Last Friday began with a pretty comical school bus-like trip up to Florence. Several of the FIRRP staff were in a minor car accident the night before, so we all had to carpool up to the office today. We listened to John Legend, read fancy food magazines, and chatted before we arrived at Florence, ready to combat detention yet again. I spent the morning continuing my research on homophobia and persecution in El Salvador, finding only a bit more information about specific cases in which gays have been targeted. A few of the cases were incredibly disturbing, however, which helped me humanize the situation again.
In the afternoon, Sam and I went to the infamous Pinal County Jail to conduct interviews for Sam’s research project. Christina, my FIRRP supervisor, has been in contact with PCJ officials for over a week now, asking permission for our presence and reminding the staff of our arrival. Person-to-person visits at PCJ are extremely uncommon; they are almost exclusively reserved for large Know Your Rights presentations by the Florence Project. The fact that Sam and I were even allowed to bypass the video chat booths and actually meet in one of PCJ’s “recreation” rooms was pretty incredible.
Walking down the long, daunting hallways to the pod was admittedly a bit frightening. If the Florence Project is the only outside human contact these men are allowed, what will it be like meeting with them? When we arrived at the first pod, the officer asked me IF I WAS UNDER EIGHTEEN, and then proceeded to shout out the names of the detainees marked on our list. The way he called their names made them seem like animals. One by one, the men emerged from their dorm rooms carrying huge stacks of all their legal documents, anxiously waiting to talk with us about their struggles. Sam and I looked at each other, disheartened by this cruel reality. We were not there to listen to their individual cases. We were not there to offer them legal advice or help them fight for various forms of relief. We were not there, in fact, to help them at all.
We pulled ourselves together and walked into the cement enclosure that serves as the prisoners’ only access to “the outdoors.” (Its window, it is worth mentioning, is roughly twenty feet long by five feet high, and is the only natural light in the entire pod.) The rec room has one table that is large enough for five or so people, so we all sat in a circle on the concrete floor. We introduced ourselves as students engaged in research, regretting to inform them that we were not lawyers or even true legal assistants. Sam started by asking each person where they were from, how long they had been detained, and the amount of time they had spent in the United States. The men were from all over the world—Latin America, the South Pacific, Africa, Asia, and even Europe. The amount of time spent in PCJ varied from two months to two years. The majority of the men had been in the United States for nearly their entire lives. The shortest amount of time was nine years, though most of them had spent thirty or more years in this country and had immigrated as an infant. One man showed us a piece of paperwork from the Bureau of Indian Affairs that indicated he was born in Yuma County on a Native American reservation in 1958. He is allegedly a U.S. citizen.
Continuing with the interview process, we began to ask about problems the men have encountered while being detained in PCJ. The most abundant issue was the cost and use of the phones. We learned that if you do not have money from outside the facility, you will not be able to make a phone call. Picking up the phone costs a minimum of $2.50, and local calls with a 520 area code and “27” beginning can cost around $10 for a few minutes of talk time. One man told us that he deposited $60 into his phone account, called his family in New York, and ran out of money after talking for five minutes. These men are brought to this horrible facility, disallowed contact with their friends and family, and supposed to fight their cases with the limited—yet expensive—available resources.
The next major problem we encountered was regarding PCJ’s “Law Library.” The Law Library, in H-unit, contains three computers, one printer, for which the detainees can almost never receive paper for, a phone book, and two outdated “Legal Resource” books. In E-unit, there are five computers, two printers, and two phonebooks. Other than Lexus Nexus, there is no legal material available. Nearly everyone had trouble understanding any of the material available in the library. There is no one available to explain how to use the Lexus Nexus or the law books.
The complications grew as the interviews continued. Some of the information was shocking. Knowing that we were only there to document their complaints and learn about PCJ was difficult. I wanted to help and stay there all day, listening to their individual cases and trying to help them in any way that I can. I wanted to sit with them on the concrete floor and hear about how hard they have tried to fight their case without a lawyer, and how rough it is to spend months in this facility. But once again, after just three hours of talking with these men, Sam and I passed through the huge steel doors and left the jail. We will most likely never see any of those detainees again, and nearly all of them will probably be deported to countries that are just as foreign to them as they are to the Deportation Officers.
Walking out of PCJ that day was particularly difficult for me. After hearing about all of the problems these men face on a daily basis and only being able to sympathize with them, I felt awful leaving. These men can barely survive the day; how could they possibly fight their difficult legal battles on their own? These men are locked up away from the outside world. Cramped, overwhelmed, and exhausted, they try to live each day in the hopes that they might be released from this abysmal County Jail.
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