A deportee’s appeal
He says his name is Raywall Harvey. He is 38 years old. For the past seven years, he says, he’s been living on Kingston’s streets – the only home he has known since he was deported from the United States after serving time for drug trafficking.
These days, however, Harvey finds some shelter at the Poor Relief Department’s Emergency Operation Centre downtown. But he wants more. He wants to find his parents who, he says, are from Burnt Savannah in Westmoreland.
“I am trying to get in touch with my family,” Harvey tells the Observer as he waits with other destitute persons downtown to get a meal from members of the Kiwanis Club of North St Andrew last Saturday morning.
“Their names are Tara Louise Clarke-Harvey and Raywall Gordon Harvey. I hope they are still alive,” he says.
“I hope you could send me as much help as you can this year and for future years to come.”
His appeal for help in finding his parents out of the way, Harvey shares his experience in the US that led to his current status.
“I was a drug dealer back in America,” he tells the Observer. “I spent 28 years in America. and lived about 10 years in New York. I was never involved in any badness in Jamaica because I was just a boy when I left.”
According to Harvey, he was introduced to the life of drug-running when he graduated from high school.
“Undercover Jamaican Mafia come to mi and pushed drugs on mi. They forced mi to sell drugs in America and buy mi guns and give mi soldiers. After that mi start to traffic.”
He says his life as a drug dealer ended when he was arrested and sentenced for possession of cocaine.
He says he escaped death many times while he was incarcerated at New York’s infamous Ryker’s Island prison, which sits on an island off the coast of New York City.
“Prison was hell for me. I went to various prisons all over America and the worst experience I had inside there was when two men tried to have sex with me for a cigarette. It can get real hard to survive in a place like that,” he says.
The Jamaican government has, in the past, complained to the US that persons who either left Jamaica as children or were born in the US to Jamaican parents do not normally have substantial roots here when they are deported. Therefore, it is unfair to send them here.
Local authorities also worry that deportees with criminal records are contributing to the island’s high crime rate and have instituted measures to monitor such persons.
Recently released police figures suggest that only 20 per cent of all deportees have criminal records here. Therefore, those who are not wanted for any crimes here cannot be detained on arrival.
Harvey, though, doesn’t fit the profile of the deportee who has transferred his criminal skills here. He basically survives on the kindness of people better off than he is. And he is grateful.
“Jamaican people are kind,” he says. “People used to give me shoes and clothes and I used to get jobs, but it seems the year 2003 is hard for people as I don’t get so much no more.”