Texas Civil Rights Review

Author: mopress

  • Not in Texas: Asylum-Seeking Immigrant Receives Humanitarian Treatment from Feds

    Immigration: Dad Can Take Bodies to Mali

    Wednesday March 14, 2007 10:46 PM

    By VERENA DOBNIK

    Associated Press Writer

    NEW YORK (AP) – The man whose wife and four children killed in a fire in the Bronx won special permission Wednesday to return to the United States after taking their bodies to his African homeland for burial.

    Mamadou Soumare had faced the possibility of not being able to accompany his family’s remains for fear he wouldn’t be allowed to return to New York.

    A space heater was blamed for the fire last week in the building that Soumare’s family shared with Moussa Magassa, the father of five other children who died in the blaze.

    On Wednesday, the federal Citizen and Immigration Services office in Manhattan gave Soumare a so-called “advance parole” that will allow him to return to the United States from Mali.

    “We’re happy we’re able to do it,” said an agency spokesman, Shawn Saucier.

    Saucier would not say what Soumare’s current immigration status is or why he needs the parole, citing federal privacy laws.

    Soumare had applied for asylum in 1992, but the case was never adjudicated, said Sen. Charles Schumer.
    Rep. Jose Serrano said after Monday’s funeral for the 10 fire victims that some members of the Soumare family may be living in the United States without immigration papers.

    Advance parole for re-entering the country typically is issued to people living in the United States who have applications pending for legal residency.

    Soumare’s family is to be flown back to Mali later this week and buried in his remote village of Tafaciriga. In addition to the four children who died, Soumare has three sons in Mali.

    “He goes home to three children. This is a day of light in what was a week of hell for this man,” immigration lawyer Michael Wildes said after his client received the re-entry permit.

    The Magassa children were buried in New Jersey.

    Three surviving fire victims are still hospitalized in good to fair condition.

  • Beyond the Shadow of Lady Liberty

    By Greg Moses

    There are some people who live in the shadow of Lady Liberty, and some people who don’t.

    We feel nothing but sympathy for Mamadou Soumare, the much publicized New York cabdriver, whom immigration authorities will allow to return to the USA after he buries his family in Mali.

    And we feel nothing but heartache for Radi Hazahza, the widely ignored Texas vehicle inspector whom immigration authorities will not release to the embrace of his living family until at least the end of April.
    Toward the arbitrary gavels of power that grant humanitarian treatment, international press coverage, and involvement of a US Senator in one case, while the other case begs for anything that could be counted on two hands–we feel nothing but rage.

    Our readers lately have turned to symbols of Civil War to make sense of the moral gravity we feel about the struggles that surround us. And the contrast between news from New York and Texas does remind us of the difference between blue and gray.

    As Jay Johnson-Castro prepares for a walk next week to dramatize the injustice of immigrant detention, he sends a list:

    The Rio Grande Valley is home to several detention facilities. Other than the newly built county jails in Cameron, Hidalgo and Willacy counties, there are the Segovia State Prison, Lopez State Prison, La Villa Detention Center, Wackenhut Detention Center, and the federal detention centers for immigrants in Raymondville and Bayview.

    When we compare the political economies of New York City with the Rio Grande Valley or the Texas Rolling Plains, we do find Civil War parallels in contrasting maturities of industrial development.

    Yet we do not forget that New York also has its prisons and immigrant detention hells, which also get ignored more than they get reported. And although the jails of New York are mixed into neo-liberal development, we do not forget that their functions are no different than the ones in Texas.

    So we ask for something besides a military-prison economy in Texas, but we ask for something better than even New York has seen. Today it looks like the shadow of Lady Liberty covers New York better than Texas, but we’ve been down Malcolm X Boulevard, where the shadow of Lady Liberty’s gown also blows this way and that.

  • Bring the Suleimans Home Tomorrow

    The story from New York, about the immigrant cab driver who will be allowed to leave the country to bury his family, reminded us of a family that we would like to see back in Texas.

    Adel Suleiman was deported in late January, along with his wife Asma Quddoura, their 17-year-old son Ayman, and their American twin daughters, age four.

    Why can they not also receive something like an “advance parole” that would allow them to return to their freshly bought home in Dallas? We asked a relative how they are doing in Jordan.

    “They’re doing fine,” came the reply. “Ayman is at school now, and their furniture is on its way. Regarding the house, it’s currently in the foreclosing stage. I don’t know how soon the bank will act on foreclosure. If you can help in any way I would be very appreciative. I really appreciate your concern and efforts.”

    As for the family’s return to the USA, the relative expresses a sense of the difficulties involved, but it would be the best thing for them to return home to Texas.

    “You probably know something better, please advise how if possible,” writes the relative. We only know what we read in the news. With international press attention, intervention by a US Senator, and the administrative power of US Citizen and Immigration Services, it is possible to take care of these things.

