These news reportscontain news stories from mid December through early January, during which timethe Detention Watch Network staff and volunteers were on break. Our apologies for any duplicate postings but we want to make sure we did not miss anything!

1)    The Carnegie Reporter – USA: Immigration; the Reform Movement Rebuilds

2)   The NewYork Times – Central Falls, RI: City of Immigrants Fills Jail Cells with its Own

3)    The Dallas Morning News – USA: Immigration officials curtail sedation of deportees after criticism, lawsuits

4)     TriValleyCentral.com – Florence, AZ: Connecticut Yankee finds calling in area of immigration courts

5)    The Seattle Times – WA: Gov calls for deportation of jailed illegal aliens

6)   The Dallas Morning News – Los Angeles, CA: Immigrant from Senegal tells of being sedated on commercial flight

1.Immigration; the Reform Movement Rebuilds

By Joyce Baldwin

An estimated twelve million undocumented immigrants live within the U.S. and about 300,000 people join their ranks annually, making it increasinglyurgent to address the issue of immigration in a way that is both legal andcompassionate and that provides a path to citizenship, protects workers fromexploitation, reunites families and promotes civic participation. Yet fierceand often divisive debate threaded with provocative anti-immigrant rhetoriccontinues, even though polls show most Americans recognize the need to fix ourbroken immigration system.

Advocates of comprehensive immigration reform have tried unsuccessfullysince 2006 to get an immigration bill passed, first by the 109th and then bythe 110th Congress.Now these advocates are using the sometimes painful lessons learned from theirlegislative battles to build alliances on a local and a national level and tobring together disparate voices. Seeking to overcome the hurdles involved inmerging hundreds of organizations, several leading groups, including those whoare cited in this article, have been working to develop a re-energized andre-focused structure that consists of “four pillars,” which center around:....

..·  a more effective policy approach,....

..·  ..more effective work in the media,....

..·  a stronger grassroots effort better linked tothe nationwide effort, ....

..·  successful efforts to promote citizenship andencourage civic participation.....

As immigration reform leaders begin to meet with immigration groups aroundthe country as well as with community, business, labor and faith groups, ideasof the principal stakeholders will be incorporated into the four-pillarsstructure. The rapidly changing political dynamics in this presidentialelection year will also impact decision making as members of these groups worktogether to develop a plan for achieving effective immigration reform.....

“Let’s not miss the fact that one of the reasons we lost the last time [in2007] is that the anti-immigrant forces mobilized their advocates and thepro-reformers did not,” says Frank Sharry, executive director of ....America....’sVoice. “Now we are working to answer questions such as: What is the best policyapproach going forward? How do we strengthen and build a communications effortthat has more volume and velocity and, most importantly, how do we have agrassroots operation that is nationwide and is effective?” For 17 years Sharrywas executive director of the National Immigration Forum. He also served as aleader in the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, which closed inFebruary 2008. ....America....’sVoice (www.americasvoiceonline.org), an organization that grew out of thiscoalition, opened in March 2008 as a communications effort designed to moredirectly challenge those who oppose immigration reform.....

“This is an exciting time,” says Geri Mannion, who leads the U.S. DemocracyProgram and the Special Opportunities Fund of Carnegie Corporation of ....New York..... “Despite their problems, issues, conflicts anddisappointment about the bill failing, these advocates have come together torethink the next phase of immigration reform and hopefully are stronger forwhat they have gone through.” Under President Vartan Gregorian immigrant civicintegration has been a consistent program focus of the Corporation, as has anevolving concern with assisting those working on issues relating to the pathwayto citizenship. Since 2001, for example, Carnegie Corporation has awarded $35million in support of immigrant civic integration at the state and nationallevels.....

Many public opinion polls document the fact that most Americans recognizethe importance of approaching immigration reform in a manner that would addressthe various facets of the issue and help our nation move forward in a strongerand more balanced way. For example, a late 2007 Los Angeles Times/BloombergNational Survey of nearly 1,500 adults found that “most voters, regardless ofparty, support allowing illegal immigrants who have been living and working inthe U.S. for a number of years to start on a path to citizenship byregistering, paying a fine, getting fingerprinted, and learning English, amongother requirements.” ....

Learning From the Past

The seeds of the pro-immigration movement are in a tradition of coalitionrelationships that began when the immigration reform debate started in theearly 1980s. It was then that a few national organizations developed a presenceon the issue, and key local coalitions were formed to represent the voices ofimmigrants. During the debate surrounding the enactment and subsequentimplementation of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, immigrationorganizations became better connected through conferences, in-person meetingsand conference calls. In the 1990s the number of organizations involved beganto increase. “We started to develop ways of working in crisis circumstancesthat formed the next phase of the movement and the challenges that people facedtogether,” explains Cecilia Muñoz, senior vice president for the office ofresearch, advocacy and legislation of the National Council of La Raza (www.nclr.org), the largest Hispanic civil rightsand advocacy group in the ....United States.....“September 11 changed everything. It made the hill we need to climb much higherand added a whole new dimension on national security to the debate andincreased the government’s ability to persecute particular people usingimmigration law.....

