7.1 ROGER, A DEPORTEE WHO WAS ACTUALLY A U.S. CITIZEN. SEVEN YEARS AFTER BEING DEPORTED, HE EVENTUALLY PROVED TO U.S. IMMIGRATION THAT HE WAS ILLEGALLY REPATRIATED (PHOTO: WILLIAM COSSOLIAS).

 

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

 

DEPORTED

 

I lost my residency for $15 after I worked for over ten years there! Taking money out of my check, they didn’t care about any of that. No, instead I’m deported to this country like a dog, without clothes or anything. Woken up at 4 am, “You’re going to your fucking country now!” Fuck that, man. They’re going to pay for that sooner or later. They’re going to pay because they’re doing too much injustice . . . tied up behind by the feet, by the hands, they don’t even give you food in the airplane. A small sandwich like this (puts his fingers together) and a small glass of soda and I’m tied to that airplane. To go to the restroom you have to be tied up, too. It’s an abuse. You’re a prisoner inside an airplane. What are you going to do, jump from up there?

(MR. S., DEPORTEE, APRIL 5, 2003)

 

DANNY: They deport more Dominicans than from other countries. Every week there are 50, 40, 30, every week, and this government doesn’t care about it. Every week it’s people and more people, more deportees. Next week about 70 will come for little things not worth it, for half a gram, deporting somebody, for half a gram! (Feburary 22, 2003)

 

AS DESCRIBED AT the end of chapter 6, the act of deportation is harrowing and deeply traumatic, not only for deportees but for their loved ones as well. In the criminological literature, this is sometimes referred to as “collateral damage” (Mauer and Chesney-Lind 2002; Petersilia 2003; Uggen and Manza 2002; and Travis 2002). This phrase is mostly used to explain the broader, unseen, and often unconsidered ramifications of sending the hundreds of thousands of men and women to prison in the United States as a matter of course. Little has been written about the social consequences of deportation, even though tens of thousands of U.S. residents who have significant social and cultural ties to the United States have been deported after they have completed their prison sentence for their crimes.

What does it feel like to be deported? How are the legal processes experienced? Who plays a role in this tragic saga? In this chapter we focus on the experience of being deported, the anguish of the deportee, the absurdity and inhumanity of the court room drama, the vindictiveness of the state, and the logics of immigrant social control policies.

In the rest of this book, we will critically analyze the act of exile, which is the “natural” result of the three wars on the globalized “other”: the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, and the war on the immigrant. In this analysis, we must remember the “bulimic” character of this process (Young 1999), i.e., the United States, in all its mythical splendor, culturally sucking in immigrants, socializing them in the factory system of schooling, feeding them the promise of social mobility, and then expelling them through a celebrated yet cruel performance of so-called due process. The actors and actresses play out similar roles on different stages of the criminal justice system across the United States every day of the week. Sometimes the immigrant subjects are not even given a court in which they can perform their role; for the sake of costs, some are granted only a video conference, during which they are told of their inevitable deportation by a judge hundreds of miles away.

We begin this chapter with a long, reflective field note taken during a deportation hearing for a Dominican-born man who had been living and working legally in Manhattan for twenty-seven years.¹ He and his family lived “just off Bleeker,” that fabled thoroughfare of the West Village where tens of thousands of immigrants have staked their claim to be “Americans.” This exposé of the courts and the legal process of deportation is followed by an analysis of five themes prominent in subjects’ experiential accounts: (1) resignation to one’s fate, (2) incompetent or fraudulent legal representation, (3) experience of the immigration detention camps, (4) legal resistance, and (5) the flight back.

 

Field Notes (February 13, 2006): We arrive at Eastern Correction facility in Ulster County, New York State, a fortress-like maximum security prison built for human disposables around the 1920s. The building is impressive in its colossal, symbolic might, peering over the Catskills like some hungry ogre. Nearby is the Ulster correctional facility, which houses the immigration court. I enter its doors through a reception area and undergo the usual inspections by its security personnel. As we walk back and forth through the security scanner while our bags, coats, and shoes pass slowly through an x-ray machine, the guard in charge emphatically announces: “No keys, pens, cell phones, or pills, just some papers needed for the court for those who are testifying.”

Meanwhile, lounging on two rows of padded black plastic chairs, seven guards are hanging around relaxed, friendly, and chatting while observing the events, perhaps this is the end of their shift or they are awaiting the beginning of it. The guard in charge returns to the business at hand.

“You’re here for the Delgado trial?” directing his question at me.

“Yes, and this is my assistant,” I responded, motioning to my colleague who is standing at my side.

“They only said one of you was coming. We only have a permission slip for one person. We’ve already had twenty-one of them come in. That’s the most we’ve ever had here for a court appearance. Usually it’s three or four but twenty-one! That’s almost more than our entire staff here sometimes,” he adds with a wry smile. “Isn’t that true guys,” he says, addressing his fellow workers. “Sometimes we only have seven people here on duty and there’s this family with twenty-one of them!”

“Well, I guess they’re all here to support him,” I retorted.

The guard glances up, raising his eyebrows, “I suppose so. I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. So you’re the expert witness, are you? You do a lot of this? I mean, you know a lot about this deportation thing?”

“Yes, I do a lot of it,” I reply. “I spent a year in the Dominican Republic seeing how deportees are living. It’s very difficult for them, very difficult. There are no jobs, the cops blame them for everything. They don’t have a chance.”

The guard looks at me straight on, shakes his head and says, “Crazy isn’t it? I mean, they’ve already done their bids and then they get this at the end of it. I guess they’ll have to come right back over here again, won’t they. You know, they’ll have to get in any way they can and just hope they don’t get caught cuz you know it’s another three years in the federal pen if they do.”

“Yes,” I said, somewhat taken aback at the guard’s sympathy and candor, “That’s what some of them do but then there’s a lot that stay over there and try to make it.”

Finally, he finds the permission letters, hands us each a visitors’ badge, and escorts us to an office positioned next to two security gates. There our hands get stamped with a special ink that can only be read by a special machine.

“There’ll be another guard here in a minute to escort you,” says our man-in-charge, “Here she comes now.”

Standing on the other side of the double gate is a tall, well-built Hispanic female who nods at us, then signals to someone in the security office. Suddenly, the gate on her side is electronically opened and she enters into a sort of no man’s land. The gate behind her abruptly closes, immediately followed by the gate in front of her opening. After several minutes of this security ritual she is standing next to us.

