Law Students

More Tales from Detention

By Andrea

I have to link to the NYT's big story on detainee deaths, which includes the full list they got from their FOIA request and a disappointingly boilerplate statement from ICE. The stories are absolutely heartrending. Three years, 66 deaths, and 1 out of 5 were suicides.

I keep thinking about what I could have done for Maya Nand, who is the kind of person I'll run into far too often during my work, a family man who made a mistake that turned into the kind of deal dozens of people take every day - plead guilty to misdemeanor domestic violence, serve no time, take anger management classes. No one is supposed to end up dying, shackled to a hospital bed, at the end of this. But he did.

I keep thinking that maybe if I were his lawyer, if I called and shouted and got colleagues in Arizona to show up at the detention center and raise holy hell, I might have been able to help save his life. Maybe. What I couldn't do, though, is keep him from being deported to Fiji. The criminal sentence probably made him an "aggravated felon" (a lovely Orwellian term when applied to a misdemeanant who served no time), which is game over for almost everyone. This exact situation is not even new. Maybe if I had seen him before he applied for citizenship. All I could have said, though, is don't apply, and hope that ICE never catches up with you. But they could, any time. The moment you pled guilty, you gave them a reason to show up and take everything from you.

I keep thinking that there's only so much lawyers can do; a few new agency heads and strongly worded memos could change things a dozen lawsuits would take years to affect, and a new executive and Congress could change things that lawsuits can never change. I keep thinking that we need a new president who has the decency to be ashamed of what we've done.

Full post as published by Peanut Butter Burrito on May 05, 2008 (boomark / email).