*In 2007 Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) introduced theComprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (S. 1348) that failed a cloturemotion on ..June 7, 2007..; in 2006Senator Arlen Spector (R-PA) introduced the Comprehensive Immigration ReformAct of 2006 (S. 2611). Both this bill and a somewhat different bill introducedin the House of Representatives (H.R. 4437) did not become law.....

http://www.carnegie.org/reporter/17/immigration/index.html  ....

2. ..December 27, 2008......

City of ....Immigrants.... Fills Jail Cells With Its Own ....

By NINA BERNSTEIN....

CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. — Few in this threadbare little mill town gave muchthought to the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility, the maximum-security jailbeside the public ball fields at the edge of town. Even when it expanded andadded barbed wire, Wyatt was just the backdrop for Little League games, itsname stitched on the caps of the team it sponsored. ....

Then people began to disappear: the leader of a prayer group at St.Matthew’s Roman Catholic Church; the father of a second grader at the publiccharter school; a woman who mopped floors in a ....Providence....courthouse. ....

After days of searching, their families found them locked up inside Wyatt —only blocks from home, but in a separate world.....

In this mostly Latino city, hardly anyone had realized that in addition todetaining the accused drug dealers and mobsters everyone heard about, the jailheld hundreds of people charged with no crime — people caught in the nation’scrackdown on illegal immigration. Fewer still knew that Wyatt was a portal intoan expanding network of other jails, bigger and more remote, all propellingdetainees toward deportation with little chance to protest.....

If anything, the people of ....Central Falls....saw Wyatt as the economic engine that city fathers had promised, a steadysource of jobs and federal money to pay for services like police and fireprotection. Even that, it turns out, was an illusion.....

Wyatt offers a rare look into the fastest-growing, least-examined type ofincarceration in ....America....,an industry that detains half a million people a year, up from a few thousandjust 15 years ago. The system operates without the rules that protect criminalsuspects, and has grown up with little oversight, often in the backyards ofcommunities desperate for any source of money and work.....

Last spring, The New York Times set out to examine this small city of 19,000and its big detention center as a microcosm of the nation’s new relationshipwith immigration detention, which is now sweeping up not just recentborder-jumpers and convicted felons but foreign-born residents with strong tiesto places like ....Central Falls.....Wyatt, nationally accredited, clean and modern, seemed like one of the betterjails in the system, a patchwork of county lockups, private prisons and federaldetention centers where government investigations and the news media haverecently documented substandard, sometimes lethal, conditions.....

But last summer, a detainee died in Wyatt’s custody. Immigration authoritiesinvestigating the death removed all immigration detainees this month — alongwith the $101.76 a day the federal government paid the jail for each one. In ....Central Falls...., where many families have members without papers,a state campaign against illegal immigrants spread fear that also took a toll:People went into hiding and businesses lost Latino customers in droves. Slowly,the city awoke to its role in the detention system, and to the pitfalls of thebargain it had struck. ....

In a sinking economy, immigration detention is a rare growth industry.Congress has doubled annual spending on it in the last four years, to $2.4billion approved in October as part of $5.9 billion allotted for immigrationenforcement through next September — even more than the Bush administration hadrequested. ....

Seeking a slice of that bounty, communities like ....Farmville.., ..Va....., and ....Pahrump.., ..Nev....., are signing up with developers of newdetention centers. Jails from ..New England.. to ....New Mexico.... have already made the crackdown pay off — forthe private companies that dominate the industry, for some investors and, atleast in theory, for places like ....Central Falls....,a city so strapped that the state pays for its schools.....

Here, a specially created municipal corporation built the jail in the early1990s to hold federal inmates, and last year more than doubled its size. As theCity Council president, William Benson Jr., put it, “The more inmates theyhave, the more money we get.”....

Yet in a community whose 1.3 square miles are said to be too small forsecrets “If you sneeze on Washington Street, someone on Pine Street says,‘Gesundheit,’ ” Mr. Benson said city officials, overwhelminglynon-Latino, seemed uninformed about who those inmates were. “Nobody knows exactlywho’s down there,” he said. “I hear some are Arab terrorists.” ....

The mystery is in some ways understandable. Though immigration detaineesmade up one-third of the daily population and a majority of the 4,200 men andwomen who moved through Wyatt’s 722 beds in a year, most were from otherstates, and those from ....Rhode Island....did not remain long: Immigration and Customs Enforcement typically transferredthem within a week.....

