Photo by Ralph Isenberg, April 2006

Attorney Goes Looking, after Client Goes Missing during Bathroom Break

By Greg Moses

DALLAS -- An asylum seeker from Kosovo faces deportation this evening after Federal agents arrested him during a bathroom break this morning in a building where he was participating in court-ordered mediation.

Bujar Osmani, an ethnic "gypsy" in his mid-twenties was in the process of suing the persons who had represented him during a failed asylum plea.

"During mediation, Bujar went to the bathroom," explains his Dallas attorney John Wheat Gibson. "He was gone a long time. I went to look for him and could not find him."

Gibson says a short time later he was told by a secretary "that a couple of men had tied Bujar's hands behind his back and taken him away after he came out of the bathroom." The arrest occurred at about 10:30 a.m. Gibson has since requested his client's release.

"Bujar's car is still in the parking lot of the mediator's office," explains Gibson in an email to the Texas Civil Rights Review. "The Gestapo did not even permit him to tell me or anybody else that they were taking him away. I found out about the abduction a few hours later when Bujar called me."

Osmani is being detained at the immigration enforcement center at 8101 N. Stemmons Freeway, says Gibson.

Bujar Osmani describes his reasons for leaving Kosovo in a 2007 affidavit::

I left Kosovo in March 2004 escape certain death at the hands of Albanian extremists, who hate gypsies. Several negative events that took place in Kosovo have impacted my life since I was very young. The Serbian military tried to recruit my father forcibly to fight against the Albanian militias and the only reason he managed to escape was that he moved in with my uncle in a different municipality.

After the war ended my father came home but we were attacked by racist Albanians. After the war, many Ashkalis were killed by Albanian extremists. They set our house on fire on February 13, 2000 while my father and I were beaten in front of the family. After the assailants left we went to the local hospital but they refused to treat us there because we were Ashkali. The only place the doctors would treat us was at a humanitarian organization in Prishtina, "Medicines sans Frontiers."

Since my family could not afford to rebuild our house, we moved in with my paternal uncle. I was taunted and attacked by Albanian extremists on various occasions, because of my Ashkali origin and the membership in the Ashkali Party, which was established to promote the Ashkalis' rights. On March 19, 2004 during the worst riots by ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, my uncle's house was attacked and set on fire. I left with my uncle's wife and five children in their car, through the back gate of the house. I traveled to Bari, Montenegro and since then have had no news about my family.

I went to Genoa in Italy, and applied for asylum using a false name, to conceal my Ashkali identity. Racist prejudice against gypsies is predominant in Italy, as well as among Albanians. The Italians denied me asylum, however, after they found out I was Ashkali. In August therefore I left Genoa to come to the US. I traveled through Mexico and entered the US on September 3, 2004.

When I came to US I did not have any relatives and the only language I could speak fluently was Albanian, so I approached the Albanian community for help. [A person] who happened to be living in Dallas as a refugee and was born in the same municipality as I, provided for me until I could support myself. He helped me with food, clothes, and money, and at the same time he went around to find legal counsel for me, since he could speak English. He said friends suggested he take me to [a person], who, we believed, was a lawyer.

The affidavit goes on to describe how Osmani met with the alleged lawyer and made preparations for an asylum hearing on April 4, 2005. But outside the hearing room, Osmani was approached by a new person who introduced himself as the attorney who would represent him.

After a series of hearings resulted in a "ruined" asylum claim, Osmani sued the pair of persons in a Texas District Court for "negligence, breach of contract, fraud, and civil conspiracy." It was during court-ordered mediation for the lawsuit that Osmani was arrested and detained by immigration authorities.

"Jury trial is scheduled for 27 October 2008," says Gibson. "The trial may be delayed by the events today, but it will happen if Osmani is not deported before the trial."

"The judge we have now is fair and reasonable as far as I can tell," says attorney Gibson. "But if Bujar is deported to Kosovo he will have a hard time testifying in the district court in Dallas."

"I asked DHS District Counsel Paul Hunker to obtain Osmani's release from detention on an order of supervision on whatever terms DHS think best, until after the jury delivers its verdict," writes Gibson. "It will be interesting to see what DHS District Director Nuria Prendes decides to do."

Email from Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (Aug. 15, 2008).

Greetings from TRAC. The latest available data from the Justice Department show that new prosecutions by Customs and Border Protection during the first eight months of FY 2008 have soared. If CBP's prosecutions continue at the same pace for the rest of the year, the FY 2008 total will be almost twice what it was in the previous year. For details, see the TRAC Report at:

trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/191/

According to the Justice Department, the CBP enforcement surge is the result of Project Streamline, a Bush Administration policy of bringing criminal charges against undocumented aliens.

By contrast, the Justice Department data, obtained by TRAC under the FOIA, show a much less precipitous increase in prosecutions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also in the DHS. For details, see:

trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/192/

Although immigration raids in Iowa and other inland locations have been heavily covered by the media, the data show that a substantial proportion of the criminal enforcement effort -- even by ICE -- takes place along the Mexican border.

TRAC continues to provide free reports on the latest enforcement trends. Go to trac.syr.edu/tracreports/bulletins/ for timely information on prosecutions and convictions that occurred in May for many categories of enforcement such as immigration, terrorism, white collar crime, official corruption, drugs, etc. Free reports are also available for major agencies such as the DEA, FBI, IRS and DHS.

The May 2008 criminal data are also available to TRACFED subscribers via the Express, Going Deeper and Analyzer tools. Go to tracfed.syr.edu for more information. Customized reports for a specific agency, district, program, lead charge or judge are available via the TRAC Data Interpreter, either as part of a TRACFED subscription or on a per-report basis. Go to trac.syr.edu/interpreter to start.

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the US Federal government. To help support TRAC's ongoing efforts, go to:

trac.syr.edu/sponsor/

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University

Note: It's a rare occasion when we re-post such a lengthy document, but with so many friends of the issue from Texas involved, we feel it is important to import the archive of this rush transcript from today's edition of Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman--gm

* * * * *

AMY GOODMAN: We turn to the sprawling detention system within this country that some have likened to a gulag and a series of domestic Guantanamo Bays: the immigration prisons that over 300,000 pass through each year.

Earlier this month, a thirty-four-year-old Chinese computer engineer named Hiu Lui Ng overstayed his visa, died in a Rhode Island immigration detention facility. He had cancer in his liver, in his lung, in his bones. He had a fractured spine.

