Inside detention - Report

Outside cameras are rarely if ever allowed inside where most INS detainees are held. My entrance required lengthy, repeated, and often futile negotiation with the INS or county jails, and occasionally both bureaucratic layers at the same time. Where permitted, access was typically restricted to a small room in the facility normally used for attorney client meetings, with white walls, a desk, and two chairs. Working under these restrictions presented many challenges, not the least of which was the difficulty posed by "documenting" detainees in this de-contextualized environment. On occasion, the short leash could be stretched a little, allowing a slightly expanded view of detainee life beyond the interview room. But the leash was always on. While the difficulties and frustrations faced in gaining access to INS facilities with a camera were many, the testimonies encountered once inside repeatedly revealed that no matter how difficult it was for me to get inside, it was always more difficult for detainees to get out. As a photojournalist I felt a deep commitment to harness photography's power in drawing public attention to this story.

While the post-9/11 dragnet drew media attention to INS practices, coverage of the entire detained population and its treatment was largely ignored. Here too, precise numbers are notoriously difficult to come by. It is estimated that the INS detains somewhere between 200,000 to 250,000 immigrants per year in approximately 400 jails across the country, often with minimal public awareness or oversight. Put into the proper context, the treatment and secrecy surrounding 9/11 detainees can be seen less as an aberration, less an exception to the rule of due process, and more as an extreme version of questionable detention practices operating throughout the country.

Detained men, women, and children like those photographed here need representation--through legal means, and through documentary. Sequestered in jails, they lose their voices, their rights, and their hopes. These images, part of a larger exhibition of photos taken from 2001-2002, begin to put a face on their staggeringly large numbers and aim to make their situation less deniable and more real.

RELATED ARTICLE: Iraqi detainee, INS Detention Facility, Seattle, Washington.

Zohir Kadir was 20 years old when he fled military service in Iraq and left on a four-month underground odyssey in search of freedom. Ultimately detained upon arrival in the United States as a stowaway in July of 1999, he applied for asylum but was denied and did not appeal. Zohir had no legal assistance at the time. The INS immediately began to arrange his deportation back to Iraq. The Federal Public Defenders in Seattle was finally able to obtain Kadir's release on parole in August of 2001, after 25 months in detention.

INS Detention Facility, Baltimore, Maryland.

Pakistani and Mexican detainees facing deportation wait inside a holding cell before being escorted upstairs to their immigration hearings. Woken up in the middle of the night, they were transported several hours by van to make the morning docket in Baltimore. Neither man had any legal representation. The jackets and striped uniforms are standard issue at their place of detention, Wicomico County Jail on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and are used to distinguish INS detainees from other prisoners held there.

Indefinite Detainee, INS Detention Facility, San Pedro, Califronia.

Born in Laos and relocated to a refugee camp in Thailand, Sonepaseut Meksouvanh arrived in the United States with his family at the age of five. A legal permanent resident, he was raised in America and did well until high school when he got in trouble with a gang. Several convictions and short jail terms later, the INS picked him up with the intent of deporting him back to Laos, a country he has not known since he was a toddler. Unable to deport him due to the absence of a repatriation treaty, the INS has kept him in detention for over a year. In spite of this, Sonepaseut struggles to maintain his self-worth: "I feel like I'm a good book with a bad cover, and they're just judging me by my cover."

Steven Rubin is a freelance photojournalist in the Washington, D.C. area, whose photographs have been published in The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, and Time, among other magazines. He was a 2001 Media Fellow with the Open Society Institute's Criminal Justice Initiative, which supported his photographic investigation of INS detention.

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