Marie Jeannard
Appearances
Criminal
A Land Without Law
Well, you know, we were lining up. They give everybody a little package, which have your blanket, soap, toothbrush. You got rid of what you had on. They give you a uniform. You got tested. You have to have tested again. Tested for what? People were getting tested to see if you're sick for whatever disease that you may have.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
My number was T1286. My father was T0126. I was only called by my name, by my dad or, you know, the other Haitians. But to everybody else, I was T1286.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
Scrawny little kids. No smile. I have a baseball cap in my head. My hair was disheveled. I mean, it's just... I wish I was that size again, though. But a scary-looking kid. I looked like I was afraid for my life.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
Well, his name was Antoine Francois. But the funny thing is, because in Haiti, people always have nicknames. So for the longest, we thought our dad's name was Louis Neis. But he goes by the name of Francique. He was strict. He was very, very strict. My only job, my dad would tell me, your only duty is to go to school.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
You could have multiple interviews with multiple different people just to try, I guess, to try to catch you in the lie. Like, if people weren't telling the truth, the story wasn't always consistent.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
I know there was no way, you know, they would send us back, meaning like my dad and myself, you know, based on our story. You know, being a naive kid, thought maybe I'll be there for a few weeks. Marie says that at Guantanamo, they were fed packaged military meals. My favorite was the omelets with the hot sauce, Tabasco sauce in it.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
It was a massive camp. Tent after tent, green tents. We have Camp 1 through Camp 7. Camp 7, we all know that's where all, if you get into a fight, you would get arrested. They would send you to that camp. Camp 7 was the jail camp, is what I call it. I was in Camp 3. Camp 3 was mostly families, people who have, adults who have children, so it was family camp.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
Then he met Marie's mother. I didn't know my mom very well. She left me when I was three months old. My grandmother and my dad would tell me. My stepmom didn't have kids until I was about 10 years old, give or take, so... I was the only kids around for a long time, and my grandma pretty much raised me with my dad.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
A dictatorship. It's what he was. You know, you were told what to do, when to do it. I remember... being, you know, told time to go to bed, like people could not be out on the streets and stuff like that.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
Miniciens, it's what they called them, and they wear, like, navy blue uniforms.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
It's literally deserted because there was, you know, really no more people left except for these people who were HIV positive.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
My day-to-day? I would wake up in the morning. My dad had kitchen duties. We actually have a kitchen where we could actually cook some decent food. By 11 o'clock, 10 o'clock, we would be done. We used to play cards and dominoes from like I don't know, from anywhere from 2 o'clock to 5 o'clock in the evening. Once in a while, we would get a movie.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
And I remember the first movie I ever, ever watched, an American movie, was Basic Instinct. Wow, that's quite a choice for a 13-year-old.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
There's no school, no education, no nothing, and you just sleep and do it again the next day.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
Yeah. So, yeah, we talked about it. But we were, as kids, we were so brainwashed with what our parents was telling us. You know, our parents telling us that, you know, we're not really HIV positive. It's a lie. They're just saying that because they don't want us to go to the U.S., So, you know, all those people, they were political asylum seekers who were deemed to be asylum seekers.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
But they couldn't send them, so they were like, yeah, it's probably a ploy just to make sure, like, even though we all qualify, we are deemed as political, but they didn't want us to come here. So they just put the sting on us, saying, like, we have AIDS. I think until the day my dad died, he was in denial that he was HIV positive.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
It would get violent. A few times, I remember us getting really violent out there. They used to do those P-bomb, I guess you would call it. Because we have buckets, that's what we had to pee on at nighttime because nobody... You're not going to get up and go to the portal party.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
So people would have those buckets, fill it with pee, and then create a pee bomb to throw at the military when it got bad.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
My father refused to sign the paperwork to hand me over to the custody of the court. And it wasn't just my father. It was many of the parents. I think... Their mentality was we were their last ticket to come to the U.S. They believed the minute they give up their rights to us minors, they would take us and they would send them back to Haiti. And nobody wanted to do that. Nobody wanted to do that.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
I remember it, you know, quite vividly. I was only nine years old, about to be nine years old.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
They were like, if we hold on, eventually they would have to get... It was like, we come in as a unit, we want to go as a unit. But I think as time progresses and they realize the American, we call them the white people, weren't playing. So eventually, I think my dead one was one of the last person to actually... signed the paperwork, his consent, to award me to the court.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
Did you want him to let you go to the U.S.? Absolutely. I did not want to be there anymore. I told my dad if he didn't want me to sign the paperwork for me to send me, then release the consent for me to go back to Haiti. I didn't want to be there. Nobody would want to be there. I mean, for a while, it was fun being there. No school, no homework.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