Despite repeated complaints of severe pain, Mr. Ng was refused independent medical evaluation by immigration officials. The New York Times reported this. Instead, he was taken in shackles to another prison two hours away, where an immigration officer tried to convince him to withdraw his appeals and accept deportation.

Before Jason Ng—his American name—died on August 6th, he told his sister the doctors at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Center in Rhode Island had told him to “stop faking” his illness.

Jason Ng’s story is the latest in a series of similar cases of neglect and abuse at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. Investigations by the Washington Post, the New York Times earlier this year revealed as many as eighty-three prisoners have died in or soon after ICE custody in the five years since the agency was created in March of 2003.

When contacted for response, ICE said they could not comment on Jason Ng’s death, because it’s under investigation.

Congress is responding to these deaths with legislation aimed to improve conditions for non-citizens in ICE custody. Congress member Zoe Lofgren from California and Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey have sponsored the House and Senate versions of the Detainee Basic Medical Care Act of 2008.

We’re joined right now by Joshua Bardavid, attorney for Mr. Ng ‘s family. We’re also joined by California Congress member Zoe Lofgren. And we welcome you both to Democracy Now!

Before we go to the legislation, Joshua, tell us the full story of Jason Ng. Where was he born? How did he come to this country?

JOSHUA BARDAVID: Jason was born in Hong Kong, and he entered with his family at the age of seventeen. They applied for political asylum. Unfortunately, a notice telling them to go to court was mailed to a nonexistent address. So an immigration judge had ordered Jason deported in absentia, unknowingly. Meanwhile, he went to school in the United States, graduated high school, went to college, graduate college, became an engineer working at the Empire State Building. He married, had two US citizen children. He married a US citizen, and they applied—he applied for his green card. When he went for his interview, instead of having his green card adjudicated, he was picked up. This was in July of 2007.

AMY GOODMAN: Wait. So when he and his wife went to the green card interview?

JOSHUA BARDAVID: Correct, correct. What they thought was their final interview to get his green card, that he would finally become a lawful permanent resident in the United States, he was picked up and swept into this system.

AMY GOODMAN: If he hadn’t applied for the green card, would he ever have been picked up? And he had been here for so many years, gone to college, was working here.

JOSHUA BARDAVID: It’s possible that he would have been picked up. It’s possible that he would have lived his life not knowing that he had an order of deportation pending against him and not been touched. But the fact that he was trying to legalize his status was actually what put him into this system. Unfortunately, the system is sprawling. And he was first sent to a facility up in Massachusetts—I’m sorry, he was actually first sent to Rhode Island, then he was moved to a facility in Massachusetts, then to Vermont, and then back to Rhode Island from July 2007 until August 5 or August 6, the day that he passed away.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s talk about what happened when he went into the detention facility. Was he healthy, as far as he knew, when he went in?

JOSHUA BARDAVID: He was a healthy, robust man.

AMY GOODMAN: Thirty-four.

JOSHUA BARDAVID: Thirty-four. No history of medical problems.

AMY GOODMAN: Very tall?

JOSHUA BARDAVID: Average height, average height. And he was slowly deteriorated as he was through the various facilities.

AMY GOODMAN: How long was he held?

JOSHUA BARDAVID: He was held from July 2007 until August 5th or August 6th. He died in the middle of the night.

AMY GOODMAN: About a year.

JOSHUA BARDAVID: About a year, a little over a year. During this process, he had a stay of deportation, because the courts were reviewing his deportation order, the fact that he was eligible for a green card, and immigration had not yet fully adjudicated his green card, because instead of adjudicating it, they had detained him.

During this process, he began to complain of various medical problems. In April of 2008, he had a steep decline. In a ten-week period, he dropped twenty-three pounds. At this point, he was in St. Albans, Vermont in a facility that had absolutely no medical facilities whatsoever, not even a nurse on duty. He was then transferred to the Donald Wyatt facility in July—I believe July 2nd.

AMY GOODMAN: In Rhode Island.

JOSHUA BARDAVID: In Rhode Island, excuse me, yes. July 2nd, 2008.

AMY GOODMAN: This, a public prison?

JOSHUA BARDAVID: It is a private prison. It’s owned by a private corporation that only owns the Donald Wyatt facility. It had been owned by a major publicly traded corporation, Cornell Corrections, until, I believe, June of 2007, and then it was transferred to this private corporation, the Donald Wyatt Detention Corporation, that owns the facility.

The reason that he was moved from Vermont to Rhode Island was because the Vermont facility did not have any medical care facilities at all. Donald Wyatt supposedly had adequate facilities to provide for his care. Unfortunately, he was given basic medical evaluations. He was not given an MRI. He was not given a CAT scan, despite the fact that he was complaining of loss of feeling in extremities, despite the fact that he lost twenty-three pounds. At this point, he had now dropped about thirty to thirty-two pounds, and he was given just basic medical evaluation.

AMY GOODMAN: They put him on a top bunk? They had double-bunk?

JOSHUA BARDAVID: That’s correct.

AMY GOODMAN: So that he would have to climb up and down.

JOSHUA BARDAVID: Correct.

AMY GOODMAN: But he was complaining of extreme back pain.

JOSHUA BARDAVID: Right, and at various stages, complete loss of movement in his feet, in his legs, and loss of feeling in his legs. Eventually he was given a bottom bunk and some pain killers and given a basic medical evaluation. But at this point, he was unaware that he had cancer.

We’re unsure when he had a fractured spine. It may have occurred when he was moved by the ICE officials on July 30th. We don’t know when the fractured spine occurred. It’s possible, at this point, he did have a fractured spine. He was not given a wheelchair, despite repeated requests by his attorneys, by his family, by him, by his cell mate. He was cleared to walk with a cane, is what we were told.

AMY GOODMAN: Why was he taken on a two-hour ride to Hartford, Connecticut?

JOSHUA BARDAVID: It’s not really clear, and that’s one of the many unanswered questions in this case. When it became clear that we were not going to be able to get through basic requests the medical care that was clear he needed, we filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus, seeking his release under due process grounds, because he was not receiving adequate care. This was filed on July 29th in Rhode Island. The very next day, he was taken in shackles in a van and driven two hours to Connecticut, where a deportation officer met with him and said that the only way they would release him or deport him is if he withdrew all of his appeals.

AMY GOODMAN: Did he?