Some were legal immigrants who had served time for serious crimes. Butincreasingly they were the kind of people who in the past would not have beenarrested — people without papers, similar to some of the people who play, cheerand live in Wyatt’s shadow. Sometimes the same people.....

Anthony Ventetuolo Jr., one of Wyatt’s developers and now the jail’s chiefexecutive, said that who the inmates were made no difference to the jail, whichwas run like a business, under strict standards. “I’m not interested in gettinginvolved in the politics of immigration,” he said. “All we do is detain peoplethat our clients tell us to detain.”....

Swallowed by theSystem....

Over 10 years, Maynor Canté, 26, hardly glanced at the jail he passed as hehurried between home, two jobs and St. Matthew’s Church, where he led a prayergroup.....

He was 15 when he left ....Guatemala....in 1997, sneaking across the Mexican border to join seven older siblings, legalresidents who had spent years scraping new lives out of the industrial ruins of....Rhode Island....’s ....Blackstone.. ..Valley..... Caught in ....Texas....,the teenager was quickly let go pending a hearing, like so many arrested underthe “catch and release” policy that prevailed while the nation’s boom timesdemanded cheap immigrant labor. When he failed to show up in court, adeportation order was issued.....

A decade later, Mr. Canté spoke near-fluent English, and had spent thousandsof dollars trying to legalize his status. Mornings, he cleaned a factory for $8an hour. Evenings, he worked at his nephew’s new clothing shop on ....Dexter Street...., one of several Latino businesses that hadrevived a bleak stretch of vacant storefronts.....

Then, early one morning in October 2007 when he headed out the door for hiscleaning job, five immigration agents hustled him into a van. That night, asfrightened relatives tried to find him, he was delivered to Wyatt in chains.....

Inside, a plaque declares that the detention center’s mission is “to protectthe public from people who pose a threat to society.” One corridor, waxed to animmaculate shine, leads to a darkened control room where correction officerswatch a dozen video monitors fed by 200 cameras. A guard can scan an entireunit housing 72 detainees in two- to four-man cells; zooming in on a card game,he can see that one player is holding hearts. ....

The jail was built for inmates awaiting trial on federal charges — drug possession,child pornography, political corruption. But to help pay off $106 million borrowedfor its recent expansion and refinancing, Wyatt was now counting on prisonerslike Mr. Canté: administrative detainees not charged with a crime, but heldwhile the government tries to deport them.....

Now he found himself slated for deportation without a hearing or even anyway to make a phone call.....

“I was scared,” he said, recalling how he prayed the rosary and stared outthe tiny window of his cell to watch a freight train pass at ..6 a.m... ....

Outside, his sister Emma, 33, was distraught. Since their mother’s death in2006, she had felt more responsible for protecting Mr. Canté, a big-shoulderedman who was still her little brother. “Three days passed and we didn’t knowwhere he was,” she said.....

On the fourth day, after calls to many jails, a high school friend locatedMr. Canté, and members of his prayer circle flocked to Wyatt. His priest, theRev. Otoniel J. Gomez, had never visited the jail in the eight years since hewas sent to ....Central Falls.... from ....Colombia.....He spoke to his weeping parishioner through a thick plexiglass barrier. ....

“I thought, ‘This is like a horror movie, talking with a criminal,’ ”he said. ....

Yet the priest soon realized that Mr. Canté was lucky. “Most of these peopledidn’t have any relatives or friends near them,” Father Gomez said, “not even alawyer.” ....

The official list of free legal help was largely a dead end. Wyatt’sexpensive inmate telephone service was often useless, because it took days toset up an account, and it could not be used to call cellphones. Desperate,other detainees passed Mr. Canté phone numbers on scraps of paper, begging himto ask his visitors to call and tell where they were. ....

Out of Sight, Out ofReach....

Plucked from communities from ....Maine....to ....New York...., some had alreadybeen transferred through several jails; many would soon be moved again, as thefederal immigration agency improvised to make space for detainees from newroundups.....

“It’s like having a room with five bathtubs and water coming in and out ofeach one to maintain an equilibrium,” explained Todd Thurlow, acting deputydirector of the Boston field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement,which contracts for about 1,000 beds in dozens of jails across New England.....

Wyatt had a reputation as one of the most professionally run. But fornewcomers without help, it could be rough. ....

