Category: Detention

Email from Joshua Bardavid, Esq.

Hi All:

I have been receiving many telephone calls of individual Americans outraged by the detention of the Hazahza family, as well as the existence of the T. Don Hutto prison and asking how to help. One of the
things I am suggesting is a letter writing campaign. I encourage everyone to write letters expressing their outrage. Below is a sample letter if people want to use as a template to write their own:

John P. TORRES
US-ICE Headquarters
Post-Order Detention Unit
801 I Street NW, Suite 900
Washington, DC 20536

RE: Radi HAZAHZA, A95-219-510
Mirvat HAZAHZA, A95-219-508
Hisham HAZAHZA, A95-219-507
Suzan HAZAHZA, A95-219-506
Ahmad HAZAHZA, A95-219-505

Dear Mr. Torres,

I am writing on behalf of Mr. Radi Hazahza and his four children held in prison at the Rolling Plains Detention Facility.

I strongly believe that the Hazahza family should be released immediately from the detention
center, so they can be reunited with Nazmieh Juma (wife to Radi and mother of the children) as well as Mohammad Hazahza, the eleven year old
child that ICE already released from prison.

The Hazahza family has been awaiting deportation since being ordered removed in 2002, yet there is no possibility of removal since both Jordan and the Palestinian Authorities have confirmed that travel
documents will not be issued for them.

The Hazahzas are asylum seekers who sought freedom and safety in the United States. They have provided the government proof of employment offers, as well as extensive ties to the United States including Mirvat
Hazahza’s U.S. citizen husband and Suzan Hazahza’s U.S. citizen fiancé.

In addition, several sponsors have stepped forward to ensure the Hazahza’s appearance upon demand by the government and to ensure that they obey any terms of supervised release.

The Hazahza’s continued detention costs taxpayers over $600.00 per day, as estimated by the government. That means that, to date, at least
$60,000 in government funds have been turned over to the Emerald Corporation, the private company that owns the jail in Haskell. This amount does not include the money spent on litigation and other expenses
related to the continued detention.

This detention is a waste of taxpayer money, particularly since the Hazahzas present no danger to society, have provided suitable alternatives to detention, and there is no purpose in continued detention as there is no likelihood of obtaining travel documents.

Please release Mr. Hazahza and his family from the Rolling Plains prison.

Sincerely,

cc: U.S. Customs & Immigration Enforcement
Attn: Officer Kelvin Meridith
8101 North Stemmons Freeway
Dallas, Texas 75247

From one of our favorite correspondents, on one of our favorite stories. Never mind the laughable headline about “keeping families together.” In the case of the Ibrahims and Suleimans, the families were split three ways. Meanwhile, the Hazahza family is still divided. The Hazahza men are still unable to live together at Haskell, depite written requests. Get a pdf of the complete report on “Locking up Family Values” from the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children.–gm

Detention Facility for Immigrants Criticized:
Organizations Laud DHS Effort to Keep Families Together but Call Center a ‘Prison-Like Institution’

By Sylvia Moreno

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, February 22, 2007; A03

TAYLOR, Tex. — The day Mustafa Elmi turned 3 years old he had to report to his cell three times for headcount. To be able to get one hour of recreation inside a concrete compound sealed off by metal gates and razor wire he had to pin his picture ID to his uniform.

Such routines characterized Mustafa’s life, as well as that of his mother, Bahjo Hosen, 26, during their first seven months in the United States, the country to which they fled to escape political persecution in their native Somalia. They ended up in the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility, one of the nation’s newest detention centers for illegal immigrants that the Department of Homeland Security touts as an “effective and humane alternative” to keep immigrant families together while they await the outcome of immigration court hearings or deportation.
Before the facility opened, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) routinely separated parents from their children upon apprehension by the Border Patrol. Infants and toddlers were placed in federally funded foster homes; adolescents and teenagers were placed in facilities for minors run by the Department of Health and Human Services; and parents were placed in adult detention centers.

Despite the change in policy, two national organizations decry the conditions at Hutto and have termed the facility “a penal detention model that is fundamentally anti-family and anti-American.”

The center, which the DHS opened last May, is an unacceptable method “for addressing the reality of the presence of families in our immigration system,” says a report written by the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, in New York, and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, in Baltimore, and scheduled for release Thursday.

“As a country that supports family values, we should not be treating immigrant families who have not committed a crime like criminals, particularly children,” said Ralston H. Deffenbaugh Jr., president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.

