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Pink Floyd's Roger Waters Launches "Campaign to Close Guantánamo" for Obama's Last Year in Office
Today marks seven years since President Obama signed an executive order calling for the closure of Guantánamo Bay within one year. But Guantánamo remains open, and now Obama only has one year left to fulfill his pledge. We are joined by the world famous musician Roger Waters, who has helped launch the "Countdown to Close Guantánamo" campaign, which asks people to take photos of themselves with signs calling for Guantánamo’s closure before Obama leaves office in 2017. Waters is a founding member, bassist, singer, songwriter for the iconic rock band Pink Floyd, perhaps best known for their record The Wall. For three years between 2010 and 2013, Waters toured the world with a dazzling concert of the same name. We are also joined by Andy Worthington, a British activist and investigative journalist who co-founded the "Countdown to Close Guantánamo" campaign.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Seven years ago today, President Obama signed one of his first executive orders upon taking office—calling for the closure of the Guantánamo Bay military prison within one year.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: In order to effect the appropriate disposition of individuals currently detained by the Department of Defense at Guantánamo and promptly to close the detention facility at Guantánamo consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interest of justice, I hereby order. And we then provide the process whereby Guantánamo will be closed no later than one year from now.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But here we are now in 2016. Obama’s last year in office began this week with Guantánamo still hanging over his presidency seven years since his executive order. Guantánamo Bay remains open due to repeated Republican obstruction and Obama’s refusal to take action on his own. With the transfer of 10 prisoners last week and two more on Thursday, the Guantánamo prisoner population has fallen below 100 for the first time since the military prison opened 14 years ago this month. But 91 prisoners still remain. About one-third are cleared for release and could be freed as the year continues. Defense Secretary Ash Carter has announced he’s preparing a plan that would move Guantánamo’s remaining prisoners to a secure site in the United States. President Obama is reportedly in the final stages of review.
AMY GOODMAN: As administration officials decide on Guantánamo behind closed doors, we turn to two guests mobilizing for Guantánamo’s closure from the grassroots. Our first guest needs no introduction: the world famous British musician Roger Waters, founding member, bassist, singer, songwriter for the iconic rock band Pink Floyd. The band is perhaps most well known for their record The Wall. For three years, between 2010 and ’13, Roger Waters toured the world with a dazzling concert of the same name. The Wall tour featured the album performed in its entirety, along with a massive stage production conveying antiwar themes. It broke records as the highest-grossing tour for a solo musician in history. Roger Waters is set to hit the road again for another world tour this year to coincide with the release of his first new solo album in more than two decades.
Roger Waters was one of the celebrities featured in the We Stand with Shaker campaign, a grassroots effort to win the freedom of British resident Shaker Aamer from Guantánamo. Aamer had been cleared for release since 2007, but the U.S. kept him locked up without charge until this past October. He was subjected to beatings, to torture, to sleep deprivation, starvation, doused with freezing water, forced to stand for 18 hours at a time. For the campaign, Roger Waters and other notable figures posed with photographs alongside a giant figure of Shaker Aamer. People around the world also submitted photos of themselves with homemade signs reading "I stand with Shaker."
We’re also joined by Andy Worthington, British activists, investigative journalist, who served as the co-director of the We Stand with Shaker Aamer campaign, the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison.
On Wednesday, Roger Waters and Andy Worthington helped launch the "Countdown to Close Guantánamo" campaign, which, like Shaker Aamer, asks people to take photos of themselves with signs calling for Guantánamo’s closure before President Obama leaves office in 2017.
Well, last week, Roger Waters and Andy Worthington stopped by the Democracy Now! studios to discuss their campaign for Shaker Aamer’s freedom and for Guantánamo Bay prison’s closure.
ROGER WATERS: I got involved really with Shaker when Clive Stafford Smith, who’s his lead attorney from Reprieve in London, received a letter from him where Shaker describes how part of his technique for staying sane in Guantánamo was to remember songs and sing them. And one of them was a song of mine called "Hey You." So he wrote some words down in the letter, and Clive forwarded that letter to me. And I answered it, and I sent a letter to Shaker, and then I made a video. And I—you know, I was immediately sucked in, because this man has got an extremely powerful and forceful personality and an extraordinary message of resilience and love for the rest of the world. And I was deeply moved by his letter, and so I got involved in the campaign that Andy and Jo MacInnes in London were running to have him released.
AMY GOODMAN: Could you sing a cappella the words of "Hey You," what so expressed Shaker’s feeling?
ROGER WATERS: Well, Hey you, out—"Hey you, out there in the cold, getting lonely, getting old, can you feel me?" is the first line. And in his letter, he says that those words and the couplets that come after it—he said, if you want to know how it feels to be in here, to be incarcerated, you should listen to this song, because it describes my feelings—which was very moving for me, for him to say that.
