Uncivil liberties Detainee twists in Kafkaesque limbo BY STEVEN STYCOS

Where can you spend two years in prison without being charged with a crime or having a bail hearing? Communist China? Turkey? North Korea?

Try Cranston.

August marked the beginning of Anderson Cesar’s third year at the Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI). The Immigration and Naturalization Service (now known as the Bureau of Immigration and Customers Enforcement, or BICE) detained him in July 2001, and it seeks to deport him to Haiti. While living in Massachusetts in the 1990s, Cesar was convicted of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (a knife). Under the 1996 federal immigration law, almost all non-citizens who commit felonies must be deported. So when Cesar completed his sentence, the INS immediately detained him.

The same law prohibits bond or bail for detainees, so Cesar, now 32, has sat at the ACI for more than two years, waiting for a final decision in his legal case. Citing his strained relationship with his wife and three-year-old daughter, he says detention, "[Is] killing me," and adds, "I’m sitting here doing dead time because it doesn’t count, because I’m not doing a sentence."

Cesar and other detainees have challenged their detentions, and thanks to rulings by federal judges in Rhode Island, at least two immigrants received bond hearings. But that door closed in April when the US Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, declared constitutional the 1996 law denying bond hearings. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice William Rehnquist stated that detention, "Lasts roughly a month-and-a-half in the vast majority of cases and about five months in the minority of cases in which the alien chooses to repeal." The Phoenix, however, identified two immigrants, in addition to Cesar, who have been detained for more than two years in Rhode Island (See "Forgotten men," News, August 9, 2002.")

About 90 BICE detainees are now housed at the ACI, in dormitory-style rooms at Medium II Security, according to Department of Corrections spokesman Albert Bucci.

Cesar says his group of detainees receives only one hour a day of recreation and is barred from attending ACI-run Alcohol Anonymous groups, English classes, and other educational programs offered to the regular prisoners. Cesar and other detainees also complain that medical and dental care is inadequate. During an August 25 trip to the prison dentist for a broken tooth, for example, Cesar says, he learned he also had six cavities. But because he is a detainee, and not a regular prisoner, Cesar says the dentist said he could only pull the teeth. "They treat us detainees worse than people doing time," Cesar laments.

Bucci says detainees are not allowed to take classes because the INS wants them separated from convicted criminals. And he adds that non-essential dental work, like Cesar’s, has to be approved by the BICE’s Boston office.

Detainees also complain they are frequently moved from prison to prison. Starting in November 2002, Cesar says, he was transferred from Rhode Island to jails in Massachusetts, Louisiana, Massachusetts again, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania before returning to Cranston in April. The moves disrupt communication with lawyers, end family visits, and result in lost legal papers and personal items, say Cesar and Liam Kelly, a former detainee recently deported to Canada.

Nationally, Republicans are pressing to increase detentions and deportations. In April, Attorney General John Ashcroft ruled that illegal immigrants with no ties to terrorist groups may be detained indefinitely to discourage illegal immigration. Then in July, Republicans in the House of Representatives held hearings to criticize a four-year-old law that bars deportation of immigrants who are likely to be tortured upon return to their native countries.

On August 22, after pondering the case for 10 months, US District Court Judge Mark Wolf of Massachusetts denied Cesar’s appeal of his INS deportation order. It could not be immediately learned if he plans to appeal.