Tag: Associated Press report on immigrant detention

AP Study Shows "The High Cost" of Immigrant Detention

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

Raymond Soeoth, a 41-year-old Pentecostal minister from Indonesia, spent more than two years under detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after his asylum claim was denied. Even after he agreed to be deported, he was drugged through forced injections — only to learn, while hallucinating at the airport, that he could not leave because his paperwork was not in order.

After becoming a plaintiff in a class-action suit, Soeoth was allowed to stay in the U.S. for at least two more years.

Soeoth’s case is one of several dramatic stories of undocumented immigrants that portray a disfunctional detention system in a special investigation The Associated Press published today. According to the news organization, “(a) computer analysis of every person being held on a recent Sunday night shows that most did not have a criminal record and many were not about to leave the country — voluntarily or via deportation.”

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