Category: Detention

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The parents, who have no status in Canada, asked that their names not be published out of fear of eventually being returned to Iran, where they say they were previously imprisoned and suffered physical and sexual abuse.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

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

The Border Ambassador

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

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

Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr.

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

Note: the following summary of a habeas corpus writ prepared for filing in a Dallas federal court Wednesday has been incorporated into the story about the Texas Independence Day protest below.–gm

According to the habeas writ that will be filed Wednesday, the Hazazha family arrived in the USA with temporary visas during the summer of 2001 and applied for political asylum. Once the appeals for asylum had been exhausted, the family was placed under a warrant of deportation in the summer of 2005, but the family was never notified.
Suzi’s mother Juma and youngest brother Mohammad were released Feb. 6 from the Hutto jail only days before a media tour of that facility. But on Feb. 12 ICE filed notice that it intended to keep the rest of the family imprisoned at Haskell as “flight risks.” Meanwhile, Jordan refuses to take the family back. Palestine and Israel have declined to reply to requests for deportation there.

At Haskell prison, lawyers say housing units meant to house eight prisoners are frequently supplemented with sleeping bags or “boats” that allow for ten to fourteen prisoners to spend the night. When inspectors arrive, the “boats” are hidden from view.

When it comes to culturally appropriate food for Muslims, the only thing the facility offers is eggs, which are served for breakfast, lunch, and supper. At prayer, the Hazahzas report they have been mocked by guards and threatened with suspension of prayer privileges.

Lawyers are only allowed to visit with prisoners for thirty minutes at a time, and only “within regular hearing distance of a stationed guard.” The three Hazahza men have never been allowed to live together “despite written requests to be united in the same, or adjacent, pods.”

17-year-old Ahmad Hazahza was placed in solitary confinement for three months because he was a minor in an adult facility. When Ahmad began urinating blood shortly after his arrival, guards mocked his medical condition and “told him that he was ‘probably dying’ of a disease and that there was nothing that could be done to save him.” For ten days, his requests to see a doctor were denied.

Both Suzi and her 23-year-old sister Mirvat spent the first 48 hours at Haskell sleeping on cement floors of a drunk tank, because no beds were available. They both ran high fevers for two weeks after that, and were also denied requests to see a doctor.

The sisters were “strip searched” each time they met with an outside visitor, including humiliating inspections that took place in full view of male guards “on multiple occasions.” When taken to the recreation area, they were made to “walk the gauntlet” in front of male prisoners who sexually harassed them with techniques that included exhibition and public masturbation while guards laughed.

As with the attorneys’ previous Habeas Corpus motion filed in behalf of the Ibrahim family, Bardavid and Cox argue that ICE has no legal authority to arrest or detain the family; therefore, the five Hazahzas should be immediately released.

By Greg Moses

CounterPunch / DissidentVoice

The night before his five-day walk to protest immigrant prisons of the Rio Grande Valley, Jay Johnson-Castro drove to Los Fresnos to get an advance glimpse of International Educational Services, Inc. (IES).

“Where’s the school?” he asked, as a guard approached him in the parking lot.

“What school?” said the guard, explaining that IES was a detention center for “young adults” whose mothers were being held at the nearby Port Isabel Immigrant Detention Center.
When Johnson-Castro explained that he was against prisons for children, the guard replied that IES wasn’t really a prison.

“Can they go to the mall?” asked Johnson-Castro.

“No,” replied the guard.

“Can they go to the theater?”

“No,” again.

“Can they dress the way they want to?”

For the third time, “no.”

“If they can’t get out,” Johnson-Castro asked the guard, “what do you think it is?”

On his walks Wednesday and Thursday, Johnson-Castro heard from local folks that the IES facility holds about 100 boys and 60 girls who have been picked up with–and separated from–immigrant parents. If the children turn 18 years old they are transferred to an adult jail.

“One source who has been inside told us there could be worse places for the children,” said Johnson-Castro. “At least they are fed and clothed. But they are also very sad because they are not free. They are prisoners.”