“You got everything?” she inquires.

I nod affirmatively, a little bemused at the question.

“Let’s go then,” she continues and gestures to a guard to open the gate again. Our escort is affable and jovial and we quickly strike up a conversation as we traverse the grounds.

“How long have you worked here?” I ask.

“Ten years,” she answers, “Came from Bedford Hills.”

“Yes, I know it. It’s the prison for female inmates,” I reply, “Did you like it?”

Her pace slows slightly as she turns her head toward me, as if for emphasis.

“The women? Oooh! They’re crazy,” she answers, elongating the word ‘crazy.’ “Compared to the men, pure crazy.”

“And here? How are the inmates here?” I respond.

“Here, they’re fine, no problem.”

We reach the immigration court via a path that passes between several inmate dormitories. For a prison (or a distribution center for recently adjudicated inmates mainly coming up from Rikers Island, which this is), the accommodation looks relatively cheery and clean. The surroundings are bucolic with snow-capped hills providing the backdrop and the sound of a rushing stream breaking the silence. Of course, I can’t help thinking how ironic it all is, the inmates so unfree while this beautiful wintry nature appears as free as a bird.

At the entrance to the immigration court building another guard greets us, inspects our visitors’ badges, and checks our names against a list. He then escorts us to a room where those asked to testify must congregate and wait to be called. While waiting, I talk to Mr. Delgado’s father, mother, niece, and fourteen-year-old son. The father and mother are clearly agitated, talking almost manically about the need for their son to come home and to put an end to this tragedy. They talk as if they are trying to wake up from a nightmare.

“He should never have pleaded guilty,” he says in a heavily accented Dominican Spanish, “the lawyers said if he pleaded guilty he would only do three years. He never said anything about being deported. He said he might have to do fifteen years if he didn’t plead guilty. My son didn’t do anything. He’s a good boy. He’s always lived with his mother and father. How can they do this to us? All he wanted to do was play baseball. When he couldn’t play anymore he started to drink. He started to get depressed. But why does it end up with this. Oh God, Oh Maria, we are good religious people, we go to church. He was raised a good boy. Why this?”

The father continues in the same desperate vein, speaking rapidly. He is not willing to accept what is happening or what might be about to take place. The mother is the same. She starts to pray and calls upon God to help reunite her with her son.

“I am an old woman, I have terrible blood pressure, I cannot take the stress. My heart, my heart can’t take it. I love my son. I don’t want to see him taken away. He’s my baby, my son, I can’t stand it, I can’t.”

The niece then starts to explain to me about the background to the case. She recounts how her uncle got into a physical altercation with someone in a bakery when he was drunk and how the owner of the bakery called the police two days later when her uncle returned to buy something.

“There was no evidence, nothing,” the niece intoned. “They couldn’t produce anything that he stole, nothing. There was no weapon. It was just this guy’s word and my uncle was drunk. My uncle is a good man. He wouldn’t hurt anyone. They forced him to do this, to say that he was guilty. You know how they do. We are a vulnerable people. We are Latino immigrants, when the lawyers tell these things to us we believe them. When they say that you’ll do fifteen years you believe them. To us they are the law. We are always afraid, always. That’s why he’s in this mess. It’s crazy. What kind of justice is this?”

Suddenly a guard appears, “A Dr. Brotherton? Is there a Dr. Brotherton here?”

“Yes, that’s me,” I said, and I bid my farewell to the family.

Inside the court room, seated along the back and the front side walls, are the rest of Mr. Delgado’s family members, including his five sisters, his seven-year-old son, his nieces, nephews, and brothers-in-law. It’s an example of the central importance of family in Dominican life, especially when this microcommunity is under such pressure.

The judge beckons, “Dr. Brotherton, please stand here and raise your right hand.”

“Do you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

“I do sir,” I said.

“Please take a seat,” said the judge.

The lawyer for Mr. Delgado looks at me, smiles and begins his cross-examination. He first asks me to describe who I am and what I do. He then asks a series of questions that revolve around whether or not deportees are likely to be tortured by the Dominican government or whether the police will torture them with the complicity of the government. I did my best to paint a picture that fitted this scenario but I couldn’t honestly say that torture is something deportees should expect. Rather, I said that in the present climate where deportees are being scapegoated, then it follows that the police who are often authoritarian and out-of-control will abuse them. It also follows that many will land back in prison, after being put in preventive custody. Given the nature of the Dominican prison system, its appalling lack of resources, and the normalization of brutality that goes on inside, it is likely that such deportees will suffer physical and psychological harm. The judge then countered that this was not the same as torture. Physical abuse and beatings by the police do not meet the criteria, he said. What was torture? It was the government-sanctioned use of extreme pain to extract information from a subject. It was the pulling out of people’s finger nails, the attachment of electrodes to people’s testicles, and the extraction of teeth without anesthetic. That was torture.

“As I have said, time and time again, Mr. Crichter (Mr. Delgado’s lawyer), you fail to make the case that deportees will be tortured at the behest of the Dominican government. Rather, you assert repeatedly that, in general, harm will come to these deportees. I have no doubt that the country we are sending them to is a bad place. I have no doubt that the deportees do not wish to go there and that life will be difficult for them. I have no doubt that for some of them it will lead to serious harm. But that, according to the law of the United States, is not the same as torture. If I were to allow such evidence, if I were to agree with you that that is torture, this appeal will simply be turned down at the next level, which is the Board of Appeals in Washington. They have done this to me already. I had a gentleman here who was going to be sent back to Barbados with full-blown AIDS. The man desperately needed his daily cocktails. His lawyer argued that if he were sent back there would be no chance that he would continue to be treated and therefore be kept alive. I agreed with him and I ruled that in such a case we would be sending this man to his death. The Board of Appeals disagreed with me and sent him to what I am almost certain was his death. That, Mr. Crichter, is the law of this land.”

The judge’s words unintentionally exposed and explained the depth of cruelty and injustice that characterize these policies. Here was one of the firmest believers in American law condemning its lack of morality and rationality simply by recounting the evolution of a case that he had just tried. I’m not sure how this was received by all who sat there, but for me it was absolutely clear that poor Mr. Delgado will assuredly be spending much of the next twenty years in a country he hardly knows.

