Did you know?
You may not, so listen up:Refugees in the United States that have entered the country without a valid visa are kept in detention centers while their cases are decided in court. This means that they are jailed for indefinite periods of time (up to several years) without actually being charged for any crime. Since they are not US citizens, they also do not have the right to a state sponsored attorney, so unless they have the money for one (which they very rarely do), they are left alone to fend for themselves in a completely unknown legal system. The worst part of all this is that the US is actually one of the countries that is "friendliest" to refugees.
In any case, since the UNHCR provides legal aid to detained refugees in the United States, today when I was answering the phones I actually got to talk for a bit with one of these people. I'll tell you, it was pretty deppressing. The caller had a really nice-guy-sounding voice. He was from Honduras and could not speak English, and was looking for legal aid to help rectify the human rights abuses that had been committed against him within the detention system. He told me he doesn't even care if he's deported anymore, he just wants someone that will seek to make justice for the fact that he was phisically abused and raped in prison. And he hasn't even committed a crime.
I listened to his story and tried to be as nice as possible, but it was rather frustrating because at the end, all I could tell him was that our Spanish-speaking legal assistant wasn't in today, and that he would have to call back Monday from 2:00 to 5:00.
To learn about refugees please check out:
UNHCR
USCCB - Office of Migration and Refugee Services (check out their resettlement programs, you could even help!)
US Committee for Refugees
posted by ertandberni @ 2:01 PM
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