“IES was the forerunner to the T. Don Hutto prison camp in Taylor, Texas,” explains Johnson-Castro. “They built Hutto in order to keep the children with their mothers, but IES is still here, still holding children separately. We still have the problem that Hutto was supposed to fix.”

Inside are Mexican children arrested near the Mexico border, but also a child from Brazil, and one from Korea. One source reported seeing a 16-year-old girl pregnant. When did the girl get pregnant? Who is able to speak Portuguese or Korean?

“We keep unfolding things,” says Johnson-Castro. “The more we ask, the more we have to ask.” For example, why are there sixty cars in a parking lot outside a prison for 160 children? If IES is not a school inside, what kind of education is being provided? If activists are troubled by the imprisonment of children at Hutto, why are they not raising issues about IES?

An Internal Revenue Service Form 990 posted online in pdf format shows that IES had a budget of $5.6 million dollars in 2004. As far as Johnson-Castro is concerned, the budget is what drives the operation.

“Sixty cars and 160 kids?” he asks. “There are a lot of families dependent for their livelihood on the imprisonment of children. And the cost of all this is that we lose our morality and conscience when we imprison children or any human being for money. And who wants it that way? The people who profit want it that way—not the rest of us.”

As with his walk to the Rolling Plains prison of Haskell, Texas, Johnson-Castro was treated to a police escort on the first day of his walk. First, the Brownsville Police, then Los Fresnos police. And on the second day, when Johnson-Castro completed the walk from IES to the Port Isabel Immigrant Detention Center, he found swarms of mosquitoes and a half dozen federal cars waiting for him at a blockaded gate.

The protest walker had been walking alone all day, without a single reporter or photographer. But there were three cars that had fallen in behind the truck of John Neck who always follows Johnson-Castro to keep him protected from traffic. So the feds had the protesters outnumbered.

“Don’t tell me you did all this for us,” said Johnson-Castro to a federal guard at the Port Isabel gate.

“Yes, we did, sir,” replied the guard.

“Well, I’m complimented. One guy walking alone.”

“Anytime you have something like this we have to take precautions. You can’t go in there.”

“No way I want to go in there willingly. I’m here to bring attention to you. This may not look like a real big event, but before you know it, what’s happening here will be known. Do you know why we’re here?”

“Yes sir, I’ve been told.”

That’s when Johnson-Castro reminded the guard, there was a time when it was legal to buy and sell human beings. “This is just a 21st Century version,” explained Johnson-Castro, the man that the Rio Grande Guardian calls Quixotic. In place of plantations we now have prisons. And it’s all done for profit.

“Can I talk to the prisoners?”

“No sir.”

“Can the media talk to the prisoners?” (A Quixotic question today.)

“No sir.”

“So where are the freedoms of speech or press? Where are these inalienable rights guaranteed by the Constitution? And why are these rights being denied to these people in a country that is supposed to be free?”

When the guard deferred the question as something that should be addressed to other federal officials at another time, Johnson-Castro replied: “This includes you.”

Not far from the prison gate at Port Isabel is a housing development for federal guards in training, but for reasons unknown the guards don’t live there now. Nobody does. The houses are all boarded up with plywood.

For Johnson-Castro and his friend John Neck, the empty houses are a sure sign of what’s not being done right. Locked up in the immigrant prisons are painters, landscapers, and carpenters. “Give us this place for the immigrants who are now in prison, and we’ll make a city out of this.”

On Friday, day three, Johnson-Castro and John Neck take their steady caravan into Harlingen on their way toward the infamous Raymondville tent city prison camp, where they plan to arrive for a 1:00 pm vigil on Sunday. The walk did get advance coverage on KGBT-TV, so the people of Harlingen should be prepared for what they are about to see.