“If you wish to stay here and watch the rest of the proceedings, Dr. Brotherton, then please do so,” said the judge.

“Thank you, your honor. I would very much like to observe the rest of the hearing,” I answered and took my seat in the middle of the court room.

“Who is your next expert witness, Mr. Crichter?” boomed the judge.

“I want to call Hector Delgado, the father of my client, judge,” said the lawyer.

The seventy-five-year old father entered the room escorted by a guard. He stood in the witness box next to the judge, who asked him if he spoke English.

“No, señor,” he answered, whereupon the translator, a dark-skinned, middle-aged Latina seated in front of me to my right, began to translate word for word, exclamation for exclamation, the statements of the next two experts in this hearing.

The lawyer for the defense began to ask Mr. Delgado about how many times he had returned to the Dominican Republic during the last ten years. Mr. Delgado answered that he used to go regularly while his parents were alive. His father lived to be 95 and his mother 104, he proudly stated. But when they died in the late 1990s he would go less, and then when his son got locked up in 2003 he hardly went at all. The lawyer then asked him about what he thought his son would be facing in the Dominican Republic. Mr. Delgado answered, “Nothing but crime and delinquency . . . nothing but hardship, problems, injustice.”

“Do you think your son will be tortured when he goes back?” asked the lawyer.

The father stood there and wondered for a while. He tried to grasp the real meaning of the question that in the eyes of the court, by saying yes this was the only way he could get his son to stay in this country. Finally, he said,

“Yes. He will face torture.”

“How do you know, Mr. Delgado?” asked the lawyer.

“Because that is the kind of place my country is. It is a place where the police kill people for nothing, absolutely nothing. They don’t care about anybody, especially the deportees.”

“Have you seen the police kill anybody?” asked the lawyer.

“Yes, I have,” answered the father.

“Can you tell us about it?” asked the lawyer.

“In the neighborhood where I used to live in Santiago I saw a jeep full of police come up and pull out their rifles and go boom, boom to some guy. He fell dead. I couldn’t believe it. I said to a neighbor, ‘What are they doing?’ ‘The police have just shot a guy,’ the neighbor said. I didn’t want to stay there. I moved away immediately.”

The father then makes a gesture with his hands as if he’s pushing away the words he had just uttered, as if brushing away a memory.

“So you actually saw the police kill someone?” said the judge.

“Yes, I did. I saw them kill this man and then bundle him into the back of a jeep and drive off. That’s what the police do in my country. That’s why I am so afraid to let my son, my only son go back there. I want him to stay here, judge. Oh God, Oh Maria, I want him to stay here with his family. Please, please, give him clemency. We are all known in our neighborhood. We have been here for thirty years. America has been good to us. We love America. We had nothing when we came here. My son drinks and gets depressed. The police, the police, they find him and bring him home. They say, “Mr. Delgado, look after your son. We found him drunk again. He’s got to take care of himself.”

At this point Mr. Delgado starts to visibly shake. The people around the room are now howling in tears. The sisters, the brothers-in-law, the seven year-old son, and the defendant, nobody is immune from the rising tension that has been created by the questions and by the desperation in the father’s creaking voice. The guard picks up a box of tissues and starts to hand them out. First one, then another, then literally dozens of tissues are being issued to the audience who cannot control their grief and sorrow. The judge then turns to the defense lawyer.

“Mr. Crichter, was all this necessary? Did you have to put this father through this? I am a man probably the same age or even older than Mr. Delgado and I have a son like Roberto. I feel for this man but he is unable to answer your questions in the way you would like. He has not been able to state factually that his son will face torture by the government when he returns and that is the crux of this case. So why do you put your witness through this? Why are you putting this family through this? Your job is to present a case to me, Mr. Crichter. You cannot help it if you don’t have a case and I am afraid you don’t have a case. We have been here now for four hours. Normally, this hearing would last one hour. But with all the family members here who have traveled so far from New York to see their brother, their uncle, their son and to support him, I have decided that this trial has to play itself out. There is no other way. But, I must tell you that I find it disagreeable and unnecessary to put people through such emotional turmoil and pain like this.”

“I’m sorry, judge,” says the lawyer, “I am just trying to show the court the probability of what faces my client. I have to work with what I have. I am just doing my job to the best of my ability.”

“Do you have any questions counsel?” the judge asks the lawyer representing the government.

“No, judge,” comes the reply.

“Mr. Delgado, please take a seat,” instructs the judge in a pleasant but firm manner.

The father walks somewhat bewilderedly back to the center of the room and sits down a couple of seats to my left. I look at him and smile but he fails to respond. His face expresses a mixture of disbelief, frustration, and anxiety. How can this be happening to him at this stage in his life? He has gone through countless hardships to raise his six children. He left the country of his birth in 1972, seven years after the Revolution, in the middle of the bloody Balaguer dictatorship, with his entire family. He never had another child in the United States. He has managed so far to keep all his family together. Everyone was doing so well with the exception recently of his son. His daughters got married, they had beautiful children, lots of them. He still lives in the same house as when he moved here in that fateful year . . . and now this. How could he prepare himself for this moment when the very country that he has believed in all these years, that gave him an opportunity to be somebody, to live decently, to experience joy and happiness, how can this country do this to him, to his son? It doesn’t make sense. It just doesn’t make sense.

“Who do you want to call now?” the judge asks of Mr. Delgado’s lawyer.

“I want to call the mother of Roberto Delgado,” the lawyer replies.

“Are we going to see the same thing, Mr. Crichter? Are you going to put her through this, too? Does she know what torture is? Have you schooled her? Have you?” asks the judge.

“Yes, I think so,” says the lawyer diffidently.

The mother is brought into the court room by the guard. She looks very tense, as if she is just holding it all together. On entering the witness box she goes through the ritual with the bible and sits down. The defense lawyer begins the questions.

“Do you follow what is going on in the Dominican Republic, Mrs. Delgado?”

“Yes, I try to,” she says.

“How do you do this?” asks the lawyer.

“Through listening to the news, through friends,” Mrs. Delgado replies.

“What do you think faces your son if he is deported to the Dominican Republic?” asks the lawyer.

“Delinquency, nothing but delinquency. Nothing good can come of this. I know he will face terrible things, I know this. My country will harm him, I know this.”

“Do you think your son will be tortured if he is returned?” asks the lawyer.

