Of By and For The People

A New Hampshire Yankee on ICE

Chapter II - SKETCHES OF DEPORTATION

When Audrius was taken by ICE I thought, like everyone else, that immigration enforcement was mostly a matter of catching and deporting people who had come here illegally to work in low paying jobs like agriculture, garment manufacturing, child and elder-care, the horse industry, landscaping, janitorial and housecleaning services and other similar jobs that could not sustain a work force at minimum wage or provide legal working conditions, while keeping costs within an affordable range for the average American who uses their labor or consumes their finished products. I knew I had economically benefited from immigrants living and working here illegally myself, so I wasn’t quick to jump on the “they should get in line and come here legally” bandwagon, but at the same time, I could understand the sentiment. Why couldn’t they take a little extra time and just come legally? How hard could that be?

I understood why Audrius had made the choice he made, but his was an exceptional situation. That is what I thought I knew. Unfortunately it was a myth. The truth was much more complex, much more heartbreaking and it brought a new, sinister meaning to the phrase “good enough for government work”. With mistakes on visa and citizenship paperwork more the norm than the exception, family visa applications in Mexico backlogged over 20 years, as well as a tendency by ICE agents to target both illegally and legally employed immigrants living peacefully with their families who may or may not have a minor infraction on their record at some point in the last 30 years, the legality of any immigrant in this country has no bearing on the issue. Living and working here as a legal resident is no protection from being imprisoned and deported; neither does citizenship, even citizenship obtained by being born on U.S. soil to a family that goes back generations. Those of us who are citizens think of immigration in terms of legality so we assume it means something to our government, but to ICE it has no bearing on their actions. The only thing that matters is: “Can we detain and deport this person somehow?”

ICE is not some valiant front line of protection standing between us and dangerous drug cartels or Russian mobsters. Our police, FBI, and sometimes Border Patrol does that. ICE agents are not quick to pick up actual unemployed immigrants engaged in current violent criminal activities unless the police have already disarmed and arrested them. Usually, once some other branch of law enforcement has encountered an immigrant who is here illegally or legally and taken them into custody on some sort of suspicion, ICE will move right in, pick him/her up and start the deportation process. If that person is an actual criminal and does not have a lawyer savvy enough to prevent it ICE usually takes them before trial and circumvents all criminal proceedings and any sentenced prison time completely.

Those who are subject to these tactics are the unlucky ones because, while criminals have full access to our justice system, immigrants do not; while the housing and care of criminal prisoners is dictated by legally enforceable standards, immigration detention is not. Immigration hearings are held in closed courtrooms run by judges working for ICE. Detainees have no right to legal council as the Supreme Court has found that they are not being punished or denied liberty. A number of ICE prosecutors will not hesitate to withhold or hide documents or evidence that would be in an immigrants favor. Justice is not the goal, deportation is. Both prosecutors and judges work under sweat-shop like conditions. One immigration judge likened it to trying death penalty cases in traffic court. There are a number of good judges and prosecutors within this system trying to do a decent job, but they are working in impossible conditions. ICE detention centers are nothing more than prison units contracted out by the federal government. The guidelines as to how detainees are to be housed and cared for are not legally enforceable and there is no visible attempt to bring detention centers into compliance. Immigration detention is rife with human rights abuses and atrocities, some resulting in the death of the detainee, but for each one that dies, hundreds more survived the same or similar conditions.

ICE is not quick to deport detainees once they have them in custody. It is not uncommon for a criminal to spend more time in ICE custody waiting to be deported than he or she would have if they had been tried in a court of law, been found guilty and done their time. This might not seem so bad if all those who are detained this way were, in fact, guilty of the charges, but with immigrants, the rule is guilty until proven innocent and without a trial, there is no way to know who should be locked up and who should not. Add to that the fact that the cost for keeping an immigrant in ICE detention is far higher than the cost for maintaining a criminal prisoner in better conditions in the same prison, and the reason for ICE’s incredibly “reasonable” offer to immigrants to just skip the courts and take the deportation becomes clear. It is good and profitable business for those who own a financial stake in and/or run our privatized prisons and have contracts with ICE. It is not good for those charged with a criminal act. Legal, illegal, innocent or guilty; it’s all the same to ICE, just another immigrant to lock up and eventually deport.

