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.
Technically true, but the turn signal was an excuse to pull him over, it’s not like they knew he didn’t have a license. At the same time, is he able to get a license without legal status? He has lived in the country for 50 years, but these technicalities are what give the excuse to deport him.
It can be argued “the law is the law” but what kind of society are we trying to achieve by enforcing these technicalities (while also permitting the corruption and outright illegal acts of the president)? It’s a case that highlights the broken (intentional or otherwise) system of legal status within this country and how it’s used to exercise control over people’s lives.