WWJD: Who Would Jesus Detain?
Monday’s New York Times has a front page, above-the-fold, top-right story about how immigrants die in custody, some being held for nothing more than visa violations. It centers on Boubacar Bah, a 52-year-old tailor form Guinea who overstayed his tourist visa. Bah fell in prison, hit his head, and wound up in a coma. He had a skull fracture and multiple brain hemorrhages, and died four months later.
Between January 2004 and November 2007 there were sixty-six known deaths among those in immigration custody. We now know this only because the New York Times utilized the Freedom of Information Act to obtain this information and, as the paper states, “it reflects a reality that haunts grieving families like his: the difficulty of getting information about the fate of people taken into immigration custody, even when they die.”
Boubacar Bah with his first wife, Dalanda, and their elder son, Amadou Talibé Bah, in Guinea before Mr. Bah came to the United States in 1998.
Mr. Bah’s relatives never saw the internal records labeled “proprietary information - not for distribution” by the Corrections Corporation of America, which runs the New Jersey detention center for the federal government. The documents detail how he was treated by guards and government employees: shackled and pinned to the floor of the medical unit as he moaned and vomited, then left in a disciplinary cell for more than 13 hours, despite repeated notations that he was unresponsive and intermittently foaming at the mouth.
The story goes on to reveal that detainees are not treated properly for medical conditions, relatives are not informed of the deaths of loved ones in custody, and they often have to fight to get that tragic information.
Interesting theological point: based on the evidence of the Gospels, Jesus spent rather more time on the receiving end of detention than the detaining end.
May 5th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
This is just ridiculous and unfair. I’m pretty conservative when it comes to national defense, but detaining people for flimsy reasons is its own form of terrorism.
The movie LIONS FOR LAMBS had the potential for greatness, but totally flopped b/c of a weak ending. However, if I hadn’t seen that movie I wouldn’t be able to appreciate this article at all. I highly recommend LIONS FOR LAMBS and THE KINGDOM with Jamie Fox.
May 5th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Abhorrent, and a story conservative radio will gloss over.
May 5th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
If it addresses it at all.
May 5th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
W F G:
I wouldn’t hold my breath. They’re not through trashing Rev. Wright and probably won’t be done until the next election. After all, they’re still talking about the Monica Lewinski scandal 10 years later.
May 5th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Wheelies and Annie~ I agree with you. And even if they do discuss it, they’ll just say that holding all of these detainees is justified.
May 5th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
There’s, as an ethical person knows, no excuse for indefinite detentions of anyone on the hypothetical premise that upon release they will return to what they haven’t been convicted of in the first place, terrorism. How backwards are we? This is akin to the Witch trials, minus the forms of execution, so far as I know. How many farm girls have yelled terrorist today? The point is, yes, in respect of rights you do take risks, because that’s what a right entails.
May 5th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
k
May 5th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Sounds like the prison industry is booming, and the corps are hiring guards at $7 an hour, so this may well be just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
We keep hearing how government can’t do the job like private industry can, so what I’m wondering is where are all the shining examples of what private industry can do? I mean aside from Haliburton and Blackwater and the Corrections Corporation of America, and Union Carbide and Hooker Chemical, and, let’s say, Exxon-Mobile.
Well I guess the US Postal Service does pretty good. Look at all the bicycle races they won.
May 5th, 2008 at 8:30 pm