Brian Rich talk on Immigrant Detention

Brian Rich delivered a powerful talk on immigrant detention on Thursday, May 28, at Al's Bar in Lexington. Below is a copy of his talk:

Ana Romero and Death Prisons for the Innocent
By Brian L. Rich

Talk given at Al’s Bar, Lexington, KY – May 28, 2009

1. Intro
Thank you. I’ve never given a presentation in a bar before, at least not a sober one, so excuse me if I seem a bit out of place.

I’d like to thank Danny Mayer for this opportunity and also to praise him for putting together this series of bar talks. I’d also like to thank family and friends for their support through some of the rough times involved in what I am going to talk about. Without their love and support, I wouldn’t be able to stand up here and get thru this. You know I love you, so thank you so much.

I am a professor of sociology at Transylvania University. I am also on the board of directors of the Kentucky Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (KCIRR). However, I want to make it clear that the ideas and positions I will express here tonight are my own and have not been approved by either my University or the Coalition. I speak alone as a public sociologist and a concerned citizen. But I know that I am not alone in caring deeply and acting - and with no small amount of tenderness - for the people I will speak about.

Now then, without telling you the main point of what I am about to say, I will let you know from the get-go that I’ll be moving from the past to the future, from the small to the large-scale and back to the small, from studious and serious to indignant and upset, and then to positive and optimistic, even to dreaming at the end. This will serve to offset the nightmarish facts that I warn you I will have to touch on in between. That’s my one and only warning. So hang on.


1. Ana Romero’s case and now Emanuel Reyes

Anaseli Romero Rivera (Ana from now on) was an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador. She was a mother of two grown sons and the daughter of an aging and sick mother all living in El Salvador. She cleaned houses in Shelbyville. Her sister Blanca is married to Mario there and they own and run a nice Mexican restaurant.

Ana had been in the states for about three years when one day, Jan.14, 2008, an officer came to her place, apparently looking for another person. Not finding that person, the officer asked to see Ana’s ID. Ana showed it to him. She was arrested. She had been ordered out of the country less than three years earlier in 2005 for not having documents, but she did not leave.

Being without documents, many immigrants obtain fake ones. This is - unfortunately for all of us – a common response to a life threatening situation. Being “ILLEGAL” in this country is indeed life threatening. Putting yourself in a life threatening situation must have reasons behind it. But hardly any of us knows about this. I will come back to that in a few minutes.

Immigrants obtain false documents, ironically, for the purpose of trying to stay out of trouble with the system. We all need papers to stay out of trouble, but false papers, most critically perhaps, circulate and are obtained so that people can get work. I’ll come back to that in a few minutes as well.

Ana was taken to the Shelbyville jail, and sometime after that she was taken briefly to the detention center in Grayson county, and then was sent to the Franklin County jail in Frankfort. As I understand it, she had two counts against, her failing to obey the deportation order and possessing a false ID.

On August 7th last year, after nearly 7 months in jail, Ana had her day in court. And what did the judge decide? The judge fined her $100 dollars and time served. Of course, the federal deportation order was in place; she was going to be deported back to El Salvador, back to her two grown sons and her aging and sick mother. Back to the family that she left behind, back to the family that she came here to help. She had come here into this life-threatening situation without documents to help support her mother and her grown sons. But she was resigned to her fate and was ready to face the consequences of her risk and return to family there. That much is clear. Her son told her “Everything is waiting for you.” And Ana told her son “I’ll be there.”[1]

Now then, there are some legal technicalities that I don’t fully understand, but this much seems clear. Once she paid her $100 fine and having spent 7 months in jail for these charges, the federal government had a limited amount of time to pick her up for deportation. Usually it’s 48 hours but if it’s over a weekend it can run up to 72 hours I believe.

In any case, the feds didn’t come. Her things were all packed and ready to go, Ana was ready. But the feds didn’t come to pick her up. By law, if the feds don’t pick you up for deportation and your sentence is finished, the jail is supposed to set you free. So now Ana was supposed to be released, but she wasn’t released.