Actually, since most of these people have never been found guilty in a court of law, once criminal charges are dropped (because ICE detention prevented their trial or because the police found the actual culprit was someone else) they enter a no-man’s land where they can be held indefinitely. They are not being held on criminal charges and they are not citizens of this country, so ICE can do with them whatever they wish – and they do. As of July, 2009 – 19,000 of the 33,000 prison beds reserved for ICE detainees were reported to be filled by immigrants being held on indefinite civil detention. That is to say, they were guilty of no crime, were not criminals in the eyes of the law and could be kept in prison for as long ICE agents chose to keep them in far worse detention conditions. Many have sat in prison doing hard time for no crime this way for years. Some have decided escape through suicide is all they have left and have taken their life by their own hand.

In reality many of the immigrants who are actually criminals are legal residents who have been picked up with a joint, taken in for public drunkenness, got in a barroom fight, were picked up for shoplifting a pack of cigarettes or some other minor infraction. Others now sit in detention or have already been deported because of something that happened as much as 30 years ago. If there was a sentence, the immigrant has long since finished serving it, returned to society, married and raised a family. To ICE, none of this matters; a crime committed last week or two decades ago and already paid for is equally deportable. They are able to do this because in 1996 Congress passed and then President Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA) that changed what constituted a deportable criminal conviction from one bearing a sentence of five years or more to minor convictions for simple infractions resulting in as small a sentence as a year and a day of probation. They made this change retroactive, so that immigrants living and working legally within the U.S. for years were suddenly subject to deportation due to something they might have done as a teenager decades ago. This has resulted in literally tens of thousands of mostly American citizen families suddenly loosing an important and necessary member of their family.

Some of the saddest cases are legal immigrants who came here as small children, know no other county or language and have been picked up because they were the same ethnicity as a description of an offender that the police are looking for. They might not have the same height, weight, features or clothes, but if the police seek a Middle Eastern man in his early 20s with a white shirt and brown pants, a Middle Eastern looking college student with a Celtics t-shirt and blue jeans may do. There is no reason to worry about proving he’s guilty. If he’s an immigrant the charges can be dropped and it won’t matter. Once ICE has someone in custody, they have few rights and even fewer chances of living on American soil with their families and friends ever again.

There are, of course, some actual criminals detained by ICE and they do sometimes even get deported eventually, but generally ICE prefers to troll subway platforms, bus stations, police stops and prisons for anyone with an accent, or “foreign” look or name . . . or to raid a meat-packing plant or a family home. They don’t seem terribly keen on dealing with armed and violent criminals while those criminals are still on the street. I can certainly understand how they feel, but I am not drawing a pay check or carrying a gun for the purpose of ridding our streets of dangerous felons who happen to be immigrants. Our present administration has made it clear that ICE is supposed to be focusing their resources on dangerous criminals. At this time, only 10% of immigrants held in federal detention fit those criteria.

Sadder still are the children brought here illegally through no fault of their own. They attend school in the United States, grow up here as Americans, but when they graduate from high school suddenly their opportunities end. Still here illegally, they have no future in the only country that they know. That is what happens to them if their parents are not detained for years and they are allowed to grow up peacefully. If they are still young and their parents do not successfully manage to live undetected by ICE they are pulled from their beds in the dark of the night with a gun in their face and marched off to detention with their parents. Yes, we have a children’s prison in the United States. We keep little children locked up.

The following short sketches of lives interrupted, held in limbo or lost are just a small handful of the tragic stories I have been personally advised of or been witness to. I have come to know many of these people and their families. They are good people. I would invite any one of them into my home without reservation. They are human beings. Their right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness was given to them by their creator. According to our own Declaration of Independence it is an inalienable right. No man, no agency, no government and no nation has the right to rob them of that.

I have left out of this chapter the hundreds of stories I know of through news sources involving immigration enforcement. I did not include any of the tragic, and frequently avoidable deaths, even the one I know of personally, a Christian man who started and ran a Bible group among the detainees who died spitting up blood after begging for medical help for days. For that one man I only have the petition of condolence and recognition the immigrants who were detained with him sent me to post on my web site and send on to those who might care, including his family. I know he was well respected, a family man and father, but I don’t know his story beyond that. I have not included the pregnant woman in Arizona forced to give birth while chained down over the protests of the attending doctors and nurses. I left out all stories of citizens born here with family going back generations who have been detained for months, even years . . . and sometimes illegally deported. This does not include most of the forced drugging of deportees with a massive cocktail of psychiatric drugs, frequently four times the normal daily dose for a mental patient. It does not include many brutal assaults or any rapes by prison personnel and ICE agents or any other of the many stories and statistics that are more the norm than the exception when dealing with immigration. The people I write of here – they or their friends and/or family are all known to me personally. They found me; I did not go looking for them. These are a tiny sampling of the faces of deportation. This is what is left of a life interrupted by ICE:

