STILL FORGOTTEN High court dashes hopes for INS detainees By Steven Stycos

By declaring that immigrants do not have the same rights as US citizens, the US Supreme Court last week crushed the hopes of many Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) detainees at the Adult Correctional Institutions in Cranston.

Men like Caesar Anderson and Errol Hall say they should be free on bond while they appeal their deportation orders. Now, they will stay behind bars.

A 1996 US law requires that non-citizen immigrants who are convicted of felonies, like Anderson and Hall, be deported. Typically, the INS detains immigrants immediately after they complete their prison sentences and holds them while it completes removal procedures.

The US Supreme Court case concerned Hyung Joon Kim, who emigrated from South Korea when he was six years old. He committed burglary and petty theft at the age of 18 and was ordered deported. Kim then challenged the constitutionality of his detention while he awaited his final removal order. Under the US Constitution, he argued, he was entitled to a bond hearing to determine whether he was a flight risk or a threat to the community. A US District Court in California agreed, and at a subsequent INS bond hearing, Kim was released. As of last week, according to the Boston Globe, he had a job and was attending college.

In a 5-4 decision, however, the US Supreme Court overruled the district court and found that the 1996 law barring bond hearings and requiring detention was constitutional. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice William Rehnquist argued that Congress could pass laws limiting legal immigrants’ due process rights. Detention, he stated, "Lasts roughly a month and a half in a vast majority of cases and about five months in the minority of cases in which the alien chooses to appeal."

Many ACI detainees interviewed by the Phoenix, however, have been detained for years, not months (see "Forgotten men," News, August 9, 2002). Anderson, a 31-year-old Haitian native who served a prison sentence for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, has been detained since July 2001. And Hall, 51, a native of Jamaica who was convicted of bank robbery, has been detained since May 1999.

Two Rhode Island judges have been sympathetic to INS detainees’ plight. In August, US District Judge Mary Lisi ordered the INS to hold a bond hearing for Yelkis Jose Segura-Rosado, a Cuban immigrant detained at the ACI for two-and-a-half years. And in March, US District Judge William Smith ordered a bond hearing for Hall, a fervent advocate for detainees. The US Supreme Court decision, however, bars similar rulings in the future, according to immigration lawyers.

At the beginning of this week, 102 INS detainees were being held at the ACI. In April 2002 Anderson, Hall and 26 others petitioned the INS to improve conditions at the Intake Service Center. In November 2002, most of the detainees were moved to medium II security at the request of the INS, says state Department of Corrections spokesman Albert Bucci. Instead of being locked into two- and three-person cells for most of the day, he says, they live in a military-style barracks with 68 beds and have more opportunities for recreation and education.