One complaint, echoed by former jail employees, was that detainees in painfrom illness or injury often went without adequate treatment. Other detaineesspoke of going hungry, like Edgar Bocce, 25, a Guatemalan cleaner who said twomuscular inmates took away his first dinner tray - rice, beans and spaghetti -while guards did nothing. Spartan meals could be supplemented with food fromthe jail’s commissary, but only if relatives sent money, or detainees stayedlong enough to earn some; on the cleaning crew that kept the jail so spotless,starting pay was 40 cents a day. ....

Though officials said detainees were housed according to their history ofviolence, only one unit was dedicated to immigration detainees, and the restwere mixed in with criminal suspects and convicts.....

Perhaps the greatest frustration, inmates said, was their inability to makesense of what was happening to them. ....

“Why am I here in jail?” asked one, a ....Central Falls....mechanic who had been seized at immigration headquarters in ....Providence....when he went to check why his green card application was taking so long. Wyattguards had no answers. “They tell me, ‘Sorry, guys, but we’re not Immigration.’ ”....

Mr. Canté’s sisters borrowed money and hired him a lawyer. But a day afterthe lawyer’s first visit, their brother was gone — transferred to a ....Boston....jail. That week, he was shackled and bused with 60 other men to detention in ....York.., ..Pa....., then put on a government plane with300 chained immigrants.....

He ended up one of 2,000 detainees packed into a windowless tent city thathad sprung up only a year earlier in ....Raymondville.., ..Tex..... — the nation’s largest immigrationprison camp, run for profit and still growing.....

For weeks after his lawyer reopened his case for a hearing in ....Boston....,she could not locate him. He was on the verge of deportation by the time shemanaged to persuade the government to fly him back from ....Texas....,two days before last Christmas.....

Mr. Canté finally appeared before an immigration judge on Jan. 2, afterthree months in the detention maze. Because his case fell under the morelenient laws in force before 1997, he not only was released on bond, butallowed to work until his immigration hearing in December 2009. He is nowtrying to pay back thousands of dollars in loans and legal fees. ....

A Market for Inmates....

Mr. Canté, whose time in detention cost federal taxpayers about $10,000, waspart of what many call an “immigrant gold rush” that turned the private prisonindustry from bust to boom.....

Across the country, starting in ....Texas....in the 1980s, prison companies built jail cells on speculation as they rushedto cash in on the war on drugs. They overbuilt; abuse scandals and escapessoured many states on private prisons, and by the late 1990s, as competitionfor inmates increased, the companies’ stock was suffering.....

Yet given the lure of easy financing and big fees for constructing deals,developers of prison space did not hold back on growth. Instead, big companieslike the Corrections Corporation of ....America....,the GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut) and the Cornell Companies added more bedsand lobbied harder at the source of the most lucrative inmates, the federalgovernment. ....

The payoff came after 9/11 in an accelerating stream of new detainees:foreigners swept up by the nation’s rising furor over illegal immigration.....

....Central Falls.... was similar, inits poverty, to more remote communities that had hitched their hopes to jails.Set in the river valley where ....America....’sindustrial revolution was born, its textile mills had hired large immigrantfamilies — French Canadians and Poles, followed by Syrians and Portuguese — andsqueezed them into triple-decker tenements. Even after the work moved away, themills’ cheap housing continued to draw immigrants, mostly from ..Latin America... ....

The city was nearly bankrupt in 1990 when developers made a proposition:Build a profit-making jail for two or three hundred nonviolent federaldetainees, and guarantee a steady stream of money and jobs for ....Central Falls..... ....

But the deal that emerged, like many elsewhere, proved better at payingprivate investors than generating public revenue. The municipal corporationborrowed $30 million through a state bond issue to build Wyatt, and hired theCornell company to run it. Six years later, the municipal body borrowed $38million to refinance, buying back most of the bonds at a premium that gave theoriginal bondholders a lump-sum return of 28.5 percent on their investment inaddition to 9 percent annual interest.....

And from its opening party in November 1993, Wyatt ran into the same problemas its competitors: finding enough inmates. For a time it imported murderersand rapists by the busload from ....North Carolina....’scrowded prisons. When city residents objected, they learned that ....Central Falls.... had no control over who was housed at Wyatt andwould get no money unless it was full.....

At best, Wyatt paid ....Central Falls....$2 to $3 a day for each detainee — less than $400,000 in the good years — tooffset its use of city services. At times when the flow of inmates faltered,payments slowed to a trickle. Yet, following the strange logic of prisongrowth, Cornell and Wyatt officials were soon pushing to refinance yet againand expand. ....

Thomas Lazieh, the mayor who had championed the deal that built Wyatt,defended it as the best the city could get. His successor, Lee Matthews, took adarker view and sued to stop the expansion. “The city was sold a bill ofgoods,” he said.....

