Kremandala radio and TV personality and journalist, Carolyn “YaYa” Marin Coleman, 42, returned to Belize on Tuesday on a 10:00 a.m. American Airlines flight out of Miami, after having passed through 7 prison facilities – oftentimes bound with waist, leg and arm shackles – within a span of less than 6 months.
Seen here with a generous smile in a photo taken by attorney Audrey Matura-Shepherd, YaYa was decked out in US Homeland Security garb and carrying a box of her personal belongings labeled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but was still very excited to return to loved ones who stood beside her through her ordeal in the United States and to receive a warm welcome from her many friends.
In an interview with Amandala today, YaYa explained that she had been sentenced to serve jail time in the United States for claiming to be a US citizen – when she is not – and voting in elections between 2001 and 2004.
She attempted to get permanent residence using a fraudulently obtained US Social Security number, court papers from the United States District Court (North District of Florida) say.
“They found evidence that I voted in 10 [state and federal] elections,” YaYa told Amandala, adding that she had pleaded guilty to the charges.
She said that when she was asked why she did it, her response was, “I paid taxes and I will have a say-so in how government runs things.”
YaYa said that on Tuesday US Department of Homeland Security officials escorted her onto the plane at the Miami International Airport, where she was made to sit at the very back. Audrey Matura-Shepherd left her assigned seat to accompany YaYa on the journey back home.
“If you need an attorney, I’m your attorney,” she said Audrey, a former newspaper editor, told her.
When she arrived in Belize, local police officers picked her up and escorted her to the Queen Street Police Station, where she was kept until 1:30 p.m., while they processed her as a deportee. (YaYa will have to report regularly to the police, because of her deportee status.)
Marin-Coleman is a British citizen with Belizean parentage. She was traveling on her British passport when she was taken off the plane in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Saturday, November 29, and detained by American authorities on the federal charges while on her way to New York City, to represent the UBAD Educational Foundation (UEF) at the Fourteenth General Assembly of the Central American Black Organization (CABO).
William R. Clark, Jr., Assistant Federal Public Defender, of Tallahassee, Florida, represented her.
“We want people to vote, but not the way you do it,” she said the judge told her at sentencing. “I am not overlooking tax dollars and the student loans you owe, but because you have no criminal record and because of the support from people in your country, I will give you time served.”
That “time served” was 2 months and 3 weeks. The irony in that is that YaYa almost spent the 6-month sentence she would have gotten for pleading guilty, if she had not received all those letters of support from people in Belize. At the time of her return to Belize, six months had just about expired.
She told Amandala that she would like to thank all those who gave her their unconditional support: among them activist Jihad McLaren, attorney Lois Young, and everyone who wrote on her behalf— from the jewelry makers to the village council chairman. One writer called her “the local Oprah,” she said. (We’ve seen nearly 30 letters filed on her behalf.)
After her sentencing, YaYa was turned over to ICE’s custody.
She has been expecting to return home for months now, and the last information she had received from US officials was that she was due to return at the end of April. But April passed and she remained in ICE detention.
It was not until 3:00 a.m. Tuesday, May 12, that a prison official woke her up and told her to pack her things. That was the news she had been waiting for, for so long.
YaYa had gotten a hint that she would have been released this week, because when she went to the prison kiosk to do a transaction, the machine told her that her account had been closed – and that happens, she said, when a person is about to be let go.
YaYa had been sentenced in Miami, to be deported back to Belize, on March 19, and it took 8 weeks in further detention before she was finally free to go.
We queried: What was the holdup?
“They said they would ask the [Belize] consulate for the travel documents. I sat for two weeks only to be told that they had sent it to Miami [the wrong place], when it should have been sent to Washington,” said YaYa.
But when the request finally got to Washington, it was received, instead, by the Turkish Embassy, next door to the Belize Embassy, and it was another week before Belize received it, she said she was told.
That meant a third week of frustration and waiting, and at that time, YaYa decided to go on a hunger strike, claiming to be protesting that they were not feeding inmates a balanced meal, but giving them starch-loaded meals, making up for the lack of fiber with the name-brand supplement, Metamucil.
Officials put her in the tight spot when they told her that she had to come off the hunger strike before they could move ahead with her travel arrangements, she further recounted.
