This story was originally produced by The Public's Radio. NHPR is republishing it in partnership with the New England News Collaborative.
A lawyer for a New Hampshire green card-holder who is being held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Donald W. Wyatt detention facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island, says his client’s spirit is starting to deflate.
Lawyer David Keller told several dozen protesters and three reporters outside the jail where Fabian Schmidt is being held that his client is sitting in legal “limbo” while he awaits to find out if and what he has been charged with.
“I'm quite taken by his charm, his charisma, his beautiful, hopeful attitude, and that's a horrible thing to crush in a situation like this,” said the lawyer, who is with Keller Law Group in Worcester, Mass.
Schmidt, who is originally from Germany, has been detained for nearly 2 weeks. According to Keller, Schmidt was stopped at Logan Airport on March 7 and was interrogated with “unnecessary tactics imposed.” Keller said during Schmidt’s questioning U.S. Customs and Border Protection interrogators used “duress” as a tactic to try to get him to sign away his green card, which Schmidt declined to do.
“It broke him to the point where, medically speaking, he needed to be transported to the hospital,” Keller said.
Keller said Schmidt was diagnosed with influenza B and released after about a day.
Although Schmidt is now “feeling better,” Keller says the case cannot move forward until the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sends Schmidt a notice to appear. Keller says he does not know why Schmidt is being detained, and that previous charges Schmidt incurred while living in California have been resolved. GBH reported that Schmidt had a misdemeanor charge for having marijuana in his car in 2015.
“These claims are blatantly false with respect to CBP,” Hilton Beckham, CBP’s Assistant Commissioner for Public Affairs, told GBH. “When an individual is found with drug related charges and tries to reenter the country, officers will take proper action,” she wrote.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Keller’s comments came as several dozen protesters had gathered to speak out against Schmidt’s detention. The protesters stood for a little more than an hour in front of the for-profit prison, where they spoke, sang and chanted as inmates intermittently banged on the narrow windows of their cells in the background. The protesters also invoked other legal U.S. residents who had been deported, such as Rhode Island resident and nephrologist Rasha Alawieh, and former Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil.
“Unfortunately, this is a trend that we're seeing,” Keller said, “that there are people with lawful status that are being stopped at our borders and mistreated.”
