It’s been 50 years since Godfrey Wade arrived to the United States from Jamaica at the age of 15 with his mother, moving to New York with a green card that granted him permanent residency.
The Black man enlisted in the U.S. Army a few years later, spending eight years in the service, where he was primarily stationed in Germany before he received an honorable discharge. He then began a civilian life in Georgia while raising a family, working as a fashion designer, master tailor, tennis coach and chef over the years while staying out of trouble.
That is, until September, when he was pulled over in Conyers, Georgia, for failing to use a turn signal, which was when police discovered he was driving without a license and arrested him.
. . . He has been incarcerated in overcrowded ICE detention centers since the arrest, a three-month ordeal where he was forced to sleep on a makeshift bed on the ground for the first 12 days, according to 11 Alive News.
In a telephone interview with local media from the Stewart Detention Center in Stewart County, Georgia, Wade said there are only two working urinals for an entire pod of 80 people.
“We don’t have any bunk space,” he told the news station. “We’re given what we call boats, and those are placed on the floor with a two-inch mat.”
“There’s sewage water flowing on the ground,” he said.
11 Alive News also reported that it had obtained records of the Office of Detention Oversight, a unit within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that oversees the federal detention centers, which revealed 12 deficiencies within the Stewart Detention Center related to health and safety, food service, phone access, use of force, and more.
“The agency also noted violations of the required 12-to-1 detainee-to-toilet ratio,” 11 Alive News reported, adding that the private for-profit company that runs the detention center, CoreCivic, has ignored various inquires by reporters seeking comment.
But the Trump administration has repeatedly demonstrated it believes it is above the law and the Constitution.
it was probably more the lack of a driving license that did it, but ofc the headline leaves that out
It was actually the fascist policies enacted by the trumpist extremists in power.
Nah, it was the driving while black and foreign born around bigots with unchecked power.
well, driving while black is what got him pulled over. then the rest is what got him arrested
Nah, that was mostly the Jamaica thing. And also the driving while black.
You’re not going to see a white guy be deported for driving without a license in Trump’s America, except MAYBE Ukrainians once they run out of nonwhite people to victimize and Miller’s quotas still aren’t fulfilled.
that was included in my “the rest”, yes
Lmao, Conyers GA is 70% black. They’re going to keep themselves quite busy if they only pull over people for driving while black.
The county Conyers is in is also majority black.
Honestly I wouldn’t make this one a race issue. These small GA towns just keep cops posted at every entry and exit point to town. Their job is to ticket everything and generate revenue.
How much you want to bet that the PD is still majority white, Ferguson style?
So was Apartheid South Africa 🤷
🤔
And whether they’re told to or not, I guarantee that they’re disproportionately targeting black people.
To be proportional to population for every 10 people they pull over 7 would be black.
As to your points the city council is split between white/black evenly. Chief of police is white but no other information about the force was available. At the county level out of the 3 commissioners 1 is black, and honestly not sure about the race of the other 2. Interestingly all 3 are women. The sheriff and sheriff’s department are majority black. This isn’t apartheid South Africa.
I really doubt this one was a race issue at the point of the initial stop. Like I said these small towns are notorious for stopping everyone for every minor traffic infraction. They just want your money. Have you ever spent any time in the state and towns like these or are you just manufacturing issues for your argument?
That still doesn’t usually land you in jail, much less an overcrowded detention center with no oversight or accountability with the threat that you will be removed from the country, possibly to somewhere you have never been and have no connection to.