no way to protect national security.

Simple decency demands that Mr. Joseph be released.

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