I mean, it’s impossible for any of those of us who have not been incarcerated, as entirely innocent men with no recourse to the law—I mean, this is the fundamental problem with Guantánamo and the law involved, is that habeas corpus has been thrown out of the window, and so we no longer have our fingertips on the grasp of the law that we’ve been used to for the last 800 years since Magna Carta in the fields of Runnymede in London. And it’s gone now. We don’t—we don’t have it. It’s been removed from us. And so that’s what’s so important about Guantánamo and all the work that Andy and Jo and people are doing.
AMY GOODMAN: So, tell us about the campaign you waged. You know, when people see it in the media, a man released, they might think it’s on the whim of one of his jailers. They say, "OK, he’s free today." But this is a result of a massive movement.
ANDY WORTHINGTON: Yeah, well, there was a—you know, there was a grassroots campaign called the Save Shaker Aamer campaign, which had been running for years, with people standing outside Parliament, so just to keep reminding MPs. And then, we would hold parliamentary meetings every six months in support of MPs that—Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell were two of the very supportive MPs all along. And at one of the meetings, we would—I was talking, and I was trying to come up with an idea that might help us to grab the attention of the public. And I had this notion of a giant figure of Shaker that would rise up behind the prime minister and government ministers whenever they went anywhere, to raise the point, you know, kind of—essentially, that he was the elephant in the room when it came to discussions with the United States about things. And, of course, you can’t have a huge figure rearing up behind the prime minister, because his security people would—you know, would arrest you immediately. But the notion of the giant figure was really—Joanne MacInnes was in the audience that night, and she liked the idea. So we got it made, and then we started approaching people.
And it could have gone either way, Amy, to be honest. You know, when you come up with a gimmick, are people going to think it’s ridiculous, or are they going to go for it? And actually, people liked it. And I think it had something about it of being larger than life, which really is something that reflects what Shaker is like. So it just took off. But, you know, we had—at the same time that we launched it at the end of 2014, there was support from the media in the U.K., and Britain’s, you know, most popular conservative tabloid newspaper, the Daily Mail, got behind the campaign.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you get them behind the campaign?
ANDY WORTHINGTON: Well, it’s funny. The Daily Mail is really not always very good on issues to do with race, but it turns out they’re opposed to the use of torture, and they uphold the rule of law. So they made it an issue that they also care about habeas corpus as much as we do.
AMY GOODMAN: The president has made a big deal of gun violence and taking executive action because he can’t get Republican support on curbing the access to guns. Do you think he should do the same thing on closing Guantánamo, doing it with an executive order, like he issued an executive order, first one in his presidency, one of the first in those first few days, saying he would close it by the end of the year?
ANDY WORTHINGTON: Yeah, well, you know, I think that he’s still trying to work with Congress. I don’t know whether he’s going to manage that. You know, Senator McCain heads the Senate Armed Services Committee and could work with him if he came up with a plan that he liked. But there’s no—
AMY GOODMAN: Who was a prisoner himself.
ANDY WORTHINGTON: Yeah, who was a prisoner himself. But there’s no guarantee that Senator McCain can influence some of the—some of the people in Congress now. If that route doesn’t work, then I think he absolutely needs to take the executive order route.
ROGER WATERS: But to give Obama his due—
AMY GOODMAN: Roger Waters?
ROGER WATERS: To give him his due, in his State of the Nation address a couple of days ago, he did actually get up on his hind legs and say how malign it was that the Republicans and the right wing were singling out the Muslim religion. And he did say we cannot lump all Muslims together in, OK, which is exactly what Trump and Cruz and the rest of the Republican presidential hopefuls are doing. So, I really applaud him for saying that on national television in a very, very important speech. And he has done the deal with Iran. And, I mean, Obama has had a pretty hard row to hoe during his incumbency as the president, and clearly the machinery of government that he’s trying to work alongside is broken. It has broken. It’s far too susceptible to financial considerations and so, after Citizens United, as we all know.
So, yes, let’s try and encourage him. You know, he’s got 365 days from today until he leaves office, so Andy’s plan is, let’s get Guantánamo closed before the end of that time. It is fundamentally important to every citizen of the United States of America that we—although I’m not a citizen, but I live here and I care about this country—that we return to the rule of law. It’s taken many, many years to develop it. Every civilized society has to have law to which we abide. We cannot be ruled by the Donald Trumps and Ted Cruzes of this world. So, please, Obama, let’s get this thing closed by the end of your presidency. That would be a great way to finish.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Roger Waters, as you said, you’re a British citizen, you live in this country—two of the leading world and war powers. I mean, President Obama is now presiding over the longest war in U.S. history in Afghanistan, and the Middle East is exploding right now. You’re about to go on a world tour for your new solo album in two decades.
