Erik Camayd-Freixas, Ph.D. has 25 years experience as a court interpreter. He also teaches interpreting ethics. He felt that the injustices perpetrated on Guatemalan and Mexican immigrants during the Potsville immigration raid were so egregious, he had to report them.
Professor Camayd witnessed immigrants coming into court 10 by 10 to be arraigned. They were all, men and women alike, in shackles.
On Democracy Now Professor Camayd-Freixas reported
"here were many (immigrants) in that same predicament. They were basically begging to be deported. And, of course, what made this case unique was that, for the first time, at least in this scale, they were not being deported but actually criminally prosecuted and sent to jail for five months or more. And the fact that they did not have a right to bail and that if they wanted to plead “not guilty” they would have had to wait possibly longer, up to six or eight months in jail without bail waiting for a trial, made this situation very, very difficult to really say that there was justice done in many of these cases."We have to ask ourselves
- Is this what we mean by justice? Families hungry, workers jailed without proper proceedings
- Has the government reflected our values: liberty, equality, justice, pursuit of happiness?
- How much longer will we uphold unjust laws?
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