Wyatt doubled in size anyway, with the backing of the current mayor, CharlesD. Moreau. Convinced that it could wrest more revenue from the jail asimmigration enforcement boomed, the municipal corporation took full control inAugust 2007. The budget it approved late that year included $6,000 a month fora ....Washington.... lobbyist to seekmore detainees at higher rates.....

A Recession, andRaids....

By then, as in many parts of the country, people in ....Rhode Island.... were looking at Latino immigrants as primesuspects in a dismal economy. A polarizing immigration debate had convergedwith a huge state budget deficit and high unemployment. As this year began,resentment flared. ....

The catalyst was an ordinary New Year’s feature in The Providence Journalabout the first baby born in ....Rhode Island....in 2008. Mother and newborn were still in the hospital when federal agents,spurred by the publicity, raided their apartment in ....Providence....and took away the father on immigration violations. Afterward, the police said,the mother discovered that a roommate from ....Guatemala....had hanged himself behind his locked bedroom door, apparently during the raid.....

The baby’s father, initially held in secret at Wyatt, was eventuallydeported. A Guatemalan landscaper with two misdemeanor convictions, he had beenordered to leave the country in August 2007, but stayed, his lawyer said,because his fiancée, a ....United States....citizen, was pregnant with their second child. ....

To some, the case illustrated how illegal immigrants, who make up less than4 percent of ....Rhode Island....’spopulation, drained public services.....

“....Rhode Island.... taxpayers arethe real victims!” declared Alice Losasso of ..West Warwick..,in a letter to The Journal. “I’m tired of paying for interpreters so thatimmigrants can take their driver’s test in whatever language they speak. I’mtired of finding that their girlfriends and children are on welfare.”....

Her words echoed a major theme of the governor, Donald L. Carcieri, aRepublican. In March, he issued an executive order directing the State Policeto help federal authorities round up illegal immigrants, saying that theydepressed wages and strained services.....

Public approval for that order reached 75 percent in one poll after anillegal immigrant from ....Guatemala....was charged with carjacking and raping a woman outside a mall. He had beenarrested twice before by the ....Providence....police, and already had an outstanding order of deportation. The governorappeared on the Bill O’Reilly program to accuse the ....Providence....mayor of sheltering criminals. ....

In ....Central Falls...., the crackdownsowed panic. At the public charter school two blocks from Wyatt, parents,already afraid to be photographed at school events, were now reluctant to driveto meetings, said Sarah Friedman, a founder of the school.....

An 8-year-old girl, one of the school’s high-scoring students, stoppedspeaking in class when her father disappeared into detention, the girl’s mothersaid. Without his income, mother and daughter, ....United States.... citizens, were almost evicted fromtheir apartment. ....

At ....Central Falls.... High School,some students stopped coming to class because their families had gone intohiding, said Margie Cruz, a school-home liaison: “The child was born here, thechild is legal. But the family has to hide because the father will be deported.....

“I’ve seen students stopped for a traffic violation and the whole family gotdeported,” she added. “Children that were here for years. I watched them growup.” ....

One longtime Little League mother said she used to worry that childmolesters could be watching from the jail windows. Now, she said, she worriedthat her sister’s children would end up inside — the niece who had justgraduated from high school with no path to legal status; the nephew who hadbeen taught that local Quakers hid fugitive slaves, and asked his aunt to hidehim if his parents were detained. ....

They were part of a generation of ....Central Falls....teenagers born abroad who were coming of age as outlaws in their own town. Somehad already lost relatives, like the 14-year-old whose older brother had made aleft turn on red and ended up in a detention odyssey that led to deportation.....

“My mother’s afraid the same thing that happened to my brother could happento me, because I play soccer, I’m out there,” he said.....

A few blocks from Wyatt, Police Chief Joseph P. Moran III praised the jailas “a great neighbor — it keeps things under control.” But he went on to tellabout the difficulty of investigating the killing of a Dominican cabdriver,because witnesses had not come forward for fear of deportation. He talked ofthe blurring line between police work and immigration enforcement. ....

One domestic violence call by a husband illustrated the new reality. After aroutine computer check, both he and his wife were taken into police custody,and her 8-month-old baby was handed to a friend. The man had an outstandingbench warrant; his wife had a deportation warrant issued by immigrationauthorities — something not included in the police database a few years ago.....

“We work hand in hand with ICE,” Chief Moran said. At the same time, headded: “I have friends from ....Honduras....,....Ecuador..... Mykids went to school here. It makes it very, very difficult.”....

Profit and Loss....

For defenders of the jail, the bottom line has always been the bottom line:Wyatt’s growth meant more federal money for the city. ....

“They’re going to detain them somewhere,” said the manager of Mr. WilliamsTrue Styles Barbershop, on the struggling ....Dexter Street.... commercial strip. “It’s a billion-dollarbusiness. Unless we’re going to free them, what difference does it make?” ....

