ICE Raids

Immigrants Receive Raw Treatment in Jail  

The United States’ tradition of welcoming immigrants with open arms is changing by the day. The trend now being created, by those who whip up sentiments and those who are willing to blame immigrants for every vice committed by anyone, is to paint immigrants as enemies of America.

The change of attitude generated by negative media vibes orchestrated by extreme right wingers in the United States resonates all over the fabric of the American government. There are intense and brutal immigration enforcement strategies being adopted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. They are separating fathers from children, husbands from wives and creating a crisis that will eventually cost this country enormous resource through welfare program because breadwinners in homes have been deported.

As the clampdown continues, immigrants are being carted away to detention centers here and there. They are placed in the same centers with criminals and treated like animals before being deported from the United States.

How else can anyone describe a situation where an immigrant who is diabetic was not given access to medical treatment, no medication and no appropriate food to prevent the aggravation of the disease?

In another situation an immigrant who has heart and breathing problems was not given a breathing machine for many days. The immigrant could have suffered brain damage that could have resulted from loss of oxygen to the brain.

It is not appropriate to treat immigrants as criminals and put them in the same detention centers as hardened criminals. Immigrants are human beings who came to America for survival and should be accorded respect and dignity in the enforcement process.

In some detention centers in New Jersey, these detained immigrants do not have access to telephone to call their loved ones or seek legal representation. In some of these centers, they could only call collect. In a situation where persons being called do not receive certain calls on their phones, such immigrants could remain in detention for months without access to their families.

The appropriate government agencies involved must do something about the raw treatment mete out to immigrants. Community leaders in immigrant communities must organize themselves to visit some of these centers to see the plight of their brothers and sisters detained as a result of immigration violations.

If you are a legal immigrant in the United States, please send an email to your local representatives in Congress requesting that something be done about this matter.

USI News