Broken Families: Tina in Irvine

Guest blogger Tina Shull is a History PhD student at UC Irvine in California, studying the rise of immigration detention in the U.S., and as well as an intern for the Detention Watch Network, an organization at the forefront of challenging and reforming the broken U.S. immigration detention system.

But You're Married?

I grew up in San Diego, California.  It was on the playground in elementary school twenty years ago when I first heard the slanderous insult.  "Illego!" one child taunted another.  Having no idea what this strange word meant I joined in anyway just for fun, adding what I thought I heard to my canon of fun insults, right next to dork and dickhead.  It was several years before I figured out that I was really hearing "illegal," in reference to unauthorized immigrants.  And I still had no idea that twenty years later I would marry one.

I went to UCLA as an undergrad, and then went on to get my Master's at NYU.  Now I am working towards a Ph.D. in U.S. History at UC Irvine.  I met my husband Andis while I was living in New York, and we were married nearly two years ago.  Two days after our beautiful wedding in Vermont, Immigration and Customs Enforcement took my husband into custody, detained him in New Jersey for three months, and deported him to Albania.  We still live apart, and he has a 10-year ban from the United States.

Nearly everyone I tell this to immediately replies with the question, "But you're married?"  If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me that question . . . Unfortunately, most Americans are not aware that marrying a U.S. citizen does not automatically get you "in."  This may have been the case in the past, but not anymore.

Did your husband commit a crime?

I spent my first three months of marriage visiting my husband in detention every day.  We were never allowed to touch and could only visit through glass.  Ironically, conjugal visits are a privilege for those in prison, not for immigration detainees who are in administrative custody.  But when I visited Andis, I could not tell the difference between this place and a prison.

This was a private-contract detention facility for immigrants without criminal records and who are awaiting release or deportation.  Many immigration detainees are asylum seekers with pending cases, and some are in this "temporary" kind of detention for years.  Andis did not see daylight the entire time he was inside.  For 22 hours a day, he shared a room with 40 other men - this is where they ate, slept, watched TV, and used the bathroom in open stalls.  Two years later, I still suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from this nightmare experience, and I was on the outside.

The second question that people often ask me is whether my husband committed some kind of horrible crime, maybe a felony, to be detained in this manner and deported with a ten-year ban from the United States.  Otherwise, it doesn't make sense.

Andis was never charged with a crime in the U.S.  Desperate to escape political and economic instability in Albania, he did enter the U.S. unlawfully in 2001.  However, he never wanted to live under the radar, and he showed himself to Immigration and applied for political asylum.  He waited through rescheduled court dates and judge no-shows, and applied several times for work eligibility while his case was pending.  He was repeatedly denied, so he worked under the table as a waiter in New York for $10 a day plus tips.  Five years after Andis first applied, his political asylum case was dismissed.  The judge said that since the Democratic Party regained power in Albania in 2005, Albania is now safe.  However, the Albanian government is still corrupt and the circumstances that drove Andis to flee his home have not changed.

What does your husband do in Albania?

When Andis's case was dismissed, his unlawful entry made him immediately deportable.  Andis started suffering panic attacks at the thought of living under the radar forever, or being deported.  Having no viable options, we appeared to Immigration two days after our wedding.  Many would tell us that this was incredibly unwise, but we were just trying to do the right thing.  Casually, the ICE officer told us that Andis would probably just have to check in every month while we filed for him to stay in the country legally.  Then suddenly five armed officers appeared, and our lives changed forever.

Since Andis was deported, I have become as active as possible in speaking out and seeking help. I have written Op-Ed pieces and given many interviews to reporters.  As a result, I have received both moral support and hate mail.  I have been told that I am a criminal, and that I deserve to be separated from my husband like this.  I traveled to Washington, D.C. with American Families United, a group of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents who are separated from their families by immigration law.  I met with my local Representative Elton Gallegly's office.  He actually wrote the law in 1996 giving deportees a 10-year bar from the U.S., and is quite proud of it.  I was told that the best solution is for me to move to Albania.  But how can the U.S. effectively deport its own citizens like this?

A third question that people often ask me is, "What does your husband do right now in Albania?"  The truthful answer is nothing.  He is scared and unable to find work, stigmatized as a deportee, and he feels like a foreigner in his own country.  It is hard for Americans to fathom, but in Albania you can't just put on a nice outfit and walk around with a resume and find a job.  To get a job, you have to know someone or pay someone, and because of organized crime wages are extremely low and prices are falsely high.  Another question: "Can't your husband go to another country?"  The short answer is no - freedom of mobility is something that Americans really take for granted.

I have been to Albania several times to visit Andis.  It has its charms, but it is also the poorest and most unsafe country in Europe.  Corruption is rampant.  Andis lives in the heart of the capital, and while I was there we had no running water for ten days while we watched politicians on television insist that everyone had plenty of water.  Andis had to wake up at 5 a.m. every day to carry 24 six-liter bottles of water up four flights of stairs so that we could cook and bathe.  Of course, I will move to Albania if I have to - but the future that I have worked and studied so hard for would completely disappear.

When I first started dating Andis, some of my friends told me to be careful.  They were worried that Andis might be using me for my citizenship, or that "all Albanians are in the Mafia."  I cannot fully blame them; mistrusting immigrants is an American pastime.  Our culture is so entrenched with this narrative that it even extends to elementary school playgrounds.

But my husband didn't use me.  He gave up his job, his friends, his family members who are living in the U.S. legally, and the entire life that he spent six years building.  He gave up the freedom and safety of living in the United States to have a shot at an honest life with me.  To me, that is the ultimate proof of his love.