Other People's Blood

During the 1980s hundreds of thousands of refugees fled civil wars and death squads in Central America seeking safe haven in the United States. Instead thousands found themselves incarcerated in immigration prisons?abused by their jailors and deprived of the most basic legal and human rights. Drawing on declassified government documents and interviews with prison officials INS staff and more than 3000 Central American refugees Robert S. Kahn reveals how the Department of Justice and its dependent agency the Immigration and Naturalization Service intentionally violated federal laws and regulations to deny protection to refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala who were fleeing wars financed by U. S. military aid. Kahn portrays the chilling reality of daily life in immigration prisons in Texas Arizona and Louisiana. Behind the razor-topped prison walls refugees were not simply denied political asylum; they were beaten robbed sexually assaulted and sometimes tortured by prison guards. Other People's Blood traces the ten-year legal struggle by volunteer prison workers and attorneys to stop the abuse of refugees and to force the Justice Department to concede in court that its treatment of immigrants had violated U. S. laws and the Geneva Convention for over a decade. Yet the case of American Baptist Churches v. Thornburgh which overturned more judicial decisions than any other case in U. S. history is still virtually unknown in the United States and today the debate over illegal immigration is being carried on with little awareness of the government policies that contributed so shamefully to this country's immigration problems. Language: English