JOSHUA BARDAVID: No. He actually had become so desperate that he started to discuss that with his family members. At this point, communication was quite difficult, because he couldn’t use a phone, and he was not given a wheelchair.

AMY GOODMAN: Why couldn’t he use a phone?

JOSHUA BARDAVID: Because he couldn’t walk to go to the payphone, and they wouldn’t give him a wheelchair to go to the payphone, and they wouldn’t give him a wheelchair to meet with us, his attorneys. So he was communicating through other Chinese-speaking detainees, although on the 30th, we were able to speak with him on the phone. And at this point, he began discussing withdrawing all his appeals.

And to give you an idea of just how much pain he was in and how much suffering he was going through, this is a man with a one-year-old and a three-year-old child with a US citizen wife who’s lived more of his life in the United States than he did in his home country in Hong Kong, and he was considering giving all of that up and accepting an order of deportation, even though it’s our opinion that he was legally eligible for a green card, simply because he needed the suffering to end.

AMY GOODMAN: When did the prison tell him he was faking it?

JOSHUA BARDAVID: That happened on several occasions. Just to correct you, I don’t believe it was a doctor who in fact accused him of faking it. I believe it was a nurse and several of the guards who said, you know, “You’re exaggerating your condition. You’re exaggerating your condition.”

AMY GOODMAN: Where exactly did he die?

JOSHUA BARDAVID: He died in the hospital in Rhode Island.

AMY GOODMAN: In the detention hospital?

JOSHUA BARDAVID: No, they had taken him to an outside hospital. What happened was, on July 31st, we had a hearing before a district judge in the district court of Rhode Island, and the district judge, while he didn’t rule on whether or not to release him, he, at the end of the hearing, said, “If this guy needs a wheelchair, get him a wheelchair. If he needs an MRI, get him an MRI.” And the US attorney, who was quite proactive at this point—only became involved in the case when we filed the petition in July 29th—assisted us in contacting the prison authorities and making sure the next day he was brought to a hospital for a CAT scan. And it was then and only then that it was discovered that he had cancer, basically all over his body, that he had a fractured spine, and we were told it was terminal. And he was—he remained in the hospital for the next three days, and he passed away on the night of August 5th, August 6th.

AMY GOODMAN: Was his family with him?

JOSHUA BARDAVID: They were able to see him on the final day. It took a little over two days for us to get clearance. The prison wanted and ICE officials wanted the Social Security numbers of his family in order to permit them to visit Jason. But we were finally able to get clearance so they could be with him at his side.

AMY GOODMAN: California Congress member Zoe Lofgren is with us now. She doesn’t represent his area, but has introduced federal legislation around medical care for immigration prisoners, for immigration detainees. Can you talk about the bill you’ve introduced and how it would affect, well, someone like Jason Ng, if he were still alive?

REP. ZOE LOFGREN: Sure. I chair the Subcommittee on Immigration in the House of Representatives, and we’ve had two hearings on the conditions, medical conditions in ICE custody. One was last October. Then we had another in June.

And as has been mentioned, there were a series of press exposes on really just outrageous conditions in custodial facilities relative to immigrants. And this is a terrible account to listen to what happened to Mr. Ng. Unfortunately, it’s not an isolated incident.

And so, we have introduced legislation basically to require the ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, which is a part of DHS that runs enforcement, to live up to the policies that they say they already are ruled by. It would require them to actually provide basic medical care to those in their detention. And it would also—the current system allows offsite, non-physician personnel to overrule medical treatment that is ordered by physicians in a facility, who are actually seeing a patient, that would preclude that. And right now, oftentimes they remove lifesaving medication from people who they arrest. That would—it would prohibit them from doing that. We’ve had people who’ve just died, because their medication was taken away when there were taken into custody. It has standards for screening and examination and continuity of care. It’s fascinating that when individuals are moved from facility to facility, their medical records aren’t sent with them. And so, that has caused some severe problems.

AMY GOODMAN: I can already hear Lou Dobbs now, Congress member Lofgren, screaming into the camera, “Can you believe it? We’re giving medical care to illegal aliens in this country!”

REP. ZOE LOFGREN: I’ve been on Lou Dobbs, and it’s not always a pleasure. But here’s the deal. I mean, when you arrest someone, you undertake some basic obligations for their care, and that’s required in our Constitution. You know, when you arrest someone, you have to feed them. That’s because they are no longer able to run down the street to McDonald’s on their own. When you arrest someone and they become ill, you need to provide basic medical care, because they can’t run down the street to the clinic or their own physician. That’s just the standards of decency that nations have, and it applies to the United States, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, and then we’re going to come back to this conversation and talk about private prisons overall and follow up on the case of a young man, a boy, that we talked to in Texas in prison—he was nine years old, Kevin—and see what happened to him. He was imprisoned with his family in a private prison. We’re talking to Joshua Bardavid, immigration attorney here in New York, now representing Jason Ng’s family. Jason died in prison. And we are talking to California Congress member Zoe Lofgren. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guests, Joshua Bardavid, immigration attorney in New York; Congress member Zoe Lofgren in California. She has introduced a bill. She’s chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law.

Awhile ago, we interviewed a little boy in prison. Kevin Yourdkhani was nine years old when he and his parents were detained at the Don Hutto Family Detention Center in Taylor, Texas for six weeks. They were flying over the United States on their way to seek asylum in Canada from Iran when there were detained, when there was this unrelated emergency. A person had a heart attack. They landed in Puerto Rico. They didn’t have the proper papers for the United States. They weren’t planning to come here. And they were sent to a detention facility. Kevin spoke to us from the jail last February.

KEVIN YOURDKHANI: I want to be free. I want to go outside, and I want to go to school. I want to be in my homeland: Canada.

JUAN GONZALEZ: How are the other children there? Are you spending time with any of the other children?

KEVIN YOURDKHANI: No.

JUAN GONZALEZ: They don’t let you spend time with the other children?

KEVIN YOURDKHANI: No. I’m sleeping beside the washroom, and I can’t—and I’m upstairs. I can’t go to the washroom all the time. And there’s a lot of smell coming out from the washroom. And the food is garbage. And the school is very bad. I can’t learn anything good. And I have asthma, and I got sick in here. I can’t stay here anymore.

AMY GOODMAN: Kevin, you said you’re sleeping next to the bathroom?

