Category: Detention

Email from Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr. with forwarded message from Beth Freed.

Hey folks…

It’s official. It’s exciting. It’s moving. It will be history making…

Amnesty International is sponsoring Hutto Vigil [X]. Following that lead is an assortment of organizations that will be supporting and participating in that vigil.

June 23rd is the selected date. It is the Saturday after the International Day of the Refugee. So mark your calendars. We have over a month to make our personal and organizational plans.

Tomorrow LULAC National will hold a press conference in San Antonio to make official their participation.

A coalition of organizations from the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex CAFHTA has already announced their participation. You can read their announcement below.

What is this all about? Something very morally fundamental. In the country that banners “inalienable rights” and “liberty and justice for all”…no child should be imprisoned…let alone for greedy callous profit. Hundreds of children are imprisoned with their mothers in the Hutto prison camp in Taylor, TX. This is shocking to many Taylor and Williamson County residents. This is immoral and criminal. It violates the conscience of thousands of Americans. Yet the elected officials at all levels…from the City, County, State and National…are complicit in this atrocity.

Our country has fought against those who would have camps with out due process. Somehow our government is committing this heinous crime of imprisoning children…an act violates all moral and human decency. It is an international embarrassment that our government would be at war on the other side of the world while this very same government would imprison innocent and desperate people…and allow private for profit prison companies to be making grotesque amounts of money off of their desperation….and then deny a U.N. Human Rights “rapporteur” from inspecting conditions at Hutto. And it’s OUR country and our money…so we have a right to say “Hell no!”…we won’t allow this.

I’m also sending you an Action Alert. This relates to Congress making a disastrous decision within the next 24-48 hours…to increase imprisonment of refugees and asylum seekers…who come here as victims of these very same forces who would now imprison them for profit…and now want to legitimize their atrocities. You can weigh in here and now http://capwiz.com/rightsworkinggroup/callalert/index.tt?alertid=9757966

You can also open the attached Immigration Action Call…

Now…from CAFHTA…

Jay

Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Forwarded message

Hi there, friends,

Throughout the Metroplex, civil rights groups have joined hands to take action against the injustice currently taking place in our state. Entire families, including infants and children, are being detained at the Hutto Family Detention Center in Taylor , Texas . This is a privately-run, for-profit facility. Read the ACLU write-up on the prison camp here. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prefers to sugar-coat the prison by calling it a “residential center” – read their spin here. Read about the Corrections Corporation of America , the company that makes money off of imprisoning children, here.

Recently, the U.S. government denied a U.N. inspector access to the facility. Isn’t that one of the reasons we are currently at war?

The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA), the NAACP and the Dallas Peace Center are a few of the partners who have joined the new coalition. Children and Families for Humane Treatment Alliance (CAFHTA) will work as long as it takes to educate the public to the atrocities taking place here at home and shut down these concentration camps.

Please visit the CAFHTA Yahoo Group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CAFHTA/. Sign up to receive ongoing information about the plight of immigrants in our nation and upcoming actions in response to the deplorable conditions at the Hutto Family Detention Center. We are currently planning an action in conjunction with Jay Johnson-Castro and his Free the Children campaign for June 23 on-site the Hutto prison.

Please join us in the fight for justice, for the kids’ sakes.

In peace and solidarity,

Beth Freed

MLFA/CAFHTA

By Greg Moses

“I’ve got to show you something I’m proud of,” says Jay Johnson-Castro, pulling a stack of business cards from his pocket and dealing off the top. “The Border Ambassador,” says the card, with a neatly cropped photo of Jay walking, foot up, head down, hat brim filled with sunlight.

“Jane Chamberlain, a very, very frail Austinite made these cards for me. She’s one of the lady champions of this thing. That was a long-distance photograph that John Neck had taken when Teye joined me for the first day of the first Hutto walk four months ago.”

John Neck is the driver who usually accompanies these walks, protecting Jay’s back. But this weekend John is tending to a medical emergency in the family as Jay returns for a second walk from Austin. Over three days time, Jay will walk from the Capitol to the T. Don Hutto prison for immigrant families. On Sunday evening the walk will end with a vigil until 8pm.

On Saturday morning Jay sits inside a cozy Austin cafe, sipping a cup of coffee before he drives to Manor for the walk of the day. An impatient wind from the NorthWest chills the faces of the very few who walk the avenue outside.

Last week, before launching his walk from the Capitol, Jay met with the staff of Austin Rep Eddie Rodriguez to get a status report on a House Concurrent Resolution (HCR 64) that would, “respectfully request the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to reconsider all alternatives to the detention of immigrant and asylum-seeking families with children.” Rodriguez co-filed the resolution with Dallas Rep. Raphael Anchia on Feb. 5. The resolution was referred to the State Affairs Committee on Feb. 12 where it today still sits on the desk of chairman David Swinford (R-Amarillo).

In a widely reported move at the end of March, Swinford announced that he was going to take immigration off of the agenda at the statehouse, effectively killing about 30 bills, including HCR 64.

