As told by Alison Parker, Director of the US Program
Gabrielle Nguema stoically answered my questions as I sat across the desk from her in Florence, Arizona's Pinal County jail. It was only May, but the small room was hot and Gabrielle's round face glistened with sweat.
Gabrielle had lived behind bars here for two years as an asylum seeker from Guinea who faced possible deportation. Her small daughter - whom she had brought to the United States to protect from genital mutilation - was more than 1,000 miles away in Cleveland, where they used to live together.
In the United States, immigrants facing deportation are increasingly transferred to remote lock-ups, far from their families and their lawyers. But thanks to pressure put on key players by Human Rights Watch, this may change.
Physically, the prison atmosphere was harsh, with the heavy clanking of gates and cement floors. But for Gabrielle, the psychological trauma of being separated from her elementary-school-age daughter intensified her misery. Gabrielle hadn't seen her little girl since being transferred from the Cleveland detention center two years ago. She couldn't afford her daughter's plane ticket.
"She cannot understand why I am here," Gabrielle said. "What do I tell her? She asks my brother where I am. Sometimes she asks him, ‘Why doesn't mom want to be with me?' "
I was interviewing Gabrielle for the report, Locked up Far Away, which criticized the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency's practice of transferring immigrants to remote locks ups - often to parts of the country unequipped to handle their legal needs. A researcher from the women's rights division, Meghan Rhoad, was also interviewing Gabrielle, but about her access to health care.
Between 1997 and 2006, about 1.6 million immigrants facing deportation were transferred to detention facilities far away from their families as well as their lawyers, making their legal defense much more difficult. The practice has been growing, and when the figures for 2008 come in, they are expected to show the highest transfer rate yet.
One reason for the transfers is to save money: the government hires subcontractors to house the detainees in inexpensive parts of the country. The subcontractors, in turn, often transfer detainees between facilities.
Of course, sometimes transfers are necessary to prevent overcrowding or to allow access to medical care. But transfers of convicted prisoners are much better regulated and rights-protected than transfers of immigrants facing deportation.
Detainees like Gabrielle are not allowed to call anyone - lawyers or families - before being moved. Attorneys with decades of experience told me that they had not once received prior notice from ICE of an impending transfer.
"I cannot overemphasize the psychological trauma to these people," Rebecca Schreve, an immigration attorney in El Paso, Texas, told me. "What it does to their family members cannot be fully captured either. I have taken calls from seriously hysterical family members - incredibly traumatized people - sobbing on the phone, crying out, "I don't know where my son or husband is!' "
The vast majority of immigrants facing deportation are men. But women face specific problems when separated from their children.
"With men, there's definitely an impact, but with women it takes over their entire being," said Holly Cooper, an immigration lawyer and law school professor at University of California, Davis. "Anybody who works with women detainees who have been transferred away from children will tell you it's so much more emotionally taxing for them."
It was hard for Gabrielle to tell me why she had to leave Guinea. She would start and stop, look at the ground, and talk in euphemisms. "Some bad things happened in my home country," she would say. But I asked the question several different ways, and finally she told me that she had been "cut down there" - subjected to female genital mutilation. She wanted to save her daughter from that fate, so they fled together to the United States.
They had been living in Cleveland for nearly two years when Gabrielle was caught shoplifting from the local mall. Gabrielle was undocumented, leading ICE to detain her. She was shipped to Arizona a couple of months later.
That was two years ago.
From a legal standpoint, Gabrielle would have had a better chance of winning her case in Ohio. The courts in that part of the country would have been more likely to recognize her grounds for asylum, but the law in this part of Arizona was less favorable.
She had a pro bono lawyer in Ohio, but couldn't afford one a lawyer in Arizona. Gabrielle - who speaks fluent French, but has difficulty speaking English - intended to defend herself in immigration court.
Immigrants who have been transferred by ICE frequently face even tougher legal hurdles.
Most detainees are transferred to remote parts of Louisiana, Texas and California. These states have the lowest ratio of immigration attorneys to immigration detainees in the country. It's not surprising that in 2008, 60 percent of non-citizens appeared in immigration court without counsel.
But things may change. Since the release of Locked Up, Senator Patrick Leahy has introduced a bill called the "Refugee Protection Act." I met with his staff a few days after the report's release, and the bill includes two of our recommendations. It would limit ICE's ability to transfer detainees who already have attorneys, and it would require the government to start deportation proceedings in the place the person was arrested, making a trial close to home more likely.
Similar provisions were included in the outline for comprehensive immigration reform legislation released on April 29 by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senators Charles Schumer and Robert Menendez.
Additionally, ICE wrote Human Rights Watch a letter, promising to transfer immigrants between detention centers as little as possible.
Gabrielle looked exhausted as we wrapped up the interview, with large, triangular bags sagging under her yes.
"My life, my daughter's life, are in limbo," Gabrielle said. "Sometimes I send a letter to her," Gabrielle said. "I try to tell her in the letter to be good, to do this, do that ... not do this or that. She is very smart. Her teachers like her. Even her principal sent a letter to ask that I be released from detention for my daughter's sake."