During a tour of Hutto this month, Gary Mead, the assistant director of ICE detention and removal operations, said the facility, which is operated under contract by the Corrections Corporation of America , averaged 380 to 420 detainees daily. That day, Hutto housed 180 children and 150 adults — four-fifths of them mothers — from 29 countries. Seventy-five families were being detained while they awaited the outcome of their political-asylum petitions.

The 512-bed facility is part of the Department of Homeland Security’s year-long push to build detention centers or contract them out to private companies to accommodate illegal immigrants apprehended along the Mexican border. A record 26,500 such immigrants are in detention daily — up from 19,718 a day in 2005.

Hutto, located in central Texas, is used for immigrants from countries other than Mexico who are awaiting “expedited removal from the United States .”

That process ended the policy known as “catch and release,” in which such people were given a notice to appear later before an immigration judge.

Mexican nationals caught in the United States illegally are routinely sent back almost immediately.

For some years, ICE has contracted with Berks County , Pa. , to run an 80-bed detention facility for families, and the report by the women’s commission and Lutheran service touched on that center but focused on the much larger Hutto.

The report lauded the goal of keeping families together but urged DHS to close the Hutto facility, saying that “prison-like institutions” are not appropriate for families. “Family detention is not one that has any precedent in the United States , therefore no appropriate licensing requirements exist,” the report said.

In response, ICE spokesman Marc Raimondi said that the Hutto and Berks facilities “maintain safe, secure and humane conditions and invest heavily in the welfare” of the detainees. He said that ICE detention standards exceed those set by the American Correctional Association, and that the agency’s practice of conducting annual reviews and weekly visits to detention facilities “significantly exceeds industry standards.”

The report recommended that ICE parole asylum-seekers while they await the outcome of their hearings. It also said that immigrant families not eligible for parole should be released to special shelters or other homelike settings run by nonprofit groups and be required to participate in electronic monitoring or an intensive supervision program that would use a combination of electronic ankle bracelets, home visits and telephone reporting.

The 72-page report also criticized the educational services for children; the food service and rushed feeding times for children; the health care, especially for vulnerable children and pregnant women; the therapeutic mental health care as insufficient or culturally inappropriate; and the recreation time as inadequate for children. The review said that families were being held for months in Hutto and for years in the case of the longer-established Berks facility.

The report also cited inappropriate disciplinary practices used against adults and children, including threats of separation, verbal abuse and withholding recreation or using temperature control, particularly extremely cold conditions, as punishment.

Hosen, who traveled with Mustafa on an inner tube across the Rio Grande from Mexico and insisted that a stranger in Texas call the Border Patrol so she could surrender to authorities, lived in Hutto from June 30 to Jan. 30.

Granted political asylum and now living temporarily in a home for immigrant women and children in Austin , Hosen said that she and other parents in Hutto were threatened regularly with separation from their children for minor infractions such as youngsters running inside the prison. She lost 30 pounds while detained, and her son lost weight and suffered from diarrhea.

Concerned about her son’s health, Hosen asked for a multivitamin for him but was denied the request, she said.

She recalled that the day she and Mustafa arrived at Hutto and she saw the word “residential” written on the facility’s sign, she was relieved after having spent almost two weeks in a detention center for adults in south Texas while her son was held in foster care. Hosen said that although she was reunited with him, little else changed. “It was just like the place I was — detention — nothing different,” she said.

By Greg Moses

The Hazahza family writ of habeas corpus has been assigned a speedy hearing Friday morning in the Dallas Federal Magistrate Court of Judge Stickney, and family supporters are standing by to meet any needs that may arise.

This is how things looked in early February when habeas writs were filed for the Ibrahim family, so there is reason to hope that we will see the Hazahza family follow the Ibrahim precedent into freedom.

“The fact that the Magistrate is moving so quickly on the writ is very positive,” says Ralph Isenberg by telephone from Dallas.

“We hope that the Judge will give the government a deadline,” adds New York attorney Joshua Bardavid via email, “to either release the Hazahzas or to provide a written response to our habeas by providing the legal justification for continued detention.”
Five members of the Hazahza family remain in the Rolling Plains prison at Haskell, Texas. Two other members of the family were released in early February from the T. Don Hutto prison at Taylor. In the case of the Ibrahim family, it took about a week to set all of them free following the filing of the habeas writ. The Ibrahim mother and children were freed within days, but father Salaheddin was put through a bond hearing prior to his release from Haskell.