ROGER WATERS: Well, I’m not about to. It’s very unlikely that I will start touring anywhere this year. These things take a long time. It took me about 10 months to put together The Wall tour. I still have to finish making the record. But, yes, it is my determination to go back on the road.
AMY GOODMAN: And the record will be called?
ROGER WATERS: That, I’m not quite sure yet.
AMY GOODMAN: Will it be around war?
ROGER WATERS: It will be about peace and love. It will be about my concern for the children of the world and how they’re being slaughtered willy-nilly by whoever it is that runs everything. You know, I don’t want to go all deep state on you, but this whole charade is being controlled—I’m not suggesting conspiracies, but it is being controlled by a group of important elements—you know, the banks, Wall Street, the Pentagon, the NSA, the CIA, the this, the that, the other, the U.K. You know, conservative policies all over the world control the way that we all live. And it is very important that we try to wrest control back to the people.
So we need to educate. We need an educated electorate who can start confronting the problems that lead to the children of the world, all of them, all the children all over the world, not living in an atmosphere of peace and love, which is what they deserve and which is what we have to bring to them somehow. And Andy and Jo, the work that they’re doing with Shaker and with Guantánamo is fundamental to that more general—more general work that we need to focus on, is my view.
AMY GOODMAN: Andy Worthington, you have launched this campaign, Close Guantánamo. What are you doing to try to achieve this?
ANDY WORTHINGTON: Well, I set up the campaign four years ago with the attorney, U.S. attorney Tom Wilner, who represented the Guantánamo prisoners in Supreme Court cases for habeas corpus in 2004 and 2008. And as we now approach the last year of the Obama presidency, we decided that it would be a good idea to count down, drawing on the things we learned from the We Stand with Shaker campaign, so to drawn in both celebrities and ordinary people so that they can make their voices heard. So we’re asking people to go visit the website, CloseGuantanamo.org, to get a poster from there, to stand with the poster, to take a photo. And we’re already lining up celebrities who are going to be involved, as you’ll see from some of the photos that we’re showing here. And—
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us some of the celebrities.
ANDY WORTHINGTON: And ordinary people can get involved. Well, Roger, of course, is involved. We’ve had—we’ve got Brian Eno. We’ve got Mark Rylance, the actor. It’s just the start. I know the calls are going now to get people involved. And we’re hoping that it will be able to do the same thing that we did with Shaker Aamer, but for the whole of Guantánamo, and to raise people’s awareness of what’s happening, through celebrity support, which, you know, helps get the word out to people, but also giving ordinary people the opportunity to say that they’re opposed to it and to provide a few words themselves about why they need to see Guantánamo closed. And we’ll have the posters that will count down every 50 days, and we’ll be trying to organize events throughout the year and helping everybody to support President Obama in getting the place closed.
AMY GOODMAN: Andy Worthington and Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters just stopped by our studios last week to discuss their campaign to close Guantánamo. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. We’ll be back in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Roger Waters performing "We Shall Overcome," accompanied by Alexander Rohatyn on cello in the Democracy Now! studio. You can go to our website to watch the whole song at democracynow.org. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
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Revered Poet Martín Espada Reflects on Struggles Past & Present in Vivas to Those Who Have Failed
The acclaimed "people’s poet" and professor Martín Espada has been compared to Pablo Neruda and is widely known as the Latino poet of his generation. In his latest collection of poetry, "Vivas to Those Who Have Failed,"—a title taken from a line by Walt Whitman—Espada begins with a tribute to the 1913 Paterson silk strike, when a group of mostly immigrant workers in New Jersey fought for improved working conditions and an eight-hour workday. He goes on to address struggles and injustices up to the present day, including the police killings of unarmed African Americans and the spate of U.S. mass shootings. Espada also pays tribute to his late father, the legendary photojournalist, teacher and activist Frank Espada. Espada joins us for a discussion and reading of his poetry.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today’s show with the acclaimed "people’s poet" and professor Martín Espada. Martín has been compared to Pablo Neruda and is widely known as the prime Latino poet of his generation. His latest collection of poetry has just been released. It’s called Vivas to Those Who Have Failed, a title taken from a line by Walt Whitman. Espada begins his collection with a tribute to the 1913 Paterson silk strike, when a group of mostly immigrant workers in New Jersey fought for improved working conditions and an eight-hour day.
AMY GOODMAN: Espada goes on to address struggles and injustices up to the present day, including the police killings of unarmed African Americans and the spate of U.S. mass shootings. Martín Espada also pays tribute to his late father, the legendary photojournalist, teacher and activist Frank Espada. Born in Puerto Rico in 1930, he worked for decades documenting the Puerto Rican diaspora, as well as the civil rights movement in the United States. Frank Espada died in 2014.
