Wrongly accused, Belizean spends a week in U.S. jail

For most Belizeans, travelling to the U.S.A., even with a pure heart and a valid visa, can be an intimidating experience … and since September eleventh, 2001 it has–quite understandingly–become more so. But picture yourself about to display your passport to the U.S. immigration officer at the airport. You’re nervous but not worried, because you’ve been back and forth numerous times, never been in trouble with the law and worked for the same employer for twenty-seven years, where you are now a senior manager. Then, in a matter of minutes, you discover that a lifetime of doing the right thing … means nothing.

Georgia Ramsey, Falsely accused
?It is very emotional to talk about it, but sometimes I try to humour it a little bit. It isn?t humour. People need to know where they stand.?

Jacqueline Godwin, Reporting
On October twenty-first forty-eight year old Georgia Ramsey and her twenty three year old son, Leon Williams left Belize for Los Angeles California where they would attend a family reunion. But for the next seven days the only family they had were their fellow prisoners in the Mecklenburg County Jail in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Georgia Ramsey
?When we arrived at Charlotte it was about seven twenty-five the night, which I think they are three hours ahead of us. We arrived and we went down to the immigration and there was a guy that led visitors here and citizens and we went. On reaching the front of the line a guy said number eleven is open, so we went to number eleven. When we got there the man swiped our passports and everything, he swiped mine first and then he put it one side and then he swiped my son one and then he stamped and gave him six months. Then he took out mine and looked at it and all that. I do have a passport that was damaged in washing but it is only the front and the back where the picture was got damaged, no other part of the passport got damaged. I had applied for a new passport in March and that was granted to me, so I was travelling with two passports. So when the guy looked at it the guy said, oh something is going pretty slow just a minute ma?am. I said ok sure. He looked at it and then he looked at the screen and he did the same thing again, and he said ma?am you need to go down to number two, when you go down you get your baggage and you go to number two because you need to see immigration.?

Jacqueline Godwin
?At this time you didn?t expect that anything was wrong??

Georgia Ramsey
?No way because I have been travelling with that visa from, I applied for that visa in 1997, seventeenth of March, 1997 and it would have been expired next year seventeenth of March, 2007. So then we went down, me and my son, the guy told us go into that room and put your luggage over there and sit in the room. So we went and sat in there.?

Georgia says fifteen minutes later that she began to realize that something was very wrong when she was confronted by one Angela Holt, an officer with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Georgia Ramsey
?When I went out, she said to me you are going to jail for one week and you will be banned from the U.S. for five years. I said for what, and she said for travelling with a false document. I said false document ma?am I have had that visa from 1997 and it will be up next year 2007. I just pass through here in July and everything went well. She said ma?am until you come clean then we will have a conversation. She said come this way and she start asking me questions and all that, and then another guy came in and he said has she break and I looked at him and I said break, break with what. It is the truth that she has there everything that I have said to her, and she said you are an intelligent woman and I said yes I know that. She started asking him questions. The guy name was Jeremy. She can?t even work the system. She kept saying Jeremy how do you do this? I can?t get this to print. I said ma?am could I ask you a question, are you looking for the correct name because you called me Gloria just now and I told you that my name was Georgia. The name doesn?t matter and ma?am don?t come here and tell us how to do our job.?

?Well then I get quiet, so she is there and is trying to get her stuff working and so on. Then an elderly man walked in and I said to him, sir I have had that visa from 1997. He said ma?am don?t come and argue with us. I said sir I am not arguing I am just trying to explain. I still didn?t stop there I looked at the lady and said is there somebody else I can talk to, a supervisor and she said ma?am I have already shown it to my boss and we all say the same thing. So I just sat there and listened to what she had to say. After that she offered me food and didn?t eat at that time and then she said come this way. They took my fingerprints. My ten fingers, my palm of my hand and my picture, so all of that is in their system. I need to say this when she said that she had checked all their records and nothing showed that I got that visa from Belize; there is no record to show. She has all the dates I have travelled in the U.S. through the two thousand series, she has every thing. I travelled in 1999 when my father died, 2000 when my mother died I was there, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, last year June, 2005 and I was there in July of this year, 2006, and I was going back again October twenty-first and that is when she said I was travelling with false document. When she told me that I was going to jail and I told her that jail and I told her to look at the stamps that are in my passport, she said like this, well you have been travelling all along with an illegal document and you finally got caught.?

Georgia says she had no idea what may have happened as to why she was being accused of travelling with a false document and why there was no record of her having been granted a legal U.S Visa.

Georgia Ramsey
?They find all the dates that I went in but they can?t find where the visa was issued in Belize and it came from the U.S Embassy.?

Georgia says an immigration officer then allowed her to make one quick phone call to her family in Belize.