“Hopefully we elevated the awareness a little bit, however small, but at least it’s on record that these guys have sat there for two months, let babies be imprisoned, while they continue their cushy lives of authority. I find it kind of appalling.”

“And yet we have 19 representatives, 17 sponsoring and 2 co-authoring, but unfortunately most of them are Hispanic” (sponsors are: Alonzo, Bolton, Burnam, Castro, Escobar, Farrar, Garcia, Gonzalez-Toureilles, Hernandez, Herrero, Donna Howard, Martinez-Fischer, “Mando” Martinez, Rick Noriega, Olivo, Quintanilla, Veasey, and Villarreal). “Of the 17 who have signed on, 14 are Hispanic, which makes it look like a Latino deal, and it shouldn’t be a Latino deal.”

Does it say something about the white voters?

“The white voters I’m talking to are shocked.” At a music gig Friday night in South Austin, Jay met one woman who works with children who said she would try to show up on Sunday. Another woman who runs an international art gallery gave Jay her card and promised to forward information to her clients.

“They’re blown away. They say ‘yeah, I’ve heard about Hutto, that’s terrible.’ But my big thing is to try to figure out how do you get that ‘God, that’s terrible’ into some kind of action. ‘That’s really terrible, now let me get back to my enjoyable life, my routine, my every day stuff,’ you know? I have good friends who joined me on the first walk, but they say they don’t want to get too involved, because they have their lives to live, you know?” Jay laughs a little.

“I’m subjective at this point. I’m not even objective anymore. I’m just focused. So I think I’m like the converted smoker who says everyone ought to quit smoking. Now that I’ve become aware of the children, I think everyone ought to join in, but it isn’t going to happen.” Jay’s brown eyes reach across the table. “I think it should.”

“I had some good interviews. Sharon from SisterSpace interviewed me and that will be on the web. And then Pacifica radio. I had my second interview with them. They interviewed me the first time from Los Angeles when I did my Raymondville walk. This time a producer with Flashpoints called me the night before and asked me great, great questions. So we had that interview yesterday. And then the Spanish-language producers at Pacifica called me and interviewed me in Spanish about 45 minutes later.”

“On Thursday morning I was on a call-in show for a Spanish-language radio station in Phoenix, and the calls were lining up, and it was really neat, and I know it was a listened-to show, because I’ve hosted a radio talk show, and sometimes you get the calls and sometimes you don’t. There was just a long stream of call-ins.”

“There was only one that was kind of questioning. He was an an immigrant who became a citizen, got his green card. And he says this is really a great country, why do people say that it’s not? My response is, it is a great country, but we’re losing our greatness. There’s an element within the government that’s doing this. But anyway, everybody else was pretty well responsive.”

“Every time something like that happens tells me that maybe a few hundred, maybe a few thousand more people are hearing this message, and overall the response is the same. There are very few people who would defend this policy. And I’m not sure what gets people the most. When I tell them about the incarceration of children, they say, ‘oh really, wow, that’s terrible.’ Then I say it costs $7,000 per month and they say, ‘God, that’s gross!’ Is it because of the money? I think everybody believes it’s wrong, it’s immoral, but then it’s almost like they’ve become really sleazy when it’s for money.”

KXAN learned Wednesday the alleged misconduct that resulted in the firing of a guard at the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor was sexual in nature.

The center is one of only two in the country that detains children and families for non-criminal immigration violations.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, or ICE, officials gave the media a look inside earlier this year, but this week Williamson County investigators took a closer look.

In a statement issued Wednesday the sheriff’s office confirmed they investigated a report of officer misconduct, and it was sexual in nature.

It went on to say their findings would be turned over to federal investigators, because the misconduct did not fall under local or state statute.

“Technically, you’re not looking at people who are convicted of crimes, and this isn’t an entity that’s subject to the sort of state and municipal control as other detention facilities should be,” said attorney Wayne Krause of the Texas Civil Rights Project. . . .

Email from Jay Johnson-Castro.

After the Hutto Walk II and the Hutto Vigil VII this past weekend…I’ve had a chance to sift through all the results and realities. Great people supported the walk and the vigil. Great people showed up. Great minds are determined to forge ahead to Free the Children.

Are we ready to take it to the next level in order to FREE the CHILDREN? If so…please mark your calendars for Saturday, April 28th, 11:00am-4:00pm. Texas State Capitol…Austin.
Let’s start by saying first…that we now have registered FreeTheChildren.info. With that name, our mission is defined. We intend to start a state, national and international campaign to free the thousands of children from cruel and inhumane, yes illegal incarceration…starting with the ugly reality that we have hundreds on innocent little ones in concentration camps… right here in Texas. There are children from some 30 countries in Hutto…who are denied all the freedoms that America promises.

Second reality is that some within our government…local, state and national…are callous enough to not only permit the imprisonment of babies…some actually derive financial and political benefits for their complicity in this crime…which up until now is being committed with impunity. That too will change.

