Immigrant Detainee Dies, and a Life Is Buried, Too

[The Stranger]

Source: New York Times

The hand-scrawled letter from a New Jersey jail was urgent. An immigration detainee had died that day, Sept. 9, 2005, a fellow inmate wrote in broken English, describing chest pains and pleas for medical attention that went unheeded until too late.

“Death ... need to be investigated,” he urged a local group that corresponded with foreigners held for deportation at the jail, the Monmouth County Correctional Institute in Freehold. “We care very much because that can happen to anyone of us.”

. . . .

Inquiries by the local group were rebuffed by jail officials. Complaints forwarded to the Department of Homeland Security were logged, then forgotten. And when pressure from Congress and the news media compelled Immigration and Customs Enforcement to produce the first list of people who had died in their custody, the Freehold case was not on it.

The difficulty of confirming the very existence of the dead man, Ahmad Tanveer, 43, a Pakistani New Yorker, shows how death can fall between the cracks in immigration detention, the rapidly growing patchwork of more than 500 county jails, profit-making prisons and federal detention centers where half a million noncitizens were held during the last year while the government tried to deport them.


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/nyregion/03detain.html?_r=1&hp

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A new Gulag arising out of the Prison Industrial Complex.

[babylonsister]

1. Kick. Life shouldn't be treated this cheaply. nt

[UndertheOcean]

2. This makes me sick

[Sultana]

3. Immigration officials are such SOBs

RIP, Mr. Tanveer

There needs to be an end of these privately owned prisons.

[BrklynLiberal]

4. There was a very informative show on Leonard Lopate, WNYC, about this subject.

It involved an American of Mexican descent..born in the US, who was held prisoner for 13 months, even AFTER a judge has ruled his American citizenship to be in no doubt. While it was being appealed he was forced to stay in prison...thru several appeals. It was one of those PRIVATELY run prisons, in Arizona. He had been arrested in CA.
I can only assume these prisons get paid for each day every person is held there, so it is to their advantage to keep someone there for as long as possible, no matter what the true situation might be.
The only thing that finally saved this man was his ability to speak and understand English. He said that there were many detainees in prison with him who did not have this advantage. These folks were put into prison with murders, rapists, bank robbers, etc. They are supposed to be kept segregated from the general prison population.

The Prison Industrial Complex is getting more and more horrific.

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/episodes/2009/04/01/segments/127586

Over the past decade, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has accelerated its detention of lawful permanent residents, asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants. Many of these detainees wait for months-- or even years-- without a hearing. Larry Cox is Executive Director of Amnesty International. He’ll be joined by Hector Veloz, a U.S. citizen who was held in migrant detention for 13 months, even after he produced documentation proving his citizenship.

[AlphaCentauri]

5. more details

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3812708