A young man from Bosnia sits in a cell waiting. He was just over ten years old when the men of his village laid down their arms with a promise of UN protection. There was no protection and every male over ten was rounded up by Serbs and massacred. A Serb who knew his family managed to convince those conducting the raid that this boy was actually younger than he looked. His father, brothers, uncles and grandfather all died that day. His father gave him all the money he had in his pocket before he was marched away to his death and told the boy he was now the head of the family. He and his mother came to America as refugees. He received no help, had to handle the horror he had just lived through on his own. He now has a drug problem and because of that he is doing hard time as an ICE detainee while he awaits deportation away from the last remnants of his family – back to where, as a child, he watched the men of his family and village marched away to their death. While he waits and waits to be deported hostilities in Bosnia begin anew. He is headed back to a changed and unfamiliar land with no family. He is headed back into danger. For a refugee such as this, the second chances we would afford our own family members struggling with a drug problem do not exist, and yet, this man experienced horrors as a young boy that no privileged American sent off to drug rehab could ever imagine.

A professional woman from Russia, who came here legally and is employed by our federal government lives in fear of deportation if she does not do everything her citizen husband demands and stay silent about his abuse. She has not been married to him long enough to become a citizen and when she has, she still can not obtain her citizenship without his signature. She knows if she leaves him she must leave her job, her friends and this country or risk being put in prison to do hard time while her case goes through the courts and so she chooses to tough it out, praying the abuse does not get any worse. Her colleagues have no idea how to help her or save her. The immigration system is too complex for the average citizen to negotiate and so they can only offer her sympathy and watch in frustration.

An educated family from Algeria mourns their beloved son, picked up by police during a day of celebrating his favorite basketball team’s victory. The police were seeking two Middle Eastern males. He and his friend did not fit the suspects’ description, their clothes and all other details were different except for their ethnic background. The suspects were described as Middle Eastern and these two young men looked Middle Eastern. They were arrested, and charged.

As soon as this young man posted bail he was taken by ICE. With no evidence to support the original charges the case was dropped. He was a refugee, a legal resident who was kept in prison indefinitely under civil detention. He committed no crime, but still did hard time for over a year and a half. ICE did everything within their power to deport this college student back to Algeria, a country he knows nothing about as his family came here when he was two years old. His family’s finances have been destroyed trying to save him from deportation. They love America and can not understand why this is being done to him and to them. Talking with him, I am struck by how much this man is like any other American college student. He is no different than my own son, except in the complexion of his skin and the features of his face. Update: In his second year of torturous hearings and appeals, just before Christmas, ICE offered him the opportunity to voluntarily depart which would allow him to be released and give him a few short days with his family and fiancée to get his things and say goodbye. Worn out by prison and seeing no end or solution in sight, he accepted. His family and citizen fiancée live in Massachusetts. He now lives in Algeria.

A gentle man from the Caribbean, here legally, married a citizen and has been denied his chance for citizenship by his American wife and her family for four years while working long hours and submitting to their every demand to prove that he did not marry her just to get citizenship. Picked up with a small amount of pot, he is sentenced to one year and one day of probation in exchange for a guilty plea. He is not told that his sentence is just enough to make him eligible for deportation. He was detained by ICE, ordered deported and is now doing time in prison waiting to be sent back to his country. He is ready to go – wants to go. He has had enough of the United States, enough of being used and abused, but apparently the United States has not had enough of him as he remains locked up. His wife refuses to help him or give him a divorce. She is also pregnant with another man’s child. His belief in the “land of the free” is greatly diminished. To date he is still doing time as an ICE detainee with no actual deportation date in sight.