“I would hope that the government would be as willing to work with the Hazahza family as they were with the Ibrahim family,” says Isenberg. “And being personally aware of the condition that Mrs. Hazahza is in, it would be a tremendous humanitarian act on the part of the government to render the decision they are entitled to.”

Isenberg says a family support network is standing by to address the needs of the Hazahza family, just as the needs of the Ibrahim family are being attended.

Thanks to a report on conditions at the T. Don Hutto prison released this week by two immigration watchdog groups, the prison-like conditions of the facility have received wide coverage. Attorney Bardavid is scheduled to join one of the authors on Friday’s edition of Democracy Now!

“These kids remain traumatized,” says Isenberg about the families that have been released. “And its going to take a lot of work to help them recover from what has happened to them at Hutto.”

“If the Congress of the United States would take the lead of their colleague Eddie Bernice Johnson as to how awful these conditions are, they have the power to enact a private bill that would get the status of these families adjusted immediately,” said Isenberg. “So I would encourage everyone to write your Congressperson, because the only real apology for these families is not just asylum, but citizenship. That’s the way to say we are really sorry for what we did.”

With the prospects of Hutto prison already looking dimmer by the day, a reliable source tells us that the San Antonio office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has opened an inquiry into the facility for allegations of civil rights abuses and questionable billing practices.

Meanwhile an Abilene-to-Haskell walk and vigil next week will call attention to the Hazahzas and other immigrants being imprisoned in the Governor’s home town. Jay Johnson-Castro calls it the “Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free” walk and vigil.

And Isenberg is publicly offering help to people he has only read about, such as the pregnant Iraqi woman and the 9-year-old Canadian child that have been reported to be held at Hutto.

“We are identifying other key cases that we can take on,” he said. “If the Canadian government wants our help in releasing that 9-year-old boy, I have been offered pro bono legal arrangements in his behalf.”

*****ARCHIVE: DALLAS MORNING NEWS*****

Mom of detained immigrants desperate for family reunion

But she’s losing hope that they’ll all be together

12:00 AM CST on Thursday, February 22, 2007

By ERIC AASEN / The Dallas Morning News
eaasen@dallasnews.com

Life for Nazmieh Juma Hazahza changed forever one morning in November when federal immigration agents stormed her Irving apartment, woke up sleepy family members, placed guns to their heads and ordered them out.

Her family was split up and sent to different detention facilities. Mrs. Hazahza and her youngest son, Mohammad, were recently released from the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility in Taylor. But the rest of her family – her husband and four children – remain locked up.

Attorneys for the Hazahzas filed a writ of habeas corpus to order the family’s release from the Rolling Plains Detention Facility in Haskell, near Abilene.

Mrs. Hazahza hopes that they will be together one day. But she’s long on pain and short on hope.

“This exact moment, there’s not 1 percent of hope,” she said through a translator this week. “There is no life without hope.”

Immigration officials have been facing criticism for how the Hutto center is run, particularly that children have been kept at the facility. The government has denied the abuses, saying the criticism is unfounded and based on limited anecdotal information. The White House last week defended the use of the Hutto center.

The Hazahzas were arrested through a program that targets people who have ignored deportation orders, said Carl Rusnok, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman. Mr. Rusnok wouldn’t comment Wednesday on the writ or details about the family’s status.

The Hazahzas were one of three local Palestinian families arrested during Nov. 2 immigration raids, among a number of “fugitive aliens and immigration status violators.” One of the North Texas families, the Suleimans, has been deported to Jordan. The Hazahzas and the other family – the Ibrahims – have been living in limbo, in and out of detention.

Even if the Hazahzas are released, Mrs. Hazahza will be in mourning.

Her son Bassam was fatally shot by Irving police last summer. Police have said the teenager was driving a stolen car when he backed into a detective’s car. He then drove toward an officer, who opened fire, killing Bassam, police have said. The officer had told him to stop.

Family members think Bassam was influenced negatively by friends, and they weren’t aware of a criminal record. The Hazahzas say that what happened to Bassam is a separate issue and shouldn’t influence what happens to the family.

Immigration officials have stated that one of those taken into custody included Ahmed Hazahza of Irving, thought to be a son of the Hazahzas, who was convicted as an adult in three burglaries and received a 10-year probated sentence.

