Dr. Arianna Iannuccilli-Mathew Addresses The Issue Of Immigration Detainees Suffering In The United States

For Immediate Release

PROVIDENCE, R.I./EWORLDWIRE/Jun 2, 2006 --- It seems that the cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment which the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay are facing, is also being practiced right here in the United States to immigration detainees being held in public and private jails nationwide.

Although people held for immigration reasons are considered administrative detainees and are not being detained for punishment, one could hardly tell by the treatment they receive at these state institutions. Often these detainees are kept with convicted criminals in over crowded cells, given less than minimum standard treatment required by International and U.S. laws for INS detainees, and often serving open ended sentences with literally no end in sight.

Dr. Arianna Iannuccilli-Mathew, a U.S. born American Citizen, is deeply troubled by the knowledge of the treatment that those from other nationalities must endure when facing deportation. Especially those who have committed no crime and are decent tax paying legal residents of the United States.

This is an especially difficult and personal situation for her, as her husband Edwardo Mathew, who is a Dutch national, is currently being detained at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island awaiting deportation/removal proceedings for discrepancies on his residency application.

Dr.Iannuccilli-Mathew and her husband have been married for 11 years. They have a 16 month old son and have significant ties to their community. They own two businesses in Providence, Rhode Island and employ approximately 18 people. Amongst the significant amount of stress caused to her family by the absence of her husband, are the conditions of his detention in which he is being held, treated and living as a criminal.

Edwardo Mathew and other detainees like him are forced to sleep on a substandard thin mattress in over crowded cells where at least one inmate must sleep on the ground due to the lack of beds. For a minimum of 20 hours per day they are locked in a cell, with only four hours of recreation time and with an hour per day of which they are allowed to receive fresh air. They are allowed visits only three times per week with no physical contact, and have no rights to privacy as all calls are monitored and all mail read. At times they are also searched and stripped to their underwear as they are brought out of their cells in view of other inmates and female administration staff. Practices like these are both degrading and demoralizing to any human being.

This is a system where immigrants who have committed no crime are being humiliated and forced to live and treated such as convicted criminals in prison. For a country which claims to be “defenders of freedom," one must certainly agree that this is in stark contrast to that assertion. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost in the war in Iraq supposedly to relieve the world of those who abuse, oppress, and brutalize human beings, yet America is doing the same in their own country.

A Dutch Judge once said that "America tortures its prisoners." Based on Dr.Iannuccilli-Mathew recent experiences with the immigration system in the U.S., she finds it hard to disagree with the above noted statement, and where once she was proud to say “I am an American” she can no longer say the same.