a1255: Reuters: US Deports to Horrific Jails (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

 Posted on Mon, Mar. 11, 2002

U.S. deports Haitians to horrific jails
By ALAN ELSNER
Reuters

MIAMI - The U.S. government is trying its hardest to deport
Gertha Clairville to Haiti, a country she was not born in, has
never lived in and where she faces certain imprisonment and
possible death.

Clairville, 21, is one of hundreds, possibly thousands, of
people caught in a 1996 law aimed at U.S. residents who are not
citizens. Some have been convicted of crimes as trivial as
shoplifting and check kiting.

Under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant
Responsibility Act, non-citizens convicted of a long list of
violent or non-violent offenses can be automatically deported.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service hopes to deport
Clairville despite the fact that doing so will leave her three
small children to grow up without their mother and knowing that
she will be thrown into a Haitian prison.

``I was born in the Bahamas in 1980 and my parents, who were
Haitian, came to the United States when I was one year old,''
said Clairville, interviewed in prison in Miami where she is
awaiting a final decision on her case.

In 1998, Clairville got into a fight with another woman and
threatened her with a knife. She was convicted of aggravated
battery and sentenced to two years in prison. When she had
served her sentence, she was put on a plane with 25 others and
deported to Haiti, a country she had never seen.

``When I got there, the officials couldn't understand me and I
couldn't understand them. They took me to a jail in Port au
Prince. I was there for two months,'' she said.

She was put in a cell with nine other women. They took turns
sleeping on a concrete floor with no blankets and bought their
own food and water since the prison did not supply any. A prison
officer threatened to rape her and only backed off when she
screamed out in terror.

``It was terrible. Why did they send me to a place where I
wasn't even born?'' Clairville said.

After two months, Clairville's lawyers from the Florida
Immigration Advocacy Center succeeded in having her returned to
the United States. She won an appeal to stay in the country in
immigration court but the authorities took the case to the
Immigration Board of Appeals which ruled against her. Her lawyer
is now trying to take the case to federal court but Clairville
could be returned to Haiti at any time.

In a similar case less than two years ago, Haitian-born
Claudette Etienne was convicted of selling a small amount of
crack cocaine, an offense which a U.S. judge did not think
merited imprisonment.

But the INS deported her to Haiti where she was thrown in
prison. Four days later, after drinking contaminated water, she
died.

Her body lay unclaimed in a morgue a year later. Her husband,
struggling to bring up their two children, lacked the money to
bring her home and give her a decent burial.

U.S. NOT RESPONSIBLE

INS spokeswoman Karen Kraushaar said U.S. responsibility for the
fate of a deported person ended when the individual left U.S.
soil. She said the United States had deported 125 Haitians
between October 2001 and January 2002, of whom 77 had been
classed as felons under the 1996 immigration law.

``Our authority ends with the deportation. We do not have the
ability to dictate to a foreign government how to treat its own
nationals,'' she said.

Asked about conditions in Haitian prisons, she said: ``It would
be a good idea to visit a Haitian prison before making sweeping
statements. It's all hearsay.''

But the State Department, in its past two human rights reports,
lambasted Haiti for its prisons and for jailing people
indefinitely if they are deported by other countries.

``Very poor prison conditions, arbitrary arrest and detention,
and prolonged pretrial detention continue to be problems. Many
criminal deportees who already served full sentences overseas
are put back in jail for indefinite periods of time,'' the
department said in its 2001 report.

Haitian authorities say that in a country with 85 percent
unemployment, criminal deportees have to be locked up to prevent
them resorting to a life of crime.

A BBC reporter, Andy Kershaw, visited a Haitian prison at Croix
de Bouquets in January, 2002 and found windowless cells, ''dark,
fetid and hot as a foundry.'' He saw 17 U.S. deportees in a cell
which measured roughly 13 feet by 13 feet.

Wendy Young of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and
Children said she found it astounding that the United States was
deporting people to Haiti, knowing what lay in store for them.

``There is a big question whether we are sending people back to
torture or even to their deaths. Is this what the United States
wants to be doing?'' she asked.

Clairville's three children, aged 6, 5 and 4 are being brought
up by their grandmother who is in frail health. Clairville says
the youngest does not even know her.

``I had my baby in jail. They took her away when she was one day
old,'' she said. She fears that if the INS succeeds in deporting
her to Haiti once more, she will not survive to ever see her
children again.



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