CAIR Coalition's Legal Director is quoted in an article entitled "The Refugee Dilemma" appearing in the December 7, 2015 issue of the New Yorker. In this harrowing and compelling narrative, reporter Rachel Aviv profiles the story of a Sierra Leonean refugee, Nelson Kargbo, who ended ended up spending years in ICE detention after his struggle with mental illness led to involvement in a series of petty criminal offenses. Kargbo's story demonstrates how the immigration system fails to protect the rights of the mentally ill, some of whom are refugees who have escaped unthinkable horrors in their home countries and are still struggling to overcome their history of trauma.
In the article, CAIR Coalition’s legal director, Heidi Altman, describes the intersection between trauma, crime, and mental illness which can have a devastating impact on immigrants and their families.
“In recent years, we’ve seen this trend of people who survived the big civil wars of the nineties—Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone—come to the U.S. as refugees, and now, many years later, are struggling with the traumas they endured.” Immigration detention, she said, is even less suited for the mentally ill than are jails and prisons, which have become the default provider for Americans who need psychiatric care. “In the criminal justice system, at least there is some acknowledgment that jails are functioning as de-facto psychiatric facilities,” she said. “But that conversation isn’t even happening on the immigration side.”
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Check out the full article here.
