Social Matters

R.I. P.- Lazaro Perez-Ramos.

**Disclaimer (WhoUFeelin does not advocate crime or criminal activity but it does advocate international diplomacy, reform in the welfare system and rehabilitation of convicted criminals that have done their time in the penal system.)**

Everyone makes mistakes just some get caught and some mistakes can cost you your freedom. I located the following passage from the Miami Herald while doing some research online. I found it very heart breaking to know and wanted to share it with the rest of WhoUFeelin readers.

Immigration is a serious issue like a dead horse bleeding on the street, its not going away, talking about it will not get it out of the way, but maybe helping assist those that truly want citizenship to the U.S. will help the influx of illegal immigration become better suited for self advancement and then maybe everyone can sit at the table for a piece of that American apple pie.

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y01/jan01/15e3.htm,
By Claire Osborn . Cox News Service. Published Sunday, January 14, 2001, in the Miami Herald

AUSTIN -- Lazaro Perez-Ramos was held in jail without charges, then after winning approval for his release, he had to stay an extra year because there was no place for him to go.
When Cuban refugee Lázaro Pérez-Ramos finally walked out of the Bastrop County Jail, he lived on the streets of Austin. When he died of lung cancer Nov. 13, his lawyer arranged to bury him in a pauper's grave. He was 59.

"He was suffering, and he was lonely,'' lawyer D'Ann Johnson said.
Johnson and her partner were the only ones at Pérez-Ramos' funeral. His friends could not come because they, too, were being held without charges in the Bastrop jail.
They are Cuban refugees who, along with Pérez-Ramos, were part of the 1980 exodus from the Cuban port of Mariel that brought 125,000 Cubans to the United States.
Many of those who, like Pérez-Ramos, broke the law in the United States ended up in a legal never-never land with almost no way out.

The Bastrop County Jail holds seven detained Cubans.
They have been convicted in the United States and have served their sentences, but they remain in indefinite detention. The United States does not want them but will not release them. Their native land does not want them back.

Like all aliens convicted of felonies, they have received deportation orders. They cannot be deported, however, because Cuba and the United States have no full diplomatic relations.
"With a criminal sentence, even if you don't have good-time credit, you have a flat sentence, so you know the absolute day you will get out. But with this, there is no light at the end of the tunnel,'' Johnson said.

"There's nothing to keep those guys from going into a black hole.''
Citing privacy rules, the Immigration and Naturalization Service declined to disclose the names or criminal records of the Cuban detainees in the Bastrop jail or other Texas facilities.
"These guys are on immigration detention, and the U.S. government tries to keep people away from them so nobody knows,'' Johnson said.

More than 120 Cubans are being held in indefinite detention in Texas, immigration officials said. Throughout the nation, about 1,700 remain in indefinite detention, said Denton Lankford, an immigration service spokesman.

The Mariel Cubans have been a problem for the United States since they arrived. Incarcerated Cubans rioted at several prisons in the 1980s. When hundreds of refugees held at Fort Chafee, Ark., rioted in June 1980, Gov. Bill Clinton sent the National Guard. He was criticized for waiting too long and lost a reelection bid.

More recently, Cuban detainees held guards hostage at a Louisiana prison for six days in December 1999.

In a way, Pérez-Ramos was one of the few lucky ones. He was released from indefinite detention -- but only because he was ill, Lankford said. He had high blood pressure, diabetes and heart problems before he was diagnosed with lung cancer.

Johnson met him when she began working with the Cuban Detention Project. The effort, begun three years ago by the Political Asylum Project of Austin and the Austin chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, provides representation to aliens in indefinite detention. So far, Johnson said, the Cuban Detention Project has gotten eight Mariel Cubans released from the Bastrop jail by proving that they weren't dangerous to society. Pérez-Ramos was one.

WhoUFeelin is now a reader of the Miami Herald online,
http://www.miamiherald.com/ and advocate soon to be volunteer with American Gateways, http://www.americangateways.org/formally known as PAPA, http://www.main.org/papa/