But at least in ....Central Falls....,the incarceration economy was not delivering on its promise.....

In late June, Mayor Moreau, a big man with a florid face and a police sirenin his car, offered up a budget that laid off firefighters — and told angrycity employees to get used to it.....

“We’re at the end of the financial rope for Central Falls,” he told the CityCouncil, citing more than 200 boarded-up homes, foreclosures at the rate of 25a week, and cuts in state and federal aid that required a 4 percent propertytax increase and an 8 percent spending cut in the new $17.4 million budget.....

Outside, past the defunct factory where Hasbro once made G. I. Joe, beyondthe rusty hulk of the downsized ....Sylvania....plant, the summer twilight gleamed on Wyatt’s new facade.....

What had happened to the windfall of money and jobs it had offered?....

The jail’s annual revenue had almost doubled in a year, to $21 million,mainly from increasing immigration detention. But the city budget projectedrevenue of only $525,000 from Wyatt, which is exempt from taxes.....

That was not even enough to cover its share of city services, according toan estimate by the city’s finance department. It was certainly nothing like the$2 million a year that Mr. Benson, the City Council president, had mentioned toa reporter in April. The mayor, he said, predicted the city would get that muchin profits formerly reaped by the Cornell Companies, now that the local boardhad taken over. Neither the mayor nor the board members, unpaid mayoralappointees, would talk about Wyatt. ....

As for jobs, only 10 of about 200 Wyatt employees lived in ....Central Falls..... The jail’s board was even declining to make the$1,500 donations to local groups it once supported, like a scholarship fund andyouth football. ....

Mr. Ventetuolo, the Wyatt chief executive, would not say how much had beensaved by dispensing with Cornell’s for-profit services, maintaining that it hadall gone toward keeping prices low for the federal government. Wyatt was stillin transition, he said, striving to fill new beds to meet soaring payments tobondholders, now up to $8.4 million yearly from $2.7 million under the terms ofthe latest refinancing.....

Yet Mr. Ventetuolo’s consulting company had won a raise, to $230,000 from$156,000. And as the number of detainees increased, so did revenue fromsurcharges on their collect calls to relatives, under a contract with GlobalTel Link that gave Wyatt a cut of about $564,000 a year. That arrangement hadsurvived a state ban on phone surcharges at prisons, thanks to lobbying thatgave Wyatt a loophole.....

Other large fees went to lawyers and financiers, as Mr. Matthews, the formermayor, pointed out. “There just happens to be a lot of money made by folksother than the people of the City of ....Central Falls....,”he said. ....

Out in the Open....

City officials in ....Central Falls....— mostly descendants of earlier immigrants — were mindful that they presidedover a community at least 60 percent Latino, where fear of the immigrationcrackdown was widespread.....

At the same time, the city had built its hopes for economic stability on ajail that was helping to make that crackdown possible. The combination createda local immigration politics that sometimes verged on denial.....

But last summer, Wyatt itself was suddenly caught in the glare of thestate’s crackdown.....

On the evening of July 15, a dozen State Police officers and 50 immigrationagents swept into six courthouses across the state. They arrested 31 cleanerson suspicion of immigration violations, people paid $7.40 an hour to vacuumfloors and scrub toilets in ....Rhode Island....’shalls of justice. All worked for two large state contractors, one owned by thebrother of a state legislator allied with Governor Carcieri. ....

In the uproar that followed, experiences that had been private in cases likeMr. Canté’s were put on public display: the difficulty of locating those incustody; the distress of relatives, many of them legal residents or citizens;the absence of basic legal protections familiar to anyone who watches “Law& Order.” Advocates eventually located most of the cleaners. Four were atWyatt, including a 29-year-old single mother detained in its new women’s unit. ....

Two days after the raids, as city officials raised the Colombian flag overCity Hall to honor that nation’s Independence Day, Mayor Moreau criticized theroundup, and chided Governor Carcieri for spending law enforcement resources onit.....

“We have better things to do,” he said, “than chasing the lady that cleansthe attorney general’s office.”....

A reporter asked how he squared that criticism with Wyatt’s role in holdingillegal immigrants, including the cleaning woman locked up there.....

“One has nothing to do with the other,” he retorted. “It has nothing to dowith the City of ....Central Falls.....”....

Soon, a case that drew national attention made that distinction harder tomaintain.....

On Aug. 6, Hiu Lui Ng, 34, a Chinese computer engineer from ....New York.... who had overstayed a visa, died in Wyatt’scustody after a year in various detention centers and months in pain.....

