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Immigration Articles of Interest

City of Immigrants Fills Jail Cells With Its Own

This article provides an excellent glimpse into the nightmare of immigration enforcement, and how the "[t]he system operates without the rules that protect criminal suspects, and has grown up with little oversight, often in the backyards of communities desperate for any source of money and work."

In Central Falls, Rhode Island, "[f]ew in this threadbare little mill town gave much thought to the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility, the maximum-security jail beside the public ball fields at the edge of town. Even when it expanded and added barbed wire, Wyatt was just the backdrop for Little League games, its name stitched on the caps of the team it sponsored.

"Then people began to disappear: the leader of a prayer group at St. Matthew’s Roman Catholic Church; the father of a second grader at the public charter school; a woman who mopped floors in a Providence courthouse.

"After days of searching, their families found them locked up inside Wyatt — only blocks from home, but in a separate world."

Source: The New York Times | Full Article | Date posted: 12/30/2008