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Columns & Stories]
Cool
Justice
War On Immigrants Continues Unabated
By ANDY THIBAULT, Columnist
Law Tribune Newspapers
May 12, 2003
There's a giant poet locked inside the Hartford
jail. He's a father of five and a teacher. He's a friend to senior
citizens. The people of Stamford need him. His family needs him. Justice
demands that he be freed immediately.
The poet, Iyaba Mandingo, is also a painter. He
was put on a deportation list last month because the government claims -
falsely - that he did not respond to an INS request to attend a hearing
for deportation. He never received notice, after faithfully attending all
previous appointments. Immigration officials arrested Mandingo on April 17
- his 10th wedding anniversary - a few days after he gave a controversial
poetry reading in Stamford. Mandingo learned then that he had been ordered
deported in March 2001.
His case is typical of hundreds around the
country as government officials, in a supposed hunt for terrorists, expel
our friends and neighbors. Eighty years ago the government rounded up
Italians on false charges; today, it's mostly people of color.
Mandingo, 33, was a Little League baseball
All-Star not long after moving to Stamford more than 20 years ago from
Antigua in the West Indies. He played offensive tackle and defensive end
for Westhill High School, eventually growing to stand about 6-feet,
4-inches tall. He won a football scholarship to a college in Iowa. He's as
American as you and me.
"He's a good, decent guy," Stamford
Mayor Dan Malloy told me. "He's a very gifted artist, and he
participates in the community in a positive way."
From the mayor and the director of the senior
center to boyhood pals, school officials and the statewide arts community,
there is a groundswell of warmth and support for Mandingo. He recently won
a $35,000 commission to
paint murals for a school in New Haven; work was to begin in June. The New
York Times said his art turns "interlocked human limbs into rodlike,
semi-abstract diagonal lines that create dynamic action as they sweep
across his boldly colored paintings." Many admire Mandingo's strong,
uncompromising poetry about slavery, racism and economic injustice. Fans
cite a soft side: One does not have to agree with Mandingo to be his
friend.
The system wronged Mandingo twice-first because
of his race, then a second time because of negligence, an inept
bureaucracy and the current political hysteria. In college, Mandingo was
wrongly accused of a crime. His lawyer did not want him to go before a
local jury, so he accepted a plea bargain. The Iowa courts treated the
case so lightly a felony charge was substituted with a misdemeanor.
Authorities let Mandingo finish a semester at college before serving a
30-day sentence. Still, he had pleaded guilty to a crime he did not
commit, and this blemish has stalled his quest to become a U.S. citizen.
He subsequently married a high school sweetheart.
They have five children. Mandingo's entire extended family became citizens
- with help from U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays and U.S. Sen. Christopher
Dodd-except for him. His lawyer at the time of the immigration amnesty
period of 1987-88 failed to file a permanent residence application on time
and was reprimanded. Still, Mandingo never missed an immigration
appointment. He was told he would not be deported, but that he would get a
notice in the mail. He never did. The property manager at his Stamford
condo filed a
statement with immigration authorities stating that all 70 units have had
mail delivery problems.
Mandingo's new lawyer, Michael Boyle of North
Haven, is trying to get his case re-opened. The government has made five
children fatherless. The good citizens of Connecticut cannot let this
action stand. Give us back out poet, our painter, our friend.
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