KEVIN YOURDKHANI: Yeah. And it’s not a separate room. It’s right beside the bed. And I’m sleeping beside the wall, and my back gets sick and it hurts.

AMY GOODMAN: Kevin was nine years old when we talked to him. This interview was played all over Canada, hardly got attention in the United States. Ultimately, the Canadian authorities let the family in. What’s happened to him since, Joshua Bardavid?

JOSHUA BARDAVID: It’s my understanding that he remains in Canada. He’s a Canadian citizen and had every right to remain in Canada. His parents had a political asylum claim that was reopened upon his return, in large part, I believe, due to the public outcry that surrounded the interview. And it’s my understanding that their legal appeals are still being fought in the courts in Canada.

AMY GOODMAN: And a special thanks to our producer Mike Burke, who got through to that prison, as we were able to talk live to Kevin and his dad Majid in the prison facility on Democracy Now!

While thousands languish in immigration prisons, private corporations contracted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, like GEO and Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA, are making record profits. CCA is the country’s largest private prison company, with strong political connections to both Republicans and Democrats. Together with ICE, they have detained close to a million non-citizens in the last five years.

But an award-winning investigative project by independent journalist Renee Feltz and Stokely Baksh at businessofdentention.com reveals there is little oversight of conditions within these prisons. We’re joined now by Renee Feltz, who is here in our firehouse studio, a student at Columbia University School of Journalism, formerly a producer and news director at Pacifica station at KPFT in Houston.

Welcome, Renee.

RENEE FELTZ: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about the prisons.

RENEE FELTZ: We looked at the business of immigrant detention. We’ve heard a lot about medical conditions for the detainees there, but we wanted to look at the billion-dollar industry. Essentially, as the immigrant detention population has boomed, the government has turned to the private sector, namely private prison companies like Corrections Corporation of America, to provide the detention services. Our investigation at businessofdetention.com looked at the money they’re making and the connections they use to make sure that the profits continue to roll in.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about what you have found, specifically the names of the companies, how they’ve grown, what prisons they run.

RENEE FELTZ: The main company we looked at was Corrections Corporation of America. They’re based in Tennessee, but they’ve got plenty of connections in Washington, D.C. Specifically, we found, for example, that one of their main lobbyists, as the boom in immigrant detention beds was occurring, was Philip Perry, who’s the son-in-law of Dick Cheney. He was lobbying for them, went on to become the general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE. And—

AMY GOODMAN: He’s married to Cheney’s daughter?

RENEE FELTZ: Yes. And then, the next year, CCA saw their highest revenue ever, for example. So, we also looked at their—so that’s one example of their revolving door. This is partly how companies make sure that the government—basically they have the government’s ear.

We also looked at the lobby money that they give to political action committees, for example, and to congressmen. We found that more than half of the senators that they spent money on are actually on the Appropriations Committee, and their most generous donations went to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, which oversees funding for these detention centers.

AMY GOODMAN: And overall, how many people are incarcerated now?

RENEE FELTZ: On an average day, you’ll see about 30,000 immigrants in detention in the United States. About 20 percent of those—and that number is growing—are in large sort of box detention centers, where they hold hundreds to thousands of people, primarily in the South and Southwest, where it’s easier to put people on planes and send them—return them to their home countries.

Essentially, this business has boomed after the government moved from a practice of catch-and-release, as they called it, to a practice of catch-and-remove. And the situation that has resulted has been an increase in the demand for beds, because people are no longer allowed to be free as their deportation hearings are pending or if they have appeals pending. Instead, they’re detained in these facilities, and sometimes for as long as six months.

AMY GOODMAN: Sergia Santibanez spent sixteen months—

RENEE FELTZ: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: —at CCA’s Houston processing center, before being deported to Mexico last year. Renee Feltz and Stokely Baksh spoke to Sergia from Mexico this year.

SERGIA SANTIBANEZ: [translated] The conditions there are horrible. Besides that, they treat you like an animal. When you first get there, they tell you you’re nobody. When I got there, the mattresses were torn. They gave us horrible things to eat, which I don’t think were even fit to feed to dogs. The one for immigrants is worse, because I have been in federal prison, and there, they give good food, treat you well, and if somebody complains about bad treatment they say they’ve been subjected to or to discrimination, they pay attention, but not here. Here it’s worse, because they even tell you that you have to put up with it, because we came to them, not them to us, and so we, in the meantime, don’t have a right to anything.

AMY GOODMAN: Sergia Santibanez is talking about the Houston detention facility. This is her daughter Luisanna Santibanez.

LUISANNA SANTIBANEZ: We actually enjoyed visiting her in the federal prison more than we did visiting her in the detention center, because at the federal prison the visitation room was—had a living room-like environment, so we could all sit around a small table. And we could only physically hug my mom before and after the visit, but we could sit there and speak with her for—like for the whole day.


And we thought that detention center visitation would be somewhat different, if not more open, given that the people in there weren’t actually like convicted of crimes, right? They’re there for immigration proceedings. It was the exact opposite. There, we were divided by the Plexiglas, and we only had thirty minutes to see her. You know, long waiting period. And it was bad.


Even though, you know, we were sad to see that she got deported, that probably would have to be the most happiest moment of our family’s life in a long time, because for the first time in like two years we would be given the chance to actually hug her and be with her a little bit. And it took her some time to recover. I think anyone who’s been in prison for a long time can tell you about the effects of having to go through that experience. But I would have to say that her detention was probably the most excruciating experience for our family.

AMY GOODMAN: Luisanna Santibanez, talking about Sergia Santibanez and her detention. Renee, you had done this interview?

RENEE FELTZ: Right. Sergia Santibanez’s case is a classic example of how these detention centers, largely run by private companies, play a key role in ICE justifying its existence. As Congress has failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform, the focus regarding immigration is on enforcement. ICE has to have its numbers ramped up to show how many people they’re deporting, as many as 300,000 last year.

Basically, when they put Sergia Santibanez in this detention center, they refused to release her until she agreed to leave the country. And that’s the case for the majority of detainees that go in there. They never see the light of day, after whatever way that they’re picked up, when they apply for their green cards, during immigration raids, some of them along the US-Mexico border, and they’re there until they agree to leave the country. It plays a key role in the US enforcement policy.

AMY GOODMAN: How much lobbying do these private corporations do?