Dedicated people are battling all kinds of sick and warped things going on in the world around us as well as in our own country. We are constantly forced to prioritize which battles we choose to fight…no? But…how much more sinister and demented…and how much more worthy a cause do we need…then the reality that precious little children are being cruelly imprisoned….and for-profit…on the pretext of national security? How much more cruel can the Administration, Chertoff and ICE be than to abuse these babies.

How much more repugnant does the federal government have to be…before the sane people of this country, who still have a conscience, rise up and say that we’ve had enough of this tyranny. Babies, children in their formative years, elementary aged children, school age children…should not be in concentration camps…let alone for profit. A concentration camp with a swing set…is still a concentration camp!

We now know that Rep. Eddie Rodriquez and Rep. Rafael Anchia are trying to champion the freeing of these little ones. They have authored HCR 64…essentially condemning the immoral incarceration of children at Hutto. Yet, the Chair of the State Affairs Committee, David Swinford, has blocked the progress of that bill. He has refused up until now…to allow we the public to address the Hutto concentration camp before the State Affairs committee in a public hearing…thereby disenfranchising democracy and the voice of “We the people”. And…only two weeks remain for committee hearings.

Since Swinford is willing to prevent we the people from expressing our views…”We the people” will therefore hold our own public hearing in the Capitol. A “We the public” Hearing. In one week…Saturday, April 28th we will meet in Committee Room: E2.028 The room is reserved from 11:00am-4:00pm. This is an opportunity for any one who has that inner conviction that the innocent children in Hutto should be freed…along with their mothers…to publicly voice their hearts and minds.

If you’re sincere about freeing the children…make this sacrifice. Join us at the capitol…to Free the Children. You don’t have to stay the whole time. But do…join us to Free the Children who are being immorally and illegally imprisoned in Hutto.

View the resolution that was introduced by Rep. Eddie Rodriquez to free the children in Hutto.

So amigos. Let’s make a difference. Please forward this to your friends and organizations…and the media contacts that you have. Let’s Free the Children!!!

Let’s remember…

“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people” Martin Luther King, Jr.
Looking forward to seeing you at the Capitol this coming Saturday…the 28th…

Jay
(830)768-0768

Email from Jay Johnson-Castro

Afternoon Freedom Ambassadors…

When Hutto Vigil IX was announced…for June 23rd…

…another group headed up by Antonio Diaz of the Texas Indigenous Council was in the planning stages of a June 9th vigil at Hutto. While this was not done to confuse anyone…there seems to be a little confusion. Let’s try to clarify it this way.

Hutto Vigil IX. This is a Hutto Vigil. It is headed up by Antonio Diaz and his group. We will therefore identify it as Hutto Vigil IX. It will be held on June 9th. We applaud the initiative and encourage all who can to support it. We encourage you to call Antonio to get the specifics. For info call (210)396=9805. E-mail: texasindigenouscouncil@yahoo.com.

Hutto Vigil X. This is the vigil sponsored by Amnesty International. Many organizations have committed to support that vigil, including LULAC. This vigil will be held on June 23rd. Amnesty International will make the public announcement with the exact details at a future date. The Hutto Vigil X date of June 23rd was selected because it falls on the weekend of the International Day of the Refugee. Folks will be coming from around the country to attend Hutto Vigil X.

Here’s a brief yet special update from Freedom Ambassadors…Gloria Benacci and two daughters…who came up with the coveted “No Child Left Behind Bars” buttons. Gloria says:

“We have T-shirts…logo, white with black/red printing front and back…Spanish and English. (see attached) Only need a better estimate on how many we need. The T-shirts are high quality and our printer does an incredible job.”

These T-shirts will be available for a suggested donation. For more information on the buttons and T-shirts…we invite y’all to visit Free the Children at MySpace where we are approaching 2000 friends…and according to Gloria…going on 10,000.

Regarding the Hutto vigils…we cannot have too many. If anything…we should try to have more. We should all try to muster up all of the expressed outrage that we can…against the imprisonment of innocent little children…and those who would profit off of them.

Hutto is like an ugly boil that has come to the head. It is so in your face. It violates everything we believe as a people. Unless we put a stop to this kind of abuse of democracy…such atrocities will go from ugly to uglier. Why do we say that? In May of last year…for the Hutto dedication…the proud architect of imprisoning innocent children…Chertoff, himself…bragged about Hutto being the prototype for future prison camps for families.

We the people happen to disagree with this demented concept and we are letting Chertoff, Bush, Congress, the U.N….and the world community know…that in no uncertain terms…we will not tolerate such conduct that defies all universal laws. Americans with a conscience will keep growing in numbers and massing together…to free the innocent children of the world. Taking down their prize razor wire, after months of protest, does not change the fact that the tender lives of little ones are being abused by the world’s biggest bullies.

In solidarity…we come to their rescue. We come to demand their freedom…and the freedom of their mothers. We come to defend our family and our race. The human family and the human race.

No Child Left Behind Bars

Free the Children

Jay

“If you make peaceful change impossible….. you make violent revolution inevitable.” President John F Kennedy