Jones called the detention center "Hell Between Four Walls."
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THE GAME OF ICE
Rocky Mountain Chronicle
By MICHAEL BECKEL AND VANESSA MARTINEZ
Wednesday, 11 July 2007
Law enforcement agencies move immigrants through multiple detention facilities, passing paydays and delays along the way.
Howls echoed through the anxiety-stricken dormitory as Sam Jones* tried to fall asleep. Men screamed and cried, hooted and heckled. Just after midnight, a prison guard entered with a document that held the numbers assigned to men from as many as 60 countries who’d be deported later that day.
“Suddenly, the room is filled of people screaming, hugging each other, exchanging phone numbers and addresses, people praying and people wishing each other well,” Jones scratched into a journal, a collection of personal reflections he wrote on loose printer paper. “These truly are moments of more than happiness. De-stressing moments, like pinching a balloon full of butane gas, an outburst of emotions that touched even the security guards.”
Jones’ number wasn’t on the list that night. He returned to his limbo, at least another few days of uncertainty, for the next inventory of numbers that may or may not hold his own, and little chance, in the meantime, of figuring out if it would.
For 22 days, Jones occupied one of hundreds of beds inside Colorado’s foremost immigrant prison, known both as the ICE Processing Center and the ICE Detention Center, in Aurora. Such facilities have fallen to increasing attacks from civil liberties and human rights groups across the country for claims ranging from inhumane treatment to unconstitutional incarceration of U.S. citizens. And a report released on July 6 by the federal Government Accountability Office confirms multiple problems at the Aurora detention center.
Jones calls the jail “hell between four walls,” and he descended into it by way of a law enforcement maze that began with a traffic stop in Larimer County.
LIGHT OUT
Sam Jones knew the left headlamp of his car was out as he drove to work, a job that kept him busy with duties like payroll and other administrative odds and ends, on the morning of March 28. It was around 6 a.m., and 63-year-old Jones, wearing blue jeans and a shirt, a brown belt and tan Airwalks, had just turned southbound onto Highway 287 from Carpenter Road when he noticed the red and blue lights of the Colorado State Patrol car in his rearview mirror.
Jones, an Italian citizen with thinning gray hair who’d been living in Mexico for the past 20 years, had never been pulled over. The fact that he’d been in the country illegally for about six months didn’t help to calm his nerves. Even worse, Jones’s English, unlike the myriad European languages he speaks, wasn’t even fluid, much less fluent. So when officer Clinton B. Rushing queried Jones for his name and date of birth, Jones quickly provided his generic American moniker but fumbled with the date, which didn’t correspond with the one listed on his Mexican driver’s license. Rushing continued to press him, and Jones became increasingly nervous. He finally fell silent. Rushing “gave him one more chance to not lie,” Rushing wrote in his affidavit.
Jones says Rushing’s voice grew louder and more forceful.
“The fear and the nerves just left me in a state of not being able to speak at all,” Jones explains.
After a handful of failed attempts to match his date of birth with the one on the Mexican ID, Rushing arrested Jones and took him to the Larimer County Detention Center, or LCDC, where he was charged with criminal impersonation, false reporting to authorities and two traffic infractions: driving without a valid license and driving with a defective headlamp. Among the possessions that LCDC officials confiscated were a wallet, keys, a cellphone and an orange Bic lighter that Jones used to light Camel cigarettes when he had them.
During his week inside LCDC, Jones was visited and interviewed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. For more than a year, county officials have submitted lists of all foreign-born detainees at the local jail to ICE, previously known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was rolled into the Department of Homeland Security in 2003.
ICE agents visit the county jail multiple times a week to determine if individuals are in the country illegally and if they should be deported. With sufficient proof, officials can place a retainer, or “immigration hold,” on LCDC prisoners. Which is exactly what happened to Jones, except he didn’t find out until he thought he’d been freed.
Jones posted the required $200 bond, then pled guilty to the false reporting violation, a misdemeanor, in a deal that dismissed the other charges. He shoveled out an additional $159 in court costs, and the district court judge sentenced him to time served. He was then released — to ICE officials. He’s one of 36 individuals Larimer County had turned over to ICE as of May 24. Last year, the county logged 118 such transfers.
Mekela Goehring, executive director of Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, a Denver-based nonprofit legal program that provides Know Your Rights presentations to detainees in Aurora, says she believes the practice is common in counties throughout Colorado.
And Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden praises the partnership.
“It’s been successful having them come into the detention center on a regular basis and to make those determinations,” he says. “We take a very strong position on arresting illegal immigrants who are involved in criminal activity.”
The sheriff says he also encourages an aggressive stance against traffic violations. Minor infractions, such as broken taillights, burned-out license plate lights or a failure to signal for turns, he says, can lead officers to drug dealers and burglars as much as drivers without insurance and those holding false documents.
“If somebody has a defective taillight and they get pulled over and it turns out they’ve also got a forged driver’s license, they’re definitely going to get arrested for having a forged driver’s license,” Alderden says, “which is a felony.”
Sam Jones wasn’t convicted of a felony in Larimer County, but ICE doesn’t make a distinction when it transfers immigrant detainees. On the road to the big pen in Aurora, burglars and traffic violators are one in the same.
*Sam Jones is a pseudonym.
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