The mother just sits after the question is translated. She looks apoplectically at the audience. God knows what’s going through her mind, the question is too pointed, too harrowing to be answered.

“Do you understand the questions?” asks the judge.

Again, the mother just looks at the audience and pats her chest. She then begins to talk, as if channeling something from another universe.

“Yes, I believe something terrible will happen to him. I believe the police will hurt him. I can’t bear to think about it. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about this evil. Can I say something? May I say something?” the mother asks the judge.

“Yes, you may,” replies the judge as he looks down at his feet as if to communicate “here we go again.”

The mother then gets to her feet and raises her hands in the air as if praying in a Pentecostal church.

“Oh God, Oh Jesus, Oh Maria, I pray to you, release my son from this trial. Oh Judge, please forgive my son. Please have the power, the pity to allow my son to go free. Allow him to come back to his mother and father, that’s all we ask. He’s a good boy. He doesn’t mean ill to anyone. What use is this to take him away from us and his children. Please, please I beg you. . . .”

The mother continues for several more minutes, beseeching the judge to release her son. The family members are again sobbing uncontrollably, men and women alike are howling in grief. Even one of the guards, a bulky African-American man, is beginning to break down and I see tears start to run slowly down his cheeks. The mother suddenly stops, turns away from the judge and, looking glassy-eyed, collapses into the chair and closes her eyes. There is now pandemonium in the court room and the judge orders one of the guards to call a nurse. After about three minutes, the mother comes around, having fainted, and is holding her chest and breathing heavily. One of her daughters runs over and holds her head, stroking her hair gently and whispering softly that “everything’s alright,” which is about the furthest thing from the truth right now.

At this point a nurse comes into the room with another guard, and between them they get the mother to her feet and take her outside and place her in a chair. They are joined outside by someone who looks like a doctor with a stethoscope round his neck. The mother does not return to the room, and we find out later that she has been taken to the hospital where she is diagnosed with having suffered a mild heart attack. The judge, looking exhausted and exasperated, turns to the defense lawyer.

“Now what, Mr. Crichter? Now who are we going to have? Please don’t let’s go through this again. It is not helping your case. It is not helping Mr. Delgado.” But his questions are misdirected. It is not the family that doesn’t have a case, or the lawyer, but in a humane society it is the U.S. government that is on the wrong side of the ethical, rational divide, and everyone in the court room knows it. I would wager that even the guards would agree that this inflexible policy leading to mass social exclusion and family fragmentation, targeting mainly black and Latino communities, is senseless. There are no winners, only losers, and it is costing the U.S. tax payer hundreds of millions of wasted resources.

“I would like to call Jessina X. . . , the niece of Robert Delgado,” answers the lawyer, somewhat chastened by the flood of undermining comments from the judge and, of course, by the inability of most of his witnesses to speak to the almost impossible subject of torture.

The niece enters the door led by a guard and confidently strides to the witness box. I had spoken to her earlier, and she had told me that she had recently graduated from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. I asked her about the case and, though she was better informed than I was about the history, she had very little knowledge of the Dominican Republic except through the occasional holiday. Neither did she know too much about the finer details of the 1996 immigration act or the subsequent anti-terrorist acts, all of which were playing a role in the expulsion of her uncle. After swearing the oath and taking a seat, the questions begin once more.

“Do you understand what is facing your uncle, Roberto Delgado?” asks the defense lawyer.

“Yes, I do. I have read about cases like his on the internet and I have tried to do some research around the subject.”

“So you know that the only way we can halt your uncle’s deportation is through proving the probability of torture when he arrives there?”

“Yes,” says the niece, “I understand that this is his only chance.”

“So, what do you understand by torture?”

“Well, for me, it is the application of extreme forms of pain and punishment to someone in an attempt to get information and just to terrorize someone. This punishment can be physical, it can come from beatings but also from the denial of food to someone. It can also be psychological and emotional,” the niece makes an impressive statement and surprises me at how cool, calm, and collected she can be under the circumstances.

“Thank you,” says the lawyer. “So, do you think that this form of torture will be facing your uncle when he goes back to his homeland? If so, why do you think this will happen?” asks the lawyer, who is now beginning to regain some of his composure.

“Well, let me see,” says the niece. “I can’t say for certain that this will happen to him, but I do know how Dominican society feels towards deportees, and I do know how violent and brutal the police are. I can tell you that Dominicans think of deportees as less than human. They are nothing to them and are blamed for everything that goes wrong in the country. And if they are thinking this, then you can imagine what the police are thinking. The police simply treat them like dirt. They beat them, kill them, torture them, they do whatever they like to them.”

“How do you know this?” asks the defense lawyer.

“Because when I’ve been back there for holidays, when I’ve been staying in the capital, I hear what people say about them, and I have had dealings with the police just driving around,” answers the niece.

“Now hold on here,” says the judge. “None of this means anything. This has nothing at all to do with the conditions of torture that need to apply in this case. For a start, your definition of torture is all wrong. As I’ve said before, it is about pulling finger nails, taking out teeth, attaching electrodes to testicles . . . that’s torture. Not all this talk about being denied food and psychological punishment, that’s not what we’re talking about under this law. And as for giving testimony on the probability of torture, you’ve proceeded to talk about how bad the police are and how nasty the people can be toward deportees, but that’s irrelevant, absolutely irrelevant. You have to be specific, factual. Mr. Crichter, once again I must ask you, have you prepared your witness?”

“Yes, judge, as much as I could. I am just trying to show that. . . .”

“I know what you are trying to show, Mr. Crichter, and I am trying to keep this trial focused and it is proving impossible.” The judge then turns back to Ms. X. . . .

“Ms. X. . . , do you understand what I am saying?”

“Yes, judge. I understand what you are saying, but do you understand what I am saying? I think I understand what torture is and maybe it doesn’t satisfy the needs of this court and maybe I have it all wrong, but I don’t think so. It is this court that has it all wrong. If you want to know what torture is, this is torture. What you are doing to my uncle is torture. Look at it here! Look at what the laws are doing! It is tearing up our family. It is tearing my uncle away from his children, his mother, his father, and his loved ones. What justice is there in this? I have done my research. I have studied criminal justice and I don’t see any here today. There is torture, yes, and it is here. This is torture, but there is no justice.”

“Thank you, Ms. X. . . ,” says the judge. “I understand your feelings, you may step down. Who do we have next, Mr. Crichter?”