RENEE FELTZ: They spend millions a year on lobbying. It’s not surprising, when you look at the disclosure records, you’ll see that they are concentrating, at least in part, on Homeland Security, which is ICE, on immigration issues, on issues that have to do with transparency of what takes place inside their facilities.

AMY GOODMAN: Lobbying against?

RENEE FELTZ: Yes. And it’s interesting. If you look at the lobbying expenditures of CCA between 2004 and the present, you’ll see a steady increase in the amount that they donate to Democrats. Before, we would see—I looked up the numbers this morning. In 2006, they spent about $4,000 on Democrats; in 2008, $35,000. So you can already see a steady increase. In CCA’s most recent earnings conference call with their shareholders and with analysts, they said that they don’t really anticipate any change in the demand for detention beds, depending on if Senator McCain or Senator Barack Obama get elected; they anticipate that there will still be an increase and a steady demand. In fact, they’ve got 10,000 beds in the pipeline ready for the government, should they want them.

AMY GOODMAN: Zoe Lofgren, Congress member from California, how much power do these private corporations have that are running these prisons? How much accountability? And what are you doing about it in Congress?

REP. ZOE LOFGREN: Well, I have serious concerns about how detention is being conducted and also the fact that people are over-incarcerated in the immigration system. Take the situation of Mr. Ng, who so tragically died. I mean, this is an individual whose notice for a hearing was sent to the wrong address. Consequently, he didn’t go to the hearing, because he didn’t know about it. To arrest him, as the only result of that, and refuse to let him go, when he has a US citizen wife, a job, owns a home, has two children, is a ridiculous situation. And certainly, his matter needed to be reviewed and sorted through, but there was no need at all, and he should not have been in custody at all. The case of the Iranian family seeking political asylum in Canada, they shouldn’t have been in custody at all. They should have been on their way back to Canada. So, first you have to look at who’s being put into these facilities.

AMY GOODMAN: California Congress member Zoe Lofgren, unfortunately, we have to end it there, because the show has come to an end, but we will continue to follow your legislation. Thank you so much to Renee Feltz and to Joshua Bardavid.

Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town Crier
by permission

I admittedly was caught off guard twice over the last week or so. Distracted by the gorgeous fanfare of the international Olympics, I did not expect Georgia to brazenly invade Ossetia. But another thing caught me off guard, right here in Hidalgo County: the conviction of Christopher Hughes.

Christopher's conviction was surprising, and depressing. First, he was convicted of killing his mom and got 45 years; secondly, he was 16 when the crime was committed. I think 45 years in prison for something one does at 16 is excessive, nuts, but I admit I still live in the past, when there were proud juvenile courts and some commitment to saving youth from the adult criminal justice system. I know. I live in the years of Jane Addams and the advent of social work, not the fiercely retributive, zero-tolerance, sock-‘em world we live in now.

Although often a maverick, I am mainstream enough to condemn killing. And if someone kills his mom, I think the state should step in and take appropriate action. But Christopher was not an adult criminal, despite the prosecutor declaring him one; this was a kid in a very troubled moment in his teen years. A father figure in Christopher's life died of cancer in February, 2007. He was the husband of Laura Doyle, the teen's mom, and within months Christopher was in police custody.

The Monitor reported, "In the months after [the father's] death, the relationship of Laura Doyle and her son quickly grew volatile. Deputies responded to several domestic violence calls at the trailer home they shared, where the sheriffs found mother and son fighting about his drug use and past attempts to steal a family car. In March, Laura Doyle received two years of probation for felony drug possession. She had previously been convicted of reckless conduct, resisting arrest and unlawfully carrying a weapon."

February and March must have been insane months for Christopher. Let me play Jane Addams, the founder of modern social work and of the now fast-disintegrating juvenile justice system: Where was our state and the help from the brave authorities during those two months? It isn't like Hidalgo County didn't know…authorities responded to "several domestic violence calls" during that time. Christopher was 16 and his father was dead and his mother was wacko and maybe scary, and now Hidalgo County, which didn't intervene properly with social workers, feels righteous giving the kid a "fair trial" and 45 years in lock-up, reminding everyone not to kill their emotionally disturbed mothers.

Since I started this column by saying I was surprised by things recently, readers might ask why I was surprised by the jury's verdict. Didn't child advocate Jane Addams die in 1935? Well, here's more on the conviction. Toward the trial's conclusion -- I followed the excellent reporting from The Monitor's Jeremy Roebuck -- it became obvious that the prosecution's case was disintegrating. First, there was no physical evidence against the kid, and the body had decayed badly before being found.

Secondly, Christopher's lawyer made a brilliant case that the sheriff's deputies were virtually fixated on Christopher, pressuring teen friends to testify against him. Several friends testified that the deputies coaxed them for evidence against Christopher, and they said that things they told the deputies were massaged in the written reports. "They came at me like they were trying to scare me," said Christopher's best friend. "Like I had done something wrong." (The Monitor, August 8th)

Thirdly, the sheriffs and prosecutors dropped to the bottom of the barrel and used a jail house snitch against Christopher. (The national Innocence Project -- see their site -- claims this jailhouse snitch practice has contributed to many false convictions.)

A convicted killer being held in the juvenile center testified that he had heard Christopher admit to the murder. This sort of evidence is unacceptable and should be inadmissible, and the prosecution should lose the case for trying to sway a jury with it. A 16-year-old like Christopher is expected to act tough in jail. Part of surviving there is to say you are a killer. Jailhouse talk, reported by a convicted teenage murderer, is hardly a "confession."

Fourthly, The Monitor reported other possible suspects: Laura Doyle had told police before her death that she feared someone was "watching" her and "breaking in." Also a 22-year-old convicted drug dealer, who once sold drugs to her, was found with a gun which might have been the weapon used. And Christopher's older half-brother, who "discovered" the corpse, took pictures of it and called friends before calling the police.

I was surprised…This case had "reasonable doubts" stamped all over the package. And another journalist told me that two "alternate jurors," (back-ups who watched the whole trial) said they too were surprised.

Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town Crier
by permission

Wouldn't it be horrible to be 50 and have been in prison for the last 25 years, missing out on seeing your children mature and have children of their own?

Well, that is the story of Steven Phillips from Dallas, a new grandfather who was just freed. He had been accused of sexual assault and burglary in two different cases and convicted in two different trials. (Once the police nailed him for one, they charged him with another one.)

Phillips got 30-year sentences at both trials. While in prison he was then asked by the authorities if he would confess to nine other sexual assaults which fit the pattern, and hoping for some mercy if he cooperated, he confessed to them.

