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ShaCorrie Wimbley, a Kansas transplant, and Saja Tunkara, an asylum seeker from Sierra Leone, met in Seattle in 2007. ShaCorrie recalls her initial response to Saja, the first foreign man who tried to chat her up. "I was not very nice." But Saja did impress her as kind and patient. "He called every day for a year until I answered the phone."

Fast forward 10 years to 2017. ShacCorrie and Saja are now married, with 2 children. ShaCorrie says of her husband. "He cooks, cleans, does laundry, makes the kids lunches, and gives them baths. I never have to ask for help. He just did it. We have built a life together. We have been through so many things that would have destroyed any family..."

ShaCorrie applied for US permanent residency for her spouse, but the petition was denied. They decided to wait for the outcome of his years-long pending asylum case, which was also later denied. On top of that, Saja was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and a neck tumor.

Saja was scheduled for a tumor-removal operation in January 2018. But because he had remained in the U.S. to support his family after his asylum case was denied, ICE took him into custody shortly before his scheduled operation. ICE did not allow him to keep his hospital appointment.

In the weeks that followed, a local organization NWDC Resistance received calls from [inside the detention center] saying, 'There’s a guy with tumors on his neck that we can see, he shouldn’t be here, he should in a hospital."

It was not until April 2018, after spending months in pain, that Saja was allowed to have his operation , by which time nerve damage had led to permanent decreased mobility in his arm.

Saja was deported in October 2018, after spending more than 9 months in detention, during which time he acquired vision and breathing problems, in addition to more tumors. ICE did not allow him his wife and children to say goodbye to him. The Tunkaras miss each other terribly.

Read the story of Saja and ShaCorrie's romance here. (Gofundme page to support the Tunkara family)

News about the Tunkaras:
Did ICE Retaliate Against a Detainee Over Seattle Weekly Report? Seattle Weekly, Nov 5 2018
Incarcerated and Infirmed: How Northwest Detention Center Is Failing Sick Inmates Seattle Weekly, Oct 10 2018
South Seattle Emerald, Jun 8 2018

To those rather predictable people who respond to reports of abuses in immigration detention by saying, "Oh well, if you break immigration law, you'll have to suffer the consequences":

I'm all for being law-abiding. But let's not forget that the goal of law and order is justice and safety. Where is the justice if the consequence is horrendously out of proportion with the "offense"?

Losing your eyesight and losing the use of your arm for overstaying a visa is NOT a just consequence.

And where is the safety when the main breadwinner of a family is suddenly ripped away?

In the case of taking Saja away from ShaCorrie and their children, ShaCorrie said: "Since my husband has been detained, I have entered a financial vortex..." Despite working full time, she still struggles to pay for basic necessities for her family.

Unfortunately, the Tunkara family's plight is not unique.

A Mississippi family with U.S. citizen children had their husband and father taken away "when [the] family was at its most vulnerable – just home from the hospital with a baby only five days old." The father Jorge had told ICE about the baby. Still, the agents left the mother Rita alone with her three children and without so much as a call to local domestic support agencies, which is routine for local police.

Back to the subject of "justice": let's remember that immigration detention is civil detention, NOT criminal detention. It is NOT supposed to be punitive.

And even in the case of criminal detention, is acquiring a permanent disability part of the sentence?

What happened to Saja Tunkara is not an isolated incident:

Mergensana Amar, another asylum seeker held in the same detention center where Saja Tunkara was held, died in Nov 2018 under questionable conditions.

What happened to Mergensana Amar? The Russian immigrant’s handwritten note raises questions about treatment at Northwest Detention Center (The Seattle Times, Nov 30, 2018):Was the asylum seeker thrown naked into a cold cell?

Roxsana Hernandez, an transgender woman from Honduras who requested asylum at the official port of entry in San Ysidro, California, was also allegedly held in cold conditions after she was taken into immigration detention:

A fellow detainee, Stacy, alleged that Roxsana had fallen ill when she was locked up for 5 days in a notoriously cold holding cell, nicknamed an ice box. Stacy claimed that Ms Hernandez was refused access to a doctor despite coughing, vomiting and suffering from diarrhoea and severe pain all over her body. "The ICE officials yelled at her" because she was sick, Stacy was quoted as saying. (BBC News 31 May 2018)

Roxsana died in ICE custody on May 25 2018. An independent autopsy found that she had been beaten.