Martín Espada joins us now. The acclaimed poet and professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst won the American Book Award and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His new collection of poetry is just out, Vivas to Those Who Have Failed.
It’s great to have you with us, Martín.
MARTÍN ESPADA: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, before we even talk, could you share a poem? Because that is you talking to the world.
MARTÍN ESPADA: Sure. This is indeed a poem about police violence against people of color. Your audience will recognize many of the cases to which I refer. It’s called "How We Could Have Lived or Died This Way."
Epigraph: Not songs of loyalty alone are these,
But songs of insurrection also,
For I am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel the world over.
Walt Whitman
I see the dark-skinned bodies falling in the street as their ancestors fell
before the whip and steel, the last blood pooling, the last breath spitting.
I see the immigrant street vendor flashing his wallet to the cops,
shot so many times there are bullet holes in the soles of his feet.
I see the deaf woodcarver and his pocketknife, crossing the street
in front of a cop who yells, then fires. I see the drug raid, the wrong
door kicked in, the minister’s heart seizing up. I see the man hawking
a fistful of cigarettes, the cop’s chokehold that makes his wheezing
lungs stop wheezing forever. I am in the crowd, at the window,
kneeling beside the body left on the asphalt for hours, covered in a sheet.
I see the suicides: the conga player handcuffed for drumming on the subway,
hanged in the jail cell with his hands cuffed behind him; the suspect leaking
blood from his chest in the back seat of the squad car; the 300-pound boy
said to stampede barehanded into the bullets drilling his forehead.
I see the coroner nodding, the words he types in his report burrowing
into the skin like more bullets. I see the government investigations stacking,
words buzzing on the page, then suffocated as bees suffocate in a jar. I see
the next Black man, fleeing as the fugitive slave once fled the slave-catcher,
shot in the back for a broken tail light. I see the cop handcuff the corpse.
I see the rebels marching, hands upraised before the riot squads,
faces in bandannas against the tear gas, and I walk beside them unseen.
I see the poets, who will write the songs of insurrection generations unborn
will read or hear a century from now, words that make them wonder
how we could have lived or died this way, how the descendants of slaves
still fled and the descendants of slave-catchers still shot them, how we awoke
every morning without the blood of the dead sweating from every pore.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That’s Martín Espada reading to us "How We Could Have Lived or Died This Way." Martín, I wanted to ask you—so much or your poetry is dealing with the politics and the realities, the social conditions of our time—how you first decided that this was part of the mission of your poetry?
MARTÍN ESPADA: I grew up with it. I grew up in an activist household. I grew up in my father’s household. Resistance was as natural as breathing. I was surprised when I went into the world and discovered that not everybody was raised the way I was. So, when it turned to the writing of poetry, quite naturally it turned to poetry about social justice. That’s how I was raised.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you mentioned your father. Of course, I knew him for many years. I was inspired by him, as well. And can you talk about—he was arrested in 1949 in Biloxi, Mississippi, for refusing to sit in the back of a bus? I didn’t even know that, even though I had known Frank for many years.
MARTÍN ESPADA: Oh, yes. Oh, yes, that happened. And he was always raising hell. That was his advice to everybody.
AMY GOODMAN: You wrote a magnificent poem about your dad. Could you share that with us?
MARTÍN ESPADA: Absolutely. This is the poem I read at his memorial service, and it’s called "El Moriviví." The meaning of that term will become apparent.
El Moriviví
In memoriam, Frank Espada (1930-2014)
The Spanish means: I died, I lived. In Puerto Rico, the leaves
of el moriviví close in the dark and open at first light.
The fronds curl at a finger’s touch and then unfurl again.
My father, a mountain born of mountains, the tallest
Puerto Rican in New York, who scraped doorways,
who could crack the walls with the rumble of his voice,
kept a moriviví growing in his ribs. He would die, then live.
My father spoke in the tongue of el moriviví, teaching me
the parable of Joe Fleming, who screwed his lit cigarette
into the arms of the spics he caught, flapping like fish.
My father was a bony boy, the nerves in his back
crushed by the Aiello Coal and Ice Company, the load
he lifted up too many flights of stairs. Three times
they would meet to brawl for a crowd after school.
The first time my father opened his eyes to gravel
and the shoes of his enemy. The second time he rose
and dug his arm up to the elbow in the monster’s belly,
so badly did he want to tear out the heart and eat it.
The third time Fleming did not show up, and the boys
with cigarettes burns clapped their spindly champion
on the back, all the way down the street. Fleming would
become a cop, fired for breaking bones in too many faces.
He died smoking in bed, a sheet of flame up to his chin.