Reza Barkhordari, who is engaged to one of the Hazahza daughters and is acting as a family spokesman, said he was unaware of any criminal charges against Ahmed Hazahza.

Better life

The Hazahzas, who are Jordanian and Palestinian, say they’re a peaceful family. They arrived in the U.S. with visas in 2001. They say they were working hard in jobs and school in the hopes of living a better life.

The family applied for political asylum because it had a “well-founded fear of persecution if returned to the Palestinian Territories on account of an expressed political opinion,” the writ states.

It also states that the father, Radi Hazahza, was accused by Palestinian militant factions of being an Israeli collaborator.

An immigration judge ordered the Hazahzas be removed from the U.S., the writ states. But the family says it didn’t receive an order to report for detention or removal. The Hazahzas say no country will take them. They’ve been unable to obtain travel documents to leave the U.S.

From fiscal 2001 through 2005, only two Palestinian asylum cases were granted nationally, according to Department of Justice statistics.
Twenty-eight were denied.

The family wants to stay in the U.S.

The Hazahzas had plans to move into a house when they were sent to the detention centers. One of the daughters was planning to get married.

For now, life is on hold.

Mr. Barkhordari has spent several months helping facilitate communication among the family. He has written government officials, with little success. He’s had to find lawyers.

He is taking care of Mrs. Hazahza and Mohammad, 11.

“These people have ruined lives,” Mr. Barkhordari said of immigration officials.

Mrs. Hazahza said she suffered from back and neck pain while in the detention facility. She said her dental pain was so bad that she couldn’t eat at times. She didn’t receive medical checkups and was only given over-the-counter pain medicine, Mr. Barkhordari said.

Mohammad said he suffered from verbal abuse from immigration officers and felt he was picked on because of his ethnicity.

Dallas-area members of CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, are aware of the detention centers and have been trying to raise awareness, said Asma Salam, a member of the group’s local board of directors.

“We’re just trying to support the families in detention and find out what are the exact reasons they’re detained,” she said.

About 15 people protested in front of the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service office on Stemmons Freeway in Dallas on Wednesday, demanding the shutdown of the Hutto center. They also called for immigration reform.

Among the protesters were former state Rep. Domingo Garcia and Elizabeth Villafranca, head of the Farmers Branch chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

They plan to protest every week.

Other complaints

The Hazahzas who are still detained say they’ve had an uncomfortable experience.

Ahmed began urinating blood after being detained, and his requests to see a doctor were not answered for 10 days, the writ states. The daughters, Mirvat and Suzan, ran a fever for weeks but didn’t receive medical attention.

Not much food that’s appropriate for Muslims to eat is available, the writ states. The family has been mocked by guards while praying and threatened with “the loss of the privilege of prayer,” the writ states.

The Hazahzas at the Rolling Plains Detention Facility have had little contact with one another, the family says.

Family members say they feel lost. The father, Radi, appears dazed when he stares at a wall in his room at the detention center.

For Mrs. Hazahza, the pain is deep and raw. Family members say she’s been depressed.

Family may be a couple of hundred miles away, so, for now, there are pictures to remember happier times.

“I’m very heartbroken,” Mrs. Hazahza said. “The fact that I’m the mother, I put the family together. The next thing, I couldn’t do that.

“It’s so hard for anyone to be away from their families.”

Staff writer Paul Meyer and Isabel Morales of Al Día contributed to this report.

Editor’s Note from the Texas Civil Rights Review: news of Ahmad’s criminal record was reported in the Nov. 3 press release from the Dallas Immigration and Customs Enforcement and has been treated in previous postings here. We noted for example that the ICE press release presents a photo of Ahmad and mis-represents his age at the time of arrest, identifying him as an 18-year-old, which is a very curious error considering that within days of the press release, Ahmad was placed in solitary confinement as a 17-year-old juvenile at the adults-only Haskell prison.

The Dallas Morning News is the first to report on the police shooting that killed one of the Hazahza boys, although the family has shared this information openly with us as part of the background documentation of the case. We have until this time decided not to raise the issue, and would have wished that if metroplex journalists were going to surface the incident at this crucial juncture, complete with the police account of things, that they could have been a little more thorough in connecting the obvious dots. They could have quoted Ahmad’s opinion about that shooting, taking the quote directly from the archives of the Dallas Morning News (pasted below). Instead, the image of our first impression from the ICE press release of Nov. 3 and the DMN story of Feb. 22 is “smear Ahmad.” We prefer to quote the writ:

Although Petitioner AHMAD was convicted of criminal acts for which he received probation, these were non-violent offenses committed as a minor, which do not fall within the narrow exception of “exceptionally dangerous individuals” envisioned by the Supreme Court in Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 that could justify continued detention. Moreover, these acts were not stated as the basis of continued detention by
Respondents.