The Dallas police, 25 years ago, were so thrilled to be nailing Phillips for eleven cases of sexual assault that they didn't pay attention to authorities in Kansas City who also had a suspect, one Sidney Goodyear. Because Phillips had been positively identified by Dallas victims, the police did not bother telling his lawyer about Goodyear and something quite important.

After the Kansas City police sent down a picture of Goodyear, the Dallas police had shown the picture to one of the victims, who said that Goodyear could be the rapist, but the police never told Phillips' lawyer about the conflicting evidence.

Luckily, one of the cases in which Phillips was tried involved some stored material which could be DNA tested. When the tests were run a year ago, the evidence did not match Phillips' DNA. But it did match Goodyear's! It is now conceded by all that Goodyear was the serial rapist in Dallas and Kansas City.

Should we feel pleased that justice has finally been done and Phillips is home? Yes. Should we be pleased that the system has proven itself to work, that bad decisions of the past continue to be corrected? No. The system does not work. At least not well enough to deserve praise. There are millions in prison, but only rare cases, like Phillips' case, have appropriate specimen material available for DNA testing. And the Steven Phillips case alone reflects three widespread and lingering problems.

First, our old nemesis: eye-witness misidentification. Some backward "red meat" prosecutors still dramatize eye-witness identification as a slam dunk. And juries fall for it. We now know that Phillips did not commit the eleven crimes, but ten witnesses identified him! The national Innocence Project which defended Phillips said in its press release, "It is impossible to know [twenty five years later] how those identification procedures were conducted or how certain the victims were in their identifications. In addition, police circulated Phillips' name and biographical information widely in the media before most of the victims identified him -- this made their identifications highly unreliable."

Most overturned convictions in Texas have fit the Phillips pattern. Of the 32 total DNA exonerations in Texas -- where there is no doubt the accused were innocent -- 25 of those cases involved eyewitness identification, sometimes from multiple witnesses.

The Phillips case reflected a second pattern: overzealous prosecutors who ignore conflicting evidence. Dallas alone has had 15 DNA exonerations, and the new prosecutor there has been working with the Innocence Project to undo the damage of a ferocious and racist predecessor. (Texas Monthly, Sept. 2007)

A third pattern: plea bargainings and false confessions. The Phillips case was really bizarre: Although Phillips did not confess to the two crimes he was tried for, the prosecutor bargained him into confessing to nine other ones. Because we have the Innocence Project statistics now, we know a lot more about confessions. Of the 200 people convicted whose innocence has subsequently been completely established by DNA tests, one in four had confessed!

Why so many confessions? Well, interrogation has become a science. (Google "Reid Technique" and you will cringe.) Interrogators are taught techniques like standing too close to you, controlling your space, cutting you off anytime you start to declare your innocence. Interrogators can lie to you legally, make up evidence against you; they can yell at you, insult you, keep you a long time, and suddenly turn friendly and "understanding." The spare interrogation room is designed scientifically to keep you off balance, while the experts -- they practice the techniques and get good at them -- list the things you might be charged with.

Emily Horowitz, a criminal justice professor, has a nice piece on false confessions in the latest Counterpunch; she mentions people who have become depressed, abject and "dependent" in a crisis situation. They are nervous wrecks before they are interrogated, and they are no match for scientific accusers. "Just admit you made a mistake, and maybe we can go easy on you," can be a very enticing line at just the right moment.

Horowitz continues: "According to a raft of social science and psychology research done over the past two decades, techniques like these [check the now common "Reid Technique"] are especially likely to produce false confessions when used on juveniles, the mentally ill, the poorly schooled, immigrants, and those with impaired cognition." (There is also some evidence that those who have been sexually abused when they were youth are quite susceptible to making false confessions, since part of their survival mechanism was to blame themselves rather than those they admired.)

Steven Phillips, now 50 years old, is fully exonerated now, and we should be joyous. But the current system of vigorous police work and prosecution is still dangerous to society, and we have a lot more work to do.

From the MALDEFian

Judge orders improvements in programs for English language learners

AUGUST 14, 2008 - Citing "palpable injustice" a federal court found that the State of Texas is failing to overcome the language barriers faced by tens of thousands of English Language Learner (ELL) students in the State's public school secondary programs. MALDEF's victory in United States v. Texas represents the most comprehensive judicial decision concerning the civil rights of ELLs in a quarter century.

The case was born out of long-standing discrimination against Latino students in Texas schools, which resulted in their inclusion in a 1981 Order that required the State of Texas to, among other things, provide appropriate and effective language educational programs for ELL students. Twenty-five years later, MALDEF and Multicultural Education Training and Advocacy, Inc. (META) filed a Motion under the Modified Order to enforce its terms. MALDEF argued that the State had failed to implement and monitor the bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) programs for ELL students in the state, resulting in the denial of equal educational opportunities for those students.

In July 2007, District Court Judge William Wayne Justice ruled that MALDEF was not entitled to the relief it sought. After MALDEF and META persisted in the case on behalf of ELL students, Judge Justice vacated his earlier ruling in its entirety. Finding that "[s]econdary…students in bilingual education fail terribly under every metric," he ordered the State to create a language program for ELL secondary students and a monitoring system that met the requirements of the federal Equal Education Opportunity Act.

This ruling was a tremendous victory for ELL students in a state that has one of the highest percentages of ELLs in the country. In the 2004-05 school year, more than 15 percent of the student population in Texas' public schools were identified as ELL. Ninety-three percent of those were Hispanic. According to the Texas Education Agency, only 13.1 percent of those students are recent immigrants.

The education system has significantly failed these students, allowing them to continue to experience the effects of the discrimination that first brought MALDEF to court on their behalf nearly 30 years ago. The court found that not only does the Texas Education Agency under-identify ELL students, but the "achievement standards for intervention are arbitrary and not based upon equal educational opportunity; the failing achievement of higher grades is masked by passing scores of lower grades; and the failure of individual school campuses is masked by only analyzing data on the larger district level."

"Failed implementation cannot prolong the existence of a failed program into perpetuity," the court concluded. Texas now has until January 2009 to come up with a revamped monitoring system that actually measures equal educational opportunities and an improved educational program for secondary ELL students. The new system will be introduced in the 2009-10 school year.