There was a moriviví sprouting in my father’s chest. He would die,
then live. He spat obscenities like sunflower seeds at the driver
who told him to sit at the back of the bus in Mississippi, then
slipped his cap over his eyes and fell asleep. He spent a week in jail,
called it the best week of his life, strode through the jailhouse door
and sat behind the driver of the bus on the way out of town,
his Air Force uniform all that kept the noose from his neck.
He would come to know the jailhouse again, among hundreds
of demonstrators ferried by police to Hart Island on the East River,
where the city of New York stacks the coffins of anonymous
and stillborn bodies. Here, Confederate prisoners once wept
for the Stars and Bars; now the prisoners sang Freedom Songs.
The jailers outlawed phone calls, so we were sure my father must be
a body like the bodies rolling waterlogged in the East River, till he came
back from the island of the dead, black hair combed meticulously.
When the riots burned in Brooklyn night after night, my father
was a peacemaker on the corner with a megaphone. A fiery
chunk of concrete fell from the sky and missed his head by inches.
My mother would tell me: Your father is out dodging bullets.
He spoke at a rally with Malcolm X, incantatory words
billowing through the bundled crowd, lifting hands and faces.
Teach, they cried. My father clicked a photograph of Malcolm
as he bent to hear a question, finger pressed against the chin.
Two months later the assassins stampeded the crowd
to shoot Malcolm, blood leaping from his chest as he fell.
My father would die too, but then he would live again,
after every riot, every rally, every arrest, every night in jail,
the change from his pockets landing hard on the dresser
at 4 AM every time I swore he was gone for good.
My father knew the secrets of el moriviví, that he would die,
then live. He drifted off at the wheel, drove into a guardrail,
shook his head and walked away without a web of scars
or fractures. He passed out from the heat in the subway,
toppled onto the tracks, and somehow missed the third rail.
He tied a white apron across his waist to open a grocery store,
pulled a revolver from the counter to startle the gangsters
demanding protection, then put up signs for a clearance sale
as soon as they backed out the door with their hands in the air.
When the family finally took a vacation in the mountains
of the Hudson Valley, a hotel with waiters in white jackets
and white paint peeling in the room, the roof exploded
in flame, as if the ghost of Joe Fleming and his cigarette
trailed us everywhere, and it was then that my father
appeared in the smoke, like a general leading the charge
in battle, shouting commands at the volunteer fire company,
steering the water from the hoses, since he was immune
to death by fire or water, as if he wore the crumbled leaves
of el moriviví in an amulet slung around his neck.
My brother called to say el moriviví was gone. My father tore
at the wires, the electrodes, the IV, saying that he wanted
to go home. The hospital was a jailhouse in Mississippi.
The furious pulse that fired his heart in every fight flooded
the chambers of his heart. The doctors scrutinized the film,
the grainy shadows and the light, but could never see: my father
was a moriviví. I died. I lived. He died. He lived. He dies. He lives.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That’s Frank Espada, "El Moriviví." For those who are not familiar with el moriviví in Puerto Rico, could you explain what it is?
MARTÍN ESPADA: Yeah, in Latin, it’s the Mimosa pudica. It’s a pantropical weed. It shrinks from contact. And it also closes in the dark, and it opens in light. And so it became the ideal metaphor, for me, for the many lives, deaths and rebirths of Frank Espada, who has died and now he’s back.
AMY GOODMAN: Spoke at a Malcolm rally, Malcolm X.
MARTÍN ESPADA: He did. He spoke with Malcolm X through the end of 1964. And, of course, my father was also a documentary photographer. He founded something called the Puerto Rican Diaspora Documentary Project. And so he photographed Malcolm after the rally.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And he also—he once gave me—his most famous photograph is that photograph of Malcolm that you mention in the poem. He once gave me a copy of it, which I still have on my wall.
MARTÍN ESPADA: Well, he photographed many activists. He photographed you.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Oh, yes, yes, me, many times, my sister, all the folks who were in the Lords. But he went across the United States, to Hawaii, to Puerto Rican communities all—that a lot of people didn’t know about—
MARTÍN ESPADA: Yes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —to capture the leaders and the struggles of those communities.
MARTÍN ESPADA: Yes. And within the art of photography, but also in every aspect of his life, my father was an activist. We often hear this phrase, "the greatest generation," in reference to mostly white males who fought during World War II. Well, for the Puerto Rican community, my father’s generation was the greatest generation, whether we’re talking about Frank Espada, Jack Agüeros, Evelina Antonetty. The activism—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Antonio Pantojas.
MARTÍN ESPADA: The activists born in the ’30s who raised hell in the ’60s. And we should still be following their example, raising hell when we can.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, you knew James Foley as a student, right? Who was beheaded by ISIS.
MARTÍN ESPADA: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to the Sundance Film Festival. There will be a documentary about him. His family will be there. How did you know him, Martín?
