Why is Trump Administration Jailing a Man Who Can’t Be Deported?

 Mamadu Balde is locked up because he can’t be deported. ACLU-PA hopes to change that.

By Andy Hoover, ACLU-PA Communications Director

In its zeal to deport anyone, the Trump administration has jailed a man that the government has tried and failed to deport in the past. Fortunately for those of us who care about constitutional rights- not to mention basic human decency- the Supreme Court has built a wall around the government’s ability to do such a thing.

In 1999, Mamadu Balde fled Sierra Leone, which was in the middle of a civil war that had started in 1991 and didn’t end until 2002. Mamadu’s hometown was occupied by rebels, the Revolutionary United Front, and his home was burned to the ground. In the fire, he lost all of his personal documentation, and he was separated from his parents and his sister during the occupation. He never saw them again.

Mamadu fled to New York City, seeking asylum in the United States. Despite the great tragedy he had experienced, the Bush administration and then the Obama administration opposed his application for asylum, and the courts agreed. When his appeals ran out in 2012, he was detained by ICE and incarcerated for more than nine months as the administration tried to deport him.

But a funny thing happened on the way to deportation.

Read more about Mamadu’s case at ACLU-PA’s Medium page.

On to the links.

EXCERPTS
(Criminal justice news deserving of an in-depth look.)

The George W. Hill Correctional Facility, in Delaware County — one of many private prisons making millions and rising in influence in the wake of Trump’s election.

Philly.com: “Dead bodies and billions in tax dollars”

“Then history intervened. Since the election of President Trump, GEO — which donated $170,000 to a Trump political action committee last year, and $250,000 to his inaugural bash — has seen its stock price nearly quadruple. One of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ first moves after taking office in February was to rescind Yates’ memo. So instead of being cut off, GEO is raking in the money. The company has signed $774 million worth of federal contracts so far this year, including a $110 million deal to build an immigration detention center in Texas. Critics argue that all of the problems that made privately run prisons a poor investment are still present: the facilities are sometimes understaffed and unsafe — three inmates have died at a GEO-run detention center in California since March — and the companies are about as transparent as a cinder block, aided by the knowledge that few Americans will shed any tears if a bunch of prisoners claim they’re being mistreated.”

Guardian: “US justice is built to humiliate and oppress black men. And it starts with the chokehold”

“There has never, not for one minute in American history, been peace between black people and the police. And nothing since slavery – not Jim Crow segregation, not lynching, not restrictive covenants in housing, not being shut out of New Deal programs like social security and the GI bill, not massive white resistance to school desegregation, not the ceaseless efforts to prevent blacks from voting – nothing has sparked the level of outrage among African Americans as when they have felt under violent attack by the police. Most of the times that African Americans have set aside traditional civil rights strategies like bringing court cases and marching peacefully and instead have rioted in the streets and attacked symbols of the state have been because of something the police have done. Watts in 1965, Newark in 1967, Miami in 1980, Los Angeles in 1992, Ferguson in 2015, Baltimore in 2016, Charlotte in 2016 – each of these cities went up in flames sparked by the police killing a black man. The problem is the criminal process itself.”

HEADLINES

(Criminal justice news to be aware of.) 

Philadelphia police have a new contract. It falls short. Photo via Philadelphia Weekly.

Pennsylvania

• Philadelphia Weekly: “New police union contract falls short on disciplinary reform”
• WFMZ: “Barnhardt: ‘I have never advocated for privatizing’ [Berks County] jail.” (But he did. And people are speaking out against it.)
• Meadville Tribune: “Two Mercer nurses face prison time for removing jail inmate’s oxygen supply”
• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “Banking on pot in Pennsylvania”
• The Morning Call: “Pennsylvania fifth in nation for hate groups”
• Philly.com: “PA GOP cites ‘corrupt Democrats’ (of color) in Philly DA race flier”
• PhillyVoice: “Report: ‘Death to white power’ banner removed by Philadelphia police”
• Sun-Gazette: “Commissioners vote to end state reentry program”

National

• VICE: “Charlottesville: Race and Terror – VICE News Tonight on HBO”
• IBT: “Police Body Camera Company, Axon, Is Vacuuming In Data, Stoking Privacy Concerns”
• ProPublica: “The Joe Arpaio I Knew”
• Mother Jones: “Charlottesville Cops Were Slammed for a Hands-Off Approach. Local Police Across the Country Are Taking Notice.”
• Wichita Eagle: “It’s getting tougher for Hispanics to get out of jail”
• Law360: “‘Legal Innocence’ Not Enough For Civil Award, Court Finds”
• Washington Post: “Can marijuana rescue coal country?”
• Injustice Today: “Does childhood end at 18?”
• The Hill: “Glimmer of hope in bipartisan criminal justice reform effort”
• Dallas Observer: “A North Texas Father Ends Up in Jail Over Fight About 4-Year-Old’s Gender”
• Harvard Magazine: “Criminal Injustice: Alec Karakatsanis puts ‘human caging’ and ‘wealth-based detention’ in America on trial”
• Wired: “Those Free Stingray-Detector Apps? Yeah, Spies Could Outsmart Them”
• The Marshall Project: “Killings of Black Men by Whites are Far More Likely to be Ruled ‘Justifiable’: The disparity remains no matter the circumstances and has persisted for decades.”
• Vice: “Viral Sleuthing Could Make It Harder to Prosecute White Supremacists”
• The Verge: “iOS 11 has a ‘cop button’ to temporarily disable Touch ID”
• Lawfare: “The Domestic Terrorism Danger: Focus on Unauthorized Private Military Groups”

Trump Criminal Justice Watch

• The New Yorker: “Jeff Sessions and the Resurgence of Civil-Asset Forfeiture”
• Reuters: “California sues Trump administration over sanctuary policy”
• National Review: “Federal Civil-Rights Case Can Wait — Let Virginia Prosecute Field”
• The New York Times: “A Hate Crime? How the Charlottesville Car Attack May Become a Federal Case”
• The Washington Post: “Can Jeff Sessions provide justice for Heather Heyer?”
• LA Times: “Justice Department wants data on anti-Trump protesters. An L.A. tech firm is resisting”
• The Washington Post: “Trump’s sanctuary city threat triggers confusion, changes”
• CNBC: “Amid corporate career, Merck CEO exonerated man on death row”
• Lawfare: “The Friendliest Lawsuit Ever Filed Against the Justice Department”

The Appeal is a weekly newsletter keeping you informed about criminal justice news in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania and beyond. It is written and compiled by Matt Stroud, ACLU-PA’s criminal justice researcher, and ACLU-PA’s summer criminal justice interns, Emilia Beuger, and Andrew Arslanpay.

If you have suggestions for links or criminal justice-related work that you’d like to highlight in The Appeal, or if you have suggestions for ways that we might improve, please email Matt at mstroud@aclupa.org. And if someone forwarded this email to you, and you’d like to receive it every Friday, you can subscribe here.

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