The unusual petition is a last-ditch effort to win the release of the ailing man, Carlyle Leslie Owen Dale, a legal permanent resident who has been held for deportation for more than five years as his court appeals languished and his health sharply declined from diabetes, chronic asthma, liver disease, severe arthritis and high blood pressure.

On Thursday afternoon, his advocates at the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago learned of a new development that added weight to their argument that his detention was arbitrary and unjustified: The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had overruled Mr. Dale’s deportation order, finding that the Board of Immigration Appeals had wrongly concluded that his 2000 conviction for attempted assault made him deportable as an “aggravated felon.” The court sent the case back to the board for a new decision.

But it is unclear when, or even whether, that decision will lead to Mr. Dale’s release to his family, which includes a son, a daughter and two grandchildren in Orlando, Fla., and a son in Biloxi, Miss., all American citizens.

In a telephone interview from the Federal Detention Center at Oakdale, La., minutes after learning of the court ruling, he wept.

“I cannot understand why I should have been detained for five years and suffer as much as I did in a country like this, just because I exercised my rights to challenge my deportation,” he said.

According to his advocates’ petition to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in Geneva, Mr. Dale has been hospitalized five times in the past 20 months for problems including asthmatic bronchitis, acute diabetes, pancreatitis, chronic congestive heart failure, flesh-eating bacterial infection, obstructive pulmonary disease and a hernia.

Though doctors reported that he had suffered “near respiratory arrest,” the petition says, Mr. Dale recently endured days of gasping for breath at the Oakdale detention center; he had a nebulizer mask pulled from his face by an infirmary assistant who accused him of “faking it” and told him to do push-ups in his cell.

Mr. Dale filed a complaint about the assistant’s behavior, but it was declared “without merit” by the same detention official who had denied all his requests for release while his appeal was pending, the petition says.

An outline of Mr. Dale’s case, which did not identify him, was presented by National Immigrant Justice Center advocates at a White House meeting in May under the heading “The Next Death in Immigration Detention.” His advocates said they decided to turn to the United Nations group only after fruitless appeals to officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including Phyllis Coven, the acting director of detention policy and planning, who visited Oakdale this month.

Brian P. Hale, a spokesman for the agency, said that despite the Fifth Circuit decision, Mr. Dale was an “aggravated felon,” subject to mandatory detention. Mr. Hale said senior officials had reviewed Mr. Dale’s care and were satisfied that he had “unfettered access to medical treatment.”

Mr. Dale’s case, and the petition to an international body more accustomed to appeals from places like Myanmar and China than the United States, underscores the current frustration of immigrant advocates who were enthusiastic when the Obama administration first vowed to overhaul immigration detention. Their petition contends that medical neglect and human rights abuses remain rife in a system that continues to detain some 400,000 people a year.

Tara Tidwell Cullen, a spokeswoman for the center, said advocates hoped that bringing international attention to the Dale case would “increase pressure on ICE to improve oversight of detention facilities, and save the lives of our client and others.”

The government has been trying to deport him since 2005, based on his guilty plea to attempted aggravated assault in a 1998 shooting at a halfway house he operated in Uniondale, N.Y. Mr. Dale, who had never been in trouble with the law, served three and a half years in prison and paid more than $9,000 in restitution to the resident he shot with an unregistered gun during an argument in which he said he was threatened with a knife.

Until the shooting, Mr. Dale’s life had followed a path like that of many immigrants to New York. He worked his way through community college as a gas station attendant and a taxi driver, married and had three children, eventually rising through better jobs at Kennedy International Airport and an advertising agency in Oceanside, N.Y., and then establishing a business of his own, the Safe Housing Project

The Safe Housing Project operated several halfway houses for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts. Mr. Dale worked closely with social services officials and detoxification programs in New York City and Nassau County.

The ruling in his favor by the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, turned on complex legal questions, including whether Mr. Dale had exhausted his administrative appeals. (He had.)

But in oral arguments, the chief judge, Edith H. Jones, showed a broader kind of sympathy for Mr. Dale when she learned about the circumstances of the shooting. “That makes it sound more like a caricature of what Texans believe New York justice to be — that self-defense is a crime,” she said.

