Expat Trini lobbies for deportees

ONE minute she was the assistant registrar at Florida Atlantic University, in the next she was being deported 1,948 miles away to a strange country that she had not seen since childhood. Meet Marlene Jaggernauth. This is her story. She has decided to share her nightmare of deportation last February under strict US laws which she says unfairly target immigrants for their past offences long after they have paid their dues. Jaggernauth will launch a support group for deportees Thursday at the Centre of Excellence, with the backing of social activists like Pastor Clive Dottin, Rhonda Maingot, Prof Ramesh Deosaran, and former diplomat attorney Randy Depoo. The group, Displaced Nationals In Crisis Coalition (DNICC), already has an office at 15 Gray Street, St Clair. But Jaggernauth first wanted to reveal to Sunday Newsday how easy it was for a naturalised immigrant like herself to run foul of US laws, especially post 9/11. Arriving in the US at age 11, with her parents she achieved the status of “permanent resident,” but 28 years later she now finds herself kicked out of the country and fighting to return.

She openly admits that she made mistakes in her past. A rocky marriage was followed by an abusive relationship. Then in 1997 came a pregnancy with twins which left her suffering from serious post-natal depression which led to her uncharacteristic behaviour. “I found out I was pregnant but the twins’ dad and I had split up and I went through post-partum depression. I went through a period of two years when I got into shoplifting. She was arrested and convicted twice. To cope with the problems caused by her depression she took counselling to try to turn her life around. “I went back to school and became a very strong community leader. I’m a home-owner, I worked two jobs, and my children were also very active in school so I was the Mum playing baseball with my kids. I moved on with my life.” She earned a BSc in Psychology from Florida Atlantic University, where she was also a staff member. Jaggernauth regretted her shoplifting episodes, but felt she had paid her dues for those acts resulting from her depression. But incredibly some six years after the shoplifting charge, she was picked up by the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) and targetted for deportation.

In March last year, INS agents came to her home, in the process crashing into a car being driven by her daughter in the driveway. “They took me to their detention facility, to go through a whole process, but still not telling me why or what. I did not get anything to eat for almost 24 hours. They served me with some papers — all legal jargon; I’m not an attorney — and all I got out of that was that I was going to be deported.” This deportation order, she said, came because of the shoplifting charges from six years prior. “After 9/11, for people who had any type of criminal convictions, the INS was just going down their database and picking up people.” The immigration agents were enforcing two federal laws passed by president Clinton — the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) 1996 and the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) 1996. “After 9/11 they started enforcing these laws, so that people who had past criminal convictions were now being picked up. They were picking up people who had charges ten, 15, 20 years ago.”

The INS was trying to enforce these laws retroactively, she said, but this was unconstitutional and is now being challenged in the US courts. She explained how immigrants without proper residency were being deprived of their driving permits so they could be criminalised by the authorities in New York. “If you do not have approved permanent residency they are cancelling your driver’s licence. So when you are driving and you get pulled over, they see your driver’s licence is cancelled and they do a background check on you. They are picking up a lot of people. It’s very inhumane.” Also inhumane, she said, were the conditions under which detainees were being held in local county jails. “We have limited access to attorneys and legal materials, and they move you from facility to facility.  I was in detention for 11 months.” She had been ordered to be deported by an immigration judge whose discretion, she said, had been severely curtailed by statue. She was held in detention to await an appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), after which she had to appeal to a Federal Court, and maybe even to the Supreme Court.

“If you want to fight you have to go through that process which can take six months to two years.” But while awaiting your appeal, she said, the authorities move detainees from facility to facility, so you lose contact with your family and your attorney. “The week before my hearing was due, they moved me ten hours away from my attorney. Two o’clock in the morning they came and said ‘pack your stuff because we are moving you.’ “By the time you get to where you are going, you are beat, you are tired. You are worried about your due date which is coming, yet you can’t get hold of your attorney. The only phone calls you can make are collect-calls to your family, which are very, very expensive, putting a burden on a family that is already burdened.” While in detention awaiting her appeal, she taught herself immigration laws. “I became an advocate. Stop violating me. I did a crime but I have more than paid my price. Enough is enough. Society said ‘you have to do so-and-so-and-so,’ and I complied and I moved on with my life.  “Yet now you have taken me from my home, from my children, from my livelihood — how much more can one pay for past mistakes?!”

She said her appeal has been kept open and reached the Federal Court. But she lamented: “They make sure you go through that process. Most people, as soon as they go to the immigration judge, are beat. They go.” She said that often as soon as the BIA rejects your appeal, the authorities immediately deport you before you have a chance to appeal to the Federal Court. “They put you on a plane the very next day.” Although she was deported, she was lucky that her appeal is still ‘alive.’ Many immigrants fighting deportation suffer great financial hardship, in addition to costly legal fees. “It’s a big rip-off. By the time of your BIA hearing, your family is broke. The family has to take care of your children, your spouse ends up with someone else. The family loses their house, they lose their business.” And the immigrant is deported penniless and sometimes wearing prison garb. “People have no money. Even here in Trinidad, you‘ll see these guys come back, no money, and on top of it, no identification. “You have no money, no friends nor family, and not even any identification. It’s hard to get employment.”

Hardest of all for her, she misses her children — Michelle (19), Jonathan (17), and the twins Tatiana and Caitlyn, age eight years. Yet in that short period back in Trinidad, she has done so many things that could touch the lives of many unfortunates that it almost seems as if Providence has chosen her for some great calling. Not only has she set up her deportee-lobbying group, but she has enrolled at the University of the West Indies in an MPhil using her insights to do a dissertation on “The Psycho-social and Economic Aspects of Deportation” supervised by Prof Deosaran. Working with the European Union Poverty Reduction Programme, she has set up a support group for destitute persons living at Riverside Plaza. But her main focus is firstly to try to cushion the trauma faced by deportees returning, and secondly to try to liaise with their families in lobbying for their return.