by Tim Chávez
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – It’s not my Nashville anymore. It’s Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. We have replicated the water-boarding this nation used against the untried captives we stored on Cuba’s edge and the various degrees of degradation we forced on Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Juana Villegas was literally tortured this month by the Davidson County Sheriff’s Department here in Nashville as she went through childbirth.
She was handcuffed by the wrist and leg to the hospital bedrail during must of her labor, restrained by skin-peeling shackles on her legs for trips to the bathroom and, worst of all, denied by the sheriff s department the use of a breast pump to feed her newborn and ease the pain from her swollen breasts.
Separated from her mother, the infant developed a dangerously high blood level of a chemical that induces jaundice.
All the while, the 33-year-old Villegas was under visible guard by the sheriff’s department, including the watch of e male sentry as she changed from jail jumpsuit into hospital clothes.
Attending nurses left her hospital room in tears.
Villegas, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, was arrested three days before giving birth. She was charged with operating a vehicle without a driver’s license and care State law recognizes a photo ID card and registration as sufficient proof that a person will show up in court for a traffic offense. However, despite having a Matrícula Consular card, vehicle registration, and three children who are U.S. citizens, Villegas spent seven days in sheriffs custody.
Ironically, over the Fourth of July weekend. Nashville was host to an episode of torture that the United Nations forbids.
Nothing in state or federal law required that Villegas, an undocumented immigrant who had been ordered deported once before, be treated so mercilessly. It was the department’s policy and politics under one man, Sheriff Daron Hall, that: led to her inhumane treatment.
In Nashville and Davidson County, more than 3,500 heads of households have been deported in the past 14 months. More than 1,500 human beings LEGALLY in this country have been arrested and questioned for hours by the sheriff’s department. Law enforcement authorities in 57 U.S. communities now have the power to enforce federal immigration law.
Nashville considers itself a progressive city. It is home to Vanderbilt University and a host of other institutions of higher education. Democrats, or what passes for a Democrat in the South, dominate politics here. Yet what is transpiring reinforces the portrayal of the small town run by a Southern sheriff.
The sheriff is allowed to torture expectant mothers by virtue of the 287g deportation
program, authorized by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Amnesty
International USA points out that only three states forbid: the kind of treatment that Villegas endured.
Sick and pregnant female prisoners are chained to their hospital beds all over the USA, it reports.
Because of what happened to Juana Villegas, the organization should investigate and put Nashville under its “human rights watch.” Public servants such as Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, our Congressional Rep. Jim Cooper and Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen – Democrats all—have failed to speak up about this outrage. They should be put on notice that our popular tourism sites will be much less appealing until they open their mouths and call for the termination of 287g.
Only California and Illinois have laws forbidding the torture of expectant mothers in custody. Wisconsin has recently improved its Department of Corrections policy. There is much work to do in other states, too.
For your own good, stay away from Nashville. It is not mine or anyone else’s anymore. It belongs to those who create and support public policy rooted in bigotry and flee from the responsibility of public service to all through the cowardice of silence.
(Tim Chavez writes political commentary for Hispanic Link News Service in Washington, D.C. A columnist with the Nashville Tennessean for nine years, he has his own web site, www.po/iticalsaisa.com. You can contact him at timchavez787@yahoo.com).