Salvadoran illegal immigrants wait for breakfast in their barracks at the Willacy Detention facility in Raymondville, Texas, in this December photo.
.The new cases involved eight men from Cuba, one from Mexico and one from Ecuador, bringing to 104 the number of people who have died while in ICE custody since October 2003, the agency said.

ICE initially disclosed little information beyond the men’s names, nationalities and dates of death, but more data was later released by officials at the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the immigration agency. That data showed eight of the men died of natural causes, while another was listed as a suicide. There was no cause of death listed for the final detainee.

Eight of the deaths occurred at facilities operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, including four at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo., the data showed. The suicide was at a federal prison facility in Terre Haute, Ind. Two detainees died at a contract facility run by Corrections Corporation of America in Eloy, Ariz.

All 10 died between 2004 and 2007, according to the agency.

Gillian Brigham, an ICE spokeswoman, said the deaths did not turn up earlier this year when the agency, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, tried to conduct a comprehensive search of those who died while in custody. Ms. Brigham said the agency was aware the 10 detainees had died in custody, but their names hadn’t come up in the original search.

Detainee Deaths
Argelio Leyva-Arjona, Cuban national; suicide, died Jan. 5, 2004, at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind.
Jose De La Concepcion Alvarez Arias, Cuban national; metastic renal cell carcinoma, died on March 10, 2004, at federal prison facility in White Deer, Pennsylvania.
Antonio Ayala-Garcia, Cuban national; “renal failure, failure to eat/drink & severe acute stage dementia,” died on Sept. 24, 2004, U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo.
Elias Lopez Ruelas, Mexican national; “cirrhosis of unclear etiology,” died on Jan. 4, 2005, contract facility run by Corrections Corporation of America in Eloy, Ariz.
Jose Rosell Sierra, Cuban national; no cause listed, died on Jan. 8, 2005, federal medical center in Fort Worth, Texas.
Conrado Correoso-Jay, Cuban national; prostate cancer, died on Jan. 31, 2005, federal penitentiary at the Florence Federal Correctional Complex, in Colorado.
Silvio Lazo Reinoso, Cuban national; pancreatic cancer, died on April 6, 2005, U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo.
Angel Polanco-Molina, Cuban national; superior vena cava syndrome, died on March 30, 2006, U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo.
Jorge Lazano-Blanco, Cuban national; heart attack, died on June 3, 2006, U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo.
Felix Franklin Rodriguez-Torres, Ecuadorian national; cancer (“very aggressive form of cancer”), died on Jan. 18, 2007, contract facility run by Corrections Corporation of America in Eloy, Ariz. SOURCE: Department of Homeland Security
.”This is a serious matter that we uncovered and it requires an immediate response,” said John Morton, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security who heads ICE. “Appropriate tracking and accounting of the deaths of individuals in ICE custody is imperative,” he said in a statement.

The hunt for other cases was ordered Saturday, although the agency announced the move on Monday.

“Today’s announcement confirms our very worst fears,” said David Shapiro, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the original request for a comprehensive list of the deaths. He criticized the government for running a system “devoid of transparency and accountability,” adding that Monday’s announcement raised questions about whether other deaths occurred.

“I think this is a case study on why they need to revamp their detention system,” said Donald M. Kerwin Jr., vice president for programs at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, an independent think tank. “We don’t really know whether their database actually even tracks this information.”

Mr. Morton said earlier this month he was launching a multiyear review and overhaul of the nation’s immigration-detention system, in part to make it less reliant on using prison-like facilities to hold noncriminal immigration offenders.

Although there were few specifics given in that announcement, Mr. Morton said he would substantially increase oversight of the facilities used to hold detainees. That includes a plan to place a government manager inside each of the nation’s 23 largest detention facilities, which together hold about 40% of the nation’s immigration detainees.

The government relies heavily on a patchwork of facilities leased from state and local governments, along with privately run centers, to house the roughly 400,000 people who pass through its immigration-detention system each year.

Advocates have long criticized the level and efficacy of medical care for those being held, but it was unclear if substandard care played a role in deaths announced Monday.

