a1183: US deports people to a country they do not know (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

US deports people to a country they do not know
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By Alan Elsner, National Correspondent

MIAMI (Reuters) - 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 U.S. 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 Womens' 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.