The Times reported a week later that despite his repeated pleas for help,his fractured spine and extensive cancer had gone undiagnosed until shortlybefore his death. Officials at Wyatt, where he spent his last month, said hehad received plenty of medical attention, and immigration authorities startedan internal investigation. But local pastors and Latino advocacy groupsgathered outside Wyatt on Aug. 15 to demand an independent inquiry. ....

A guard who watched the demonstration, who asked that his name not bepublished for fear of losing his job, voiced the ambivalence toward Wyatt thatseems to shape the attitudes of many in ....Central Falls.........

He spoke with sympathy of “good, hard-working people” detained there, andwith distaste of the rookie guards — a result of low pay and high turnover —“who talk to people with no respect, like they’re dogs.”....

But he added: “Immigration and all that, that has nothing to do with us.We’re just the prison.”....

Even in the Latino population, the new awareness of Wyatt stirred littleresistance. ....

“If the Spanish were all registered to vote they could take the city in oneelection,” observed Councilman Benson. “A lot of them don’t vote because theydon’t trust the government, and a lot of them are illegal, so they can’t.”....

In contrast, Mr. Canté, who finally had proper papers, said he felt likepart of ....Central Falls.... for the firsttime.....

“In all these years I’ve been here illegally, everywhere I went, everythingI used to do, I used to feel like a reject,” he said. “Now I feel like I’vebeen accepted for the community. I don’t feel afraid anymore. I feel, like,free.”....

Just how closely ....Central Falls....was entwined in the business of locking up people like Mr. Canté became moreobvious this month, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, citingtheir continuing investigation into Mr. Ng’s death, abruptly removed allimmigration detainees from Wyatt, scattering them to other jails in ....New England.., ..Texas.... and ....Louisiana.........

With Wyatt’s solvency, if not its survival, uncertain, the mayor lobbied thestate’s Congressional delegation to get back a share of the growing market inimmigration detainees. Meanwhile, jail officials hunted for deals like the onethey narrowly lost last spring, to house 80 ....Vermont....inmates judged criminally insane for crimes like murder and rape. ....

Mr. Lazieh, the former mayor who first championed Wyatt, called the government’simmigration policies immoral, arguing that “the system has gone overboard —we’ve turned to criminalizing all immigrants.” ....

But he had no regrets about his city’s part. “If it’s not in ....Central Falls....,” he said, “then this facility would be someplaceelse.”....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/us/27detain.html....

.. ..

3.Immigration officials curtail sedation ofdeportees after criticism, lawsuits....

..Monday, ..December 29, 2008........

By DIANNE SOLÍS / The ....Dallas....Morning News
dsolis@dallasnews.com....

Federal immigration officials, over the past year, have dramaticallycurtailed the controversial practice of sedating deportees with powerfulanti-psychotic medication.....

The move followed court challenges and a public outcry over the practice,which often involved the use of Haldol, a drug used to treat schizophrenia.....

Data collected through Freedom of Information Act requests by The DallasMorning News show that Immigration and Customs Enforcement sedated only 10people in the past fiscal year. Haldol was used in only three cases.....

Over the past six years, through October, federal immigration personnelsedated 384 deportees, an average of 64 a year, the government disclosed. Ofthose cases, 356 involved the use of Haldol.....

....U.S.....officials defended the sedation policy but declined to discuss it in detail,including the frequency with which sedation has been used, which led TheNews to request the information through the Freedom of Information Act.....

....U.S.....officials say the procedure is done on the recommendation of medical personneland now requires a court order – a change made when the American CivilLiberties Union began opposing the procedure and after Julie L. Myers, thenassistant homeland security secretary, learned of the cases.....

"When we do ask the court to involuntarily sedate, it is both necessaryto effectuate removal and medically appropriate," said Pat Reilly, aspokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency within theDepartment of Homeland Security.....

Critics said there had been no effective oversight of the process, and somecontinue to say that the policy violates medical ethics. They praised the useof the court order and sedation restrictions.....

"What you are seeing here is that the courts have proven once againthat sunshine is the best disinfectant," said Wade Henderson, a lawyer andthe president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on CivilRights in ....Washington.., ..D.C.........

Though the agency has dramatically reduced its use of Haldol to sedatedeportees, the practice remains controversial. ....

Haldol is used to treat schizophrenia and such psychotic symptoms ashallucinations, delusions and hostility. ....

It is sometimes used in hospital emergency rooms to manage acute agitationand psychosis. ....

Medical authorities say the use of Haldol carries potential complications.The drug can trigger such adverse reactions as muscular spasms and a conditionknown as neuroleptic malignant syndrome that can result in a coma and evendeath if left untreated.....

Scott Allen, an internist and co-founder of the Center for Prisoner Healthand Human Rights in ....Providence.., ..R.I.....,said he opposes sedation except for deportees with schizophrenia or othermental illness. ....