"Piecing together the timeline and dating the injuries based on the pathology, it seems that the injuries (happened) when she was handcuffed and in custody," said Andrew Free, a civil rights attorney representing her Ms. Hernandez's family. (Journal Sentinel, Nov 27 2018)

Description
ShaCorrie Wimbley, a Kansas transplant, and Saja Tunkara, an asylum seeker from Sierra Leone, met in Seattle in 2007. ShaCorrie recalls her initial response to Saja, the first foreign man who tried to chat her up. "I was not very nice." But Saja did impress her as kind and patient. "He called every day for a year until I answered the phone."

Fast forward 10 years to 2017. ShacCorrie and Saja are now married, with 2 children. ShaCorrie says of her husband. "He cooks, cleans, does laundry, makes the kids lunches, and gives them baths. I never have to ask for help. He just did it. We have built a life together. We have been through so many things that would have destroyed any family..."

ShaCorrie applied for US permanent residency for her spouse, but the petition was denied. They decided to wait for the outcome of his years-long pending asylum case, which was also later denied. On top of that, Saja was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and a neck tumor.

Saja was scheduled for a tumor-removal operation in January 2018. But because he had remained in the U.S. to support his family after his asylum case was denied, ICE took him into custody shortly before his scheduled operation. ICE did not allow him to keep his hospital appointment.

In the weeks that followed, a local organization NWDC Resistance received calls from [inside the detention center] saying, 'There’s a guy with tumors on his neck that we can see, he shouldn’t be here, he should in a hospital."

It was not until April 2018, after spending months in pain, that Saja was allowed to have his operation , by which time nerve damage had led to permanent decreased mobility in his arm.

Saja was deported in October 2018, after spending more than 9 months in detention, during which time he acquired vision and breathing problems, in addition to more tumors. ICE did not allow him his wife and children to say goodbye to him. The Tunkaras miss each other terribly.

Read the story of Saja and ShaCorrie's romance here. (Gofundme page to support the Tunkara family)

News about the Tunkaras:
Did ICE Retaliate Against a Detainee Over Seattle Weekly Report? Seattle Weekly, Nov 5 2018
Incarcerated and Infirmed: How Northwest Detention Center Is Failing Sick Inmates Seattle Weekly, Oct 10 2018
South Seattle Emerald, Jun 8 2018

To those rather predictable people who respond to reports of abuses in immigration detention by saying, "Oh well, if you break immigration law, you'll have to suffer the consequences":

I'm all for being law-abiding. But let's not forget that the goal of law and order is justice and safety. Where is the justice if the consequence is horrendously out of proportion with the "offense"?

Losing your eyesight and losing the use of your arm for overstaying a visa is NOT a just consequence.

And where is the safety when the main breadwinner of a family is suddenly ripped away?

In the case of taking Saja away from ShaCorrie and their children, ShaCorrie said: "Since my husband has been detained, I have entered a financial vortex..." Despite working full time, she still struggles to pay for basic necessities for her family.

Unfortunately, the Tunkara family's plight is not unique.

A Mississippi family with U.S. citizen children had their husband and father taken away "when [the] family was at its most vulnerable – just home from the hospital with a baby only five days old." The father Jorge had told ICE about the baby. Still, the agents left the mother Rita alone with her three children and without so much as a call to local domestic support agencies, which is routine for local police.

Back to the subject of "justice": let's remember that immigration detention is civil detention, NOT criminal detention. It is NOT supposed to be punitive.

And even in the case of criminal detention, is acquiring a permanent disability part of the sentence?

What happened to Saja Tunkara is not an isolated incident:

Mergensana Amar, another asylum seeker held in the same detention center where Saja Tunkara was held, died in Nov 2018 under questionable conditions.

What happened to Mergensana Amar? The Russian immigrant’s handwritten note raises questions about treatment at Northwest Detention Center (The Seattle Times, Nov 30, 2018):Was the asylum seeker thrown naked into a cold cell?

Roxsana Hernandez, an transgender woman from Honduras who requested asylum at the official port of entry in San Ysidro, California, was also allegedly held in cold conditions after she was taken into immigration detention:

A fellow detainee, Stacy, alleged that Roxsana had fallen ill when she was locked up for 5 days in a notoriously cold holding cell, nicknamed an ice box. Stacy claimed that Ms Hernandez was refused access to a doctor despite coughing, vomiting and suffering from diarrhoea and severe pain all over her body. "The ICE officials yelled at her" because she was sick, Stacy was quoted as saying. (BBC News 31 May 2018)

Roxsana died in ICE custody on May 25 2018. An independent autopsy found that she had been beaten.

"Piecing together the timeline and dating the injuries based on the pathology, it seems that the injuries (happened) when she was handcuffed and in custody," said Andrew Free, a civil rights attorney representing her Ms. Hernandez's family. (Journal Sentinel, Nov 27 2018)