Mar 31, 2006  |  By: ELIZABETH WEILL-GREENBERG  | COMMENTS     

It’s not often that New York’s famed Rikers Island jail is referred to as heaven.

But Tom, an HIV-positive bisexual immigrant from Guyana, says that Riker’s Island was just that compared to New Jersey’s Passaic County Jail.

Tom spoke on condition that his real name not be used because he is not open about his HIV status.

Tom was held in the Passaic County Jail from December 2003 to April 2004. His journey to jail began when his landlord concocted a bogus charge against him to push him out of his room after learning he was HIV-positive, according to Tom and his attorney. Once the court proceedings were over, he was stopped and arrested for overstaying his visa.

Tom came to the United States in 1997 to attend school.

"I moved to the U.S. to get a better life, to be able to lead my life the way I wanted to," he said.

But his experiences here didn’t live up to expectations.

"It’s nothing I would have ever thought of especially in a country like America," he said. "Is this how you treat people just because they came into the country and overstayed their visa? It’s something I couldn’t understand."

Tom, now 36, said he did not receive his HIV medications at all during his first three weeks at Passaic. After that, he said he received them irregularly and became so sick from severe diarrhea that he developed an anal fissure. When the nurse examined him he asked the guard to close the door so the other detainees couldn’t watch, he recalled. The guard refused.

"For me that was very humiliating," he said. "Everybody was looking."

That same guard announced to other inmates that Tom was "one of those," meaning he had HIV, said Sarah Sohn, Tom’s attorney and a fellow at Immigration Equality.

Once Tom was released from jail he was hospitalized for three weeks, he said. Four months ago, a judge ruled Tom can stay in the United States but can’t travel abroad.

Now, as the Senate considers a bill that would make more immigrants eligible for detention, gay rights advocates fear that many more people may suffer through an experience like Tom’s.

The House passed its immigration reform bill last year, which was widely criticized as extreme and punitive. The Senate version, which creates a path for legalization, passed the Senate Judiciary Committee and is being debated on the floor.

"There are provisions in the Senate bill that create opportunities we have not created for a long time," said Chris Daley, director of The Transgender Law Center.

‘Drive-by deportation’

While immigrant and gay rights advocates have cheered the Senate’s effort to create a way for immigrants to become permanent residents, they are troubled by some of the other provisions in the measure.

Many immigrants who are wading through the lengthy documentation process, including those like Tom who overstayed a visa or asylum seekers who lack proper identification documents, are detained in county jails and immigration detention centers.

The Senate bill authorizes 10,000 more beds for immigrant detainees — in addition to the 40,000 that were approved last year, Sohn said. It also allows immigrants to be held in closed military bases, she added.

The Senate bill mandates certain immigrants to expedited removal, meaning an immigration officer, not a judge, decides if the person should be deported. Under this provision, immigrants, except for Mexicans and Cubans, who are detained within two weeks of immigrating and are arrested within 100 miles of the border, are subject to expedited removal.

This new provision, Sohn said, is "drive-by deportation."

The detention facilities have already been plagued by reports of rampant abuse, especially against gay and transgender detainees and HIV-positive immigrants, according to immigrants’ rights advocates. And advocates fear what may happen if more people are tossed into detention.

"When transgender people get arrested, somebody else decides what gender they are," said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality.

In some cases, the abuse directed at gay and transgender immigrants has been so bad that it has forced asylum seekers to give up and return home, said Sohn. One of Sohn’s clients, a transgender woman from Mexico, was raped by a corrections officer while her asylum application was processed, Sohn said. She eventually withdrew her application because of the jail conditions.

"Any move that expands detention is horrible for folks who are transgender," ...