All locked up and nowhere to go

Kim Smith

Sunday, Sept. 19, 1999 | 1:24 a.m.

Thinh Adrong has spent the last two years interpreting for his fellow Vietnamese and rubbing elbows with people from Yugoslavia, Cuba, Thailand, Russia, Cambodia and Armenia.

Adrong isn't a translator by trade, however. And he isn't an ambassador or a jet-setting tourist.

Adrong is a prisoner at the Las Vegas Detention Center. He is what federal public defenders call an indefinite detainee. He is one of more than 130 such detainees being held in Las Vegas by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

There are more than 3,000 indefinite detainees in the United States. Because of a law passed by Congress in 1996, they can't be deported, but they can't be released from jail either.

The 43-year-old electronics technician was convicted of assaulting his wife in California and spent four years in prison after violating his probation by using drugs. Now, eight years after Adrong's conviction, the INS wants to deport him.

The only problem is Vietnam doesn't want him back.

When Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRA-IRA) in 1996, members wanted the INS to be able to deport more criminal aliens. They expanded the types of crimes aliens could be deported for and they made the act retroactive, meaning people who committed crimes decades ago and have long since served their punishment, could be deported.

Opponents of the reform act say Congress didn't take into consideration the handful of countries that cut off ties with those who emigrate. As a result, thousands of resident aliens all over the U.S. are living in limbo inside jail cells. The United States doesn't want them. Nor do their native countries.

Under the old law, those people who could not be deported within six months were released. Now they are being kept behind bars with little hope of being released.

Critics of the law point out that the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects people from the deprivation of life, liberty or property without due process of law.

The INS says the deportable aliens might disappear or commit additional crimes if released. The aliens forfeited their constitutional rights the instant they were deemed deportable, the agency argues.

"What would your feeling be if the INS released a child molester and two days later he molested your child?" asks Karen Dorman, officer in charge of the Las Vegas INS office.

The issue, in Las Vegas at least, may come to a head Nov. 5.

The U.S. Public Defender's Office in Las Vegas has filed motions on behalf of dozens of clients asking for their release. The judges of the U.S. District of Nevada have agreed to allow the public defender's office to present about 100 cases as though they were one.

In July five federal judges in Seattle, after hearing five test cases, ruled indefinite detention was unconstitutional

Regardless of what the U.S. District of Nevada judges decide, other resident aliens in other jurisdictions will remain jailed, opponents of the law complain.

Many critics

Critics of the immigration reform act include the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Human Rights Watch, American Civil Liberties Union and the Las Vegas-based Fair Treatment for Immigrants. They are irate that even a first-time shoplifter can be deported under the act and that he would not have the right to appeal.

Mitigating circumstances, such as military service, family ties and exemplary post-conviction behavior, are not being taken into consideration, the organizations say.

Matt Tallmer, a public affairs manager for the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Washington, D.C., said, "Because of IIRA-IRA, now the INS can say, 'We don't care if you served your time, we don't care if you paid restitution or if you served probation, we're going to deport you anyway.' "

The INS officers who have to make the decisions are not immune to the hardships caused by reform act, but they have to follow the law, Dorman said.

"Congress gave us a very fine line to walk without a lot of discretion," Dorman said. "The intent was to curtail the immigration of hardcore criminals. Unfortunately, some of the criminal acts people did when they were young and maybe foolish are now considered aggravated felonies.

"I know some think the INS doesn't have a heart, but we do. We can't do, sometimes, what we want because it would mean our jobs. The law is written and we have to adhere to how the law was written."

Dorman stressed, however, that the Las Vegas detainees are more likely to be violent and/or habitual offenders than not.

"Some of these rap sheets, I can pick them up and they are longer than I am," Dorman said.

Support for deporting

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he believed resident aliens who are convicted of crimes should be deported. He added, however, that he is not opposed to allowing those with no place to go to be allowed out on probation, providing they are believed to be nonviolent.

Reid said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., will soon introduce legislation that should resolve the issue of undeportables.

"If ever there was an example of a Catch 22, this is it," Reid said. "They can't be deported and they can't be released."

Adrong, along with his parents and siblings, fled Vietnam in 1975 and settled in California. He became a resident alien in 1977 and eventually married and had two children, Brian and Michelle. He and his wife are now divorced and the children live with her in San Jose.

"I screwed up. America is the land of opportunity and after I came here I worked myself up from bus boy," Adrong said. "Then, I take it for granted and I start experimenting with drugs and alcohol and I end up here."

