Daraine Luton, Staff Reporter

Linden Graham walks from the Kingston Central Police Station lock-up last month a free man after 479 days in jail. He was deported from the United States which Graham said is his country. - file

ONE MONTH after being released from the Kingston Central police lock-up, Linden Graham, who was deported in error to Jamaica, is fighting against all odds to remain alive in a Spanish Town Road community that he now calls home.

Donning a pair of long white socks, a pair of shorts, a white shirt and a pair of sneakers, Graham said he still feels as if he is in jail.

"I am grateful to be out, but I feel like I am in jail," he said with frustration written all over his face.

Graham was released from jail on a ministerial order on October 24 after spending 479 days behind bars. United States authorities had sent him to Jamaica claiming that he was a national of this country, but Graham, who has spent time in U.S. prison protested, saying he was a native of St. Croix, a U.S. Virgin Islands territory which makes him a U.S. citizen.

Jamaica, which accepted him as a native, kept him at the Kingston Central lock-up as a man in transit, while immigration officials sought to establish his identity. On September 14, officials decided that he was not a Jamaican.

Attorney-at-law Peter Champagnie filed an habeas corpus writ demanding the release of Mr. Graham which Resident Magistrate Glen Brown ordered.

When he was released, Graham said that he felt a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. But he had underestimated his trials.

No money

The Gleaner sat with Graham inside an apartment in Greenwich Town - one of the set of houses built under the Inner-city Housing Project - and Graham began to let down his cross.

"I don't feel like I am an asset here. I have no money, I have nothing to contribute." He said it is the goodwill of a woman, Angella Galloway that has kept him.

Galloway stumbled upon Graham by chance after an acquaintance who was jailed at Central lock-up asked her to deliver food for the deportee who had no one. A relationship soon developed and when Graham left jail he went to stay at her house. At the time he says, he had estimated his stay to be about two weeks.

With a weekly income of $5,000 and two children to take care of, along with mortgage and utility payments to make, Galloway can hardly keep her family afloat and Graham knows it.

"It gets very depressing at times," he says.

As part of the ministerial order upon which he was released, Graham is required to report to the police three times per week - Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Graham is upset that he has to report to the police station and he says he cannot afford to do so because he has no money. In fact, he did not report last Wednesday and Friday.

Wants gov't assistance

"I want the Government to assist me with getting proper identification card and a Tax Payer Registration Number (TRN).

"I want them to find a place for me to stay until they send me back to my country and terminate the three times per week reporting to the police.

"You put me in a land that I know nothing about, and expect me to take the bus and go report to the police three times per week when I have no money," Graham says.

Attorney-at-law Arline Harrison Henry has already written to the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General on behalf of Graham.

In the letters, Harrison Henry said the orders are "burdensome as he is without enough resources to report three times per week".

Graham has not yet attempted to find a job since his release from jail. He says he has no clothes or money to go looking for work, and besides the Government has a responsibility to take care of him so he will not put himself in harm's way while job hunting.

Graham says he will be seeking to recover US$5 million from the Jamaican Government for what he calls "illegal incarceration and inhumane treatment".

Gilbert Scott, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of National Security, who is also the country's chief immigration officer, was not available to comment on Graham's status.

daraine.luton@gleanerjm.com