The Task Force on Immigration at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Medford, along with several members of the Department of Romance Languages at Tufts, are cooperating to launch a holiday book drive to benefit Spanish-speaking inmates of the Suffolk County House of Correction. Collection boxes have been placed outside the Department of Romance Languages office on the second floor of Olin Center.
The Suffolk County House of Correction houses about 1,500 inmates. Five hundred of them are Spanish-speaking and about half of them are undocumented immigrants awaiting deportation. The undocumented immigrants are being housed in a separate wing of the facility under the supervision of the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The prison library has very few books in Spanish and the inmates have asked for reading materials in their own language.
In addition to being a humanitarian gesture, the campaign highlights the detention of the approximately 250 undocumented immigrants who are awaiting deportation. It was in the ICE-supervised wing that a Dominican immigrant named Pedro Tavarez was detained. Forty-nine-year-old Tavarez died on Oct. 19 after being transferred to Brigham and Women's Hospital. While working as a taxi driver in Providence, RI last year, he was stopped by law enforcement for speeding. Record checks found discrepancies related to federal immigration violations, and Tavarez was brought to Suffolk County House of Correction for detention.
Records show that 105 immigrants have died in temporary detention facilities across the country. And yet immigrants like Tavarez are not criminals, terrorists or security threats. Immigrant advocates have noted that more than 95 percent of immigrants awaiting deportation do not need to be incarcerated; an electronic bracelet is just as efficient at keeping track of them, saves taxpayers $90 a day and is more humane. Advocates have also demanded an end to deportations that destroy the intactness of immigrant families -- at least until the U.S. immigration laws can be rewritten in early 2010.
Spanish books and magazines will be collected between now and the end of the semester and can be deposited in the boxes in Olin. Other community groups, including the Metro North support cluster of Malden's Refugee Immigration Ministry, are also supporting the book drive. We encourage students and faculty to donate whatever Spanish books they no longer need to this effort. Everything collected will be delivered to the prisoner library before the holidays.
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Michael Glenn is a retired psychiatrist who has been studying Spanish at Tufts for the past three years as a community audit member. He is head of the Task Force on Immigration at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Medford.