Write to Cam Simpson at cam.simpson@wsj.com

I was abused in a US Jail for four months, no charges, I also witnessed and documented the abuse of others, and then I was moved to a new jail, filmed to show that I was well treated, kept awake for 40 hrs, then flown to Britain and dumped at Heathrow, where they took me to the authorities, who told them I wasn’t wanted for anything….so Homeland Security walked away and went shopping in London. Now understand that as a ‘legal Green Card Immigrant’ or even as a US citizen, THIS COULD BE YOU.

After begging everyone (lawyers, doctors, legal clinics etc) for help here in the UK for six months, and being unable to get any, I approached my MP Maria Eagle, to ask her to investigate this matter. Being extremely stressed out, I took the parish priest with me to that meeting, as explaining the abuses in the jail is no easy thing, and I wanted to get my story across.

In the Middle of the Night, I was then taken from my home, jailed and told I was under suspicion of ‘making a threat against Ms. Eagle’ and there was a warrant for my ‘computer, articles to commit an offence, and Literature related to America’

HOLD IT – if Ms. Eagle, lives in the UK, why does the warrant cover ‘Literature related to America’ ??? Why did they need to any of the evidence I have of how I was treated over there? Is there some doubt that I am telling the truth?
Ms. Eagle has now tried to get the police to return my laptop, and the police are saying they need to do a full investigation…and cant or wont explain where the wording on the warrant came from……..you can search for years for something that isnt there…

Why did they need to take my evidence of what happened in America away from me?

Having never threatened anyone, and having begged for help for six months, I recall Binyam Mohammed’s comments released to the Press, that his lowest moment was when he realised that MI5 was actually cooperating with the Americans as he was tortured in detainment; he had held out hope that the British would intervene to assist him as the Americans continued to violate all of his human and Civil rights. This paragraph here, is my only potential ‘connection’ to terrorism; I actually feel the same as he did at that moment, completely let down by the Authorities who have the power to prevent these ‘abuses of power’ from happening.

After discussing with friends, their comment in unison, is that ‘You must have really upset someone in US Govt.‘

And here in the UK where I was raised with the belief that Britain doesn’t stand for this kind of thing, I can get NO HELP at all. Do not be surprised if this blog ends without explanation or conclusion. If they can do this to me, then they can just disappear me, under one of the new anti-terror laws, probably. I already know you don’t have to be a criminal to wind up in jail.

IF YOU KNOW A LAWYER, BRITISH OR AMERICAN, BRAVE ENOUGH TO TACKLE THIS SITUATION, Please have them contact me at Josieg6@hotmail.com

Thanks to www.condron.us for this website.

now read www.immigrationdetaineestories.wordpress.com

I thought he was crap. He couldnt understand my situation, (who can, plus – I give no info out when getting read, to assess the skill of the reader) but he said all he could get was ‘John Lennon’, he said he kept getting ‘let it be’ – as in ‘keep quiet’ – that I must keep quiet now….and to trust my instincts and I should be alright… he said all he could get was John Lennon.

Well, I was unimpressed, I thought this was crap. I was hoping for a bit of direction.

I knew very little about John Lennon, except he was shot on the streets of New York. Then it dawned on me that he was supposedly shot by a Schizo, who now has dayrelease to go visit anyone he likes etc….and I was in jail with a schizo… coincidence! Oh shit. shit shit.

Then a couple of people told me that John Lennon had opposed some US policies and was shot by the CIA…
I dont recall opposing any US Govt policies, until I spoke out about what they have just done to me, and the many trapped unnecessarily in their Immigration jails…abused, lied to, mistreated, starved…stuff you don’t hear about because most are afraid to speak up.

I spent my whole childhood afraid – so I just CANNOT not speak up when people are being terrorised. Same as if I hear a kid screaming I WILL go investigate, even if his dad is 3 times my size. That is who I am.

So, today I googled John Lennon….oh bugger.
I will always have to trust my instincts. Becuase you cannot trust your Govt, your politicians or your police. So, will they be sending a Manchurian candidate after me, or just continue to try to discredit me as a mental case?

