On Monday the first I paid a visit to the Elizabeth Detention center in Elizabeth, NJ. It is a place where Immigration services takes undocumented people and holds them until deportation or until the individuals lawyers or people in power convince our government to return the individuals’ freedom. Some detainees are there for weeks and others are there for over a year. It is a slow process handled by people who have no desire to speed the process up.
On my way there Jose, a member of the Reformed Church of Highland Park (RCHP), warned me that the detention center would be dirty. Jose said to me, “this place is kind of like a jail that you see in the movies, except for dirtier and the workers there, well they do not care about the people who are detained.” I knew that Jose had been to the detention center multiple times but I did not really understand how true those words would be. He told me a little bit about the people he has met at the detention center. Jose shared with me stories that the detainees had shared with him. The stories all read of injustice and suffering. Jose told me of innocent, hardworking people who are being treated like criminals when their only fault is not having the proper documentation to be in this country. The stories of people who are being taken advantage of by their lawyers because the lawyers can get away with robbing them and still the detainees trust the lawyers because they are their only hope. Jose told me, “The philosophy of the detention centers is that if they treat the detainees badly enough the detainees will ask to be deported.”
As I entered the Elizabeth detention center and saw a Hispanic family waiting to go inside and visit their family member, my heart hurt. Jose and I walked up to the window and asked to visit a couple of the detainees on Jose’s list. After about 30 minutes of the guard finding more interesting things to look at (like the specks on the wall), she finally finished writing my name down on a list of visitors and handed me a red laminated tag that I was to place on my shirt. The tag said, “ELIZABETH DETENTION CENTER VISITOR PASS ESCORT REQUIRED”. After Jose received his, the door buzzed and we walked though it.
We went though the metal detectors and then they opened a door for us, once that door closed a different door opened and we walked though it and into the visitation room. A room of about 15 different cubicle like stations with a chair and a phone. The room was divided by glass, dividing you and the detainees. Just like Jose said, it was like a jail in movies except dirtier. The paint was chipping off the walls, there was dust on the glass display case that held paper flowers crafted by the detainees in their free time (there is not a single window in the building most of them have not seen the sun in months, the detainees have nothing to do except be tortured by loneliness), the floors were filthy and the plastic chairs looked ancient.
The most ironic part of the room was the colorful mural on the wall: A mural of the statue of liberty with the New York City skyline and a red, white and blue flag,the words UNITED WE STAND, GOD BLESS AMERICA were written on the top corner. Those words have never felt so empty and have never meant so little. As I sat there and watched Jose talk to a man whose wife and children will soon have no money to eat or pay rent because he has been detained for 3 and a half months and the money he had saved up will soon run out. A man who could not look me in the eyes when he spoke of his wife and children because if he looked at me he would have probably cried. A hardworking, responsible man whose only fault is not having the proper documentation. When he spoke to me he said, “I do not want my children to live in my country, it is violent there and there are no opportunities for my children. We are here because we want our children to be safe and to have a chance of a better future. They will not have that in my country.”
Another man I spoke to had been in the detention center for seven months. This man knows no one in the United States but cannot return to his home country because his family believes he is a homosexual, if he returns he will be killed because homosexuality is unacceptable in his culture. When spoke to me, he smiled and asked me questions about myself, he did not want to talk about himself. He did advice me to work hard so that later I can take care of my mommy and daddy.
William’s eyes made my heart ache and Ebenizer’s smile gave me hope.
I do not understand our government and their politics. I do not understand why they are spending so much of our money to detain innocent people who otherwise would be contributing to our economy. All I know is that millions of innocent people are being treated like criminals and not only are they suffering but so are their families. We are the most advanced nation in the world? We are the land of the free? We are the land of opportunities?
I wish I could help every single person in the detention centers but I am just one person. I pray that God gives peace to all the men and women who have had their freedom and dignity stolen from them. I pray that God forgives our nation for our ignorance and our lack of enthusiasm when it comes to doing justice. I pray that we can become knowledgeable and work together to make a positive change in our government. In the end, government officials work for us. Don't they?
Anyways, that is my infuriated blog on detention centers and injustice.
May God bless you and always give you peace,
Karla <3
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