"This decision gives hope for the future of thousands of young Texans. Its importance cannot be overstated," said MALDEF Staff Attorney David Hinojosa who, along with META, brought the case on behalf of LULAC and the American GI Forum.

Email from Bob Libal--gm

The Texas Indigenous Council in conjunction with San Antonio musicians and other community groups will be holding a vigil this Saturday, August 16th, in Taylor, Texas. Demonstrators will gather at 12:00 noon at Heritage Park where they will rally until 1 pm, followed by walk for the children to T. Don Hutto detention center for the protest, vigil, and music from San Antonio artists. Please contact Antonio Diaz at (210) 396-9805 for more information and caravan times from San Antonio.

Oppose Family Detention Center Expansion

As many of you may know, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has proposed three new family detention centers to be located in different parts of the country. The facilities will expand the system of family detention that has been made notorious at T. Don Hutto.

As an op-ed against the new detention centers by University of Texas professor Barbara Hines in the Dallas Morning News said, "The proposal for new centers is a step in the wrong direction. Congress has repeatedly called on ICE, the agency within the Department of Homeland Security responsible for immigration matters, to implement alternatives to detention programs for families, stating that detention of families should be the last alternative and not the first."

Please take time to contact your representatives, and tell them that ICE should be investing in alternatives, not creating more Hutto-like family detention centers.

As always, see tdonhutto.blogspot.com for up-to-date information on Hutto and family detention.

By Nick Braune

Back on July 4th, The Monitor of McAllen ran a surprising -- surprising, in the sense that I was surprised they ran it -- article: "Border Patrol uni*n criticizes agency's hiring, training push." The gist of the piece is that the national uni*n (the National Border Patrol Council, NBPC) has publicly criticized how the agency is using "shortcuts" in hiring and training to massively increase its ranks.

A Washington, D.C. agency spokesman denied the NBPC charges that the Border Patrol has lowered its standards, and he told The Monitor that the Border Patrol's new recruits are actually better selected and better educated than ever before. Because this response ("better… than ever before") sounded like a defensive exaggeration, and because I have watched some of the new batch of agents, I decided to read the uni*n's report. It is on-line, 14 pages long, and seems credible to me.

In 1994 there were fewer than 4,000 agents, but all enforcement and detention ballooned during the Clinton years, so that there were 9,000 by the time Bush reached office. Increases were incremental until 2006. Then Bush suddenly announced another "immigration reform": he would double (!) the number of Border Patrol agents by the time he left office. The NBPC report says, "In order to meet that overambitious goal, the Border Patrol was tasked with hiring and training approximately 10,000 agents in…two and a half years."

How could an agency double its ranks so quickly? The Border Patrol lowered its standards, charges the NBPC. For instance, a high school diploma or GED requirement is not required of recruits. (The Border Patrol spokesman denied the charge that they had lowered their standards, according to The Monitor, insisting that the agency never did have a high school diploma or GED requirement. Hmm.)

The uni*n report, in my reading, reflects particular bitterness on one point: recruits who scored under the 85th percentile on the qualifying exam used to be turned down, but during the recent Bush push, any passing grade suffices. "Anecdotal and other evidence suggests that the reading comprehension and writing abilities of a small percentage of new-hires are no better than those of middle school students. In an occupation where poorly written documents can result in miscommunication of critical information and botched prosecution, this is completely unacceptable." One unhappy Academy instructor said, "We definitely know when we get a class from the seventieth percentile."

The training program for the recruits has been compressed to facilitate the greater numbers, and there is a scramble for trainers, according to the report. Verbal and written communication skills are being deemphasized, and even the Spanish language class, a longtime component of the training, has changed. The new Spanish program is no longer grammar-based, but is conversation-based with gimmicky pictures and storyboards.

"Instead of requiring students to speak in complete sentences in order to collect biographical data necessary to complete arrest reports," trainees are "often taught single word questions." Nombre? "There is a great deal of concern that agents who are taught this method will no longer be able to elicit enough information in Spanish to effectively do their jobs."

And post-Academy field training is found inadequate. The report prefers "one-on-one instruction and mentoring," but it is now common "to have one Field Training Officer to be assigned to instruct twelve or more trainees." And interestingly, lax field evaluation makes it hard to screen out unsuitable newcomers. Several times the report implies there is less emphasis on weeding out potential "bad apples."

The Academy training (except for the classes teaching Spanish) is now only 55 days, and the report says this is too quick for recruits to digest the material or for trainers to evaluate recruits carefully.

In the rush to recruit, one can even be admitted to the Academy before background screening is completed. The report mentions increased theft of personal and government property at the quickly reorganized (disorganized?) Academy. One fellow, Angel Avina, was already getting Academy enforcement training when it was discovered that he had been a gun smuggler the previous year.

Overall, it is a short, scathing report, evidencing morale problems in the agency and some embarrassment among older agents who perhaps dreamed of being in a premier law enforcement agency…which, of course, it was never intended to be.

Agents all know that most federal law enforcement agencies require at least a four-year college degree, while the Border Patrol doesn't even require high school graduation. (An Introduction to Policing textbook I own says only 17% of America's local (!) police agencies require less than a diploma or GED. The federal agency Border Patrol ranks lower than most all local police agencies in education standards.) But I suppose Homeland Security sees the beefed-up Border Patrol as a thug component in their "virtual wall." And walls don't need complete sentences.

***

The above article appeared in my weekly Mid-Valley Town Crier column in mid-July, 2008. A few further comments: First, I realize that a "police uni*n" like the NBPC is usually less than the best source to quote; police uni*ns are often prejudiced and busy covering for one faction or another. Still I think it is very significant that the NBPC report describes divisions in the ranks in regard to the massive doubling of Border Patrol officers ordered by Bush two years ago.

The BP has always been part of the hated La Migra, taking a central part in the vicious "Operation Wetback" (Ethnic Cleansing) in the early 1950s and always representing the side of oppressors. Still, it does seem to be getting worse, if one accepts the NBPC document.

The Spanish language training was criticized for being less rigorous, which the report indicated would make report-taking from immigrants more difficult and inaccurate, and the report seems to say there is less attention paid to weeding out "bad apples" early. That both of those complaints were raised lends credence to the report. This report is not just the griping of the old guard, concerned that new guys are coming in and taking valuable spots. The authors of the report might even be concerned that the credibility of the BP, traditionally low among Mexican Americans, is now being further undermined.