Ana despaired and there is evidence she got more depressed. On August 20th, almost two weeks after her court appearance and still in jail, Ana called her sister Blanca, telling her her stomach hurt and that the food smelled bad, that she was being treated badly, that they had put her in a dark cell as punishment for not wanting to eat. The family encouraged her to eat but she insisted that the food was not good.[2]

Ana was put on suicide watch. She was seen by mental health providers. She insisted she was not suicidal. She was taken off suicide watch. Then on that fateful night, Ana was allegedly found in her cell with her neck wrapped in a sheet. There were vital signs, she did not die there. She was taken to the hospital, where she died on August 21.

The autopsy and Medical Examiner investigation and reports sustain that Ana died as a result of asphyxiation due to hanging.[3] The family and many of us close to the situation, had a very hard time believing this because Ana was looking forward to going home, she was resigned to her deportation. Recently in a letter to her sister Blanca, she had written that famous prayer, “Lord give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change those things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference between them. Amen”[4]

Ana’s family had to endure many very difficult moments from the time Ana was first put in custody 7 months earlier, thru the news of her death when the authorities informed them, the long period of uncertainty and sorrow that followed her death before her body was available for the funeral that didn’t occur until December past, and on further now with the legal case that is pending. The lawyers for the family are pursuing and preparing several claims that I’ve told will be filed in court next month. So the search for justice for Ana continues and we will see what becomes of the charges that will be put forth against the government.

But the details of the Ana Romero case and Ana’s death in jail, as sad as they are, do not stand alone. Far from it.

For another example right here in Kentucky, we just recently learned that another immigrant, a Mexican named Emanuel Reyes, may have been mistreated or mishandled by prison personnel a few weeks ago. Reyes was in jail in the Grayson County detention center outside of Leitchfield in Western Kentucky, on what charges I don’t know. Apparently he got into a fight with another inmate and was seriously beaten up. His injuries were bad enough that he underwent brain surgery and died six days later. But if his injuries were so serious, why was 911 not called for emergency care? Why wasn’t he taken by ambulance or flown by helicopter (both of which are available at the Grayson facility) to the hospital? Instead, he was taken to the hospital in a deputy car.[5]

Let’s go even bigger. In just the years 2003 -2009 more than 90 immigrant detainees have died in custody.[6] Currently, the detention system holds over 500,000 immigrants.[7] The entire prison system has grown enormously over the past decades, as many studies and statistics have already documented. But the growth in the immigrant population in prison is astounding and correlates pretty well with the increase in the undocumented immigrant population.

My colleague Dr. Doug Massey a sociologist at Yale University, probably one of the top 2-3 researchers on immigration in the U.S., testified in the senate last week. Dr. Massey has been studying very closely immigration, esp. from Mexico, for over 20 years. In his testimony he presented damning evidence to show that the increase in the undocumented immigrant population in our country is a direct result of our failed immigration system.[8] What does that mean? It means that our federal government, aided and abetted by the large corporations that are the most direct beneficiaries of undocumented immigration, is directly responsible for the large increases in undocumented immigrants without papers in our country, now often estimated at easily over 12 million people. How did this happen?

Well, it’s a bit complicated, but let me boil it down for you. Some might disagree with my interpretation, but the facts are there, it’s a matter of how we see the facts emerging and why. Basically, our government and the constituents that have been most influential in affecting immigration policy, have allowed the our broken immigration policy to go without reform because it has been good for business.

Just look around here in Lexington. Perhaps as many as 90% of workers in the horse industry are immigrants, the vast majority without papers. The hospitality and service industries (restaurants, hotels, eg.) are heavily dependent on immigrant labor. Construction and factory work in our area have significant numbers of immigrant workers.[9] Our local economy would come to a crashing halt if these workers were all arrested and put in jail for not having “real” papers. This is one reason why immigrants obtain false IDs, they need them to show employers who only have to “make believe” that they look like real IDs in order to hire them.

Having no legal status, and being almost completely defenseless legally, immigrant workers do not complain, work long hours, sometimes multiple jobs, put up with abuse, and fear detection from “la migra” the government immigration enforcement agency now known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement or “ICE”. They are in no position to organize themselves at the workplace and want nothing more than to work without trouble, help their families whether here and/or back home, and possibly someday return home.

It never ceases to amaze me when people try to link immigrants with increased crime. Studies consistently show that immigrants have the LOWEST crime rates of any group in the U.S.[10] Why would people without papers, who have borrowed and spent large amounts of money to cross the border, risking their lives often, (not to mention the risk of apprehension at the border upon trying or deportation once here) and traveled long distances away from family get involved in crime? The LAST thing they want is to get into legal trouble, when family members back home are dependent upon the money they send back home to survive.