“I would like to call the son of Roberto Delgado, Roberto Junior.”

The new expert witness enters somewhat hesitatingly with his head bowed, led by a guard. He is a handsome boy with long, thick black hair. He stares at his father who looks back at him with great intensity and tears in his eyes. The judge is kindly toward him and gently asks him to take a seat after being sworn in. The judge turns to the lawyers and says, “Mr. Crichter, I am allowing this witness, but only for very few specific and direct questions. Do you understand? I want no repeats of what has gone on before.”

“Yes, judge,” says the lawyer, “I understand.”

“Mr. Delgado, do you understand what might happen to your father?”

“Yes,” says the boy, “he’s going to be deported.”

“And do you understand what is meant by torture?”

The boy looks at the lawyer and slowly looks down at his feet. After a while, he shakes his head. The judge says, “You have to say something, Roberto. You cannot just nod for the court.” The boy returns the judge’s look.

“No,” says the boy, “I don’t understand.”

The lawyer now looks down at his feet and shakes his head. It is interesting how bodily gestures are starting to mimic one another.

“Ok,” says the lawyer, “Ok, that’s enough. You may step down Roberto. Please step down.”

The boy looks up and turns to the judge. The judge says gently, “It’s ok, just take a seat.”

The boy goes to the middle of the room and sits behind his father. He cups his head in his hands and begins to sob, silently, his shoulders and upper body motioning up and down rhythmically, but there is no sound. As I look around, I see his little brother staring at him with tears running down his cheeks and his eyes swollen and red. It is heartbreaking for me, as I think of my own children and how they would be reacting if I were to be taken from them. The process is simply insane.

“Now, we have had all the witnesses, is that right Mr. Crichter?” says the judge.

“Yes, that’s correct, judge,” the lawyer answers.

“I have allowed this court all the time it takes to come to some kind of judgment. Up till now I see nothing that alters the opinion of the court that Mr. Delgado will be deported. He will be returned to his homeland after completing his sentence which, I believe, has five months more to run. Now, Mr. Delgado, before I fill out the forms confirming your deportation, do you have anything more to say?”

“Yes, judge, I do.”

Mr. Delgado stands up and looks around the room. Tears are in his eyes, and his face, too, is swollen from the strain and the crying.

“I want to tell you and my family that I am no thief. I’ve never taken anything from anyone in my life, not even a pair of nail clippers. What happened to me was wrong. It was a miscarriage of justice. I agreed to a plea for something I didn’t do. I thought I was gonna get a short sentence and then be released. I thought if I didn’t do that I was gonna get fifteen years, that’s what they threatened me with. No one told me I was gonna get this. Ok, I have a temper and I can get violent. It happens when I drink and I’d been drinking when all this happened. I don’t remember much about it except the guy gets the better of me and I go home. That’s about it. But I didn’t steal nothing from nobody. All I wanted to be was a baseball player, that’s all. I got a scholarship to some university but it didn’t work out. I didn’t get picked up and so I got depressed. I get very depressed and I start to drink. I know I need treatment for this but I don’t need jail and I don’t need to be torn away from everything I love. This is my life here. I’ve been here since I was a kid. This is all I know. Here’s my family right here. I don’t have no family where you wanna send me. What am I gonna do there? Where am I gonna live? How am I gonna see my children again? Where’s the justice in all of this?”

“Why, Mr. Delgado, didn’t you become a citizen like your sisters? Why?” asks the judge.

“Because I can’t read or write, judge. I knew if I took the test I wouldn’t be able to write down all those names of the states. I wouldn’t be able to write down the answers to all those questions that they were gonna ask me, that’s why. I got a scholarship to a college when I was a kid, somewhere in Oklahoma, to play baseball but they never taught me to read or write. It’s as simple as that.”

The words that come out of Mr. Delgado’s mouth are astounding. It’s as if this whole theater is an exercise in different levels of humiliation. I was thinking how much courage it took for him to make this statement. The bitter truth of his situation reveals itself in his suffering that happened long ago, not just in the last few years. The marginality of his race and class, the cynical, mass packaging of the American Dream, the shattered hopes of the parental immigrant generation, the children left fatherless, resentful and traumatized, these are all the truths embedded in his final plea. Only this time there was no bargaining. The decision was non-negotiable. Mr. Delgado didn’t even bother to ask for an appeal. At this moment he was a broken man. The unassailable logic of the immigration laws won the day. They had gotten their man. He was ejected with seemingly due process in the American way through the court system. Of course, objectively, the odds were massively against him from the beginning, but the appearance was maintained—as the judge often remarked, “This trial will play itself out.” As we exit the prison, I turned to the translator who had performed so magnificently throughout, never wavering in her concentration for a second.

“Do you do a lot of these hearings?” I ask her.

“Yes, all the time. I’ve been doing them for years,” she answers.

“It was quite a day, wasn’t it?” I follow up, rather inanely. “I bet these kinds of scenes are quite unusual aren’t they? I mean, the intensity of it.”

She looked at me a bit puzzled and then, in a quiet, matter-of-fact manner, she retorts, “No.” She said, “They are quite common. I work under these conditions very frequently. It is a very emotional job. I try to keep calm and professional, to be of maximum service.”

On the drive back to New York City, my colleague excitedly and vividly recounts how he experienced the day’s extraordinary events. After a while he begins to focus on a single, seemingly undeniable conclusion: “What kills me about this country is its self-representation. How it continually tells the world that it’s the freest, the most democratic place on earth and yet its practice is totally the reverse. What’s the difference between what this country is doing and what the Soviet Union was doing? Tell me, what’s the difference?”

 

 

EXPERIENCING THE LEGAL PROCESS OF DEPORTATION

 

There is a great deal we can learn from Roberto’s experience of the deportation process as he struggled to understand the irrationality and vindictiveness of society’s rules. For Roberto and his family, however, it is impossible to accept the finality of this action. It runs counter to their understanding of being “American” and of everything that this identity constitutes, i.e., legal legitimacy, justice, democracy, and opportunity. Roberto’s parents came from a country that, in their experience, possesses none of these qualities—this was an important reason for their original departure. To have the country of their dreams turn against them so many years later is unimaginable. To have this country so willfully and painfully fragment their family, an institution which is still the foundation of most Dominican sociocultural life, creates an existential crisis from which both parents will never psychologically recover—it may indeed hasten their deaths.