I have had psy visions since I was 17. It was very strange, and disturbing, so I made it ‘lie down flat’ and ‘go away’ for years, to have a normal life. (as much as possible!) Most people don’t even separate it out, and just assume they are lucky or have great instincts. Mine were never good, because I grew up in a volatile house with random violence, so I had to be on alert all the time. But psy ability doesn’t really go away, and so it would push its way into my dreams, if there was something I really needed to know.

While trapped unnecessarily in immigration jail I did have a strong dream about Chicago suffering an extreme explosion though, and I did have an experience worth noting, which I will put at the end. I dont do dead people. I can see right into the heads of the living though! sometimes I can see what they can’t. When I met Julie Myers Wood in Immigration jail, she had dilated pupils. Anyhow, the older you get, the more you learn about the world and start to accept things for what they are, and to some degree, what you are, so I kept a dream blog, which included many dreams about political events, missiles, warships, U-name it. Stuff that I didnt pay any attention to in my daytime life; I wasnt very interested in world politics nor politically active in any way, other than documenting my wierd dreams. But I did get ‘C14′ in my dreams, which turned out to be a highway in Africa, which may be used to transport nuclear materials, but I dont know, If I haven’t seen it with my own two eyes in daylight, so therefore, I dont believe. Lets keep SMIS busy; all this stuff is on my dream blog..not hard to find….

A small psy experience in jail – there were many who did not speak any english. I had a dream where everyone was greyed out, including my useless spouse, except for one woman, I could see her eyes clearly, and she could see mine.
The next day, I asked a kid that was completely bilingual to ask that lady to come over, so I could tell her something. I asked th kid to translate word for word, which she said she would.

So I said ‘I saw you in a dream last night, I know you can see me too, I know you are psychic too”
The kid looked at me – I said, just word for word, OK?
so she translated it…the other woman looked at me, then she started gabbing, -it was translated to me,

‘Yes, I saw you too, I had the same dream, but I dont want anyone to know becuase you know they are all so religious in here, and superstitious, and if they know they will think I can tell them whether they get to go home’ – she also said that there is so much pain in the room that it makes her stomach hurt and she cant eat…so she doesnt want anyone asking her to tell them what will happen to them.

so I had the kid translate, I explained to her that I wouldnt tell anyone, I just wanted her to know that I could ‘see’ her, and I knew. She was ok with it. The kids eyes nearly fell out of her head!! She was about 17 and had never witnesses two psys communicating before, even though we needed a translator!! was quite funny.

So, what they think they know about me, I know. If they want me to fill in the gaps, they should have asked me nicely instead of putting me through this. . Like they should hire Gary McKinnon, not torture him.

This blog allows me to see who looks at my blog,….this tells me who currently feels the need to cover themselves just in case any non-corrupt party decides the events detailed in my blog warrant a true and honest investigation…Lets remember, I was a housewife, who worked in a bank, waiting for her greencard in the US, for 20 years…and then I was falsely arrested twice at my home, they nearly killed me, held me in jail for four months, kept from legal and medical help, and then dumped in the UK…so I set up this website to document this insane but true story.

I can only guess someone, somewhere, is Very pissed off at me for speaking out about what has happened since I requested assistance from the US and British Govts, …most of whom have just ignored this situation, or directed me elsewhere, just hoping it will go away….

Thanks to the FOIA, yesterday I received a copy of my file from the FCO, the lies in it told by US Immigration to the British Govt are staggering, they were told that I was a fugitive, also that I faked illness on arrest on May 9, (I had a massive seizure, I wonder if agents Navarro, Youssif and Hatchett are willing to perjure themselves to please their bosses; in court will it be assumed that the paramedics are lying?) – and the most amazing thing is the sheer willingness of the British Govt to believe it all, because they absolutely are paralysed by their need to ‘go along with’ the US Govt.

What they don’t understand is that within the US Govt, are different warring factions, each will use a situation to their own end purpose. So, I dont imagine they are done screwing with me yet.

On the journey back to America, finally, there were Homeland Security people (two) at the UK end, (how unusual), and at the US O’Hare end the guard came straight over before the Immigration agent had a chance to summon him, she said ‘I didn’t press the button’ and he said ‘you will’ and she then acknowledged it from whatever was on the screen about me….and I was then escorted to the little pen, where they check people’s backgrounds. They then had a good laugh reading about the absolute hell this stupid Govt has put me through, because of their own incompetence, and then they acknowledged that my papers were legitimate, and had the nerve to tell me to keep my nose clean….

