Life After Amnesty

Former detainee gives solace to asylum seekers

DANIEL MACHT

Jean Pierre Kamwa

It is an open question whether the old Volvo will make the trip. The car sputters each time Jean Pierre Kamwa presses down its gas pedal. The same thing happens when he slows down. The car toils over the George Washington Bridge to the immigrant detention center 30 minutes away in Elizabeth, NJ. It is 4 p.m.

Kamwa, 37, borrows the Volvo from a friend whenever he needs it. He needs it for Espoir, the immigrant support organization he founded in 2004. A week ago, the Volvo broke down and Kamwa had to cancel three appointments. If he could raise more money for Espoir, which means “hope” in French, he would buy a better car. But he can barely afford the $20 he spends each week on tolls and gas. And then there are the books of stamps and phone cards he gives away.

“It’s a sacrifice,” Kamwa says. “You have to have a commitment. I have more to give people than I want from them.”

Kamwa wears a blue and white striped collared shirt, grey slacks, and sandals. His head is closely shaved and his face is kind.

He lives in a modest apartment in the East Tremont area of the Bronx with his wife and 2-year old daughter. Another baby is on the way. Their living room doubles as Espoir’s office. Although the U.S. government granted Kamwa asylum eight years ago, he has yet to receive a green card. His wife’s legal status is also unclear.

Kamwa spends what little he can spare helping other asylum seekers. When he arrived in the country he was also detained. His only visitors were his doctor and lawyer.

Today, Kamwa hopes to meet for the first time an Eritrean woman at the detention center. He knows only her name and case number. Kamwa gets this information from organizations that may be inundated with requests for help.

Of the nearly 55,000 people who applied for asylum last year, 23% won, while 27% had their appeals denied, according to the Justice Department. The rest either withdrew their applications or their cases were not resolved. In 2000, immigration courts approved 17% of the nearly 52,000 applicants. Kamwa was one of them.

He exits I-95, turns onto Dowd Avenue, and then makes a right on a small side street lined with warehouses. So far so good with the Volvo. Kamwa’s destination soon appears like a big brick Costco.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contracts with privately-owned Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) to run its Elizabeth immigration detention center. It has 300 beds, though the number of current detainees is not easy to verify. Neither CCA nor the DHS responded to requests for more information.

Kamwa walks into the detention center at 4:45 p.m. Visiting hours start in 15 minutes. After stowing his keys and other items in a small locker near the entrance, he sits back to watch CNN in the waiting room.

Since January 2007, Kamwa has worked the night shift at Rikers Island where he helps inmates secure housing and medical care upon release. But lately the job has weighed him down. Nightly searches and security checkpoints remind him too much of his own imprisonment back in Cameroon.

“I would much rather work for Espoir all the time but I have to pay my rent and feed my family,” he says.

Espoir squeaks by with small donations here and there. In April he began drafting letters to churches, hoping one will offer free office space. Sometimes refugees meet at his house after they are released from detention but Kamwa says many feel uncomfortable with the lack of privacy.

Kamwa never imagined he would spend so much time in jails. In Cameroon, he was a philosophy major at Yaoundé University.

“Having class was a hell,” he says. “In the amphitheatre, to have a lecture at 8 a.m. you had to wake up at 3 a.m. to have a seat.”

Books were outdated and students had to pay to use a toilet. The school was built for 4,000 students but served 16,000.

He joined protests against the school’s overcrowded conditions. Then he joined Cameroon’s political opposition party to fight for democratic reforms. At protests, soldiers attacked Kamwa and arrested him multiple times. While in jail his captors beat the soles of his feet with the flat part of a machete, then forced him to dance through his pain. He was also raped.

One day, he was carrying a bucket of waste outside the prison and ran off to his uncle’s house where he picked up a fake passport. Later that day, he boarded a flight to America.

“I was lucky because they killed a lot of my classmates,” he says.

His family was not immune to violence. His brother and grandfather were killed for their involvement in politics. His father contracted tuberculosis in a Cameroon prison. Both parents later died from the disease.

When Kamwa arrived at JFK airport and declared amnesty, he was handcuffed and sent to Wackenhut, a Queens detention center that no longer exists.

Mopping floors kept him busy. He made a dollar a day, enough to buy a phone card each week. Another detainee, who spoke English, helped him find a lawyer. He was released five months later.

“People come here because America shows the world the values of liberty, freedom, and democracy,” he says. “Then, when they get here it is the contrary.”

For the next year and half Kamwa lived in a homeless shelter in Brooklyn. He found support through NYU’s torture survivor program and solace by visiting other political refugees in detention centers.

After earning his master’s degree in social work from Hunter College last year he now spends much of his free time building up Espoir.

It is 5:15 p.m. and the guards usher visitors through a metal detector to a meeting room. Kamwa takes a seat in one of the room’s 20 booths. Each booth has a phone for the visitor and detainee to speak to each other through soundproof glass.

Detainees wearing blue jumpsuits enter the room by groups of two or three. Kamwa says the jumpsuits used to be orange but detainees complained it made them feel like violent criminals.

Nearly 45 minutes pass. Kamwa and one other man three booths over are the only visitors sitting in front of empty glass windows. He suspects the Eritrean woman might not show.

But soon a woman in her early to mid-20s walks tentatively past his booth. Her black hair is braided in the front and she has a small stud on the right side of her nose. Kamwa gestures to her through the glass, picks up the phone and calls her name.

“Yes,” she says, smiling.

She sits down and places a stack of handwritten notes on the counter, her story.

She flew from Eritrea and claimed asylum three weeks ago. She did not expect to be taken here. She contacted Human Rights First and Catholic Services, but representatives told her she must wait for a lawyer. She thought her lawyer had arrived when guards said she had a visitor.

“I am not a lawyer but if you need something, I can see what I can do to help,” Kamwa tells her. “I used to be on the other side.”

“Thank you,” she says.

He offers to bring a religious leader next time if the detention center cannot provide one. Does she need stamps? A newspaper? He gives her his contact information.

She asks him to write down the name and phone number of a person who works at the United Nations.

“Tell him I am here,” she says. She has been treated well here and the food is good.

“Do you need stamps?” he asks again. She accepts.

Moments later, the guards rush all visitors to the parking lot as part of a drill. For Kamwa the visit is over. The detainee and former detainee say their goodbyes.

Kamwa says he never asks many questions on the first meeting. That comes later.

“They don’t know who you are,” he says. “They think you could be a government spy or get their family in trouble.”

Tomorrow he will contact the man from the U.N. A week later the Eritrean woman will be released. She will call Kamwa to thank him.

It is almost 7 p.m. and Kamwa needs to head back to work at Rikers. He climbs into the Volvo and it lurches toward the city. In the morning, he will send those letters to churches. He hopes that will drive Espoir forward.

“Some people, when they get asylum, they want to start new work and change states,” he says. “But I still have something in my head. I have to accomplish my mission.”

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