Roberto and his family are not the only victims in this scenario; it is clear that everyone connected with this act is somehow tarnished and diminished, their humanity harmed, undermined, and questioned. Even the judge, on the one hand a stickler for the Weberian execution of bureaucratic procedure and on the other a man protesting the pain that the family must endure, is caught in an impossible situation as he tries to make the court process accountable and transparent, doing his best to be an “American” who believes in the existence of “due process” and the neutrality of the law. The contradictions are there for all to see, a massive disjuncture between the most basic principles of human rights that one should not inflict harsh and undue punishment on others and the practices of the immigration legal codes. As we consider these data we need to remember that, as the Chicago school sociologists saw it, the more society turns to coercive mechanisms for social control, the greater the failure of the project. In this experience of expulsion, as remembered by the subjects, it is hard to discern who or what benefits from the current policies.

 

 

RESIGNATION TO ONE’S FATE—OR “WHAT YOU GONNA DO?”

 

The subjects had a clear understanding of the odds stacked against them in battling the system to win some kind of justice for themselves and their families. Many had spent years in prison, felt the discriminating opportunity structures of employment, discovered that school was often little more than a tracking device for skilled and unskilled labor, and lived in neighborhoods that always seemed to have fewer amenities and facilities than the well-to-do areas they passed through on the subway trains and public buses. When it came to the criminal justice system, they learned early that “their” knowledge of the receiving country’s culture is not what counts; in fact, it could condemn them to many years behind bars. They also learned that it is difficult to fight back (though not impossible) and that fatalism—another name for “knowing your place”—is a common condition of barrio and ghetto life. What else can explain why so many signed without protest the agreement to be deported during their prison stay? Was it simply the codified language of the dominant culture that assured this act of compliance, or was it another example of the power differential that shaped their everyday interactions with authority? The prisoners are expected to comply and they do; it is only some time after the fact that they more fully understand what they have done (Venator-Santiago (2005a) found that only 13 percent of his sample fought their cases).

 

ANDREAS: The DA (district attorney [added by the authors]) told my lawyers how I was gonna cut up for three years (accept a plea bargain with sentence [added by the authors]). He was like, “Are you sure you gonna cut up for three years? I was like, “Yeah, I’m gonna take that, I ain’t got no other choice, all I gotta do is my time. If they’re gonna deport me, they’re gonna deport me, at least I’m gonna be in my country.” But then on July 3rd I was in the Island (Rikers [added by the authors]) and a couple of DAs from Immigration wanted to see me. I was like, “Alright, first I need to speak with my mother and father,” because they didn’t know about anything. So I was calling my father and he was saying that he was gonna do his best to get me out and not let them deport me. But then he got mad at me. . . .

DAVID BROTHERTON (D.B.): Your dad got mad?

ANDREAS: He was like, “Don’t sign that.” I was like, “Yeah, I need to sign this, if I don’t sign I’m gonna stay over here like for two more years trying to fight this case and they still gonna deport me, so am I gonna lose two more years of my life? No.” So I signed out quick. (May 27, 2003)

 

JUAN: I cut a big deal, you know what I mean, and I only spent eight months.

D.B.: You were supposed to do seven years but you only spent eight months?

JUAN: Yeah, because I signed.

D.B.: Did you know what you were signing?

 

Juan: Yeah, I just wanted to get out. (March 1, 2003)

GUIDO: When I went to court to see the judge, they didn’t even take the handcuffs off, they didn’t take nothing, I’m telling them: your honor, can you please take these off? He said, “We can’t do that.” But I said, “Look, you have about 300 cops around here, where am I gonna go, with guns and everything.” They said, “No.” I couldn’t even write, I couldn’t sign a paper, nothing, you know, so I was telling them, I said, “Your honor, but who’s gonna take care of my kids?” They said, “Don’t worry, the government will take care of your kids. . . .” I said, “But it’s not the same. You’re not gonna be there like a father.” He said, “You was in jail for such and such amount of time, so what are you telling me now? Who was there when you was in jail doing whatever?” I said, “But your honor, I already paid for what I did, now you’re gonna send me back to the Dominican Republic, why would you that?” He said, “I can’t help you, you’re gonna have to go.” At first I told him that I didn’t wanna come to this country, so they said, “Which country do you wanna go to?” I told them, “I wanna go back to England.” (laughs) He said, “You really want to go back to England? The process is about six months.” I said, “I gotta stay six more months in jail?” He said, “Yep, and we gotta send a letter over there to see if they accept you. Do you have any family over there?” I said, “No, but I don’t wanna go to the Dominican Republic, I wanna go to England.” So they said, “Ok, now you’re gonna have to wait six months and then we have to write to the Prime Minister to see if they’re gonna accept you, and they are probably not gonna accept you (laughs).” So I said, “Ok, I wanna go back to my country.” They wasn’t gonna send me, right? I’m asking you. (May 26, 2003)

 

 

INADEQUATE OR FRAUDULENT REPRESENTATION

 

As noted in earlier chapters, a large part of being poor and living in the cultural margins is reflected in the access one has to legal resources, especially when confronting the state in a legal matter. Immigrant communities are particularly vulnerable as a result of language differences, and many members of this population rely on neighborhood law offices to protect their interests and help them negotiate the various interlocking systems of criminal justice, welfare, immigration, education, and so forth. Sometimes, immigrants who find themselves in “trouble” with the law are afforded legal representation at the public’s expense, such as Legal Aid in New York City. In such circumstances, there is a reasonable chance they will get decent counsel from skilled and committed professionals. Professionals in the public system are often overextended, however, due to increasing case loads and a lack of adequate public financing, and we consistently heard complaints about the quality of representation and sometimes no representation (ten of the original sixty-five respondents claimed to have been defrauded by their lawyers). Of the total sample, only three respondents spoke positively of their representation, which is extraordinary given the gravity of the legal predicament facing each of them.

 

D.B.: You spent three years?

MIGUEL: In immigration.

D.B.: Where?

MIGUEL: In Buffalo.

D.B.: Upstate New York?

MIGUEL: Yeah.

D.B.: Why did it take three years to fight your case?

MIGUEL: Almost more than the time they gave me.

D.B.: Why did it take so long?