Also someone decided to write in the FCO notes that I seem mentally unstable, (thank you, my countrymen for your support as I went through this completely unnecessary hell) if that was the case, why did I not receive any treatment, in jail or since being in UK for ten months? you can’t have it both ways, either I am sane and telling the truth or this is all baloney…it is well documented that 80% of people incarcerated in US Immigration jails show signs of mental disorders, caused by their unnecessary incarceration. See the docs at http://www.Immigrationdetaineestories.wordpress.com.

The US failed to inform the British Govt that they had arrested me, they then told porky pies to cover the fact that they falsely arrested me, and have since told the British that I am a threat to national security, but not why they think that…so Great Britain was/is watching me, so is the US…all paid for with my 20 years of tax dollars. That’ll teach me to be frugal and careful with my money, or to save for a family that I can’t have now. They have wasted about 700K so far. Its tough being sane in an insane and paranoid world.

I wonder how many cops will again come trooping thru wherever I live, stumbling over my dance shoes again and again, in the quest for Osama Bin Salsa…which I am not.

I WAS LIED ABOUT: It was either my husband in his sheer greed to have the house bought with my money, or more likely, an upset ex-boyfriend who lied to the US Govt, trying to make me public enemy number 1, to hurt me, because I broke up with him, COS HE NEVER STOPPED WHINING…when he didn’t have any real problems!!…

During this past year, the Govt has spent about 750K detaining then deporting then investigating me, wasting manpower and tax dollars, etc, that could have been much better used to prevent crime and terrorist attacks against all of us. I learned all of the filthy things the US Govt does and what happens to people in power, they become mad. Demented prison guards and pencil pushers…..and possibly that a boyfriend with a broken heart can be extremely dangerous; its all about power and control.

It’s all beneath contempt. What did I learn from all this? don’t ever go out with an indian bus driver???? that the Govt is really the mess you think it is, and if doing this to me was ‘to keep us all safe’, then god help us all??

They offered to close the door for my ‘privacy’ – hello, they just locked me unnecessarily in a jail for four months where the dyke guards stripped me for their entertainment; I think I am over the privacy thing at this point. If I wasn’t as tough as I am, I would have killed myself by now, but today was a close call after the embassy. it seems so pointless in life to keep trying for an ordinary, happy life. But I will not
let them do that to me.

It was so ridiculous to be questioned about a rape that happened ten years ago; and to be told they can’t process my visa because 1) the computers are down, and 2) they want to ‘double check ‘ that the ‘waiver of deportability has been cleared by washington’ and they will ‘write to me’ – even though they are LOOKING AT THE WAIVER THAT HAS BEEN GRANTED.

I have been sitting in a room alone in the UK since being dumped in a country I have not lived in for 20 years, I had so much I would prefer to never remember about growing up in the UK. I have been forced to relive my nightmare childhood since being dumped here, (yes I saw a shrink in my twenties, dealt with all that crap and put it all behind me. Then I was falsely arrested, detained, tortured and got to watch others lives and minds being destroyed, in US Immigration jail – so now all that stuff is back in my mind, along with all the new traumatic events that I was forced through by USCIS/Homeland security. )

I was raped (1) in uk by my first employer, I got home and I knew to try to hide it from my violent unpredictable family, so my dad beat my head against the wall to find out ‘why I was upset’ – he did the same when I asked about whether I should go to college. There is your Ten O level candidate! (more than my MP, I guess) I didnt go on to college, unsuprisingly. My only thought was to get away from them. I had no clue how. When you grow up around angry violent people, it takes a long time to figure out who treats you well, and how important that is for your life and happiness, you can even marry people who treat you badly as you dont recognise it as such….

Who says Britain doesnt value its working class intelligent kids! My parents always threatened me that I couldnt tell anyone what happened in that house. Too late now.