MARTÍN ESPADA: He was a student of mine at the University of Massachusetts. He got an MFA in fiction there, and I was on his committee. But more importantly, I referred James Foley to a place called The Care Center in Holyoke. It’s an alternative education program for adolescent mothers, mostly Puerto Rican, who have dropped out of the school system there. Jim Foley taught English to Spanish speakers there. That’s who—that’s who Jim was. He was compassionate. He was always trying to do the right thing.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you for being with us. Martín Espada, the great, award-winning poet and writer, professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has written numerous books, including The Republic of Poetry, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His new collection is titled Vivas to Those Who Have Failed.
And that does it for our broadcast. We have two job openings: director of finance and operations and director of development. Go to democracynow.org.
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Exclusive: Sickened by Gangrene in Utah Immigration Jail, Guatemalan Father Now Faces Deportation
In a Democracy Now! exclusive, we look at the case of an undocumented Guatemalan national previously sickened in an immigration jail and now detained in the latest round of controversial raids. Angel Rosa is recovering from a gangrene infection of his scrotum, which he says began while he was held in a detention center in Utah. Rosa’s family says he faces almost certain death if he is deported despite a request for humanitarian relief. We are joined by three guests: Rosa’s daughter, Lorena Rosa, an 18-year-old high school senior who has played a key role in nursing her father back to health; Mark Reid, senior paralegal at the Thomas Rome Law Group in Hartford, Connecticut, who has helped Rosa’s family with his immigration and asylum claims, and played a role in stopping his deportation so far; and Renée Feltz, Democracy Now! criminal justice correspondent and former producer, who has spent more than a decade reporting on immigrant detention centers.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to the case of an undocumented immigrant who faces deportation after, he says, he suffered a gangrene infection of his scrotum while held in a filthy cell in a detention center in Utah. Democracy Now! first learned about the case of Angel Rosa when he was detained this past Friday by armed federal agents at his home in Hyrum, Utah. Rosa is a 55-year-old father of four U.S.-born children and [has] six U.S.-born grandchildren. His arrest came amid nationwide raids, mostly targeting Central American immigrants for deportation.
Since then, here’s what we’ve confirmed. Rosa first came to the United States in the mid-1980s and has entered without permission at least three times. In 2012, he was charged with a criminal offense for illegal entry. He appears to have been targeted in part because he had a decade-old criminal record for assaulting a minor, his son, during an incident in which, his family says, the prescription medication Rosa was taking reacted badly with alcohol, and the police were called. Since then, they say, he’s been a sober and loving father.
AMY GOODMAN: After Angel Rosa pled guilty and was convicted of illegal re-entry in 2012, he ended up in the Utah County Jail, just south of Salt Lake City in Spanish Fork. The facility has a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. In December 2014, Angel Rosa says, guards put him in a cell with a broken toilet that overflowed with feces, and didn’t allow him to shower. He says he was then placed in solitary confinement as punishment for the broken toilet. At some point during this time, he says, he caught an infection known as Fournier’s gangrene. It began in his testicles. Left untreated, it eventually caused Rosa’s rectum to swell shut, and his intestines became infected. Rosa does not speak English, and his family says it was only after another inmate, who did speak English, told a guard about Rosa’s urgent medical situation that he was examined and taken to an outside hospital. Rosa says he was told to sign documentation so that, if needed, doctors could surgically remove his testes. Ultimately, he was not castrated, but he says he was left sterile and placed on antibiotics and other medicine.
Too sick to remain in detention, he was released under terms that included regular check-ins with immigration authorities and for him to wear an electronic monitoring device on his ankle. For the past year, he says, he’s tried to comply with these conditions, but authorities disagreed. And this past Friday, Rosa was taken back into detention. He is now appealing his pending deportation from jail. The doctor who treated him for gangrene has submitted a letter to ICE that suggests he’s not fit for travel.
For more, we’re joined by three guests. In Salt Lake City, Utah, Lorena Rosa is with us. She’s Angel Rosa’s daughter. She is an 18-year-old high school senior and has played a key role in nursing her father back to health. She got permission to do homeschooling when her father needed the most attention during his recovery. Every other Friday for the past year, she says, she drove him to his regular check-ins with his immigration officer.
Also joining us, from Hartford, Connecticut, is Mark Reid. Senior paralegal at the Thomas Rome Law Group in Hartford, Connecticut, he’s been helping Angel Rosa’s family with his immigration and asylum claims, and played a key role in stopping the deportation so far. Reid is a legal permanent resident of the United States, originally from Jamaica. In 2014, he successfully won his own release from detention.