On Friday the Magistrate Judge is expected to ask the authorities one more time: what is the legal basis for arresting Ahmad Hazahza, one day posting his picture on the web as an adult, the next day sending him as a juvenlie into solitary confinement, and for every day since that time denying him the company of his brother or father, despite repeated claims by ICE that “families are kept together”? And the answer we hope for is: this has gone on long enough. Let Ahmad, his older brother, his two older sisters, and his father go home already, where Juma and Mohammad are waiting.–gm

*****ARCHIVE: DALLAS MORNING NEWS*****

Teen’s death raises questions

Irving: Family seeks details of events that led police to shoot him

05:46 PM CDT on Saturday, September 2, 2006

By KATHERINE LEAL UNMUTH / The Dallas Morning News

IRVING – Bassam Hazahza’s love of cars got him into trouble one last time Tuesday night.

Police said the 16-year-old was driving a stolen car when he backed into a detective’s car. He then drove toward an officer, who opened fire, killing Bassam and wounding his 15-year-old best friend. The officer had told him to stop.

Sobbing, Radi Hazahza questioned why police shot his son.

“He loved driving cars,” he said, shaking his head. “I want to believe it’s just a dream. In a few days he will be back.”

Several people close to the family said Bassam had a criminal record for similar incidents, but police could not provide details because he was a juvenile.

Irving police spokesman David Tull said the officer involved in the shooting is on administrative leave, pending a criminal and internal investigation, which is standard procedure. He said the officer has four years of experience.

The other teen will face auto theft charges. He has not been named because of his age.

Car called weapon

While Bassam’s family said the young men had no weapons, Officer Tull said the car was a deadly weapon.

“When you’ve got a car that’s coming at you that’s already struck something, I think that’s cause for alarm,” he said.

On Tuesday evening, police went to the Hillcrest Apartments off Walnut Hill Lane when they learned of two stolen cars in the parking lot. Police watched as two men took items from the cars and drove off in a third vehicle.

They were stopped and arrested. Then Bassam and his friend got into one of the remaining cars.

The officer was standing outside his vehicle at the west driveway to the apartment complex as they drove toward him, according to police reports.

“The patrol officer was outside his car trying to get them out, telling them to stop,” Officer Tull said.

Doubt and anger

Community activist Anthony Bond questioned the officer’s actions and said many young Muslims are angry with police. He said he was told there is video footage of the sh

ooting from cameras mounted in the police cars.

Bassam’s family did not learn of his death until 1 p.m. Wednesday.

“My mom fell down on the floor outside,” said Hisham, 22. “I was thinking, ‘This is a mistake.’ ”

Family members said they have many questions about what happened. All said they wanted only justice for Bassam.

“It wasn’t necessary to shoot him like that,” said his brother, Ahmed, 17.

Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd met with the family Thursday.

On Friday, the family said goodbye to Bassam in a service at the Islamic Center of Irving. Irving police directed traffic. Women and men packed the mosque.

Mr. Hazahza, his wife and six children moved from Jordan to the U.S. nearly seven years ago.

School officials said Bassam withdrew as an eighth-grader from Sam Houston Middle School in January 2005. His family said he was hoping to return as a freshman at MacArthur High School.

Moving forward

It has not been an easy back-to-school week in Irving.

The week before school, Nimitz High freshman Fernando Garcia, 15, was shot to death while sitting outside his apartment with his sister and friends. Three teens with gang ties were arrested.

At least two were former Irving High students.

Houston Middle School counselor Melanie Maine went to the Hazahza apartment to speak with teens who knew Bassam. She said no matter the subject, Bassam was laid back, always smiling, quiet at first, then talkative.

She said the shooting was discouraging.

“You’d just like to think you can make a difference,” she said. “But I love these kids. I hope when people see this happen, people realize they’re kids.”

Raed Sbeit, a youth group leader at the mosque, said he hopes the incident motivates Irving to try to focus on preventing other incidents.

“It’s the community’s job to have a support system,” he said. “This is what we need to work on – how can we help these youths?”