The logic of our immigration system, especially as it is related to our long and ongoing economic and political relationship with Mexico and other Central American countries (like El Salvador, in the case of Ana), is what is at the root of our broken system. What I mean by that is that the system is ILLOGICAL. We have to understand a basic truth about globalization in order to make sense of our immigration problem.

2. NAFTA and immigration

The North American Free Trade Agreement (or NAFTA) has been fundamentally changing the relationship between our country and Mexico. Put into effect in 1994, NAFTA lifted many barriers to the on-going economic integration of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Mexican migration has been an integral feature of our economy since the Mexican-American War that followed on the heels of our civil war. As a result of the U.S. victory in that war, almost half of the territory claimed by Mexico was incorporated into the Southwestern U.S. Since that time, and especially in the past 25 years, our integration with Mexico has accelerated.

Now, more than ever, we are involved in a deep and long-term process of economic integration with our neighbors to the south. What this means for migration is that insofar as our economy needs more workers and insofar as Mexico has a surplus of workers willing to come here, then immigration from Mexico will continue. Despite the current economic crisis, we can project that immigration from Mexico over the longer-term will continue. Therefore, it behooves ALL of us to make this process legal, rather than continuing to exacerbate and make worse the growth of illegal activities in the black market or underground economy that we have seen.

Just to give you some idea of how fast this integration of the U.S. and Mexico has progressed, let me quote a few lines from Professor Massey’s testimony 8 days ago to the U.S. Senate. Speaking about how and why the build-up in border patrols and militarization of our border has occurred in the past few years, Massey stated:

“Paradoxically, this militarization [of the border] occurred as undocumented migration reached its peak and [began] moving downward. It also unfolded as we were drawing closer to Mexico economically, by treaty agreeing to lower the barriers to cross-border movements of goods, capital, information, services, and certain classes of people. Between 1980 and 2000 total trade increased nine times [that’s 900%], business visitors 7.4 times [740%], treaty investors ten times [1000%], and intracompany transferees 27 times [2700%]” [11]

He goes on to say further that: ” our militarization of the border increased the costs of crossing it from $600 to $2,200 in constant dollars ) while also increasing the risk of death while having no effect on the probability of apprehension. Given the higher costs and risks of border crossing, fewer migrants left; but those who did still got across because the odds of apprehension did not rise. Once inside the US they hunkered down and stayed longer and in larger numbers to avoid experiencing the costs and risks again. In sum, it was because of a decline in return migration and not an increase in entry from Mexico that the undocumented population ballooned during the 1990s…” [12]

This BALLOONING of the undocumented population, related directly to NAFTA, is a direct result of our government’s lack of adequate response and change in our immigration policy. For a number of reasons, we have been unwilling to provide increased LEGAL channels (work visas, green cards, etc) for the Mexican workers we need in our domestic economy (and who need work here to help their families survive and prosper). I would love to say more about NAFTA’s effects on the domestic economy of Mexico, but let it suffice here to say that is has been devastating especially in the rural countryside. In effect we have an example where the dynamics of our economic integration are FORCING Mexican workers to come without documents. And then we have set up a costly and deadly system of apprehensions, raids, and deportations that have torn families apart, disrupted communities here and in Mexico, and caused the kind of grief that Ana Romero’s and countless other immigrants have had to suffer.

I ask you all to think about how costly this is to each of us, putting aside for a second the immigrants directly under the Damocles Sword of our broken system. Between 1985 and 2005, the total cost of immigration enforcement went from 1 to 5 Billion dollars [a 500% increase]. Between 1980 and 2000, the Border Patrol Agncy’s budget increased by 27 times (2700%).[13] But nothing is improved. We have more immigrants without papers, we have more detention centers, more raids and deportations, more hardship, more suffering, more death. THIS IS OUR TAX MONEY BEING THROWN DOWN THE DRAIN!

Is this the kind of country that we want? A country that sets up a system for its own selfish interest at the expense of our poorer neighbors to the south? A country that represses, imprisons, and threatens the very people it so needs to keep our economy moving and growing? A country that turns a blind eye towards an entire group of people who are suffering and quiet for fear of worse things to come? A country that plans, builds, opens, and fills and overfills more and more prisons?