And with us in New York is Renée Feltz, Democracy Now! criminal justice correspondent, former producer, has spent more than a decade reporting on immigrant detention centers and is the first to report on Angel Rosa’s allegations that he contracted gangrene on his scrotum while in detention and is now facing deportation.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Let’s go to Salt Lake City first to Lorena. Thank you so much for joining us, for taking this time. Lorena, talk about what happened on Friday.
LORENA ROSA: On Friday, I go to Cache High, and I got out of school early. And I was just barely getting home. I came in. I saw my dad getting out of the shower. He was washing the dishes, getting ready to drink his coffee. I went into my room, and out of nowhere, I heard a big bang bursting, opening the door, and I saw my dad running into the living room. And I heard him calling my name. And I ran into the kitchen, and I saw them handcuffing my dad, with shields and guns surrounding the whole trailer. And I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. And I was asking them, "What’s going on?" They’re like, "Your dad is under arrest." I was like, "Why?" And they’re like, "We can’t give you any of that information. If you want that information, go to court and ask for them." And I asked them, "Where are you taking him?" And they said, "In a jail nearby." And they didn’t even know the address, so I had to call my lawyer to see where he was exactly. And after that, they just finished surrounding the house, and they came in to check who was in the house. And I asked them, I was like, "What kind of permission do you have to come into my house just like this?" And they told me, "If you want to see the report," to call the court, and they’ll let me see it.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Lorena, you have been assisting your father now, ever since he was released. Could you talk about the experiences you’ve had during the time he’s been released, from the time he got ill?
LORENA ROSA: When he got ill, it was a horrible experience for a teen my age. I was a junior, that time. He had a lot of doctors’ appointments, a lot of nurses, that he had to go through. And so, I asked permission to be homeschooled for just one tri, so I would be available for him to take him to all those doctors’ appointments. And he had a nurse come in every other day that he didn’t have a doctor’s appointment. It was a really rough time, because it was hard for him. He was so terrorized that it was hard for him to eat. His sugar was high. He would always look so pale, and he would be fainting couple of times. He would be in emergency rooms, Instacare. And it was a really tough time for me and my family.
AMY GOODMAN: So, he was released, Lorena, so he could deal with the gangrene. We have the photographs. We won’t show them. They are so horrific. Can you describe what his recovery has been like and what you think will happen if he is deported?
LORENA ROSA: His infection was horrible. And ever since he had that surgery, he hasn’t been the same. His—anything that upsets him with immigration, because immigration is attacking him and attacking him, and when they do, his blood pressure goes really high, his sugar drops. And if he does get deported, I know Guatemala is not going to have the medical attention that he needs here. And the infection always comes back. It’s always on top of his skin. And I know if he does get deported, he won’t survive. That’s what we’re scared of.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I want to read from a letter by Angel Rosa’s doctor Mark Reid has submitted to ICE with requests for humanitarian relief. Dr. James Mathews writes that he has been treating Rosa for, quote, "a groin/testicular infection which has recurred several times, and at one point required hospitalization and surgery this year. He has had several recurrences of the infection." Dr. Mathews goes on to write, quote, "It is my professional opinion that he should remain where his family and medical care are available, specifically in the Cache County, Utah area." Mark Reid, how you got involved with this case, could you talk about that, your involvement and what you’ve done?
MARK REID: Well, we got involved in this case approximately, you know, over a year now, which was referred to us by one of our colleagues in Utah, Ms. Vanessa Juarez. We’ve been fighting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement right now to try to get Angel some type of stay of deportation because of the nature of his infection. We realize that if Mr. Rosa gets deported to Guatemala, he won’t have the medical care, he won’t have the support of his family. He can’t fend for himself. He’s not able to work. So, in our professional opinion, Mr. Angel Rosa will be facing persecution.
AMY GOODMAN: This is how the Board of Immigration Appeals explained why it denied Angel Rosa’s request to reopen his asylum or withholding proceedings. The ruling was on November 24, 2015. It says, quote, "[T]he applicant seeks the opportunity to apply for humanitarian asylum based on contraction of Fournier’s gangrene while in DHS custody. However the applicant is in withholding only proceedings, thus he is ineligible for a grant of humanitarian asylum," unquote. Interestingly, the ruling also notes, quote, "While we are in sympathetic to the applicant’s situation, a request for a favorable exercise of prosecutorial discretion must be directed to DHS." Let’s bring Renée Feltz into this conversation, a Democracy Now! criminal justice correspondent. You’ve been following this case, exposed what’s been happening with Angel Rosa.
RENÉE FELTZ: Right. Well, Amy, there are so many reasons that one person can be denied asylum, or when they request humanitarian relief, and I think Mark can go through some of that. But when I looked into this case, at first I thought, is this sort of your standard story of someone who has a long history of entering the country without permission, maybe a criminal record—and we can talk more about that—and therefore is not in a very good legal position to stay here? But when I looked a little bit deeper and I saw his illness that he had suffered and the fact that Mr. Rosa didn’t sue ICE this year when he was released, and was just trying to simply recover—
AMY GOODMAN: Though he contracted this gangrene in the detention facility.
