You may not be removed to certain countries such as Iran, Cuba, etc.

[Modee]

With certain limited exceptions (see Jama v. ICE regarding Somalia), INS cannot remove you to a country that will not accept you and provide travel docs.

This really only comes up in situations where people are ordered removed to a country that will not accept or provide travel docs. - e.g. Iran, Vietnam, etc. In those situations, or in withholding of removal cases, DHS has the right to remove the person to any country that will accept them. (To most any country if they are simply being removed and their country will not accept them, and to certain countries if pursuant to withholding of removal.)

For a regular removal (not withholding) case, as part of this gamelike ritual, the detainees must send in requests to emigrate to something like six different countries. The detainees just pick these at random, and the countries come back and always say NO we will not accept or do not respond at all.

For withholding cases the DHS goes through a flowchart of possible countries to try and remove, such as any where the guy had established residence, may have a blood tie from one parent, etc.

All I can think of is if this story is true, the guy was in that kind of situation and put down Haiti as a choice of country and for whatever reason they accepted him. Maybe he had established residence there before. I cannot imagine Haiti or any other country accepting a non citizen with no ties, so he must have had some tie to Haiti, such as one parent coming from there, lived there or some other tie of some sort that persuaded the country to issue travel docs.

Where the guy's story falls apart is that pursuant to Zadvydas v. Davis no one (not even non-permanent residents) can be detained longer than six months. If no one will take them after six months, unless they are a danger to society they must be released back to the streets of the U.S.

[Modee]

Bottom line is this: at this time, if you are a citizen of Iran, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam or Cuba, or any other country (except in limited situations, Somalia) that the U.S. does NOT have diplomatic relations with, you CANNOT be removed from the U.S. for ANY reason unless:

the DHS can find some country that will accept you. Of course no country will accept you unless you have somehow settled there previous to coming to the U.S. And even then they probably will not.

So DHS will just detain for maximum six months and then pursuant to Zadvydas v. Davis release you back to the streets of the U.S., with a removal order IN PLACE but not acted on. Your permanent residency, if you had it, will be stripped from you. You will never get that back if taken away, but you will get working papers and can stay in the U.S. - so long as those diplomatic relations are not resumed. You will report to a DHS officer regularly for the rest of your life. If, someday, diplomatic relations are resumed with your country, you will be promptly put on a plane back home.

Now here is where it gets interesting, and a little complicated: if you are a flat out illegal - no permanent residency, nothing, and you are a citizen of one of those countries, AND you have no criminal record that would preclude your getting an immigrant visa, as long as you stay out of trouble about two years after DHS releases you, you will be issued permanent residency. Yes, one day locked up by DHS, about two years later get a green card.

So, you see how lucky it is to be a citizen of one of these countries. Even if you are a criminal, at worst you get to stay with some kind of papers. And if you have a clean record, you may end up with a green card!

[Modee]

In these situations he can be taken into custody and detained for up to six months, then if no country will accept him, he will be released back into the U.S. and put on a supervised release program. If he is inherently admissible - that is, no serious criminal record and no other reason to exclude him (i.e. is not a Nazi, member of Communist Party, a drug addict, etc.) - then after a period of time on the streets he will actually be given a permanent resident card. But he may have to go through the ringer of detention first.

An attorney can start the process for him, and he might be given bail or even released on his own recognizance, but since he is illegal at the moment, he will probably have to surrender to the jurisdiction of the DHS who will decide his fate.

[Modee]

To summarize, unless the crimes are so bad that he is deemed a danger to society, will be released to the streets of the U.S. under supervised release for as long as his country refuses to take him. In most cases, that means forever.

There are even people who get released - commit another crime - end up back in detention, and eventually go back to the streets again. People from Cuba, Iran, Vietnam, etc. simply cannot be removed, and in almost all cases, just return to the streets after a maximum of six months in detention.

Prior to September 11th, since INS knew they couldn't hold them, they wouldn't even bother to detain people from countries like Vietnam for more than a few days, if that.

[Modee]

In these detention centers everyone envies the people from those countries like Iran, Vietnam, Cuba, etc. No one says it's fair, just the way it is. Like William Blake wrote long ago, Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to the endless night....

It comes back to that immigration detention has gotten WAY out of hand. People should be either quickly removed to their countries or put back on the streets of the U.S., or granted reasonable bail. When the supreme court held that the removal process is just "administrative" and "a civil matter" and not punishment, most detainees were stripped of due process rights. No free attorney, limited rights to appeal, ex post facto laws CAN apply to them, etc. etc....immigration detainees get the least rights of anyone else in the U.S. locked up (except for maybe the "terrorists" at Guantanamo Bay). I wonder if the supreme court justices would still feel that lockup is "not punishment" if they spent a few weeks or even a few days detained with no idea when they might be getting out. At least regular prisoners have a set release date.