MIGUEL: Because, I got a private lawyer, my wife helped me out. He was putting appeals in. He said, “You got a good chance for staying in New York.” So I got in one year, and I was deciding I wanted to leave but my wife and family said, “You waited one year, you can wait more.” But working in there, taking all that time, seeing no chances, I couldn’t do no more.

D.B.: Must have cost a lot of money!

MIGUEL: Yeah, I paid like almost $5,000 dollars. But he was a fucking thief lawyer, he kept saying, “You’ll get out, you’ll get out.” But you never get out. (January 25, 2003)

LUIS2: Well, the lawyer that I had, I sued him because when I was incarcerated he told me, “Get me $2,500 because I’m getting you out.” The mother of my friend, the one I was in prison with, got me the $2,500. Then he lied to me because he kept all the money and didn’t help me at all. Then he continued working for the court and took my money. I sued him, I still have the papers. The court answered saying that the lawyer had been suspended for a year due to malpractice. I couldn’t continue with the suit because of my English and lack of experience. Some of the terms I’ve forgotten. I wasted a lot of time writing from here to see if I could take the case forward. Then I stopped the whole thing because I didn’t have, how do you it say it, the means! (April 2, 2003)

 

Consequently, it was not surprising to hear subjects talk about being “tricked” into signing their deportation papers because they did not fully understand the immediate and long-term consequences of their action. Their main complaints were that they (1) were rarely given sufficient time to think about their choices, (2) had few people with the appropriate knowledge with whom they could consult, (3) had insufficient time to consult with family members, and (4) possessed insufficient education and knowledge of the English language to fully comprehend their legal standing or their rights. In Roberto’s case, it is clear that he had a lawyer who was willing to fight for him and a family who was going to support him, but this was an exception to the rule. In the majority of cases, the subjects were alone in trying to come to terms with something that was almost impossible for them to grasp, either conceptually or emotionally. Therefore, many subjects felt resentful at their treatment, in contrast to those above, who had come to accept the hopelessness of their new reality.

 

D.B.: Did you have any idea about the process?

SANTO: No, no.

D.B.: You had no idea from before.

SANTO: Let me explain to you. They took me to the immigration jail; I lasted six months there, fighting the case. Then, the last time the judge goes, “Look, even if you fight the case, we’re going to deport you. It’s useless for you to fight ‘cos you’re leaving for your damned country.” The judge told me just like that. He told me not to fight the case and that I was leaving for my damned country. Then, I started to think and said to myself, “It’s ok I’m going to leave.” Then he told me, “Sign here.” I didn’t know what I was signing because he didn’t even give me the papers for to read. I signed without knowing that it was about the deportation! After he said, “That’s your deportation. Do you understand me?”

D.B.: During this time you didn’t have any legal notification from a lawyer who was sitting by your side. . . .

SANTO: A court lawyer, but it’s theirs, from immigration! The lawyer told me, “Regardless, you’re going to your country, don’t start fighting the case here.” And the judge said, “Regardless you’re going to your damned country, don’t try fighting your case.” In three days, they called me and deported me.

D.B.: Three days! Did you call your family?

SANTO: I called my family, but it was too far—they didn’t have time to come and see me. I didn’t know what, when, or who were going to deport me. Then around 4 am the security police came to wake me up, “You’re leaving for your country.” At 4 am! I came like this here without anything. If he had given me the papers I would have looked for someone to study the case, and I wouldn’t have signed without knowing what it was. That was just a trap to get me. (May 3, 2003)

TONY2: I didn’t know I was going to be deported because the previous time they even gave me work release. That was my second time back when they were deporting others, but they didn’t deport me. They even gave me a break and sent me back to the street. It wasn’t until my third court hearing that I got deported. But I didn’t expect this because by this time I was married, had a kid over there, a little boy, so I thought they was gonna give me a break. But they didn’t care—I’m just another Dominican who sold drugs. (April 1, 2003)

 

 

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE IMMIGRATION DETENTION CAMPS

 

Investigative journalist Mark Dow (2005) has written extensively on conditions in the ever-proliferating detention camps of the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).² Dow spent time at one of the biggest of these camps in Florida as an English teacher, and he described these camps as follows:

 

The Krome Detention Center of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service is a sprawling complex at the edge of the Everglades. . . . The despair and frustration of the prisoners at Krome were unmistakable. . . . As I drove back to Miami Beach my mind’s eye retained the image of large groups of mostly dark-skinned prisoners sitting around a yard or in a cement-block building in their bright orange uniforms—what my student referred to in his poem as his “uniform of contempt.” Before the hopelessness that pervaded Krome had dissipated I would be back on the familiar freeways, passing the usual strip malls and subdivisions; in an hour I would be on the beach. I had realized that Krome was invisible.

(DOW 2005:1)

 

Practically all of the subjects had spent some time in camps such as these, often in states much further away from their families than where they were previously incarcerated. None of these subjects spoke positively about these facilities; rather, they recalled overcrowded conditions, a lack of recreational opportunities, rampant abuse by prison guards, a general atmosphere of despair among the detainees, and the gradual if not immediate recognition that their experience of the justice system would not improve during this last stage of their detention. Juan sums it up:

 

D.B.: You were waiting there to see the immigration judge.

JUAN: No, I was already deported by the judge. But we just had to wait to get a ticket.

D.B.: And how was that? Was jail any different to the prison?

JUAN: That was worse!

D.B.: Much worse?

JUAN: Yeah, they used to have riots over there all the time and they do things just to bother inmates.

D.B.: What sort of things?

JUAN: Lots of different things. The food was very bad, they got a lot of rules, they were abusive to most of the people that go there from prison or from the feds. No good treatment. No, they’re accustomed to work with guys from the street. They think that people from prison have to be treated in the same way. But most of the people that go to immigration prison just want to leave and get out. We’ve just tired of being in custody. (March 10, 2003)

 

 

LEGAL RESISTANCE

 

There were, however, ten subjects who decided to fight their case, taking the system at its word and making use of the appeals process. Four did so with the aid of a lawyer, and six tried their best without professional representation. To take on such a responsibility requires a great deal of self-confidence and courage. It also requires a level of education that most of the study participants lacked. In addition, there were three participants who fought to have their sentences reduced in prison, arguing that they had been inadequately represented. These three were successful towards the end of their sentence; these successes might have been helped along by judges responding to the increased pressures to reduce both prison costs and overcrowding.