Folks, listen, we are PAYING OUT THE NOSE for this nonsense and mostly we are unaware and uncaring about it. Is this REALLY where we want so much of our taxes to be going? Think about Ana and her family, think about the 90 other immigrants who have died in these prisons, think of the 500,000 immigrants that are today sitting in these jails and detention centers.[14] Do they really deserve to be there? Are they really guilty?

3. Death prisons for the innocent

I put the extreme title of DEATH PRISONS for the INNOCENT on this talk, not to claim that all these people have crossed the border legally, not to say they are innocent victims. They know full well what they are doing, they take these risks in a calculated and hopeful way. They want a better future, they want to get themselves and their families a bit ahead, they come with dreams and hopes just like our ancestors did. But instead of being welcomed, given papers and freedom to move about and live and work for a better day, no we put them under the gun, we make it harder and harder for them. And you know something, it isn’t just the immigrant population that we are doing this to. It is the folks without the best education, folks without the right skin color, folks without good opportunities, folks that enter into drug addiction, or petty theft, for lack of better alternatives.

Certainly I don’t want to claim all these folks are innocent. There are always bad elements in any group; often folks turn bad because they don’t have hope, don’t see a better day ahead thru the normal and good channels. However, I do want to claim that the good, hard-working, family-loving immigrants that are forced to migrate into our communities ARE innocent. If they are guilty of anything, they are guilty of the same things we are guilty of, guilty of hope, guilty of the desire for a better life, guilty of the will to work hard and raise a family, guilty of wanting to be good children and support their aging parents, guilty of wanting their children to get a decent education and grow up strong and wholesome, smart and courageous.

I believe we should seriously, each and all of us, think about what kind of society we want for ourselves and our neighbors. Let’s send people to jail that need to be segregated for the safety of everyone else. People that need to be tended to and to pay their debt to the people they have harmed and to society. People that can be encouraged to see the wrongs they have committed. People that might change their ways once they are given better choices. But let’s not build and fill prisons, detention centers, and jails with immigrants and their dreams for a better life. Let’s not incarcerate people that break laws that are badly conceived and make no sense. Let’s change the laws.

Look at where our country stands in the world on this issue of incarceration. The U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations.

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population, but it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners. We have has 2.3 million people behind bars, more than any other nation in the entire world. [15]

I think we can do better than that.

4. So, where do we go from here? What can we do?

You may have heard the phrase “Let history be the judge” – I think this is a very interesting set of 5 words: “let history be the judge” – I think it’s interesting because it isn’t about history at all really. It’s about the future. Think about it.

When we say let “history be the judge,” we are really talking about how folks in the FUTURE will evaluate what we are doing now, because we are always making history in the present. Let history be the judge means let us see what people in the FUTURE say about what we are doing now. The phrase is about the FUTURE really, not the past.

So how will we be judged when the children today and their children look back at these events in the future?

Will we find the sense to look, without fear, without a blind eye, at the reality of our broken immigration system and its deadly consequences and DO something to fix it? President Obama promised during his campaign to reform this broken immigration system in the first year of his term. We should hold him to it, because it is important and is directly connected to solving our other crises, from the economy to health care reform to strengthening a fraying sense of community.

The term Comprehensive Immigration Reform has been widely used to describe change that would involve more border security, some type of large increase in work visas, and our long (and I would say almost sacred) tradition of allowing family reunification. Sometimes fines for employers that hired undocumented workers are proposed. We have this on the books now for over 20 years and the number of employers that have paid such fines you could count on two hands (o.k. maybe a few more hands). And you might be able to tell by now, I don’t think wasting more and more of our taxes on border security is the answer to what ails us.

The immigration reform details are complex. But there is no doubt in my mind that a centerpiece of any successful reform should be the legalization of the 12 million undocumented immigrants we have now living and working and raising families in our midst. Can we do this? Yes, we can. Can we make it work for the better of all of us? Sure. Bringing the underground illegal economies above ground should always be positive. The rule of lawlessness we now have on our hands is bad for all of us.