A man from Czechoslovakia, a leader of the Velvet Revolution, called that because no one was hurt during that revolt that freed his country from Soviet tyranny – the revolt that was the beginning of the end of the Cold War – sits in prison for over three years. Applications and documents that could free him have been “lost” – his citizen mother’s pleas for his release go unheeded. This young man has been hailed in letters of praise by the likes of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu for his accomplishments and his courage. He was in danger of being killed in his country because of his revolutionary actions and so was brought to this country legally. His courage during those tense days of 1989 were publicly praised by President Bush during a visit to Prague in what is now known as the Czech Republic while he himself sat in an American prison, no longer welcome here because he had converted to Islam.

Still a human rights activist, he wastes away in prison while ICE attempts to deport him back to a country that no longer exists. He left Eastern Europe a revolutionary, a gentle revolutionary, but a revolutionary none-the-less and it is likely he will be killed if he returns to Eastern Europe. He has no funds with which to obtain a lawyer, but he is a highly educated man, adept at speaking, reading and writing in many languages and so he does write. He has written our president and other officials seeking justice. He has written human rights groups. To date his pleas have been ignored. This man who put his very life on the line to help end the Cold War has been reduced by ICE to an insignificant number, just another prisoner lost in a vast system as if he had never done anything extraordinary, as if he had never defied the Soviets, never stood up to oppression, never began a movement that changed the course of history to our country’s benefit. And yet . . . he did. In a recent letter to me he writes: “I can assure you that even the Communist Secret Police didn't torture me in such a manner that I am currently experiencing in the land of the free!”

A United States Army veteran who has lived here with his family since childhood sits in a town in Mexico, close to the American border, but unable to cross it to rejoin his family. He grew up here legally, went to school, married and had children in California. He never had to learn English – it’s the only language he knows. He served this country in Iraq with honor and dignity. He did everything that was asked of him and put his life on the line for the American people, but war takes its toll and he admits that he was self medicating to try to handle the mental difficulties of having fought in that war. He was arrested for having an ounce and a half of marijuana. He should have received probation and continued on with his family but instead he was deported to Mexico despite having a legal document stating that as a veteran he could not be deported.

His marriage did not survive the deportation. His family visits him rarely. They do not live near the border and the expense of plane tickets is too much for them to be able to make the trip frequently. He has been banished from the country he served for a crime that men elected to the Presidency have admitted to committing (unless there is some way to smoke pot while not having it in one’s possession). He cannot collect any of the benefits to which veterans are entitled. His heart aches. He misses being able to visit with family when he wants to, casual conversation, belonging and the warmth of a hug. By his reckoning he is an American. He fulfilled his end of the bargain. America rewarded him with ICE.

A gentle, spiritual mother, again from the Caribbean, who fled for her life to America and became a citizen, weeps for her son, eleven years old when he came here, now in his late twenties. He has been held in prison for over a year and is now ordered deported. His documents would have been fine, should have been processed when he was a minor and she became a citizen. If the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) had done their job at the time he would be a citizen like his mother. INS did not do their job and his mother trusted them, did not want to make waves – did what they told her to do without question. Now she and her son’s fiancée cry while he is held in prison paying the price for INS’ mistake. Update: We helped this woman file to get her original documents showing she had filed properly with INS and that her son should have had his citizenship. She told him the good news while visiting him at the prison. Through a prison phone where every word was recorded she told him that they would be able to appeal his deportation. The next night ICE came in wee hours of morning and took him from his cell. Without the required prior notice to allow his family to provide him with clothes or make arrangements for him they put him on a plane to Trinidad. His pleas with the agent who accompanied him at the airport were finally heard and he was allowed to call his by now frantic mother to let her know what was happening. He is now in a country he does not know without a job or any way to support himself. His mother is devastated.

Two United States citizens struggle to grow up without their father. Their mother is a citizen, her family has lived in this country for many generations. Their father is from Africa. A marital disagreement resulted in his detention and deportation. A moment of “get-even” anger was soon regretted by his young wife, pregnant with their second child, but the damage was done and she could not undo it. Our immigration system has no interest in the wishes or welfare of a common citizen except when those wishes parallel their mission – deporting as many immigrants as possible. So this young woman was left to give birth alone while her husband was kept locked in a prison cell, awaiting deportation. That was ten years ago. He now lives in Africa, his marriage gone, his daughters far away. The oldest has had difficulties growing up without her father, the youngest has never met him. They maintain contact, they know their father, but those moments when a father’s love and protection chase away the nighttime monsters, comfort a scrapped knee, teach the art of riding a bike, protect and counsel through words, action and example as a little girl grows into a young woman . . . those moments they have never had. Those moments were taken from them forever. Their mother is a citizen, born and raised in the USA. Her parents, grandparents and great grandparents were all citizens. These girls are as American as any young child can possibly be and our federal government has dictated to them all, through immigration enforcement, who they are allowed to live with and love. To our eyes, these children are our future. Their difficulties directly affect us all as we know they will grow to adulthood, will be our neighbors, our coworkers. In the eyes of our federal immigration system, their future is not relevant; protecting the future of US citizens is not part of their job description.

