Angel Island; A Haven for Injustice
The life of a detainee is neither easy nor enjoyable. We take the freedoms and human rights written in our constitution for granted until they are taken away. Being detained goes against everything the American constitution entails about the rights and freedoms of its citizens. As an immigrant, one feels left out and out of place because of them in a new land and foreign country. The unfamiliar surroundings, the people, and the customs of America are new to immigrants, and it is not an easy task to adapt to life in America. The culture in this new country is different from my own’s. Their way of life is also different from the one back in my hometown. The people are welcoming but at the same time, not friendly. They look at us immigrants like aliens who have come from another planet to take their lives, jobs, and way of life. Even though the country’s constitution protects the rights of every person living in the country, the rights of immigrants are ignored by most people in American society. Since I am an immigrant, I was detained by the U.S. immigration officers at Angel Island in San Francisco, California.
Angel Island is a small island on the bay of San Francisco that doubles as an immigration center for immigrants. The immigrant officials use the island as holding and detention centers for immigrants to be deported back to their countries. The immigrants are deported back to their own countries, but at the same time, they are held at the center against their own will. At the Angel Island Immigration Station, we are interrogated and asked questions by the officials. Even after answering the questions by the officials, we were still detained and the hopes of being free dimmed with each passing day. For days, the officials would interrogate us and ask us if we have any credentials that prove that we are American citizens, and if we did not have them were put in cells waiting to be deported. The immigration station was not up to humane standards, and the detainees’ rights were being infringed upon. The introduction of the immigration laws allowed racism to take root in the country, and the officials used the opportunity to exercise their hate towards other races at the detention center. The center was a front to treat people differently because of their ethnic background before being deported.
Angel Island Immigration Station violated various statutes of human rights protected by the U.S. constitution. For starters, we were denied our freedom of movement and the right to express ourselves. The station had cells that were used as prison cells of sorts while the immigrants waited to be deported. The prisoners were not allowed to express their grievances to the immigration officials. Thus, they used to write on the walls of the cells to show how they found life at the island to be demeaning. The officers assumed people were immigrants based on their race. They interrogated people for hours and still determined they had to be deported. I believe that the exercise was meant to shame the immigrants and to prove who was superior to the other. The officers treated the immigrants so poorly and in inhumane nature that made the detainees hope to be rescued by someone or just anyone. The country had enforced laws that would be used to detain people based on their ethnic profile and also based on the color of their skin. The immigration officers abused their power to impose their beliefs and ideas onto the detainees who had come to America to make a new and better start to their lives. The life of an immigrant is not easy because they travel across the world to America in hopes of finding greener pastures only to be detained against their will and be deported.