Quick ques­tion. Who has been detained by the U.S. gov­ern­ment?

A. A Nepali poet who came to vis­it the U.S. car­ry­ing a few copies of his books.

B. An Indi­an man diag­nosed with schiz­o­phre­nia who has lived in the U.S. since he was 12.

C. A HIV+ Pak­istani man who has a green card and lived in New York City for 30 years.

D. All of the above.

The answer? All of the above. Odds are, if I were to say “South Asians” and “deten­tion”, most peo­ple would think “Guan­tanamo.” After years of pub­lic out­cry about the treat­ment of Arab and South Asian detainees at the prison in Cuba, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma took the ground­break­ing and long over­due step ear­li­er this year of announc­ing the facil­i­ty’s clo­sure by 2010. But, this got me think­ing … what would the com­mu­ni­ty do if they knew about immi­grant deten­tion of South Asians in facil­i­ties right here in the U.S.? 

Pradeep is a poet from Nepal who was arrest­ed and detained for months right after he arrived at Newark Air­port in New Jer­sey, all because immi­gra­tion offi­cials thought he was going to sell his books while on a tourist visa in the Unit­ed States. Har­vey is a 52-year-old man from India, who grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia. Dur­ing col­lege, he was diag­nosed with schiz­o­phre­nia, which pre­vent­ed him from mak­ing appoint­ments with immi­gra­tion offi­cials. He was lat­er arrest­ed for a crime and was tossed between men­tal insti­tu­tions and immi­gra­tion deten­tion cen­ters before being deport­ed. And Ali is Pak­istani-born HIV+ gay man, after com­mit­ting a minor crime, was placed in immi­gra­tion deten­tion where he is fre­quent­ly abused and fights for his med­ica­tion. You can see Ali’s sto­ry cap­tured by Break­through here:

These indi­vid­u­als have dif­fer­ent sto­ries, dif­fer­ent back­grounds, and dif­fer­ent paths. But they all share a com­mon expe­ri­ence with the more than 300,000 immi­grants who have been detained in 2008. Detainees are often denied much-need­ed med­ical care, torn apart from fam­i­ly mem­bers, and even held in actu­al jails. Poli­cies are need­ed to ensure that those caught up in the immi­gra­tion sys­tem are treat­ed with human­i­ty and dig­ni­ty. Last week, Rep. Lucille Roy­bal-Allard from Cal­i­for­nia intro­duced the “Immi­gra­tion Over­sight and Fair­ness Act” which specif­i­cal­ly improves detainees’ access to tele­phones and med­ical care as well as pro­motes alter­na­tives to deten­tion. This bill is a vital first step towards pro­tect­ing the rights of all immi­grants who may end up in deten­tion, includ­ing those like Ali, Har­vey, and Pradeep.