A man from Portugal with a proven criminal record is held in detention and ordered deported. It seems his case would warrant deportation. Some do. He was not taken to the airport on the day of his scheduled deportation – was transferred to another prison instead. He is suffering from colon cancer. On the day he was supposed to be put on a plane for Portugal, the day he was instead only moved to another facility, ICE canceled his medications. He sits in a U.S. prison still, unable to leave, not knowing his fate, denied proper medical care. His protests and pleas for medication finally landed him in “the hole” (solitary confinement) as punishment. Update: This man was finally given his medication and has since been deported. In his case, his deportation is good news as it was his only hope of getting proper medical treatment.

A man from Iran, his family friends with the former Shah, comes to this country for safety. He lives here legally for many years, marries, has children, starts and grows a small business employing a number of American citizens. Unfortunately he develops kidney cancer. One kidney is removed completely. The surgery and the cancer cause terrible pain that prevents him from working. The prescribed pain medications cost $250 a week and leave him too “spacey” to work. He must support his family and his employees depend on him too, so he self-medicates with $50 of heroin a week – an illegal solution, but one that leaves him able to work without breaking him financially. It proves to be an unwise solution as well. He is arrested for drug possession and placed in prison by ICE. Proceedings are started to deport this Christian man with former ties to the ousted Shah and a drug problem to boot back to Iran, a country with zero tolerance for Christianity, friends of the former Shah or drug users. His citizen wife struggles to pay the bills and find him help without his income. His citizen teenage children struggle to live in a country, their country, which has removed their father and is now threatening to take him from their lives forever, all for the crime of being a cancer patient dealing with addiction.

While under ICE detention this man finds adequate drinking water to keep what remains of his one kidney properly flushed hard to come by. He develops pain, is denied medication and eventually placed in the hole. Finally his pleas and those of his wife are heeded (perhaps due to a little prodding from the ACLU) and he is given medication with strict doctor’s orders that he is not to be kept on an upper level or made to sleep on an upper bunk because the medication could make him dizzy. He is placed back in the general prison population on an upper floor and given an upper bunk on which to sleep. He falls from the bunk and then, dizzy and confused, falls down a flight of stairs and is knocked unconscious. The next day he experiences blurred vision for which he is not treated. His wife calls and tells me what has happened, tells me he is having trouble with his sight and I advise her that she must get him help right away – she must call his lawyer, the prison, call whoever, but the symptoms of blurred vision after a severe blow to the head like that could be life threatening – or they might be nothing serious, but only a qualified doctor would be able to tell the difference. She reports back to me later that he has been moved to the medical unit. A week later he is back in the same unit, cell and bed as before. Update: He has finally been released and is home with his family trying to regain some health and rebuild his life.

A Methodist minister from Africa living in the United States legally becomes the victim of identity theft. The thief commits other crimes with this man’s identity and the minister is picked up by the police. It does not take long for the officers to determine that this man is not a criminal, but a victim of a crime. Unfortunately, by this time ICE has already been notified. The minister is detained and thrown in prison where he remains while his case slowly makes its way through the courts. Finally a judge orders him released. That was in early March, 2009. By fall of 2009 the minister was still in detention. Update: With the help of a lawyer, the minister has since been released.

A man from the Caribbean comes here legally. He is involved in a bar fight over a woman. He claims that he was breaking it up. One combatant says he had rings and cash stolen and this man is arrested. When offered a plea bargain of ten months he turns it down, believing that the evidence will prove his innocence. Instead he’s convicted and sentenced to eight to ten years. He’s told if he appeals he will wind up with an even longer sentence and by now he is a believer.