Georgia Ramsey
?When he handed me the phone my sister was on the other line saying hello and I said hello to her and I broke down to her at that time. Then I remembered the guy said that I couldn?t take long so I took two quick deep breaths and I told her. I said Leon and I are at Charlotte Airport and they are going to take us to an I.N.S. holding cell. I am detained for travelling with false documents and what I want her to do for me is go to the embassy Monday morning and make sure she gets down there and ask them to please either fax or e-mail up what they have when I applied for that visa with them. She asked me if I was okay and I told her yes and then I said bye to her because I remembered the guy told me that I couldn?t stay long. That was the first and last contact that I had with my people in Belize. After the phone call I said to my son well on Monday we will be on our way to finish our journey.?

But the only place where Georgia and Leon were taken was to the county jail where the mother and son were not only booked, but searched and then put in separate cells with hardened criminals.

Georgia Ramsey
?We did not know it was a jail then, but when we pulled up and got inside we knew then that it was a jail. We thought that it was an area where they hold people for immigration.?

Jacqueline Godwin
?At this time what was going through your mind??

Georgia Ramsey
?Well there is nothing else we could do. We were hoping that Monday we would be out free, that our family would contact the embassy and that the embassy could help us to get out.?

?They took me to an area where they call a pot or something, but it is a cell that house fifty-two inmates. They gave me a room and there is where I spent my first day which is the Sunday.?

This is a copy of Georgia?s U.S. visa that clearly shows that it was granted on March seventeenth, 1997 and expires ten years later. Her sons? passport displays his U.S. Visa that also does not expire until next year.

Georgia Ramsey
?So I did all the things that you have to do. You line up, you get you name called so many times for the day, you can?t talk at certain times for the day, so I went through the motion and I followed the rules still with hope that Monday we will be out.?

But that would not be the case and Georgia says she just went through the motions although she could not believe what was happening.

Georgia Ramsey
?At four thirty in the morning that is when you get up for breakfast and then you go back to your cell, and then you wake up quarter to seven for shift changing. You then go back in your cell and you get out at eight, eight thirty to take your shower, that period is open, then you get back in your cell and you wait for lunch time which is like eleven thirty, twelve their time. After you eat you get locked away again until three in the evening when you get another recreation and then you are locked down again. At eight in the night you get recreation ?til about eleven and that is when they close down everything.?

Then on Saturday October twenty-eight Georgia and her son were finally deported back to Belize where they were met by immigration and police at the P.G.I.A. On Monday, there was an appointment for her to see an official at the U.S. Embassy.

Georgia Ramsey
?My son, my nephew and myself went there and we spoke to I guess the vice consulate, Mr. Ed Saulthers or something like that, and he said to me … he listened to my story and he asked what happened and I told him. He said ma?am all I can say to you is that he can apologize to me, but that he knows that that cannot change what I went through but there is nothing that they can do. They don?t have any records, and apparently it?s from 2000 going back. There is no record to show something went down with there system, they don?t have anything to show where I applied for a visa and it was issues to me.?

Ramsey has sought legal advice and advises any Belizean who received visas between 1997 and 2000 to be careful when travelling to the United States

Georgia Ramsey
?Well I have spoken to my family in California and my sister in New Jersey and right now I am trying to get legal advice from here. They also want for me to send up the documents to them, so we haven?t really communicated. We wanted to see what the embassy would have said to us. I even asked the consulate can it be cleared up over there that my fingerprints and the other stuff, and he said that there was nothing for him to do. Homeland and what they do when you enter the country is separate from what the embassy does; they are two separate entities.?

Jacqueline Godwin
?So any Belizean who applied for a visa between the period of 1997 to 2000 stand a chance of going through what you recently went through??

Georgia Ramsey
?That is right. I would advise them to try make contact with embassy here, I don?t know how cooperative they will be to let them know, but they need to know if they have any records on them. Also I would advise the Belizean public to please make sure you copy some documents. Copy your visa and copy your documents and make sure you have it. Fortunately for me I have a document with my visa because they took away my passport, I don?t have my passport with the visa they have it. I have a document where I had applied for a Californian ID, you know when you travel your family would tell you don?t take around your passport in case you lose it, you have something. I applied there and they have my visas, they have copies of my I-94s and all that. So I have those to show that yes I got a visa, but like I am saying they don?t have it on their file or records so I don?t know how much it will stand up with Homeland. If the embassy doesn?t have it here then I don?t know what else we can do.?

Jacqueline Godwin for News Five.

Ramsey’s son, whose visa was declared valid, was taken into custody when he refused to leave his mother on her own. He was charged with aiding and abetting her possession of false documents. We called Consul Cindy Gregg at the U.S. Embassy and asked her to explain why this happened but she declined to speak … specifically citing the visa holder’s right to privacy.