Nasty Georgia cops misuse immigration law

On a Canadian woman who was LEGALLY in the country



Cheryl Kuehn still breaks down in tears when she remembers the “outrageous” conditions she endured for more than 11 hours in a Georgia detention centre after being arrested for speeding and running a stop sign. Kuehn, who just completed the first year of her master’s degree in social work at Carleton University, is demanding an apology from state officials. The governor’s office and the Glynn County Detention Center, the jail in which she was held, are each running their own investigations into the incident.

“It was a very terrifying experience,” she said in an interview while on vacation in Daytona Beach, Fla. Kuehn, 23, said she “felt like a criminal” and feared for her safety when she was hauled to the jail April 7. She said her mug shot was taken, she was fingerprinted, and was forced to strip down and put on used underwear and a navy blue prisoner’s uniform. She waited several hours in a freezing common holding room until she was moved to a shared cell, where she was greeted with jeers and stares from inmates banging on the walls of surrounding cells, she said. “When I went in there, it was the scariest thing ever,” she said. Paranoid, she said she laid awake the entire night until her release.

Even though Kuehn had a valid passport, and her husband, Scott, gathered the $222 US to post a bond for her release within three hours of her arrest, Kuehn was told she couldn’t be set free until officials with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency conducted an immigration check to ensure she was legally in the country.

Georgia police and detention centre officials have maintained that it is protocol to detain foreigners for traffic offenses. A controversial new state immigration law, which does not come into effect until July 1, also requires immigration checks for people charged with a felony or drunk driving. But Kuehn was not charged with either offence, and the investigation has already revealed that the jail received the information needed for her release by about 7:30 p.m. — long before she was released the following day at around 5 a.m. “They’re still investigating where the ball was dropped,” she said, “but it was dropped.”

Glynn County Sheriff Wayne Bennett, who ordered the internal review at the detention centre, said in a press release April 11 that his office had “no control” over the delay in Kuehn’s release. “Common sense should have dictated to the jail supervisor that the release of Ms. Kuehn on bond should not have been delayed on such minor vehicular traffic offenses,” he said in the statement. The office is now taking “corrective action,” the release stated.

Before the arrest, Kuehn was driving to Florida to visit in-laws with her husband, her brother-in-law and a friend to celebrate handing in her last paper. After taking a wrong exit along I-95 outside Brunswick, Ga., Kuehn said she made a U-turn and was about to park in a restaurant lot when, at about 5:20 p.m., she was pulled over by a police car. After the officer wrote her a citation for speeding and failing to stop at a stop sign, he told her she would be taken into custody and released only after bond was paid.

Kuehn said she was shocked. “I was walking over to the passenger side and he was like, ‘Hold up, you’re coming with me,’” Kuehn remembered. “I was nervous during the whole thing and so finally I just broke down crying, holding on to my husband.” When she began crying and told the officer she was afraid of him, Kuehn said he threatened to handcuff her if she did not go with him. “I can’t even explain what the fear was like to be in that situation,” she said. “No one ever read me my rights, no one ever told me anything.”

Kuehn said she has received dozens of messages of support from family, friends and the public. “It just seems like everyone’s outraged. I think people are realizing the U.S. has taken it a step too far in what they’re doing,” she said. Kuehn’s father, Randy Durksen, wrote letters to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and MP John Baird asking for action. Durksen said he was contacted by Baird, who promised he would raise the issue with Michael Wilson, the Canadian ambassador to the U.S., during his trip to Washington, D.C., next week. “I want our government to get the written apology and assurance from Georgia that this was an unlawful detention, it was a misinterpretation of this new statute, that it should never have been done, and it won’t happen again,” Durksen said.

He said that when his daughter called him, it was “traumatic” to hear her sobbing over the phone about what was happening to her in jail. “If this happened in Canada, their government would’ve gone ballistic on ours,” he said. Kuehn said the laws need to be changed and Georgia police must start treating people with respect. “I don’t think anyone should have to go through this,” she said.

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