Email from Jay J. Johnson Castro, Sr.–gm
Greetings amigos…
Last week at the Hutto Anniversary Vigil a letter was publicly read to President Bush to free the innocent children of Hutto prison as well as all across the United States. We want the same deal for the innocent children that Scooter Libby got. That letter is being mailed to the President tomorrow.
If you share in the sentiments of this letter and would like to also send this letter to the President…in your own name and/or that of your organization…feel free to do so. (See copy below) Feel free to make copies and share this letter with your respective networks.
Enjoy the holidays…your friends and your family…
Jay
Jay Johnson-Castro, Sr. as St. Nick
(Photo by Walt Harrison / Winston Smith Media)
President George W. Bush
The White House
Ref: Free the Children Imprisoned in America
Mr. President,
As the President of the United States of America, as the most powerful and first global ruler in world history, we appeal to you. Please exercise the power of your presidency and that of your office to free the innocent children from the grips of prisons. If you can commute the sentence of Scooter Libby, who has been convicted of crimes of national proportions, you can surely free innocent children who have committed no crimes and yet are in this T. Don Hutto prison with no rights on American soil right here in Taylor, Texas.
In 1989, the world community adopted the International Rights of the Child. In 1990, the US Congress voted to ratify those rights. In 1990, your father, the 41st President, refused to sign those rights of the children into law.
Sixteen years later, at its grand opening in May of 2006, your Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, bragged about T. Don Hutto being the prototype of prisons that would detain innocent immigrant children all over this country. That also means that your administration has been guilty of orchestrating such crimes as the imprisonment innocent children, which is now being done by private “for profit” prison companies.
One year ago today, December 16, 2006, we the people of this great State of Texas stood up to that immoral and illegal position. We have continued and will continue to oppose, as well as expose this immoral and illegal act. We appeal to you for your help. We need your help.
In May of this year, 2007, the “Special Rapporteur”, Jorge Bustamante, from the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations came to Texas to inspect the human rights violations of children in prison cells. He was denied access by Mr. Chertoff. At your directive as Commander and Chief, our government has bombed a country because it denied access to UN inspectors to inspect WMDs that did not exist. Sr. Bustamante was denied access to investigate human rights violations that did exist, as has been born out in the August settlement between Mr. Chertoff and the ACLU.
The attorney who drafted and signed the contract with Williamson County Commissioners and Corrections Corporation of American (CCA) to imprison innocent children for profit, Gustavus “Gus” Puryear IV, is the corporate council for CCA. He is also a deacon of the First Presbyterian Church in Nashville, TN, a church that openly opposes ill treatment of immigrants and profit prisons. His actions not only betray his faith, his actions betray the moral conscience of America and the laws of the international community. As an accomplice to the imprisonment of innocent children for profit, he is morally, let alone judicially, unfit and your recent nomination of him to the Federal bench should be immediately withdrawn.
Now, at the end of this year of 2007, our country, with the exception of Somalia, is the only country in the world that does not guarantee innocent children basic human rights. If you are truly a man of faith, you well know that the Lord would never have allowed the imprisonment of children. He scolded those who would even look down upon them. As the author of “No child left behind”, this is an appeal to you to assure Texans, the United States of America, and the international community that “no child will ever be left behind bars” in the entire world…let alone on American soil…“deep in the heart of Texas”. To do otherwise would be a continuance of what is totally unchristian, un-American, immoral and illegal by any standard of decency.
Since you intervened in the case of Scooter Libby, stating that the punishment did not fit the crime, we publicly appeal to your sense of fairness and justice to intervene in this case and to readily declare that the imprisonment of the children of the world does not fit their innocence.
Your Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security allows these children to live in the 8’ x 12’ cells of this medium security prison. Mr. Chertoff spends a minimum of $2,800,000 per month of our taxpayers’ money to commit this international crime. On this very day, that amounts to $20,000 per child per month. That is a corrupt amount of our money being funneled to CCA to imprison innocent children that should never be behind a prison wall. Such a heinous practice must not be allowed to exist in the land of the free. Mr. Chertoff has betrayed America by such an immoral, inhumane, illegal and politically corrupt act. He should at the very least be indicted for crimes against humanity.
Since you are the leader of the “free world” then please free these innocent children, immediately. If you grew up singing “Jesus loves the little children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight” please exercise the values you were taught in your church here in America. You are the one, the only one, who can overturn the immoral and criminal decision and practice of Michael Chertoff.
Please do the moral thing. Please do the humane thing. Please do the legal thing. Please show yourself to be a leader. Do not let the imprisonment of children in “for-profit” internment camps under you watch to cloud your legacy as the 43rd President of the United States. Put an end to this crime against humanity now, before the end of your term. Show the world that we as Texans and Americans still believe in the tenets of the Declaration of Independence, that we really do believe that all are endowed by our Creator with the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Show the world the power of the Constitution, that “all men…even children…are created equal”.
Today, at this Hutto Anniversary Vigil in protest against the imprisonment of the children here, “We the people of the United States”, make this appeal to you. Texans, Americans and the whole world look to you to show such moral resolve that no other elected or appointed official in America seems to show. We appeal to you to exercise your moral leadership and give these children here in Hutto, and all immigrant children across our great country, at least as good a deal as you gave Scooter Libby.
Very Sincerely,
Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr.
Freedom Ambassadors
Del Rio, Texas
Texas Civil Rights Review 