OFFICIALS AT the Jamaican Embassy, Washington, D.C., are lobbying the US Immigration and Naturalization Service not to deport Jamaicans who are legal permanent residents, especially those who had migrated there from early childhood.
"We are in discussion with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. We have been asking them to give special consideration to this category," Errol Strong, Assistant Commissioner of Police who is based at the Jamaican Embassy, Washington, D.C., told reporters yesterday.
He said that many of the Jamaicans targeted for deportation had emigrated from a very tender age, and now knew nobody in the island, because all their relatives were also living abroad.
The Gleaner had reported cases of Jamaican deportees who had no known close relatives when they returned to the island.
Fitz Wilson, for example, emigrated from the age of six years and was deported in 1997 when he was 24. He had no relatives here and was forced to live on the streets. He ran afoul of the law and was sent to prison.
Dexter Robinson left here when he was 12, completed his schooling in New York and later joined the US Navy, after which he became mentally ill. He was deported to Jamaica in 1998, with nobody to receive him. He lived on the streets for sometime before becoming a patient at the Bellevue Hospital, Kingston.
Up to June this year there were more than 2,000 Jamaicans in INS centres waiting to be processed and deported. Last year 1,533 were deported and the previous year it was 1,483.
According to Asst. Commissioner Strong there was growing concern about the number of Jamaicans (mainly women) who were smuggling children into the US.
"We think they are putting them up for adoption illegally. A number of them -- grandmothers, mothers and spouses -- have been arrested," ACP Strong said.
(In June The Gleaner reported that two young children were being held in INS centres. One, Georgia Norman, 4, was sent back to the island after she was taken to Chicago by a US national using false documents).
ACP Strong said the Jamaica Embassy in Washington DC, had been trying to get specific information on the background of detainees in INS centres claiming to be Jamaicans, because frequently many were not.
"Sometimes when we interview them, if they say they are from Montego Bay, we will ask them about Sam Sharpe Square or prominent places in the city and they cannot tell us anything about them," ACP Strong said.
