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INS Coverage
Phoutone Chanthabouala has been detained by
the Immigration and Naturalization Service since
April 1998. Phoutone came to the United States in
1981with his family when he was nine years old. All
refugees from Laos, his entire family arrived in San
Francisco; later they moved to Illinois and ultimately
settled in Arkansas. In Arkansas, Phoutone
got into trouble with the law and served approximately
three years’ jail time until he was paroled in
1997. On a visit to his parole officer in 1998 the INS
took him into custody and has held him ever since.
The INS picked him up with the intent of deporting
him back to Laos, a country he has not known
since he was a child. Laos lacks sufficient diplomatic
relations with the United States and as a
result does not accept the return of INS detainees.
The INS cannot then deport him and will not release
him, and so he sits in detention indefinitely, waiting
for years on end.
He was photographed at the Oakdale Detention
Center in Oakdale, Louisiana, but is normally
detained in the Iberia Parish Jail in in rural
Louisiana. —S.R.
After nearly 18 months in
detention, Hua Zhen Chen
learns from her lawyers that
her next asylum hearing before
the immigration judge will
not occur for another four
months. Having ignored three
previous requests for parole
and denied another, the INS
appeared resolved to keep her
locked up in Virginia jails at
least through the court date.
But due in part to the tireless
efforts of the Washington, D.C.-
based Capital Area Imigrants’
Rights Coalition and the work
of her student lawyers from
American University Law
School, Chen was finally released
on bail two months later.
—S.R.
Photos by Steven Rubin.
Nieman Reports / Winter 2002 21