Just a case of the jitters.
"Severe stutter mars Jamaican’s asylum bid" October 17, 2011|By Maryclaire Dale, Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA - Derrick Cotterel was a farm worker who came to the United States from Jamaica, picking citrus in Florida and apples in West Virginia for 10 years, before a pay dispute with a landscaping employer led to his arrest last year on robbery charges.
Given his long-expired visa, the arrest landed Cotterel in immigration custody in York, Pa. But judges there struggled for nearly a year to understand his request for political asylum.
Cotterel, 42, speaks a Jamaican patois, or Creole, that might alone be difficult for Americans to grasp. But his speech is further compromised by a severe stutter that makes him nearly impossible to understand.
Related: Slow Saturday Special: Boston Globe Stutters
Nor can he read or write. So many of his thoughts remain trapped inside of him.
Then you just have to re-arrange.
Unlike criminal defendants, immigration detainees have no right to free counsel. So Cotterel sat in the York County Prison, where about 700 detained immigrants are housed with 1,700 convicted or suspected criminals....
Also see:
Hitching a Ride With Homeland Security
Clear the Court: Boning Immigrants
Immigration Incarceration
The Illegal Immigrant Imprisonment Industry
Wasn't exactly in the brochure, was it?
Immigrants have the right to hire counsel or find pro bono lawyers, said Elaine Komis, a spokeswoman for the US Executive Office for Immigration Review. And aid groups get government funding to inform detainees of their rights.
But few have the money to hire lawyers, and there are a finite number of immigration lawyers near York, which is two hours west of Philadelphia. So 84 percent of detainees go it alone, said Angela Eveler, director of the Pennsylvania Immigration Resource Center in York.
“The need for legal services in the immigration detention system far outweighs the capacity of nonprofit legal services organizations. It has become a legal and humanitarian crisis,’’ Eveler said.
Especially if you stutter in a language no one can understand.
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