"The medical community needs to assert itself and make clear themedical ethics of involuntary chemical restraint: It is not acceptable,"he said.....

As for its decline in use, Dr. Allen said, "That is certainlyencouraging, but it enforces the impression they were overusing forcedmedication in the past."....

New policy....

ICE established the policy of requiring a court order for involuntarysedation of detainees during removal with "no exceptions" in January.ICE said it restated a policy from June 2007.....

Ms. Myers, who resigned as assistant homeland security secretary last month,said she moved toward a policy of "getting a court order so only in thenarrowest of circumstances would we proceed like this."....

She defined the narrow circumstances in which sedation would be used asthose in which the agency believes that "based on the advice of medicalprofessional, that this is the only way to have a safe and secure deportation,and a court agrees with that."....

The policy went into effect in June 2007 after the Los Angeles Daily Newsreported that two detainees had been forcibly drugged in an effort tosedate them for a deportation flight. ....

Last year, the ACLU sued the ....U.S.....government on behalf of the two immigrants, one from ....Senegal....and another from ....Indonesia.....Attorneys for the men believe both were given Haldol. The case was settled for$55,000 in total for the two, and the government admitted no wrongdoing orliability. ....

In November 2007, the federal government attempted to get a court order tosedate an Albanian man who resisted deportation and boarding from Dallas/FortWorth International Airport, screaming he would be killed if he were sent backto Albania. ....

The man, a political-asylum seeker, was aided by U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert,R-Tyler, who wrote a private bill that effectively stalled the Albanian'sdeportation until early 2009. ....

Government data....

The government's FOIA disclosures don't indicate whether all 384 sedationswere forced or voluntary. But government officials and lawyers who haverepresented deportees said it is clear that a significant number wereinvoluntarily sedated.....

"Immigrants are not animals," said Ahilan Arulanantham, the ACLUattorney involved in the lawsuit against Homeland Security.....

A FOIA request for government data for the five fiscal years prior to ..Oct. 1, 2002.., was deniedbecause the federal government said it was unable to locate any records.....

The issue of sedations drew further attention in May, when The WashingtonPost reported its use in more than 250 cases. ....

The report was based in part on information from the confidential medicallogs of deportees. ....

Even before the policy shift, the practice was used in a relative handful ofdeportations. In fiscal year 2007, more than 240,000 people went throughdeportation proceedings. ....

Race as a factor....

The documents show that sedation was used disproportionately againstAfricans, leading some to suggest that race was a factor.....

"The racial dimensions add a particularly troubling dimension to whatwas already an unacceptable regime of choices," said Mr. Henderson of theLeadership Conference on Civil Rights. ....

....U.S.....officials deny that race was a factor. ....

"Nationality is purely coincidental," said Ms. Reilly, the ICEspokeswoman. ....

Over the six years, nearly 40 percent of those sedated with Haldol wereAfricans. No other continent had that high a percentage. The cases cover aperiod from October 2002 through October of this year. ....

According to the federal data, sedations with Haldol were scattered amongdeportees from all over ..Africa.., but clusters can befound among deportees from ....Guinea....,....Nigeria...., ....Ethiopia....,....Senegal.... and ....Uganda.........

On their own....

Former ....Dallas.... resident StanleyUkeni of Nigeria was deported in October 2007 after overstaying a visitor visaby more than a decade.....

Mr. Ukeni pleaded with immigration officials to let him stay in the ....U.S.....,saying he had provoked the wrath of high-ranking officials in ....Nigeria....with human-rights work he had done there on behalf of the Ibo tribe. He said hefeared he would be tortured if he returned.....

According to Mr. Ukeni, immigration officials gave him a choice: He couldland in ....Lagos.., ..Nigeria....,sedated and manacled, or he could remain unsedated, fully conscious and betterable to protect himself from harm. He chose to go peacefully and avoidedsedation.....

In a phone conversation from a relative's home in ....Nigeria....,Mr. Ukeni said he would like to return "home" to ....Dallas....,where he has two small U.S.-born children with his girlfriend. E-mails from Mr.Ukeni and a letter from his Nigerian attorney asserted that Mr. Ukeni had beenabducted and severely beaten several times since his return.....

ICE officials would not discuss specifics of Mr. Ukeni's case. ....

But Ms. Reilly acknowledged that deportees are on their own once they arrivein their home country. ....

"When we remove a person from the ....United States....," she said, "our authorityover them ends when they leave an aircraft in their country of origin." ....

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-sedate_29nat.ART.State.Edition2.4a82d85.html....

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4. Connecticut Yankee finds calling in area of immigrationcourts ....

by Daniel Dullum....

..December 26, 2008......

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