    In other words, it is possible that federal officials can return two 4-year-old Americans to their Dallas home tomorrow. It is what should be done.–gm

  • Archive: Advance Press for Valley Walk

    From the Rio Grande Guardian and KGBT 4 TV Harlingen come two advance stories about next week’s walk. For background on the issue, also see subtopia and aztlan electronic news. Materials forwarded by Jay Johnson-Castro.–gm

    Johnson-Castro walking in the Valley again, this time against immigrant detention camps

    By Steve Taylor
    Rio Grande Guardian

    AUSTIN – Anti-border wall activist Jay Johnson-Castro, Sr., is heading back to the Rio Grande Valley next week… for another walk.

    “I’m hoping many of the friends I made on my last Valley walk will join me on this next one,” Johnson-Castro told the Guardian, announcing details of the walk.
    The walk starts in Brownsville on Wednesday, March 21, and ends in Raymondville on Sunday, March 25.

    “This time I want to help give voice to the immigrants locked up in the children’s camp in Los Fresnos, the prison camp in Bayview, and the new tent city in Raymondville,” Johnson-Castro said.

    The 60 year-old Del Rio bed and breakfast owner achieved international attention last October when he walked 205 miles from Laredo to Brownsville to protest the federal government’s plans to build 700 miles of extra fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.

    Johnson-Castro also protested the border wall on a 55-mile walk from Ciudad Acuña to Piedras Negras in November and a caravan tour from San Diego to Brownsville in February.

    However, much of Johnson-Castro’s focus of late has been directed towards what he claims is the inhumane treatment of immigrant children and families in prisons administered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    He has walked from Austin to Taylor and participated in a number of vigils to protest conditions for Other Than Mexican families detained at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor. Last week, the American Civil Liberties Uni*n filed a lawsuit over conditions at the center.

    Johnson-Castro has also walked from Abilene to Haskell , Texas , to protest an ICE facility in Haskell.

    Johnson-Castro said one of his main objections to ICE policy was the decision to award huge contracts to private prison operators.

    “I just cannot understand how our government can pay private companies to imprison children. I do not know how to equate that in history. It’s like rounding up wild horses. It’s beyond my imagination,” he said.

    Johnson-Castro said that in Raymondville, that meant awarding Management & Training Corporation (MCT) $7,000 a month per inmate. In Hutto, he said it meant awarding Corrections Corporation of America $126,000 a month for medical services the immigrants do not get.

    Johnson-Castro said he was “encouraged” by all the attention the Port Isabel Detention Center in Bayview was getting in Massachusetts and in Congress.

    ICE’s decision last week to round up hundreds of immigrants, mostly female factory workers, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and fly them to both Bayview and a detention facility outside El Paso, angered Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and many in the state’s congressional delegation.

    Johnson-Castro said the BBC news network was interested in filming the Bayview facility.

    “I cannot tell you how many folks contact me every day now from all over the state, the country and the world,” Johnson-Castro said. “They are waiting for this next walk. I believe that we will get special solidarity like never before.”

    Johnson-Castro said he hoped groups that have supported him in the past, such as LULAC, LUPE, ARISE and the South Texas Immigration Council, would participate in the latest walk.

    He said he planned to meet with the Valley staff of U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, before setting off on the walk.
    ************************

    Protest Walk in the Valley

    March 14, 2007 09:09 PM

    reported by Ryan Wolf
    KGBT 4 TV Harlingen

    Action 4 News gets exclusive details on another protest walk coming to the Valley. It’s in response to government detention centers used to house illegal immigrants right here in the Valley.

    Jay J. Johnson-Castro, the man who brought a protest walk last October in opposition of a border wall, says he’ll be staging a 5-day walk next week.

    The self-proclaimed border ambassador says he was outraged to learn families were ripped apart during an illegal immigration sting along the east coast. Many were sent to holding centers in the Valley.

    Johnson-Castro wants to highlight how the government facilities in Bayview and Raymondville translate into nothing more than prison camps… he calls it taxpayer waste.

    We ask, “Jay, you’re going to have people who are going to say these people were illegally in our country and the government is doing what they need to secure our border… to this you say what?”

    “I say the term illegal is a recent phenomenon… most of the people who came to this country… did so as a migrant… and most of them came illegally…. I don’t consider it illegal when looking for refuge . . . when looking for hope,” says Johnson-Castro.

    Here’s a look at where his 5-day walk will take him. On Wednesday March 21st… Johnson-Castro says he’ll leave from Brownsville and walk his way to the Bayview Detention Center arriving on Thursday March 22nd. From there, he’ll head West to Harlingen and then North to the Raymondville Detention Center, arriving on March 25th.

    Johnson-Castro encourages anyone from the public to join him on his quest… he says he’ll provide more details as the walk draws near.

  • Family Questions Source of Hazahza Case Leak

    We are receiving emails indicating that sources close to the Hazahza family say they have heard nothing regarding a court ruling in their case.

    In an earlier post we cite a source saying the federal magistrate court is expected to support the detention of the Hazahza family, and we have editorialized our dismay.

    At this point we have no reason to retract the earlier post, because it is from a good source. But friends of the family believe the source has been misinformed.–gm