US Image-Polishing on Immigration?

By William Boardman, Reader Supported News

10 August 13

The Dream 9 are out, but 30,000 are still prisoners subject to torture. With 40 protesters arrested in DC, Washington acts to cool the heat.

he scene in a Tucson, Arizona, parking lot in the late afternoon of August 7 looked something like the aftermath of a local graduation ceremony, with small groups of people clustered around smiling young people in caps and gowns. But these nine "graduates" were smiling in part because they had just left the nearby Eloy Detention Center, where six of them had suffered the torture technique of solitary confinement for the offense of going on a hunger strike to get phone contact with the outside world.

These are the nine young people known as the Dream 9, who have lived much or most of their lives in the United States and threaten to put a human face on the cruel and unjust activities known generally as U.S. immigration policy. On August 1, police arrested more than 40 peaceful demonstrators for taking part in an immigration sit-in on Capitol Hill. What if civil disobedience connects with the moral rot of American policy?

The cynic might suspect that the Dream 9 were released because they'll be less of a problem for the government scattered to their homes around the country than they were inside where they were organizing, protesting, gathering stories of other detainees, and shining some light on one of the darker corners of authoritarian America.

On any given day, the United States holds more than 30,000 people in immigration prisons, with more than 300 of them in solitary confinement. It is a system in which the use of torture techniques is unquestioned, and is outsourced by the government to private contractors like the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which runs the Eloy prison, which has a reputation for horrific conditions and a history of detainee deaths, including two suicides in March this year. [CCA has not responded to inquiries.]

HEADLINE: "Dream 9 Released from Custody After 17 Days in Detainment"

That was the early headline on NBC Latino, an online source of Latino news, as the story of the release broke. The tone of that headline and the happy-face story that follows illustrates how compliant media can create the appearance that "the system works" when the evidence is overwhelming that American immigration law is unjust and the Obama administration policy that has deported more that 1.7 million people is cruel and inhuman.

That much is clear from the experience of the Dream 9, whose civil disobedience took the unusual step of committing a legal act for which they assumed they would be arrested and jailed. The legal act? Crossing the border and asking the authorities for asylum. The government obliged by arresting and sending them to a for-profit prison, where they were further mistreated.

As reported August 1 on Colorlines.com, CCA's mistreatment included singling out "ringleaders" for special attention:

Shortly after arriving at Eloy, the Dream 9 say their phone use was unfairly restricted. In protest, they began a hunger strike - but six were placed in solitary confinement for their decision to do so....

At the time of publication, 24-year-old Lulu Martinez and 22-year-old Maria Peniche have spent 104 out of the last 108 hours in complete isolation.... when Martinez and Peniche are brought out of their individual cells and into the yard once a day, they are shackled and interact only with guards....

Thesla Zenaida, who met the Dream 9 at Eloy and is now participating in a hunger strike along with other women detainees, explained in a phone call that a guard's treatment at the detention facility drove a fellow detainee to suicide.

Look, a girl hanged herself. A girl was hanged here. [After] she was hanged, they didn't want to take her body down. And for the same reason - because they treat us poorly. A guard treated her poorly, and that guard is still working here. They us like the worst dogs.

Jesus Magana Is a Citizen and an Air Force Veteran - His Sister Is a Prisoner

On the same day the Dream 9 got out of Eloy, Jesus Magana, 24, posted a short video about his sister, Alejandra Pablos, 29, on the National Immigrant Youth Alliance (NIYA) channel on YouTube.

Alejandra Pablos has been a prisoner for about two years. Her mother is a citizen, and her brother is a citizen who served four years in the Air Force (part of the time in a combat zone). Alejandre Pablos made her first mistake when she came to the U.S. when she was only two, accompanying her mother.

She never lived in Mexico after that. She went to school in Arizona and graduated from the University of Arizona with high honors and a business degree. She was planning on returning to school for her masters before the U.S. Department of Homeland Security decided it needed to detain her and revoke her permanent residency status over two misdemeanor convictions.

The U.S. is trying to deport Alejandra Pablos. She is resisting deportation because she has no ties to Mexico and is fearful about what would happen to her there. This is essentially the same situation each of the Dream 9 faces, and served as the basis of their argument for asylum in their home country, the U.S.

For whatever reason, Homeland Security has now decided that the Dream 9 have reasonable fear for their wellbeing if they are sent back to Mexico, so they have been released, pending an immigration court hearing on their asylum requests. Why do security officials exercise such inconsistent standards? They don't say, even on those rare occasions when they're asked. Surely it's not only to protect CCA's profit margin.

Why Didn't the President Respond to the Moral Challenge of the Dream 9?

Stonewalling is the bedrock of American immigration enforcement. On July 30, Representative Mike Honda, a Democrat from California, sent a letter to President Obama, also a Democrat, asking him to intervene on behalf of the Dream 9. More than 40 other members of Congress have signed the letter.

Rep. Honda spent four years of his early childhood in a Colorado internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II. In 1965, Honda joined the Peace Corps and spent two years in El Salvador, where he became fluent in Spanish. His letter began by reminding the president that:

... last week, three leaders of the undocumented youth movement in the United States crossed the border into Mexico and turned themselves in at the Morley border crossing near Nogales, Arizona, along with [six] other DREAM Act-eligible youth currently living in Mexico. They took this courageous step because they are fighting to reunite families separated by the border and mass deportation policies, including their own. These youths are the victims of our broken immigration policy, and they deserve to come home to the United States, where they can continue to work toward fulfilling their dreams of higher education.

In a July 30 press release announcing the delivery of the Obama letter, Rep. Honda said: "These courageous, undocumented young people shine a light on the painful family separation caused by our broken immigration system. One who took part in this protest is Lizbeth Mateo, a constituent. It had been 15 years since she last saw her family in Mexico, and overcame incredible odds to gain admission this fall to Santa Clara University Law School. While we are working hard to achieve comprehensive reform in Congress, DREAMers like Lizbeth need action now for the opportunity to live, learn, and succeed in our country."

President Obama has not responded to the letter.

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.