E-mail kunmuth@dallasnews.com

Thanks to John Wheat Gibson for bringing this story to our attention–gm

Canadian boy caught in Texas detention:
Aircraft’s chance landing in U.S. calamitous event for 9-year-old, his Iranian parents

Feb 16, 2007 04:30 AM

Michelle Shephard
Rick Westhead
Staff Reporters, Toronto Star

A 9-year-old Canadian boy is in a Texas detention centre after his flight to Toronto made an unscheduled stop and U.S. officials detained his family.

Now the boy’s Iranian parents are pleading with Canadian officials to help secure the family’s release from the immigration holding facility, which has come under fire for allegedly detaining children in sub-standard conditions.
“All the time he is asking me, `Why am I wearing the uniform? Why I am here?’” the boy’s mother said, as she sobbed during a telephone interview from the detention facility yesterday.

“We didn’t do nothing. My child is innocent.”

The parents, who have no status in Canada, asked that their names not be published out of fear of eventually being returned to Iran, where they say they were previously imprisoned and suffered physical and sexual abuse.

The family’s complicated journey began after the couple fled Iran and arrived in Toronto in January 1995. They lived here for 10 years while seeking asylum, giving birth to a son. But on Dec. 6, 2005, with all legal avenues exhausted, the parents were deported back to Iran.

The boy’s father claimed he had been originally persecuted in Iran after he was discovered with novelist Salman Rushdie’s book. Once they were sent back there from Canada, they were detained and tortured for three months while the boy lived with relatives. Once released from custody, they again fled, reaching Turkey with the help of relatives. They bought fake passports and eventually travelled to Guyana, the parents said.

On Feb. 4 they boarded a direct flight from Guyana to Toronto aboard Zoom Airlines, planning to seek refuge again in Canada. The boy’s father said the plane was diverted to Puerto Rico after a passenger suffered a mid-flight heart attack.

Once they disembarked, U.S. officials discovered the family was travelling with the fake Greek passports. They were detained for five days, then flown to the T. Don Hutto Family Detention Center in Taylor, Tex., the boy’s father said.

Immigration rights groups have condemned the detention facility since it opened last May and last Saturday, officials opened its doors to the media to try to deflect some of the criticism. The New York Times reported that the American Civil Liberties Uni*n is studying conditions there as it considers filing a lawsuit contending that the laws protecting detained juveniles are being violated.

On Tuesday, the boy’s father phoned the University of Texas’s immigration clinic and spoke with Matthew Pizzo, a student worker there. Pizzo then called the Canadian consulate in Dallas, where an unnamed employee told him the consular officials would investigate the detainment.

When he didn’t receive a return call, Pizzo said he called back late Wednesday and left a message. There’s been no further word from Canadian officials and consulate spokesperson Henry Wells could not be reached for comment yesterday.

“The interesting issue here is they weren’t even trying to get into the U.S.,” said Francis Valdez, a supervising attorney at the university’s immigration clinic. “They were just trying to get back to Canada.”

The parents said they hoped to reapply for asylum in Canada armed with evidence of what happened to them in Iran after they were deported.

Authorities at the Hutto detention centre have acknowledged holding 170 children there, says Barbara Hines, a University of Texas law professor.

It’s a frightening experience for children, she said. Families are held in prison cells that have had the locks taken off. Laser beams detect when people get out of their beds, the professor said.

“Families get 15 minutes to eat and then the food is thrown out,” Hines said. “Have you tried to feed a child and then yourself in 15 minutes?”

Email from Jay Johnson-Castro; original in red, white, and blue–gm

Hola y’all…

My friend, John Neck and I will be doing yet another protest walk. This time to Governor Perry’s hometown and home county of Haskell, Haskell Co., TX. John has been with me from the very first day that I set out on the Border Wall-K to stop Chertoff from building a fence on the Texas-Mexico border. I do the walking. Hundreds of others joined. John is the support crew.

On this walk to Haskell, we are going to be highlighting…exposing…the inhumane treatment of immigrants, asylum seekers…especially the young and innocent women that are being subjected to degrading abuse and sexual violations by the staff of the Emerald Correctional Management Corporation that runs the prison camp for Chertoff and the ICE Company. Our motive for the walk is to get the victims freed.
In order to do so…we are going to give Governor Perry a chance to show his leadership…or lack of it. So far, it does not seem like much of a coincidence that the Governor’s hometown and home county would have a debased prison camp that abuses human rights and human dignity while he sits quietly as the head of the great state of Texas . One hears rumors that he is actually trying to position himself to be Vice President of the United States . He either shows leadership NOW and champions the freedom of the victims in his hometown, in his home county, in his home state…or he can kiss his aspirations good bye.

