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Ever wonder what occupies that prime piece of real estate on the corner of West Houston and Varick streets in the West Village? Apparently a chronically overcrowded jail for "illegal immigrants, asylum-seekers and legal immigrants who face deportation because they have past criminal convictions," the Times reports.
The little known The Varick Street Detention Facility imprisons about 11,000 men every year on the fourth floor of a federal office building, where inmates complain of "frigid temperatures, mildew and meals that leave detainees hungry and willing to clean for $1 a day to pay for commissary food." The jail has been "chronically overcrowded since 1998" and has failed to meet federal standards for the past nine years because it lacks an outdoor recreation space. Worse, lawyers allege they can't provide proper counsel to prisoners because "immigrant detainees, unlike criminal defendants, can be held without legal representation and moved from state to state without notice," the paper of record notes. “Any attempt to get support or services for them is stymied because you don’t know where they’re going to end up,” said Lynn M. Kelly, the director of the Justice Center.
Though a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said he "considers the access to legal services at Varick Street as a good model," lawyers from the City Bar Justice Center begged to differ, issuing a report today demanding "that there be government-funded appointed counsel for all detained immigrants who cannot afford private counsel."
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'West Houston and Varick streets in the West Village? '
omg they should TOTALLY put a rooftop lounge on top of the building!
FABULOUS!
Or replace it with a shiny steel and glass immigrant jail...with the rooftop bar and techno DJ.
Varick and W Houston? I work right next to that building (in it there's a Post Office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, GSA, and State Department offfices all there), and I had no idea there was a mini-jail there! That explains the tinted-windowed vans.
Let me make a suggestion here. All the illegals held there should be taken to an off island site located like 400 miles east of Manhattan and dropped off.
This great West Village area is actually now called Hudson Square. The same place that FEGS (a drop off rehabilitation center for the dregs of life) is located and the proudly announced proposed triple district sanitation garage. So I really give a shit if the illegals don't have out door recreation facilities?
It's all about you, right? It's not an issue of whether YOU have an issue with it or not. The issue lies with the federal government has deemed it to not meet federal standards.
Re-write your comment to 'who cares', not 'I don't care' you egomaniac.
Read the NYT article and I have to say that it's one of the most slanted articles I have ever read. The only detainees that are highlighted are sad cases. We have everything from a guy with asylum for advocating for gay rights, another guy with a swollen jaw and missing teet, a sickle cell guy with a 5 year old...it goes on and on. I feel sorry for the people mentioned but I gotta wonder about the others. Are they trying to say that there's not one illegal guy that ran someone down in a drunk driving episode and totally deserves to have his ass handed to him?
This is so funny, yet sad.
Hmm, I don't know how long you've been reading Gothamist, or if you ever read streetsblog.org, but it's off-duty NYPD officers who are notorious for "r[unning] someone down in a drunk driving episode and . . . [not] hav[ing] his ass handed to him." I can think of about three episodes in the last month, and each time, the Officer was able to resist a breathalyzer for up to about 6 hours. Just read up 5 posts on Gothamist.
But right, let's blame the immigrants and ignore their suffering and lack of due process rights in immigration proceedings, while conveniently ignoring the intuitive logic, which is also supported by facts and research, that immigrants, legal or otherwise, commit less crimes than US citizens per capita. And this makes sense, since immigrants who commit crimes get deported, and who the F wants to go through all the trouble to get here, just to get deported. OR we can just close our eyes to reality and go all Dobbs and Beck and blame those Others for spreading Leprosy and Swine Flu (unlike US Americans of course).
I missed this line, "I feel sorry for the people mentioned but I gotta wonder about the others."
I take back some of my snark.
When I was in grad school I had a good friend that had left Iran on a student visa to come here to the US. He is gay and, while in college in Iran, chose not to pray to mecca during school hours (which, he explained, is tecnically legal if you are on the grounds of a University). Nevertheless, he felt safe here and as his visa was about to expire he began to panic. My husband had volunteered on several pro bono cases for people seeking political asylum. I referred my friend to that legal group. So far he has asylum, but in the process he was held in a number of situations with some, as he put it, "very scarry, very criminal people" and felt that at least a number of illegal immigrants probably become illegal because they are too afraid to go back to their home countries and equally afraid of the the process of seeking political asylum because many of them hear about these detention centers as being holding tanks for very dangerous people.
I'm sick of hearing sob stories about people who broke the law. Don't want to wind up in a place like this, don't sneak into the country.
Yeah, why "sneak into the country" when you can arrive at JFK with bulging bags full of freaky food items?
re-read it, retard. legals are there, too. surely they didn't 'sneak' in as you claim, you neo-con.
its detention for profit.
and if you ever find yourself in a legal situation in this country or the next youll be screaming about having rights also. rights to legal support, rights to food, rights to health care, rights to not get assaulted by racist gaurds, same old crap. except its not happening to you.
anybody ever read the great article about post WW2 babies blacks deported to BACK to germany.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,651989,00.html
the stupidity of deporting people who have established themselves in this country goes beyond saying they broke a law.
Don't be so stupid. There were quite a few notable mafia members that were deported basically because they entered the country illegally.
I'm not saying that we should not give the immigrants a chance to live in the states but how do you say in Spanish, "Speak English!"? Otherwise you will be doing gardening work for the rest of your life.
The immigrant Asian population shows that being smart and realizing that English is the language of success in the US have shown that America is not prejudice to those of different cultural backgrounds and skin colors.
Lou Dobbs is calling you. Go to flushing, and there are many Asians who don't speak English. Go to Crown Heights and they are many Hasidics who don't speak English. Go to the Arthur Avenue and they are many Albanians who don't speak English. Why are you focus on the Latinos. Damn, What a little hateful miserable person you really are. Truly.
This situation is almost a FelixtheCat kind of topic. The building is not that large and if every illegal immigrant in New York City was placed in a building like same it would have to be the size of the old twin towers. Three hots and a cot is more than these shits had in their old country. A roof over their heads? What's a roof?
FelixtheCat issue? WTH? Dude, Brown bag will solve all your problems.
Hey idesofmarch, they didn't necessarily sneak into the country. Asylum seekers have a right to be admitted and tell their story before an immigration judge - they don't have to sneak in.
Maybe some of those people broke the law. Maybe some of them didn't. But without due process, you are sending away people who may have every right to be here.
Precisely.
'Innocent until proven guilty' only applies to conservative nativists. In their book, all the rest of the wogs should be deported, whether they are here legally or not. Why give anyone a chance at due process, unless they arrived on the Mayflower.
only in america can you get paid a dollar a day to buy a $7 bible from your masters.
Most of the people here not only don't understand innocent before proven guilty, but also the realty that the worst lawyers become immigration lawyers because they can cheat their clients blind and have their mistakes deported. All it takes to get arrested by INS is lost or late paperwork.
U.S. to Pay $1.2 Million to 5 Detainees Over Abuse Lawsuit
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/nyregion/03jail.html?ref=nyregion
I walk past this building to work every morning and here and there the armed guards come out and stop all traffic and pedestrians...the garage door opens and out snakes a giant chain gang of aliens marching up into a non-descript van/shuttle bus of charter bus with tinted windows and off they go to NJ! Makes me think twice sometimes when I'm complaining about having to sit in a cube for 9 hours
If you support the existence of this jail you are a racist and probably would have been cool with the Nazis.