This is the father that punched me in the chest and nearly killed me when I was a kid, (I was unconscious when admitted, check the records for the cottage hospital, its been demolished now) My mother is STILL a vicious cruel old woman who is losing it a bit, and still likes to physically attack me, so I don’t go near; whole family is very conflicted/damaged so I have made decision that no contact is best course of action to hang on to my own sanity. I owe them NOTHING, and I did way better without them for 20 years…..

My nieces and nephews tried to be pleasant and welcoming to this stranger that they remember spending time with them when they were little kids. I thank my nephew Graham, for trying to help me understand them, (and seeing this family all too clearly) and my nephew Sean, for trying to help me, but thanks to my mother, and her interference, I now cannot contact them. And they saw me immediately after I was locked in a jail for 108 days, and close to a breakdown, so I am sure they question my sanity. Its been like that film with Mel Gibson, Conspiracy Theory. But just like him, I’m telling the truth about what has been done to me. My sister knows because she contacted the jail from Australia every day, and they wouldnt even confirm they were holding me.

In liverpool recently I have been face to face with the man (schizo) that violently raped me and tried to kill me in the uk when i was 19, (number 2) He then may have murdered someone, (I did not see him do it, but? too many coincidences) and back then I had the courage (an and idealistic view of law enforcement I think) to go to the police and gave them statement – yet they couldn’t prove it, so he is still walking around, as dangerous as ever – so, is it really worth cooperating with law enforcement? if that man ever knew I gave a statement, I would be dead now. I take a chance writing this now.

In the USA from 1989 absolutely nobody wanted to be my friend unless they could get something from me; its a long ugly road for a lonely young woman, the night someone broke in and raped me (might have been number 3) I could actually reach the phone to hit him with it, but I knew already if I didn’t hit him hard enough he would kill me, so …you want to stay alive, so you wait it out….and he left and I had to go to work the next day…..and of course, my first husband left me high and dry – with Immigration issues, so I was afraid to press charges…

I know I was raped by another man in Chicago but I can’t remember all of that one(4)

I was then in a relationship with a man called Kenneth Rodgers, who was a Chicago Basketball coach. when I found I was pregnant (quite an accident) I told him, and he said if I had the baby he would get me deported or kill me. Wow.
I was very fortunate that I had a very supportive female friend T, who had been through a similar nightmare, she stood by me as I made the saddest decision of my life. Ken then wanted to talk to me, ( I was so desperately alone) he came around to my flat, he held me for a minute, then he dragged me into the bedroom and raped me,(5) saying he wanted to get me pregnant again. I knew if I fought he could really hurt me. He then sat on the end of the bed, and said he would come back later and take me to dinner. (insane) I was later told that he has done this to a number of women.

A few weeks later, he wanted to do it again, I ran from him and he battered me into my building, but I was screaming as loud as I could trying to get a witness, he was afraid he would be caught and he ran away. I made a police report and this is the rape that the U-Visa was based on, as I had the sense to get a stranger to take photographs of all of the bruising from the beating, and kept those pictures for fifteen years in a box, along with the police report.

So – after two legitimate marriages, two applications for a greencard, 20 years and finally the U Visa that was approved, but now they are stalling granting it, having to ‘check with Washington’ – I don’t recall anyone in Washington raping me, except metaphorically, to advance their career perhaps…. Maybe I missed something in all of this shit that this ordinary hard working woman tried to just get over and put behind her!

My friend mentioned above, T, once said, ‘dont ever try to count the times you’ve been raped’ and another friend said her mother told her ‘rape is not the worst thing a man can do to ya’ – which if you don’t identify with, you have either been extremely lucky, or you are a man.

So what is a U Visa for, if not to allow someone to get on with their life?

Aside: Does cooperating with Law Enforcement include being telephone harrassed by a police spokesperson a few years ago? I stupidly called in the anon harrassment and the calls were traced back to his home…that went nowhere.

My current husband Joel Carreon knew all this stuff, and we were together 7 years, I busted my ass to make that man happy and sorted out all of his legal messes, I made him rich and got him out of debt and through school…and I secretly hoped we would have a child eventually. Then 2 years ago he started to cheat on me with someone at his job, and then he decided he didnt need me any more…

He stood there and told me that he never wanted kids with me, he only wanted the house to impress his parents and he wanted me to move out. Away went any dreams I had of having a family. It was devastating.

