AP that ICE officials tried to block minutes before it was scheduled at a Houston lockup.
Less than a week after the interview, Al-Shrmany was deported to Canada, said his lawyer, Afreen Ahmed.
Incarceration used to
strong-arm people?
Immigrant advocates say ICE prefers incarceration for non-criminal immigrants, even though alternatives are available, for one major reason: to strong-arm people.
"When you're there for weeks and weeks or months or months, your determination to fight your charges is reduced," said Judy Green, a policy analyst with Justice Strategies, a nonpartisan think tank on incarceration issues. The goal is "to keep intense pressure on detainees to agree to removal and not to fight on whatever grounds they have for relief."
The Rev. Raymond Soeoth, a Pentecostal minister from Indonesia who had never been imprisoned, said his lengthy incarceration — and the uncertainty of how long it would last — wore on him as he fought his immigration case and pursued a lawsuit accusing ICE officials of forcibly drugging him and other detainees.
"We just wait. We cannot do anything," said Soeoth, who was released after more than two years, given a special visa as part of the government's settlement of the drugging lawsuit.
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