an example of how ICE withholds information to keep press out of their facilities: I obtained permission to visit the immigration court at Port Isabel detention center. My friend and me drive up for hearings at 830
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The guard (a contractor from Ahtna) tells my friend she is not on the list to drive into the center. I offer to get out and walk to the court. The guard tells me walking is forbidden
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I offer to have her drop me off and leave. He tells me this is also forbidden. I cannot park the car inside muself because that would involve leaving my friend at the end of a dirt road in the middle of nowhere in the blazing sun for hours
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He says I can take a taxi in but that he is forbidden from giving me a taxi number. He also says he is forbidden from showing or telling me what rule forbids walking. In the many elaborate lists of rules ICE sent me, the walking rule was nowhere to be seen
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I’m able to go to the afternoon session of court by paying a taxi 30$ to drive me 10 minutes into the center. Immigrants leaving detention are also required to be picked up by these exorbitantly expensive taxis, instead of walking to the gate. It’s up to $60 to the nearest town
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After I get back from Port Isabel, the department of justice emails me and accuses me of sneaking an artist into the building. When I say I am the artist, they tell me that though I had permission to report in court, I was forbidden from sketching without additional permission
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As for visits at Port Isabel, ICE requires reporters to submit immigrants’s names, dob, alien registration numbers and countries of origin at least 48 hours in advance. While prisoners’s names, locations and numbers are available to the public, detained immigrants’ are not.
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Once the reporter obtains this information (and gets the consent of the immigrants) ICE then asks the reporter to have immigrants fill out and sign forms to give to ICE. This is tricky because the reporter cannot call the immigrant or go to the center
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At Port Isabel, immigrants are only allowed to speak to reporters for a half hour at a time on Wednesday mornings. When I applied to meet five immigrants who wanted to speak to me, ICE called this “excessive”
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ICE also withheld information about the second set of documents they needed filled out until it was too late for me to get them filled out 48 hours in advance of the one slot in which immigrants were allowed to speak to me
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Soon enough, the journalist gets tired of driving out hours each way to facilities only to be turned away, of filing papers that will only lead to demands for more papers. Their deadline comes up. Out of town journalists run out of budget and go home. And that’s the strategy
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Every bit of bureaucratic drag by ICE serves to prevent immigrants from telling the media stories they desperately want to tell.
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The ICE public affairs officer who delayed sending me forms —preventing me from interviewing detainees — makes $108,000 a year
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I was refused visits to every single ICE detention facility and CBP border patrol station in the Brownsville/McAllen area. Here’s ACF refusing to allow me to visit the shelter for kids in a former Walmartpic.twitter.com/wQ3bdAWLUE
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Private companies I spotted working with ICE: Ahtna (guards at Port Isabel) G4S (courtroom security), Trailboss Enterprises (moving shackled immigrants) Trinity Services Group (commissary and messages to detained immigrants) EP Services (high-fee money transfers)
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Yesterday the Department of Justice sent a document to all Immigration Review courts around McAllen banning unauthorized sketching and threatening federal penalties to artists who didn’t comply. I feel special
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The Harlingen Immigration Court (which is open to the public) refused to allow me in to take notes until they had called a public affairs officer at the Department of Justice. They displayed the sketch-ban taped to their wall, with the relevant lines highlighted
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Today in Harlingen immigration court, removal proceedings started for a 14-year-old indigenous Guatemalan boy who spoke only Quechua. He was unaccompanied and had no lawyer. The appeal information forms are court are only in English
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Correction- he spoke Kiche’, not Quechua
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কথা-বার্তা শেষ
নতুন কথা-বার্তা -
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Surprise - they often do the same to attorneys representing detained immigrants.
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Or insist they called you repeatedly at your scheduled phone consultation time when in fact they didn't even get your client from her cell.
কথা-বার্তা শেষ
নতুন কথা-বার্তা -
লোড হতে বেশ কিছুক্ষণ সময় নিচ্ছে।
টুইটার তার ক্ষমতার বাইরে চলে গেছে বা কোনো সাময়িক সমস্যার সম্মুখীন হয়েছে আবার চেষ্টা করুন বা আরও তথ্যের জন্য টুইটারের স্থিতি দেখুন।
molly@mollycrabapple.com