The ACLU, which is probing Roy's case, asserts that a legal dead zone exists between the ICE hold and Sheriff Baca's procedure. The ACLU and DeMayo say they have seen many such maddeningly inappropriate jailings.
Jenny Pasquarella of the ACLU of Southern California says, "A lot of time, when you talk to immigration about a person who is in custody, they say, 'We can't do anything about it because the person's not in our custody. Talk to the Sheriff.' Then you talk to the Sheriff and they say, 'We can't do anything about it. We didn't place the hold.' They keep pointing fingers at each other."
PHOTO BY TED SOQUI
After 89 days, the system told Duncan Roy: Never mind.
PHOTO BY TED SOQUI
Roy was pressured to plead guilty to get out of MCJ.
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Many cases are quickly resolved — for example, if, under the initial criminal charge, the jailed person agrees to a plea bargain. Then the person either serves a sentence or is turned over to ICE for deportation.
But Roy refused to consider a guilty plea for extortion.
And that, the Los Angeles County jails system did not like.
Things got worse for Roy after that. Still recovering from his testicular cancer, he tried to get help from the jail's medical division. "They kind of ignored it. The only time I ever saw a doctor — the shoes they give you cause the skin to break off your feet. My foot cracked so bad it began bleeding, and I saw somebody about that. They wouldn't see me about anything else."
He says the forms he filled out requesting medical attention went ignored.
Whitmore, Baca's spokesman, insists, "If anybody has an issue that they were not treated properly, they can file a complaint." (The Weekly reported in its 2011 cover story "Wheelchair Hell" that even seriously ill and crippled inmates sometimes are denied medical help, working wheelchairs and other key needs.)
Authorities began holding it over Roy's head: Admit to "extortion," accept the likelihood of being deported and become a free man. As his third month behind bars began, Roy nearly gave in to this unfair pressure. "There were points in there where I just said, 'I'm going to take it.' And then I'd speak to the other inmates and they'd just say, 'You can't. You didn't do it. If you accept this, it's going to have repercussions for the rest of your life.' "
Christmas came and went. On New Year's Eve, Roy began to feel desperate. "I remember seeing those images coming out of New York. I felt very angry and upset. ... I watched on TV the ball coming down and felt bereft that nobody was going to help me."
In the weeks that followed, Roy suffered a breakdown. "There was a time when I literally sobbed, like I hadn't sobbed since I was a baby. I was regretting things in my life. I wouldn't want to go back there, I hate the idea that that place exists. I hate the treatment. But in many ways philosophically I think I changed. At that moment I was so frustrated that I just totally broke down. Literally within seconds of me on my bunk, crying into my towel, I was surrounded by people who just made me feel that, whatever happened, it was going to be fine. And that I should not surrender to madness or desperation."
Help was, in fact, not far off. An inmate told him about Esperanza Immigrants Rights Project, a Catholic Charities of Los Angeles program in the jail. Roy slipped a note under the door of the chaplain's office. A few days later, "This woman literally turns up at the dorm, Susanne Griffin. And she's wearing a bright pink suit. She said, 'My boss doesn't usually take individual cases, but I think we can take yours.' They took my passport information to prove that I was here legally."
Within 24 hours, Lee Baca's jailers let Roy go.
Griffin explains that her organization knew exactly who to call at ICE. When they laid out the facts about Roy, the feds reviewed it and lifted the hold.
Just like that. After 89 days inside the system.
ICE explains to L.A. Weekly, "Because he had no prior criminal convictions and did not otherwise fall into ICE's enforcement priorities, the agency rescinded the immigration detainer and Mr. Roy did not come into ICE custody."
They refuse to explain how Roy got trapped in the nightmare.
On Feb. 12, Griffin broke the news that Roy was being freed. His mind couldn't accept it. "I thought it was a joke at first. Then they told me that I was going to be released on bail. I couldn't believe it. I said goodbye to everybody. Gave away my food and my phone cards."
Releasing a man from the bowels of Men's Central Jail takes as long as a cross-country flight. Roy was handed his belongings, processed and fingerprinted in the middle of the night. "You are literally spat out of the jail. Then they pull you through a door, and you're outside. And it's the weirdest feeling. I'm on the street at 3 o'clock in the morning, waiting for the bail guy who's going to take me home."