She called Kremandala chairman, Evan X Hyde, and her father, Roque Marin, in Belize, and they advised her to come off the hunger strike – so she did.
Still, plans to speak via phone with Belize Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wilfred Elrington, that Thursday, April 16, failed. That conversation took place the following week and YaYa said that her documents were signed on April 23.
She thought she would be sent home the week of 27th, but she wasn’t released until this week.
YaYa continued being an activist while serving time in the US, and before she left the country, she wrote US President Barack Obama about an issue she feels needs to be urgently addressed: the housing of mentally ill inmates with the regular prison population.
“The nurses aren’t trained and the resources are scarce,” she said, also citing a case where a mental patient was refused vital medication.
“At Moore Haven…they would bring people and you would know something is wrong. You hear them screaming in their cells. One inmate hit another inmate and nothing would be done. When she hit her the fourth time, I wrote…,” she added.
“They told me to mind my own business and stop speaking for other people. But I insisted I have the right to speak against injustice.”
She said that after the ICE supervisor failed to respond within the routine 5-day period, she was advised to take her concerns to a higher authority.
Apart from writing President Obama, she also wrote the ICE headquarters about the same concerns, asking them to write back.
“I haven’t heard back from either of them,” she said.
YaYa was first housed at the Mecklenburg County Jail in North Carolina, which she said was the best of all the facilities. After five days, she was transferred to “the worst” — what she now describes as the “ghetto jail,” in Georgia. At the ‘ghetto jail,” there was one toilet for 60 women, she said.
From there, she was transferred to Federal Prison at Tallahassee.
“I was stripped, told to bend, spread my cheeks and cough,” she lamented.
At that prison, she took showers only three times a week.
Being a vegetarian, YaYa’s diet was limited to things like bread, beans and vegetables – sometimes fruit, even though she admits to having gained significant weight since her departure from Belize.
She drank water instead of the artificial juice they served, citing reports that “they were putting something in juice to keep the libido of the inmates down. I didn’t drink the juice.”
She added: “The water is hard on your hair and causes it to break,” so she washed her hair about three times the whole time. High on her priority list this week is a visit to Laura Lightburn, her hairdresser in Belize City.
While at Federal Prison, YaYa tried to get released on a bond, but she was denied it on the allegation that she was a flight risk.
“I was then taken to Wakulla County Jail, but kicked out and sent back to Federal Prison,” said YaYa.
At Wakulla, where the lesbian culture was strong, she was shocked that inmates were expected to take open showers. There were 3 showers and 5 toilets for a place that could house up to 54 inmates, and there were no doors for privacy, so she showered at nights when the lights went out.
Her next location was the Tallahassee Federal Prison, where she stayed until her sentencing, after which she was moved to Moore Haven in Florida.
“They took me to Gun Club, then they took us then to Krome [Service Processing Center] in Miami. They took us there because they had men as well in the bus,” she said, adding that there were about 20 men and 4 women separated by a grill partition.
“We went to Krome and stayed for 3 hours. [They] …took us to Gun Club, a women’s facility, and processed us. We stayed for a few hours and they moved us to Stockade, a huge female facility, where we spent 3 nights.”
The final facility she was housed at was Glades County Detention Center in Moore Haven, Florida, where she remained from March 3 until her return this week.
The experience was humbling, she said, recalling the initial shock she experienced when the prison outfitted her with used garb, including used underwear.
YaYa said that while she was waiting in Florida to return home, she met people from as many as 20 to 25 countries, and she heard stories from all over the world, and from people who said that they had been detained at flea markets, on the job, in their house, or were contacted via mail for deportation.
The US has cracked down on even Green Card holders since “9/11”, and even those who have served a penalty have violated the condition of the Green Card and faced deportation, she added.
YaYa said that while waiting to return to Belize, she met a woman from the Caribbean who had a similar experience coming back from the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, and was picked up because she had gotten in trouble with the law for biting off her husband’s finger during a domestic dispute. She faces deportation as well.
Of note is that while imprisoned in the US, YaYa kept a detailed journal of what she ate, as well as her concerns, questions and visions – ideas she plans to implement now that she has returned to Belize.
Kremandala has welcomed YaYa back, and she is expected to take up a new position in the weeks ahead. (Details will follow.)