Then, in May of 1997, Trung was transferred to the county jail in Victoria. The INS sent Trung to the county jail in New Braunfels, Texas. So what to do? The INS's policy has been to keep people like Trung incarcerated, even though they've completed their criminal sentences. Vietnam is one of a number of countries, including Cuba, Cambodia, and Laos, which won't accept deported individuals. Given the serious nature of Trung's crime and the fact that he was not a citizen, an immigration judge could and did decide to deport him.īut there was a catch. While he had begun the application process, he never completed it. Trung, in fact, was not a citizen, though he was a lawful permanent resident. But when his time was up, he wasn't released. He plead guilty to both counts and served 32 months in federal prison. On October 19, 1992, he was arrested and charged with drug trafficking and money laundering.
#SHAMYLA THIS AMERICAN LIFE CRACK#
He began to sell crack cocaine, and he was pretty good at it, netting $500 to a $1,000 a week. His grades slipped and his scholarship was rescinded. Trung went on to college at Texas Southern University, and there he lost his footing. I asked Barney Frank what he thought about his colleague saying that. It should just make exceptions for those cases that merit it. And Republican congressmen like Lamar Smith have been saying for years now that INS does not need a new law. If something bad happens, politicians should take the heat for it. Now, the Republicans say that is just fine. If Janet Reno or the INS pardon somebody who then went on to commit terrible crimes, the Attorney General and her party and its candidates- they are the ones who would take the blame. In fact, the INS itself has the power to look the other way in any case and not deport somebody. Janet Reno could issue an order allowing Mario Fredas, or any other potential deportees, to stay in the US. He's exactly right, by the way, that the Attorney General has the power under current law to stop deportation of anybody who she thinks is deserving. Jack Martin of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Last month, they held a speaker's forum in a Fall River church, where women were invited to tell their stories, and politicians were invited to come and listen and respond. They dress in black and carry signs protesting the deportations. They hold a monthly support group and weekly vigils in downtown New Bedford. Over half of the population is of Portuguese descent.Īt this point, there have been so many deportations, a women's group has formed here, made up of mothers, sisters, and wives of men who've been deported to Portugal. This is the kind of place where it seems like every little store and doctor's office has a Portuguese name, and where many first-generation Portuguese immigrants never learned to speak English. A section of Moby Dick where Ishmael meets up with whalers from all over the world is set in New Bedford.
#SHAMYLA THIS AMERICAN LIFE FULL#
And Portuguese immigrants have been coming here since the 1790s, because this was a major whaling town, and the Portuguese islands, the Azores, were full of whalers as well. New Bedford and Fall River are both really pretty port towns, with cobblestones, colonial-looking downtowns, and small houses on streets winding back from the waterfront. Alex Kotlowitz tells the story from Texas. Under current law, usually, you stay in jail indefinitely. What happens if the immigration service wants to deport you, but the country that you come from won't take you back. I'm Ira Glass.Īct One of our show today, Where Goes the Neighborhood? We hear how the immigration law of 1996 has a community of nonpolitical people reluctantly going to protests, attending meetings at night, talking to politicians, doing all sorts of things most of us would do anything to avoid.Īct Two, Whose Idea Was This Anyway? Congressman Barney Frank argues that most of his colleagues had no idea what they were voting for when they voted for key portions of this law, and an advocate for the law explains why we should want to deport more people.Īct Three, Man Without a Country. From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. Most of the law's original sponsors in Congress now say they went too far, they were too harsh when they passed the law, and yet most of the law's key provisions still stand unchanged and unchallenged. It's an immigration law that the immigration service itself says is unfair. We live in a big enough country that there are actually lots of laws too obscure for most of us to have heard of, which actually affect tens of thousands of lives in huge, huge ways. Today on our program, the story of a little-known law and how it has affected one community in Massachusetts.
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