So if you want a better future for yourself, your parents, your kids, grandkids, friends, and neighbors, I encourage you to pay attention to this debate, this critical process of immigration reform. I encourage you to support pro-immigrant organizations like KCIRR. I encourage you to challenge the racists and xenophobes who stigmatize, make fun of and degrade our immigrant neighbors. Maybe you even know friends, co-workers, family members, or neighbors that make jokes or put down immigrants. Challenge them courteously. Ask them if they know how their own family got here in the first place. Ask them if they actually know any immigrants very well at all. I encourage you to get involved.

This is personal to me, I suppose that is just a teeny bit obvious at this point. But I think this should be personal for you too. After all, unless we were here before the Europeans, we were all immigrants once, coming of our own free will, indentured, or enslaved. But even if we can indentured and enslaved, we are no longer illegally kept that way.

This is really about how we define and identify ourselves as Americans. Will we build more prisons, conduct more raids and deportations? Build bigger, taller, more expensive walls on our border? Or will we find a way to integrate ourselves into a larger society, a better one, one that sees borders as something we may need to erode, not to increase their power to divide us?

I know we can dream and I know that dreaming is not just idle speculation about a future wish. Dreaming is critical to thinking deeply about improving ourselves and our world.

I remember the pain and sorrow I saw on Ana’s sister Blanca’s, tear-stained face, before and during and after Ana’s funeral and also at the vigil we held for Ana at the Franklin County jail on the third month anniversary of her death. I witnessed Ana’s 20 year-old son Erik crying for the senseless and unnecessary loss of his only mother. My own feeble attempts to comfort them personally were very humbling.

Multiply these sorrows ten thousand or a million times ---- and let’s ask ourselves if we can find a better way. To quote one of my favorite song writers: “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” And I do hope you will join me and the tens of thousands of others that are working hard to make a comprehensive and humane immigration reform a reality, and as soon as possible. We will all be better off for the effort.

Thank you very much.

Brian L. Rich, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology

Transylvania University
300 N. Broadway
Lexington, KY 40508-1797
Phone: 859-233-819
Fax: 859-281-3507

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[1] Valarie Honeycutt Spears, “Second opinion sought in immigrant jail death,” Lexington Herald-Leader, Sept.9, 2008.

[2] Millie Mercado, “Familia esper respuestas: muchas son las icognitas que rodean el caso de Anaseli Romero-Rivera” [Family awaits answers: many unknowns surround the case of Anaseli Romero-Rivera], Hoy en las Americas , Sept.11, 2008; Valarie Honeycutt Spears and Steve Lannen, “Officials silent on jail death,” Lexington Herald-Leader, Sept.3, 2008

[3] Valarie Honeycutt Spears, “Franklin coroner asks for records in jail death” Lexington Herald-Leader, Oct. 1, 2008.

[4] Mercado, op cit.

[5] Tonia Rose, “Local magistrate questions jail officials’ decision in transport of injured inmate,” Journal-Times (Grayson County), May 6, 2009.

[6] Nina Bernstein, “Immigrant Detainee Dies, and a Life is Buried,” New York Times, April 2, 2009

[7] Ibid.

[8] Testimony of Douglas Massey, United States Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, May 20, 2009. http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=3859&wit_id=7939; Marisa Treviño, “Guest Voz: Princeton sociologist proves federal government responsible for high undocumented population,” Latina Lista, May 22, 2009. www.latinalista/palabrafinal/2009/05/guest_voz_princeton_sociologist_proves...

[9] Brian L. Rich and Marta Miranda. 2005. “The Sociopolitical Dynamics of Mexican Immigration in Lexington, Kentucky, 1997 – 2002: An Ambivalent Community Responds,” pp.187-219 in New Destinations: Mexican Migration in the United States. Edited by Victor Zúňiga and Rubén Hernández-León. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

[10] Butcher, Kristin F and Anne Morrison Piehl. 2007. Why are Immigrants’ Incarceration Rates So Low? Evidence on Selective Immigration, Deterrence, and Deportation. (July). National Bureau of Economic Research, Paper No. 13229; Sampson, Robert J., Jeffrey D. Morenoff, and Stephen Raudenbush. 2005. “Social Anatomy of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Violence.” American Journal of Public Health (February), 95 (2): 224–232.

[11] Testimony of Douglas Massey, United States Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, May 20, 2009. http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=3859&wit_id=7939

[12] Ibid.

[13] Massey Testimony, op.cit.

[14] Bernstein, op.cit.

[15] Adam Liptak, “Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’” New York Times, April 23, 2008.