RENÉE FELTZ: Right. And he was simply trying to go to his check-ins. It appeared that he was trying to follow the rules of his release. So I started to wonder, you know, why exactly is he being targeted now. I tried to confirm as much as possible about what we’ve reported so far. We’re the first ones to do so. I was able to speak with ICE, two immigration spokespersons, yesterday, and they were unable to tell me anything in terms of confirming what we’ve reported, because he hasn’t yet signed a privacy release form. It’s hard for me to get that to him while he’s in the Cache County Jail. I also spoke with a researcher of Human Rights Watch. She’s looking into this issue of medical neglect and medical care in general for immigrant detainees. And she interviewed Angel Rosa in September last year. And briefly, he told her that his infection first developed when he was placed in the solitary cell after his toilet broke in his cell. And so, I do have to some extent confirmed from Angel directly what happened to him, not just through his daughter and through his attorney.
I want to say one other thing. You know, when I started looking at this facility, it’s in Spanish Fork, Utah. It’s the Utah County Jail. People may wonder why is he in a cell, why is he in a jail. It’s a facility that ICE contracts with, and so there are immigrants held there. Interestingly, to keep out timeline straight, he was ill in 2014. I looked up ICE’s own death records for detainees. And this facility, actually, in Spanish Fork had a death. In fact, I can read a little bit here about it. On July 12, 2014, ICE records show that Santiago Sierra-Sanchez died after he was detained in the Utah County Jail in Spanish Fork, Utah. The cause of death was Staphylococcus aureus infection. He actually died at the Utah County Regional Medical Center, but he was held previously at this facility before he was taken there. He was a 38-year-old Mexican national. And interestingly, when he was entered into the facility where Angel Rosa also was, just like everybody, they’re supposed to receive a screening when they enter, a medical screening. And either they didn’t catch this infection, if he had it when Angel went in, or the staph infection that Mr. Sanchez had—either they didn’t catch it, or they caught it after they were there.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Mark Reid, what are the options right now, or what can be done, in Mr. Rosa’s case?
MARK REID: Well, we’re actually waiting for this. We filed for a stay of removal, and we also filed a motion to reopen based on new evidence. So now that motion is actually pending at the Board of Immigration Appeals.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Renée, in your covering, putting this in context, the immigration raids that have been taking place, what kind of recourse does he have now? And in terms of ICE’s—in terms of ICE’s response to you yesterday, how typical is it? You got one call after another from them when they heard you were looking into this case, didn’t you?
RENÉE FELTZ: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Though they didn’t come—wouldn’t come on the show.
RENÉE FELTZ: That’s right. I mean, you could just simply say that ICE was being responsive and that the spokespersons were doing their job, and that’s great. But they’re not the most responsive agency generally for journalists. And, in fact, they weren’t able to really tell me that much. But, you know, I appreciated them getting back with me. But it does seem that he’s on their radar, in many ways.
And in terms of what Mr. Rosa has in terms of options, like Mark said, you know, they’re still working on his case. I know that they’re asking for some sort of humanitarian relief. And I wonder—as Obama, President Obama, pushes back to say that he is trying to do the right thing with deportations and target the right people, shall we say, and that he’s using his executive order to suggest prosecutorial discretion in these cases, I wonder if they will now look at this case with a little bit more discretion.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Lorena, final words as you try to get your father out of detention and prevent his deportation?
LORENA ROSA: I honestly say that they’re looking—attacking the wrong person. My dad has been a wonderful father since he’s been out of jail. He—my dad, when he gets home, all he does is read the Bible, and he supports us in so many ways. My dad, if he sees that you’re cold, he will literally take his sweater off, in this weather, and give it to you. He would give you his plate for you to eat if you’re starving. And honestly, I think immigration is attacking the wrong person. And that’s all I have to say.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Lorena, thanks so much for being with us. I know you have to go to high school now. Lorena Rosa, her father, Angel Rosa, is fighting deportation. Mark Reid, thanks for joining us from Hartford, Connecticut, paralegal at the Thomas Rome Law Group. And, Renée, thanks for your reporting, Democracy Now! criminal justice correspondent.
RENÉE FELTZ: And you might mention, Amy, that Democracy Now!'s team will be in Utah next week, so maybe we can continue to follow this if Mark is out, and interview him—I'm sorry, if Mr. Rosa is out, and interview him there.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s right. We will continue to follow this there. This is Democracy Now! When we come back, Martín Espada, the poet, joins us.
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