But after a while, you start missing the food you used to eat. You miss your friends. You had your family. You don't have anybody. When I was there, I was molested. I didn't want to be there. It wasn't fun for me. I wanted to go. If I couldn't go to the U.S., I wanted to go home. And my dad knew that.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
I was super excited, super, super excited. I got called. I went to the processing center. At that processing center, usually you're there for a couple of days, and then they call your number again. So you get on a plane to come to the U.S.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
You go to Miami, and then once you get to Miami, they put you in a halfway house and then await your final destination of wherever your first appearance is located. So when I went my first time and went to the processing center, I didn't get called again. So I got sent back to my dad. And my dad was highly pissed off. And I was highly disappointed.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
And I thought, oh my gosh, am I back here for good? Am I not? This is not going to happen. About a week later, they called my number again. So this time I actually ended up, went through everything.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
People were out on the street beheading those people. Where my house was, my grandmother's house, it's like in a corner of a four-way street. You know, you used to have multiple bodies just being burned there. They would get them from their house, drag them out to the street.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
When I heard it was opening again, it just made me think about, wow, we were actually in prison. Because that's, you know, at the time, I don't think any of us thought of it that way, but that's exactly what it was. We were incarcerated. For the one and a half years, we were detained, I mean, I don't typically have this conversation.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
The best way to do it because they feel like beheading was too much of a mercy killing because there was no pain being inflicted. So the best way to do it was to put tires around them and set them on fire with gasoline burning them alive.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
Most people not going to ask you, hey, tell me about your time in Guantanamo Bay, you know.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
We always kind of say, yeah, we were like kind of destined because the March 19th that just passed marked our 31 year of being a family unit. So we was just joking about that. And I say, yeah, you know, I've been putting up with you for the last 31 years. She said, you've been putting up, I've been putting up with you.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
He said, you know how difficult it is to have a teenager who didn't speak your language? I wouldn't be where I'm at today without my mom. That's hands down.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
I remember my grandmother saying, like, this is the first time in her life being able to vote. So it was like, you know, that's the time you thought things going to change. And that's when really my dad started to get into local politic.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
You know, we thought that's, you know, it's going to be a big change. You know, it's a priest. What could go wrong having a priest for a president?
Criminal
A Land Without Law
All I know, when the coup happened, my dad went in hiding. They were hunting anybody who was in the Lavalas party. So I was sent to my grandmother, who lived in a little town called Zima, which is a little bit far out in the country, really. Nobody would have any business going over there and my dad wasn't hiding. So I stayed there for a while until one day my dad sent for me
Criminal
A Land Without Law
And we got so sick. I was sick. My stepmom was sick. My brothers, we all was like sick. We were seasick. Till this day, I can't get in the ocean. They were on an oversized fishing boat. You know, it's a handmade boat. It wasn't, you know, and you use pedal, you know, you pedal the boat. There was no motor or anything like that.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
Maybe 150 people. We were packing it like sardine. People was just on top of people. But the sea was rough, so we ended up only getting to La Tortue. And when we got there and we couldn't go any farther for whatever reason, we ended up having to head back. And when we head back, my stepmom say, I ain't doing this again. So we stayed in hiding for about a week, and we got back again.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
This time, just Marie and her father got on the boat. Because I was, you know, I would be an orphan if my dad never come back, and I would be an orphan. So my dad say, if we all, if we're going to perish, we're going to perish together. I would not wish this up on my worst enemy because a person who's navigating the boat doesn't know where they're going, for one thing.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
It's like we're going to just navigate it. If we land somewhere, we land somewhere.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
If they would catch my dad, it would be all over again what I used to see when I was younger with people being beheaded and the worst, you know, being burned alive. And the only thing I could think of is If you're going to die, die on your own term. And we used to own a couple of fishing boats. So he loved the ocean.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
So, you know, I didn't want to die, but I'm guessing, like, if that's how he's going to go, I think that's the way he would want to go.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
So when the boat was intercepted, you know, got into this huge vessel, I thought it was a house on the ocean. You know, it's just like you couldn't even feel the movement when you were in the vessel. So we were processed. They issue us an ID with the number. Everybody was interviewed. Family stays together. I think we spent maybe three days on the boat in the Coast Guard.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
Through Grand Van, you hear you were not going to the U.S. Finally, Marie found out where they were going. They say we were going to Cuba, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.