While serving his sentence he angers one of the prison guards, words are exchanged and he is thrown to the floor. One guard places his knee in this man’s back while the other grinds his face into the floor with his boot, breaking his jaw bone severely. He is not a large man, perhaps a little over five feet tall and according to his account he was shackled at the time. When the swelling in his jaw does not subside after two weeks he is sent for a medical evaluation and finally to a hospital where it is determined that his jaw is broken so badly he will have to have a piece of thigh bone used in order to repair it.

Soon after this he is told that if he signs deportation papers, he can leave prison and go back to the Caribbean. He signs willingly, by now eager to put some space between himself and this country. He remains in ICE detention with an un-repaired broken jaw for another few years, barely able to speak or eat. Update/ As soon as this man found a lawyer who was able to help him obtain an order that ICE provide medical treatment for his jaw he was deported back to his home country.

A young couple from Eastern Europe meets while here as exchange students. They fall in love, marry and have two beautiful children as young couples are prone to do. The children are American citizens and the couple does not want to remove them from the United States so they stay longer than their papers allow. Eight years later the mother is apprehended and put in prison while deportation proceedings are started against her. She is ordered deported, but the first time they take her to the airport she is hysterical, crying out for her children, so she is returned to the prison. On the second attempt to deport her she is forcibly injected with a large cocktail of psychiatric drugs and remembers no more after that. She and her husband and two children now live in Eastern Europe. The children miss their friends, schoolmates and teachers in America. They miss their country, but they must live in exile because their parents are not United States citizens and are now barred from entering this country.

A man from Africa comes here legally and marries an American woman. He works hard and turns each paychecks over to her. He takes care of everything, accepts her claims that he is not good enough and works harder. When he speaks up for himself he is threatened with deportation so he stays silent and works more. He finally does get his citizenship and files for divorce. She threatens him with deportation again, but he is now a citizen, she can not control him any longer. He leaves his house and marriage with nothing but his clothes, but rebuilds his life, remarries, has children, and goes on to create a happy American family, to live the American dream. He is one of the lucky ones.

These are just a few of the people of immigration, the stories that the media does not tell you, the people living a private hell courtesy of the policies and enforcement tactics of ICE. These are my people now. We are all sharing the same fears, crying the same tears, praying the same prayers. To those in power I have but one request: Do the right thing. Let these people out of prison and grant them the same justice you would want for yourself or your family were you in their position.

Our leaders know this is going on. They know it is wrong. They acknowledge that the immigration system is broken and offer legislation that will supposedly fix it . . . eventually, but these people do not need legislation as much as they need good old fashioned compassionate justice, a commodity in short supply for any immigrant living within the US borders these days. Our leaders point to 9/11 as if the horror of that day painted every immigrant with the brush of suspicion, made every immigrant guilty until proven innocent, made it acceptable to declare open season on all human beings with accents or darker skin.

In reality, this did not begin with 9/11. It began September 30th of 1996 when then President Clinton signed the IIRAIRA. Before that time no U.S. military veteran was ever deported. Before that time, people who were here legally, living peaceably and raising families had a right to justice. The day that Clinton signed that bill changed everything for immigration in America, but no one noticed . . . except the immigrants caught in its trap and the families that love them.

While DHS promises reform and President Obama admits that the system is broken both have chosen to ramp up detentions and deportations, ignoring the fact that a broken anything is dangerous to run at any but the slowest speed, if at all. Their thirst for more prisons and ever increasing numbers of detainees and deportations flies in the face of their admissions that they are not able to adequately care for the people that they already have in their custody. There is no way of determining how many of the adults caught up in this system are innocent, how many deserve to be deported or do not deserve to be deported, or how many American families are forever destroyed as the system is careening out of control with no one visibly at the helm. It is definite that every one of the children affected is innocent and has been traumatized at best and at worst caused permanent harm. It is definite that any sense of justice left this system a very long time ago. It is definite that we are committing multiple severe human rights violations and even atrocities on a daily basis.

Even those immigrants who are uniquely qualified to fight against terrorists, who have the special skills that are in short supply and which we desperately need to have some chance in Afghanistan, men who were ready and willing to use those skills for our benefit . . . even those immigrants are being blindly swept up and sit behind prison bars, of no use to themselves, their families or to us. And our veterans, those who have already helped us, those men who put their lives on the line for us; is this how we reward their sacrifices? The system is beyond broken. It is criminal and dangerous and it needs to be stopped until it can show that it has been reformed and can conduct itself as a proper agency in a country founded upon a belief in Liberty and Justice for all.