Guido discussed how he acquired his knowledge and motivation to fight. Although he did not succeed, he at least won some respect for his endeavors, and in his eyes he had somehow resisted the status quo and forced the system to take him a little more seriously.

 

GUIDO: I not once heard anything concerning long-term legal residents, not one thing. When I got parole, a couple of Spanish guys from El Salvador used to tease me, telling me, “You going back, shit, they’re gonna send you back so fast.” I said “Look, you believe I’m a fucking idiot? I’ve been here nineteen years.” And they said, “I know a guy like that, wait and see, they got so many laws waiting for you.” And when the guys from immigration picked me up, a Dominican guy and a Puerto Rican guy, the Dominican guy tried to play with me. He wanna be Puerto Rican, I guess, ‘cause he had this resentment toward his own people. He was very rude and disrespectful. I asked him whether or not they were gonna send me back. He said, “Yeah, we’re gonna send your ass back, you can forget about it, it doesn’t matter if you’ve been here 50 years, you’re going back!” In the bus I met this gentleman—I’ll never forget his name. He was locked up in Greensville Penitentiary, Peter Bernard, from a small island in the Caribbean, St. Lucia. This guy did twelve years, just got out on armed robbery after he had done another bid prior for like six years. This individual was one of the smartest individuals I ever met in my life, especially when it came to law. He was a jailhouse lawyer. He showed me how to study the law books, helped me to stay interested in fighting my case. I learned how to read the law, look up files, and I started to write to the American Immigration Law Foundation. From the time I was transferred to Immigration and Naturalization Service custody, I used that whole time to study, learning everything about 212(c), retroactivities, the decision regarding retroactivity in the Supreme Court. . . . I had no choice at the time; my mother was dying of cancer and I had hired a lawyer for my board hearing, but I noticed the guy’s level of competence and motivation were very low, so I said, “Shit, no one is gonna help me but me, so I gotta learn this myself, and show these people I’m able.” So I studied those laws, I learned those laws to the point that I had the judge and the prosecutor looking through the books to understand my interpretation and to understand my arguments. . . . I appealed early but I lost after like I won. I left there showing you might have deported me and ruined me but still the judge said to me, “I’ve never seen no one coming in front of me defending themselves as you have. They didn’t expect that.” (May 22, 2003)

 

 

7.2 DEPORTEES ARRIVING AT A SANTO DOMINGO AIRPORT ON FLIGHTS FROM THE UNITED STATES THAT ARRIVE TWICE EACH MONTH (PHOTO TAKEN FROM THE INTERNET, PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN).

 

 

THE FLIGHT BACK

 

Finally, there is the flight back to the Dominican Republic. Their long wait in the prison cells of the United States is over, and the deportees are escorted by federal marshals on a commercial flight bound for Santo Domingo, to be delivered to officials of the Dominican Department of Deportation on the other side. The journey was full of contradictions. On the one hand, many of the subjects felt relieved that it was all over; they had emerged from prison intact and were now ready to start life anew. Others experienced pure dread as they returned to a place that they were no longer familiar with, where they had little to no family or social support and no economic prospects, and were often nursing quite serious medical and mental health problems. It is possibility and hope juxtaposed with anxiety and despair. Luis1 and Luis2 provided two examples of the fortunate ones. Luis1 still had his large, extended family waiting for him; Luis2 had very little family, but what he did have was crucial for his resettlement.

 

LUIS1: All my family helped me tremendously when I returned. They accepted me, gave me a roof, helped me out with money even though they have very little, and just helped me become part of the community again. (April 6, 2003)

 

LUIS2: So they said, “Ok, you may go back.” They put me in another jail, and from there they put me on a plane. While we were in the bus we were handcuffed for about nine hours, uncomfortable like this.

D.B.: Totally unnecessary?

LUIS2: Totally unnecessary. From 4 am to about 11 am or 1 pm.

D.B.: So you came off the plane handcuffed.

LUIS2: I was still handcuffed in the plane.

D.B.: When did they take the handcuffs off?

LUIS2: About ten minutes to land before they took them off. Then they took me over to the police plaza. Boy, it was hectic there, but they actually let me go the same day.

D.B.: After only a few hours.

LUIS2: Yeah, they took me to my house. They said, “Give me an address.” So they drove me over, and then from there over to here now.

D.B.: Who was here to help you when you came?

LUIS2: My cousin, if I wouldn’t have found that cousin, they wasn’t gonna let me go. Actually, I didn’t have no family over here. I have nobody over here. I’m just living off what my family sends me. I live in my cousin’s house, but he’s not here—he lives in the United States. I stay in his house and I don’t pay no rent, but if it wasn’t for them I’d be sleeping maybe right here, you know (points to the park bench). I don’t think my family is gonna leave me, I think that’s how it’s gonna be, you know. (May 7, 2003)

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

The data in this chapter reveal much about the invasive properties of the security state today as well as the lived culture and practices of repressive immigration policies. Although these “data” shed a humanistic light on the processes of immigrant incorporation and removal, which are often obscured by legal discourse, they also raise some important issues about the state of contemporary immigration theory and its departure from one of sociology’s founding concepts: social control.

We have examined the multiple levels of experience of this final part of the social exclusion process of the deportees by following them through the immigrant court proceedings and their efforts to defend themselves through whatever devices are left to them. We have also documented their extremely conflicted experience on the return flight to their “enforced” homeland. Now they will have to adapt. For some, it is another process of acculturation; for others, it is a period of social and cultural rejection. Miguelito’s expression of a common deportee sentiment provides an appropriate end to this chapter.

 

D.B.: Is there anything else you want to add?

MIGUELITO: I think at least if you’re gonna deport someone, make it for a fucking capital crime. You deserve to get another chance ‘cause they’re selling you a lot of dreams over there. “Do your work,” “Go and join this program,” “You wanna be a new man? Put all your effort into your new life.” This is what they tell you again and again, and yet you do all this and you still end up getting separated from your family. You’re fucked! People have to think about all of this and why they give us no real reason for kicking us out for the rest of our lives. You’re a resident of that country, that means you live there, forever! I understand if you killed somebody, or if you’ve done a bad crime, you know what I mean. Under the law they can even kill you. That’s OK, I suppose, I understand that. But selling a few drugs! Or maybe even using drugs or whatever! Or for getting a traffic ticket! You get deported for this bullshit! (January 25, 2003)