Men without countries languish in the Tulsa jail

The indefinite detention of asylum seekers under a widely derided Trump administration policy has made international headlines in recent months, and now the controversy has reached Tulsa, where the county’s David L. Moss Detention Center is currently housing around a hundred individuals from numerous countries ranging from Central America and the Caribbean to Africa and Asia. La Semana joined the Coalition for the American Dream (ADC) last week to visit these detainees in the jail pods where they are being held and try to get a sense of how they are being treated and what progress, if any, they are seeing on their claims for asylum from violence and persecution.

The majority of asylum seekers are housed in two pods at the county jail. Although these men are not accused of any crime, they are being confined in the same cells and under the same restrictions as those charged with serious felonies. There are no female asylum seekers being held in Tulsa.

Those being held in Tulsa as of July 5th include 38 from Cuba, 14 from El Salvador, 18 from Honduras, seven from Guatemala, five from Nicaragua, two from Brazil, one from Ecuador, five from Sri Lanka and others from parts of Africa and South Asia.

Under the Obama administration, the emphasis was placed on quickly conducting initial asylum interviews then releasing families and individuals pending immigration court hearings, a process that can take months or years. And, despite the false claims of President Trump to the contrary, the overwhelming majority of asylum seekers do in fact show up for their scheduled court appearances. For the most part, only those who were considered to be a security threat were detained indefinitely – until Trump took power.

The asylum seekers in David L. Moss are not even accused of entering the United States illegally. These individuals presented themselves to officials at the border and asked for asylum, in accordance with U.S. law.

Despite their ordeal, the men in detention in Tulsa, while frustrated at the slow pace of their cases and their present circumstance, remain hopeful. Their incarceration notwithstanding, they don’t feel their human rights are being violated, although they are not at all happy with how the seemingly arbitrary views and policies of this president contradict all they had expected from America.

“It’s like we left one dictatorship for another,” one Cuban observed.

Aside from being kept in jail, the biggest complaints of these men are the lack of contact with their families, the poor quality of jail food, and the scarcity of necessities such as soap, toilet paper, and detergent to properly wash their jail-issued clothing. A jail administrator said this last issue is being addressed by installing automated soap dispensers in the facility’s washing machines. All of the men La Semana spoke with said they were being treated well by jail officers, with one exception that the sheriff promised to investigate.

Most of the detainees have already had their initial asylum interviews, except for the Cubans. It was unclear after speaking to the sheriff and his staff why that is, but the ADC hopes to raise this matter with local ICE officers to see if the Cubans’ interviews can be expedited.

Volunteer attorneys have been by the jail to try to help as many asylum seekers as possible, but for most of these men there is a long way to go and a very real chance they will ultimately be sent home. For many of these men without countries, the waiting and not knowing is the most difficult part of their ordeal, and they wish fervently they could get some sort of answer.

“If they’re going to send us back anyway,” one man asked, “why are they keeping us here for so long?” (La Semana)