[On Wednesday, Feb. 28] John and I will start this 60 mile walk north to Haskell from Abilene, TX . . We will hold a press conference at 9:00am at the park to the east of the Convention Center located at 1101 North 1st Street …between Cypress and Pine Streets. After the press conference, we will then head on over to Hwy. 83 and then start our trek to Haskell. Since Texas is such a vast state, John and I are starting in Abilene to help the state, national and international communities…as well as the media…gain a perspective of where the Haskell prison camp is.

View Google Map of “Huddled Masses” Walk

Here’s what’s behind our push to do this walk to the Haskell prison camp. It shocks, outrages and angers us what is being done to innocent people there. Rather than lose our cool and do nothing about it…we have learned that we can do something about it. Change things. Working together we all can. So…if you too would be shocked by a young woman being stripped naked and having her body invaded by the highest authority of this land…being paraded in front of criminal offenders who masturbate in front of them…please read the Texas Civil Rights Review story of Suzi Hazahza.

The violations of Suzi, her sister Mirvat…and countless other young women and immigrants imprisoned there…is occurring with impunity at the Rolling Plains Regional Jail…in what we will refer to as the Haskell prison camp. And this kind of demented conduct has been going on for a very long time. {Haskell prison camp contact info. Rolling Plains County Jail . 118 County Road 206. Haskell , TX 79521 . (940) 864-5694}

The grand lady…the Statue of Liberty …welcomes lowly immigrants saying:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

When did our state and federal governments forsake that global promise of the American dream? Right here in Texas …Governor Perry’s silence about the struggling people in the prison camps is deafening. How can he consider himself a potential national leader when he doesn’t know how to use his lofty position as governor to take care of the “Huddled masses yearning to breathe FREE”…like the ones who sit in a Haskell prison camp in his hometown…or the innocent children and their mothers who are imprisoned just 35 miles up the road from his exalted Capitol office and Texas White House…in the CCA Hutto prison camp in Taylor, TX? By the way. Is it surprising to anyone that In 2006…CCA gave $10,000 in campaign contributions to only one state elected official? Rick Perry? Might the Governor be an accomplice to this immoral and criminal for-profit prison system in Texas ? What does his silence say?

So our walk to the Haskell prison camp is a walk to liberate the “Huddled masses yearning to breathe FREE”. We start here in Texas . We will carry this liberation across the country. We are seeking freedom and independence for ALL the immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees…who come to this country based on the international promise by the Land of Liberty …only to fall victims to a perverted-for profit-money laundering-scheme that imprisons them and steal them of their dignity.

This especially includes the liberating of Suzi and her sister Mirvat Hazahza…and the bright young college student, Samantha Windschitt. Why? Because we do not believe that any human is illegal on planet Earth…let alone innocent youth. (See attached photo with some freedom fighters, including Rosa Rosales, President of LULAC, who witnessed the Hutto prison camp first hand and pledged her national organizations resources to close all such dehumanizing prison camps.)

Our walk to liberate the “Huddled masses yearning to breathe FREE” starts on Wednesday, February 28th. We will walk for four days to arrive at the Haskell prison camp…to hold a Texas Independence Day Vigil at 3pm on none other than Saturday, March 3rd…Texas Independence Day.

As always…you are welcome…invited…encouraged…to walk a mile with us. You have 60 different miles to choose from. Take your pick. Bring your friends, family or neighbors. Feel free to forward or blog this invitation. Let your organizations know. Be part of this rapidly growing grass roots dissention of the atrocities that are being committed right here on American soil…under the American and Texas flags.

Join with us in not just reading about it…but in making a difference…in making history. What happens in Texas sets a precedent for the rest of our county. So…come walk a mile with us…

Jay

P.S. John and I are most willing to accept a meal, lodging or trip expenses. John comes from Brownsville . I come from Del Rio . We are not funded by any organization. We are grass roots folks like you. We do this on our own…along with your help. If you would like to help, you can call Sarah Boone at (830)768-1100…or e-mail her at sboone@stx.rr.com. She’s our “command center”. (:}) JJJ

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The Border Ambassador

Connecting.the.dots…making.a.difference…

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Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr.

Del Rio, Texas, USA
Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila , Mexico