Court Warriors

My Odyssey Through ICE Detention Centers

By Jeysson The following is an excerpt from a piece Jeysson wrote while in federal immigration detention, and before he eventually beat the deportation order. The rest of Jeysson’s story can be read on the online version of Silicon Valley De-Bug Magazine, Issue #21 at: http://issuu.com/svdebug/docs/dbeng21

My detention by immigration became an odyssey that I thought would never end. And to this day, I still don’t know what padilla will ultimately happen with vs. kentucky me. When I ended my time In March 2010, the US Supreme Court ruled in criminal custody, I was in Padilla vs. Kentucky that immigrants living detained and transferred by in this country must be told by their lawyers ICE to an immigration facility whether pleading guilty to a crime could lead in San Francisco. In this facility, to deportation. Jose Padilla was a longtime lethey took my fingerprints and gal immigrant living in the US for over 40 years. some mugshots and told me He pled guilty to the charges he was facing that I was not eligible for bail only because he was told by his attorney that until I saw an immigration pleading guilty would not have an effect on his judge who would approve me immigration status. The lawyer was wrong, and for bail.

Kentucky Supreme Court would not let him

I got locked up in a take his plea back. His case went all the way to waiting cell, and I was told I the US Supreme Court where the Justices ruled was going to see the judge 7-2 in Padilla’s favor. From now on, lawyers the same day, which never cannot remain silent on the effect a guilty plea happened. They only gave me may have on a defendant’s immigration status. a sandwich and orange juice In clear cases, a lawyer must advise his or her for the whole day. Later on, client that the guilty plea triggers automatic they brought more people deportation. In less clear cases, the lawyer must and in a couple of hours, the still advise that an immigrant’s status could be cell got crowded. It became in jeopardy. so crowded that it was even difficult to breathe, and there was no room to sit. They had us standing up the whole day.

During the night, they got us on a bus to be transferred to Yuba County. When we got there, they took our chains off, and we got pulled in a cell for a couple of hours and were told we were going to be transferred to the ICE agency in San Francisco. We were supposed to see the judge that day but we couldn’t, so we had to wait until the next day.

That morning we got back to the agency, and once again, we couldn’t see the judge. Afterwards, we were taken to the Oakland airport where a Homeland Security airplane was waiting for us to take us to Arizona.

The guards and the people in charge of the airplane were extremely hostile and very disrespectful. The ICE agents treated us worst than animals. They would kick the little belongings that we had, and they would talk to us in a very disrespectful way.

What’s more, their actions and bad ethics were tainted with racism 18