“Surveilled, Separated, Silenced: A Jail Visit with Asylum Seekers”
-Jacob Hannan
Today, for the first time after starting as a legal assistant at OCSILiO, I went to visit inmates at the Seneca County Jail in Tiffin, Ohio, to talk with them and learn about their cases. Upon arriving at the jail, I immediately felt as though I was being watched. From the moment I entered through the moment I left, there was a clear sense of surveillance. A reception desk was hidden behind one-way mirrors. Cameras were visibly scattered across the ceiling. Everything was seen by faceless observers.
The jail itself is of very sterile design. The walls consist of concrete bricks; the floors are hard and solid. Lifeless fluorescent lights illuminate everything. Stepping into the visitation room, the seats, table, and dividers were all unpainted aluminum. The thermostat was set low, and the chill was especially strong through all-metal furnishings. Thick glass clearly separated the outside from the inside, with plastic, hard-wired phones establishing the only connection. When the first client was escorted by guards into his side of the visitation room, no sound came through the glass – the only sounds heard came through the phone, or in the form of cavernous echos of closed doors bouncing off concrete. Any discussion with the client was conducted through the hard-plastic, hard-wired phone; there was no speaker or headphones, so the phone had to be held up constantly for any dialogue.
The phones weren’t just uncomfortable. They were impractical. Our second client held his phone just a few inches from his mouth, far enough to make hearing him difficult. Letting clients sign forms proved challenging, as an officer would have to be called to retrieve the forms from us, enter the secured portion of the jail, and give them to the client, a process that had to be repeated when the client was ready to return the forms to us.
Clearly, I was engaging with a system that was designed to keep society’s worst deviants securely inside – a system that was now being used to hold captive asylum seekers who sought a better, safer life than the one they left behind in their home country. Convenience and humanity were never priorities of this system; they were deliberately left behind in the name of security. Of course, that prioritization of security made it difficult to fulfill the most basic legal needs of any client, even ignoring the 90-minute drive to visit in the first place.
The third and final visit of the day was with a potential client who had been removed before; thus, he was only eligible for withholding of removal and CAT withholding – both significantly more restrictive and difficult to obtain than asylum. This third visit was conducted in a different room, one without a plug. Thus, the laptop for notes had to run on battery – a battery that only lasted 20 minutes. Again, this system was clearly not designed to make it easy for lawyers to help their clients, people who are only seeking a better life.
Of course it was difficult to assist clients at jail. But my experience was starkly different from that of the clients themselves. While I had to spend a few hours in the sterile, uncomfortable, privacy-free jail, others spend a couple years in that environment. And I entered of my own free will, able to leave when I was done. Those on the inside are not so lucky.
