A month and a half after receiving its first tip on the Palestinian families jailed at the T. Don Hutto prison in Taylor, Texas, the Austin American-Statesman today followed the Dallas Morning News example by publishing news of the Ibrahim family’s abduction. And at long last, a headline about the story appears in Harvey Kronberg’s Quorum Report under “news clips you need to see.”
What made the story impossible to ignore any longer was the filing of a Habeas Corpus motion in an Austin federal court. New York attorney Joshua Bardavid flew in and out of Austin Thursday to file the motion in behalf of pregnant mother Hanan Ibrahim and her four children, who have been jailed at Hutto since their arrest November 2.
And what made the involvement of attorney Bardavid possible was the support of Rita Zawaideh of the Arab American Community Coalition of Washington State and Dallas real-estate developer Ralph Isenberg.
There are two other families of Palestinian heritage at Hutto, along with an unknown number of children from other families detained by immigration authorities.
Activist attention to the prison is expected to continue with a fourth vigil on Feb. 12. Meanwhile, there is reason to be optimistic that the unlawful jailing of the Ibrahim family may soon come to an end.–gm
Texas Civil Rights Review 