Adrong said deportation should not be considered for people whose crimes were not truly "horrible."

"Before I committed my crime I was doing well. I owned my house, I had a good career and now I've lost everything and they are trying to break me away from my children. I don't think that's right."

Short-lived relief

His relief at learning Vietnam wouldn't take him back was short-lived.

"Now I am faced with being incarcerated indefinitely," Adrong said. "I think about losing my children and my family. To never see them again, maybe dying would be a better feeling."

Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 200 detainees being held in 14 jails between February 1997 and August 1998. It then submitted a list of recommendations to Congress. Among them were establishing time limits on detention, requiring parole for those whose countries won't accept them back, and faster case reviews by the INS.

Gary Peck, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said the ACLU is involved in the fight to revise the act as well.

"It's clear that the practice of detaining these people was intended to facilitate their deportation, but once it's obvious they can't be deported, it should be obvious that this practice amounts to a life sentence," Peck said. "We have begun to discuss these issues in earnest and we are looking at any and all avenues to rectify the situation, up to and including, litigation."

Las Vegas resident Malena Burnett, founder of Fair Treatment for Immigrants, said she has been besieged by resident aliens whose loved ones have been picked up by the INS. Many do not speak English and are baffled by the law and the process. She refers them to the U.S. Public Defender's Office.

Not only are resident aliens being kept behind bars for crimes they've already paid for, those imprisoned at the North Las Vegas Detention Center are housed in the general inmate population, Burnett said. At the Las Vegas Detention Center INS prisoners are kept segregated.

Overcrowding woes

Of course, there are those who would prefer to share cells with criminals than be imprisoned far away from their loved ones, Burnett said. Because of overcrowding, INS prisoners tend to be shipped to wherever there is room.

Felix de Jesus Escobar, 43, is sitting in a jail cell in Eloy, Ariz., five hours from his wife and children in Las Vegas. Escobar, a native of Cuba, was given probation for four years in May after being caught with cocaine. On the day he was sentenced, the INS took him into custody. He left Las Vegas for Eloy two days later.

Escobar's wife, Maria Louisa Casales, 30, and their children, Felix Jr., 11, and Maday, 6, have seen him once since then.

"I know he committed a crime, but if he was ready to pay for the crime, why did immigration separate him from his children?" Casales asks through an interpreter. "Immigration didn't even give him a chance to finish his sentence."

Yobani Goichochea, 22, is behind bars at the Las Vegas Detention Center. His dad and sister are in Miami. His mom and other sister are in Cuba.

Goichochea came to the United States in 1992 when he was 15. Four years later he was convicted of robbery and served a year in prison in California. He was picked up by the INS in May 1998 after serving seven months for a parole violation.

"I have lots of things to do out there," Goichochea said. "I had plans to go to Miami and finish high school and start my life over again. This is just taking me away from my family."

Like Adrong, Goichochea has spent jail time in California, Arizona and now, Nevada, INS facilities.

Many disadvantages

Detainees being held in Las Vegas are at a disadvantage on a number of levels, Adrong and Goichochea said.

The INS wants its detainees to prove that they can be productive before releasing them on bond. Any efforts made while behind bars to get a job or improve themselves are looked upon favorably.

Unlike INS facilities, however, the detention centers in North Las Vegas and Las Vegas don't offer its prisoners Bible studies, job training courses, English as a Second Language courses, counseling or substance abuse classes. They were built with short-term county inmates in mind and until recently haven't had to worry about prisoners staying for years.

Ken Ellingson, chief of detention for the city of North Las Vegas, said he is working to get programs in place.

Mike Sheldon, chief of detention and enforcement for the city of Las Vegas, said his inmates are offered some vocational and recreational options. There are space limitations, he said, adding that with so many different countries represented, setting up academic programs would be problematic.

While in Eloy, Ariz., Adrong said he took a 20-hour business seminar and auto mechanic classes. Here he is one of only 15 detainees lucky enough to be allowed to work inside the jail, picking up dirty dishes after mealtime.

Nothing to do

"A lot of the men are doing nothing, they are sitting there watching TV," Adrong said. "We have to show the INS what we do while we are locked up, how we rehabilitate ourselves, but we don't have any programs to show them."

The inmates also say it's difficult for family members to scout out jobs for them when they live so far away.

"This experience has changed me a lot, it has changed me completely," Adrong said. "I'm more mature and I will work harder to support my family. I want to make up for the time I neglected them. Until the day I die I will never commit another crime."

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