美国国家公共电台 NPR Unequal Outcomes: Most ICE Detainees Held In Rural Areas Where Deportation Risks Soar

 

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement needs more space to house undocumented immigrants. And increasingly, the agency is finding it in rural regions. A new analysis by NPR indicates a majority of detainees are held in rural areas. But as NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports, those detained in far-flung places also have a much harder time finding lawyers and are far more likely to be deported¹.

YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE²: It took 10 1/2 months for Yoel Alonso to meet with a lawyer. Alonso had turned himself over to immigration officials in Laredo, Texas, seeking asylum³ from Cuba last October. Since then, he's been detained in two rural facilities, first in Louisiana and now in Adams County, Miss., about a two-hour drive from Baton⁴ Rouge⁵.

Alonso's wife, Midalis Rodriguez, is a permanent U.S. resident. She lives in southern Florida with their two children.

MIDALIS RODRIGUEZ: (Speaking Spanish).

NOGUCHI: "It's very, very far from anything," she says, "too far to afford hiring a private attorney."

Lack of legal help is one of many challenges for undocumented immigrants and an even bigger problem for those detained in remote locations, yet ICE is adding detention⁶ facilities far from cities. Over half - 52% - of detainees are held in rural areas according to NPR's analysis of ICE data. And that rate is increasing. Liz Martinez is a board member of advocacy group Freedom for Immigrants.

LIZ MARTINEZ: It's a very concerning trend that immigration detention is moving to rural areas, remote areas where that makes it so much harder for a person in detention to get the support that they need.

NOGUCHI: Detainees in urban areas are at least four times more likely to find attorneys to represent them according to a 2015 University of Pennsylvania Law Review study. Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center sued ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security. The civil rights group alleges⁸ the government is deliberately⁹ detaining people in rural areas far from legal resources. ICE, which currently detains nearly 56,000 people, declined comment on that case. In an emailed statement, an ICE spokesman says the agency looks at airports, health care and legal resources when selecting facilities. He also says detainees have access to phones and video teleconferencing and can meet with lawyers during visiting hours.

But many immigration attorneys complain rural facilities lack necessary resources. There aren't enough phones or translators, call connections are poor, visiting hours are too restrictive, and it's simply too far to travel.

Yoel Alonso's wife has been able to visit him only once. Alonso was recently diagnosed with lung cancer, which makes the wait more excruciating. He eventually found a lawyer - one of the rare detainees with free representation. But his wife says his asylum request and two requests for parole have been denied.

RODRIGUEZ: (Through interpreter) What more could a wife with a sick husband want other than to be with him? At the very least, I want to offer him my support and for my children to offer support.

NOGUCHI: One of the key reasons detainees are held in remote regions appears to be money.

LAUREN-BROOKE EISEN: Cheap labor¹⁰, cheap land.

NOGUCHI: Lauren-Brooke Eisen is acting¹¹ director of the Brennan Center's Justice Program. She says many rural areas viewed prisons as job engines. Hundreds of new facilities were built in the 1990s. Inmate¹² populations peaked then declined, leaving lots of empty beds.

ICE is now contracting with those rural prisons. It needs those beds as it continues to detain more immigrants. Just last week, ICE arrested nearly 700 workers at food processing plants in Mississippi. Loyola University law professor Andrea Armstrong says she sees that happening across Louisiana.

ANDREA ARMSTRONG: When the criminal justice reforms were enacted¹³, that left empty beds that were ripe for contracting with ICE.

NOGUCHI: Those contracts can be lucrative¹⁴. The state pays local sheriffs $24.39 a day to house an inmate. By comparison, ICE pays five times that, an average daily rate of more than $126. ICE confirmed it recently opened eight new detention facilities, seven of which are in Louisiana. All but one of them are in sparsely¹⁵ populated areas.

Lisa Lehner is director of Americans for Immigrant Justice. She represents detainees in Glades¹⁶ County, Fla., about 100 miles from Miami. Glades is the state's fourth least populated county, surrounded by acres of sugar cane¹⁷ fields.

LISA LEHNER: I've never seen an immigration attorney up there - never.

NOGUCHI: You've never seen one?

LEHNER: Nope, never.

NOGUCHI: Detainees there, she says, are treated like hardened criminals. Glades has been the subject of a number of complaints and lawsuits¹⁸. They allege⁷ everything from misuse¹⁹ of pepper spray and solitary²⁰ confinement²¹ to religious persecution²². Lehner argues conditions are worse in rural facilities in part because fewer people can observe what's happening. By contrast, she says, when a Brooklyn New York ICE facility lost heat for a week during a cold snap in January, there was an outcry.

LEHNER: If there's lawyers going in and out, you would imagine that the people who are detaining the immigrants are going to behave in a more careful way.

NOGUCHI: It's not just that treatment might differ. Immigration courts in rural areas deny many more asylum cases, sending detainees back to their home countries. NPR's analysis of research from Syracuse University found judges in rural immigration courts denied 87% of asylum cases compared to just over half in urban courts. Romy Lerner is associate director of the immigration clinic at the University of Miami's law school.

ROMY LERNER: It is an issue because it means if you have the bad luck of being detained in a certain facility, then you're almost guaranteed to be deported.

NOGUCHI: Mississippi detainee Yoel Alonso hopes to beat those odds²³. He's appealing his case for asylum and hopes to reunite with his family.

Yuki Noguchi, NPR News.

[POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In this report, we said an ICE-contracted jail in Brooklyn, N.Y., lost heat during a cold snap in January. In fact, that facility no longer contracts with ICE and was not doing so at the time.]