It seems he found a shortcut to taking more than half of everything I worked for for twenty years, two days after I was arrested by US Immigration, my husband changed the locks and refused to assist me in any way, he probably thought I would die in Immigration stuff. But apparently all that drama made me one tough woman.

So, will US Immigration ever do right by me, and will they ever allow me to get on with my life and put all of this behind me, or will I have to rehash it forever to suit the authorities?

The stories I heard in Immigration jail make mine pale in comparison. One woman was raped by her father since she was a child, now she was being deported, while her little girls are with her parents….she was out of her mind with worry. I am not religious but I pray for her. But today, I will just try to find a reason to stay alive.

May 29 – I would like to thank the 5000 plus people who have now visited my blog. Be aware, what has happened to me, could happen to YOU. There were US born citizens in Immigration jail with me. It makes no sense at all.

Thanks to www.condron.us for this website.

Napolitano made her remarks at the opening of the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference, an annual gathering of federal judges and court officials from the Western U.S., held this week at the Hyatt Regency in Monterey.

Immigration reform topped her list of pressing issues, the former Arizona governor said, “because for the last 16 years, I’ve seen how flaws in our underlying legislation … need to be corrected.”

Napolitano has been a longtime proponent of emphasizing enforcement of immigration laws in the workplace.

“The demand for cheap labor is such a primary driver of illegal immigration into our country,” she said.

She urged new thinking on “what immigration means and how it should work. And that includes, by the way, not just picking up people at the border. It means all the way through the system, including through the legal and the judicial system so heavily impacted by immigration.”

Last month, Napolitano met with 30 lawmakers who were “given the charge” by President Barack Obama to push for a comprehensive immigration bill he hopes will be passed by late this year or in early 2010.

She plans to be involved in drafting the bill during this summer’s congressional recess,

she said, encouraging the Ninth Circuit Court officials to weigh in to her or their congressional representatives before an open hearing process begins this fall, most likely in the Senate.

Napolitano, who took the helm of the Department of Homeland Security in January, said the three issues of immigration, cyber crime and the H1N1 virus were “very acute in terms of timing.”

Attacks on computer systems are on the rise, she said, posing a threat to institutions such as the courts that constantly deal with confidential files.

“In my few months as the secretary of Homeland Security, I’ve seen an increasing cascade of attacks on systems in the United States. I’ve seen attacks into our own department,” she said.

Government agencies and the courts must develop “the institutional capacity to detect these things, repair them and keep on operating in this new cyber world,” she said.

Finally, a possible return of new forms of the flu virus to the U.S. this fall could mean widespread absenteeism that affects government, businesses and schools.

“We all need to be thinking through, how do we keep things going, how do we keep business happening with absentee rates that could be 10, 20 or 30 percent — maybe even 40 percent — at the height of the return of a flu pandemic? How will you operate the courts?”

While the next outbreaks are unlikely to reach levels of the devastating 1918 flu pandemic, she said, the H1N1 virus could force school and business closures across the country. The virus is circulating through the Southern Hemisphere, she said, and is expected to make a strong comeback in the U.S. by early fall.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” she said. “I would urge you to lean forward and navigate this issue ahead of time so that decisions are not being made in the height of a pandemic.”

Napolitano told the judges she is “squeezing out” wasteful spending from her department’s $50 billion budget, all the way down to the cost of redesigning logos. That task alone cost some taxpayers $3 million, she said, as the department consolidated 22 separate federal agencies when it formed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“We will no longer fund new logo designs in the Department of Homeland Security. You heard it here first,” she said, drawing laughter from her audience. “I think our logo is just fine, thank you very much.

So this is what I do in a flight when I have an annoying passenger seating
next to me…

1. Remove laptop from the briefcase;

2. Open the laptop slowly and carefully:

3. Turn it on, as well as the sound;

4. Make sure that the passenger next to you is looking;

5. Access the Internet;

6. Close my eyes for a few moments, open again and look up to heaven;

7. Take a deep breath and open the site:
http://www.myit-media.de/the_end.html

8. Observe the facial expression of the passenger seating next to you.

Have fun!

Thanks to www.condron.us for this website.