Secondly, to Valley residents it is obvious just how big the Border Patrol is getting. The BP is part of a big wall rising up along the border. (I visited with Jay Johnson-Castro recently, who estimated that of the nearly 20,000 agents nationally, less than two thousand are assigned to the Canadian border, which leaves a whopping number on the U.S.–Mexico line) As was mentioned in the article, Clinton doubled the ranks of the BP, and he doubled the INS budget in a four-year span. And now Bush is doubling the numbers again in two and half years.

The BP's uniforms are green, which contributes to the sense of militarization in the Rio Grande Valley. Indeed one fourth of the Border Patrol are ex-military, and the percentage will increase because BP recruiting stations are set up now in military bases overseas. Want a good military-style job, a green uniform, and a gun? You can have it all and stay in the States, by joining the exciting BP. (With the reports of poor psychological screening of those leaving the military and with the hurry-up mentality of BP recruiting, we may see some loose cannon problems soon.)

The BP has opened this very month a new station for Brownsville, on 51 acres of land, in a facility with 54,000 square feet. Two years ago they completed a new station in Edinburg and there is a new giant one expected in McAllen in six months. There are nine stations in the Rio Grande Valley sector.

Thirdly, incidental observation might also lead one to the conclusion that the fast growing BP is not trying hard to do public relations, but rather to harden its image. When assailed by rock throwers from the Mexican side of the border in December near San Diego, the BP fired powerful tear gas and pepper spray over the border, in complete disregard of Mexican family dwellings nearby the rock throwers. There were perhaps eight such incidents. (AP wire, Dec. 17) The BP has now put razor wire (concertina wire) on top of miles of border wall in California, supposedly to protect its ranks from attacks.

And here are three things I have mentioned recently in previous columns indicating a hardening of image:

• The Border Patrol's "Operation Streamline" is a provocative escalation, a machine-like street-level enforcement policy criminalizing the undocumented.

• They have refused to discuss with community groups their plans during possible hurricane evacuation.

• They bulldozed down the small Candelaria Bridge to Mexico, a bridge that had been a symbol of friendship for the Mexican American community for decades.

From the MALDEFian

AUGUST 8, 2008 - On July 12, Luis Ramirez, a 25-year-old Mexican immigrant residing in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, was beaten and stomped to death. Witnesses overheard anti-Mexican and ethnic epithets shouted by his assailants. This violent hate crime is a tragic example of the growing and virulent anti-immigrant sentiment heard and felt around the nation. We must put a stop to it.

In the days following his murder, MALDEF called upon U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, the United States Attorney’s Office, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to conduct a full and fair federal investigation, and to bring appropriate criminal charges against those responsible.

MALDEF also called for the dispatch of representatives from the Department of Justice Community Relations Service to quell community tensions. The Department of Justice subsequently opened a federal civil rights investigation and dispatched CRS representatives to Shenandoah.

MALDEF organized a vigil and press conference in memory of Luis Ramirez together with local community members, and focused national attention on the significance of this hate crime specifically, and those against Latinos generally. MALDEF provided much needed legal support to Luis Ramirez’s fiancé and their children in the aftermath of this tragedy.

While local officials initially attempted to minimize the ethnic aspects of the murder, the county district attorney filed murder and ethnic intimidation charges against three local teenagers. Charging documents and eyewitness accounts indicate that Luis Ramirez suffered racial slurs as the perpetrators punched and kicked his body and head causing him to foam at the mouth, to sustain two skull fractures, and ultimately, to die.

The death of Luis Ramirez has repercussions beyond his family and community. The FBI Hate Crimes Statistics Report documents that hate crimes against Latinos have increased by 35% over the past several years. We must prevent these crimes from happening and demand prosecution and punishment to the full extent of the law when they do.

MALDEF will continue to assist Luis Ramirez’s family and Latinos in the Shenandoah community as the criminal case goes forward. Luis Ramirez’s death elevates the importance of strong hate crimes laws and enforcement and exposes the depth of hostilities immigrants face all too often.

MALDEF has worked this year on the recent introduction of federal legislation to improve the integration of immigrants into cities, towns and communities across the country. S.3334/H.R.6617, introduced by Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Representative Mike Honda (D-CA), Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Representative Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX) will authorize the creation of immigrant integration councils bringing together local leaders from labor, business, education, faith, ethnic and other walks of life to promote education, job training, civic engagement and broader interaction of immigrants and the wider community. Tough prosecution of hate crimes and avenues to empower immigrants in their new communities can make a difference.

MALDEF will represent the family of Luis Ramirez and will do all that we can to ensure that justice is done. We call on you to help ensure the safety and advancement of immigrants in your own city or town. Call your Senator and Member of Congress today and ask them to cosponsor S.3334/H.R.6617. Send the message that the demonization of Latinos and immigrants must desist, our civil rights must be protected, and our contributions to the community must be respected.

Founded in 1968, MALDEF, the nation’s leading Latino legal organization, promotes and protects the rights of Latinos through litigation, advocacy, community education and outreach, leadership development and higher education scholarships.

Victory!

NEW DELHI – Bhopal survivor organisations today celebrated victory after the Government of India announced that it will set up an Empowered Commission on Bhopal, and take legal action on the civil and criminal liabilities of Uni*n Carbide and Dow Chemical. (Read more . . . )

"These documents show that Carbide's officials knew that by 1989 the ground water was severely poisoned" he added.

According to Champa Devi "The new evidence not only compound the crimes against humanity committed by Uni*n Carbide, they clearly establish the serious liability of Dow Chemical, Carbide's new owner. Dow announced its merger with Uni*n Carbide in August 1999 less than a year after Carbide's scientists found deadly poisons in the ground water. Dow knows that a whole new generation is today being poisoned in Bhopal and so far has done nothing to prevent it".

According to independent experts, the clean up of contamination could cost Dow up to $500 million.

Also see notes on Diane Wilson's arrest at the Indian Consulate of Houston in June, 2008.

Note: portions of the above were previously posted in the announcements section of the Texas Civil Rights Review.--gm

Ramiro R. Muniz - 40288-115
FCI El Reno
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O. Box 1500
El Reno, OK 73036

(Walt Harrison / Winston Smith Media)

Hutto:
First Anniversary Vigil
Dec. 16, 2007

Faten and Maryam Ibrahim

June 23, 2007
(Photo by Walt Harrison)

Also: See Slide Show from the Prisons for Profit Blog