(SOUNDBITE OF DISTANT.LO'S "TOO OFTEN")

1 deported   

v.将…驱逐出境( deport的过去式和过去分词 )；举止

参考例句：

• They stripped me of my citizenship and deported me. 他们剥夺我的公民资格，将我驱逐出境。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The convicts were deported to a deserted island. 罪犯们被流放到一个荒岛。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 asylum   

n.避难所，庇护所，避难

参考例句：

• The people ask for political asylum.人们请求政治避难。
• Having sought asylum in the West for many years,they were eventually granted it.他们最终获得了在西方寻求多年的避难权。

4 baton   

n.乐队用指挥杖

参考例句：

• With the baton the conductor was beating time.乐队指挥用指挥棒打拍子。
• The conductor waved his baton,and the band started up.指挥挥动指挥棒，乐队开始演奏起来。

5 rouge   

n.胭脂，口红唇膏；v.(在…上)擦口红

参考例句：

• Women put rouge on their cheeks to make their faces pretty.女人往面颊上涂胭脂，使脸更漂亮。
• She didn't need any powder or lip rouge to make her pretty.她天生漂亮，不需要任何脂粉唇膏打扮自己。

6 detention   

n.滞留，停留；拘留，扣留；(教育)留下

参考例句：

• He was kept in detention by the police.他被警察扣留了。
• He was in detention in connection with the bribery affair.他因与贿赂事件有牵连而被拘留了。

7 allege   

vt.宣称，申述，主张，断言

参考例句：

• The newspaper reporters allege that the man was murdered but they have given no proof.新闻记者们宣称这个男人是被谋杀的，但他们没提出证据。
• Students occasionally allege illness as the reason for absence.学生时不时会称病缺课。

8 alleges   

断言，宣称，辩解( allege的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• The newspaper article alleges that the mayor is corrupt. 报纸上断言该市长腐败。
• Steven was tardy this morning and alleges that his bus was late. 史提芬今天早上迟到的说词是公车误点了。

9 deliberately   

adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地

参考例句：

• The girl gave the show away deliberately.女孩故意泄露秘密。
• They deliberately shifted off the argument.他们故意回避这个论点。

10 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

11 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

12 inmate   

n.被收容者；(房屋等的)居住人；住院人

参考例句：

• I am an inmate of that hospital.我住在那家医院。
• The prisoner is his inmate.那个囚犯和他同住一起。

13 enacted   

制定（法律），通过（法案）( enact的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• legislation enacted by parliament 由议会通过的法律
• Outside in the little lobby another scene was begin enacted. 外面的小休息室里又是另一番景象。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

14 lucrative   

adj.赚钱的，可获利的

参考例句：

• He decided to turn his hobby into a lucrative sideline.他决定把自己的爱好变成赚钱的副业。
• It was not a lucrative profession.那是一个没有多少油水的职业。

15 sparsely   

adv.稀疏地；稀少地；不足地；贫乏地

参考例句：

• Relative to the size, the city is sparsely populated. 与其面积相比，这个城市的人口是稀少的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The ground was sparsely covered with grass. 地面上稀疏地覆盖草丛。 来自《简明英汉词典》

16 glades   

n.林中空地( glade的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Maggie and Philip had been meeting secretly in the glades near the mill. 玛吉和菲利曾经常在磨坊附近的林中空地幽会。 来自辞典例句
• Still the outlaw band throve in Sherwood, and hunted the deer in its glades. 当他在沉思中变老了，世界还是照样走它的路，亡命之徒仍然在修武德日渐壮大，在空地里猎鹿。 来自互联网

17 cane   

n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的

参考例句：

• This sugar cane is quite a sweet and juicy.这甘蔗既甜又多汁。
• English schoolmasters used to cane the boys as a punishment.英国小学老师过去常用教鞭打男学生作为惩罚。

18 lawsuits   

n.诉讼( lawsuit的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Lawsuits involving property rights and farming and grazing rights increased markedly. 涉及财产权，耕作与放牧权的诉讼案件显著地增加。 来自辞典例句
• I've lost and won more lawsuits than any man in England. 全英国的人算我官司打得最多，赢的也多，输的也多。 来自辞典例句

19 misuse   

n.误用，滥用；vt.误用，滥用

参考例句：

• It disturbs me profoundly that you so misuse your talents.你如此滥用自己的才能，使我深感不安。
• He was sacked for computer misuse.他因滥用计算机而被解雇了。

20 solitary   

adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士

参考例句：

• I am rather fond of a solitary stroll in the country.我颇喜欢在乡间独自徜徉。
• The castle rises in solitary splendour on the fringe of the desert.这座城堡巍然耸立在沙漠的边际，显得十分壮美。

21 confinement   

n.幽禁，拘留，监禁；分娩；限制，局限

参考例句：

• He spent eleven years in solitary confinement.他度过了11年的单独监禁。
• The date for my wife's confinement was approaching closer and closer.妻子分娩的日子越来越近了。

22 persecution   

n. 迫害,烦扰

参考例句：

• He had fled from France at the time of the persecution. 他在大迫害时期逃离了法国。
• Their persecution only serves to arouse the opposition of the people. 他们的迫害只激起人民对他们的反抗。

23 odds   

n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别

参考例句：

• The odds are 5 to 1 that she will win.她获胜的机会是五比一。
• Do you know the odds of winning the lottery once?你知道赢得一次彩票的几率多大吗？