STORY ON JAMAICANS HELD BY US COAST GUARDS

ACLU hoping to end inhumane detentions by US Coast Guard with lawsuit

With suggestions the alleged inhumane treatment of five Jamaican fishermen detained by the US Coast Guard in 2017 is not an isolated incident, the civil rights organisation which has filed a lawsuit on their behalf is hoping the case will lead to an end to wanton detentions on the high seas.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is claiming that the Jamaicans were stripped naked, chained to the decks of four US Coast Guard vessels, made to lie in faeces and had their boat burned.

They were also denied the opportunity to contact their families, some of whom thought they had died, during the month they remained at sea.

Steven Watt, Lawyer for the ACLU, said it is a common practice by the Coast Guard and needs to stop.

“This is not an isolated incident. This is not a one-off. This practice has been going on for many years and many other hundreds, maybe thousands of men are picked up by the Coast Guard annually and held in these atrocious conditions,” he lamented.

Mr. Watt, who was speaking on RJR’s Beyond the Headlines Thursday evening, said the ACLU has been contacted about similar cases since it filed the lawsuit on Wednesday.

He believes this current case will raise awareness and lead to more people seeking redress against the US courts “as they have a right to do”.

The ACLU said US officers wrongly suspected the boat and its Jamaican crew were involved in trafficking drugs, and dispatched four armed Coast Guard officers in a high-powered speedboat to stop, board, and search the vessel and those on it.

The fishermen reportedly told officers they were from Jamaica and had got lost.

However, they were sentenced to 10 months in a US prison, and deported late last year.

The ACLU is seeking to get compensation for the men.

Guilty plea

In the meantime, Mr. Watt said the fishermen pleaded guilty because they felt it was their best option.

“That happens routinely in the justice system in this country is that people take pleas so that they can get home, especially foreign nationals where this country is not their home. They want to get home to their families as quickly as possible; and if they’d plead not guilty… they could end up spending months or years in pre-trial detention before they even had a trial and then there is always a risk that if you go to trial that you’re found guilty and that you’d receive a high sentence,” he explained.

US-based immigration attorney, Wayne Golding, has suggested the US government committed a breach by not contacting Jamaican officials when the men were detained.

He said it was “disturbing” that the men were detained for an entire month without any communication to the Jamaican government, despite there being an arrangement between the two countries for such communication in those instances.