Habeas Writ Details Allegations of Sexual Harassment, Medical Neglect, Overcrowding, and Isolation Techniques at Haskell

By Greg Moses

IndyMedia Austin , Houston / CounterPunch / DissidentVoice

There are different kinds of angry. Jay Johnson-Castro has tears in his eyes when he thinks about Suzi Hazahza at the immigration prison of Haskell, Texas.

But he’s not going to cry without doing something, so next week, Johnson-Castro will walk sixty miles from Abilene to Haskell and hold a vigil for the release of Suzi Hazahza and “anyone else” being mistreated for their desire to be American.
“I’m almost in tears trying to tell you how angry I feel,” says Johnson-Castro via cell phone as he drives home to Del Rio, Texas on Tuesday evening following three weeks of border protests.

He’s talking now about 20-year-old Suzi Hazahza and how she was subjected to body searches so humiliating that she has refused all visitors since early December. In a federal habeas corpus brief that will be filed Wednesday in Dallas, lawyers allege that both Suzi and her 23-year-old sister Mirvat have been subjected to repeated humiliations at the hands of prison guards. And according to Suzi’s fiance, the searches got even worse after his fifth visit when Suzi called begging not to be visited again.

“I can”t believe a fellow American would do that to anybody,” says Johnson-Castro. “But I’m afraid that’s the policy not the exception.”

Dallas real-estate developer Ralph Isenberg has seen the pattern before. It happened to his wife in Haskell under similar circumstances. She was imprisoned for immigration violations stemming from “bad lawyering” and once Isenberg started making noise about things he didn’t like at Haskell, his wife, too, was subjected to a full body-cavity search. To this day, he recalls the sound of the scream that the search provoked.

In protest of Suzi Hazahza’s treatment and confinement, Johnson-Castro will begin his freedom walk in Abilene on Wednesday, Feb. 28, arriving at the Rolling Plains prison in Haskell for a vigil on Texas Independence Day, March 3.

Ralph Isenberg says he’ll host Johnson-Castro in Dallas prior to the walk and introduce him to some people he has helped to free. During the walk, Isenberg pledges to join Johnson-Castro for a time, and if he can get enough people together, Isenberg plans to meet Johnson-Castro at the Haskell prison on Texas Independence Day with a bus full of people from Dallas.

“The good people of Haskell have no cognizance of what’s happening to sweet innocents such as Suzi Hazahza,” says Johnson-Castro. “And when they find out, they will rise up like the people of Williamson County did against the Hutto jail.”

Outrage at the jailing of children at the T. Don Hutto immigration jail keeps growing, joined this week by Dallas Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson and the chair of the House subcommittee on immigration Zoe Lofgren (D-CA). Both of them told WFAA reporter Brett Shipp that child imprisonment is flat wrong, period.

And grassroots distaste for immigrant jailings sparked a new protest Tuesday from honor students of Fort Worth’s Tarrant County Community College who are angry that a wonderful fellow student has also been tossed into Haskell jail for “bad lawyering.”

The Fort Worth protest for 19-year-old immigration prisoner Samantha Windschitt was covered by two Metroplex television networks, which is a story in itself.

“The good news is that all the insane things that have been happening in a disconnected way are finally being connected,” says long-time immigration activist Isenberg, reflecting on the protest and news coverage.

“I honest to gosh believe that everything we have done up to now is adding up to something bigger,” says Johnson-Castro, who helped ignite protest in mid-December with a walk from Austin to the Hutto prison. In Haskell, he plans to make the most of the date and place.

“It’s Texas Independence Day and it’s the Governor’s home town,” he says. “We’re going to be looking for freedom for people who are trying to be Americans. And we are going to Gov. Rick Perry’s hometown and free the people that need to be freed, and not incarcerate them so that someone can make a profit.”

The Rolling Plains immigration jail in Haskell is managed by the Emerald Companies of Louisiana (see: emeraldcompanies.com).

Meanwhile, New York attorneys Joshua Bardavid and Ted Cox are scheduled to arrive in Dallas Wednesday morning to file federal habeas corpus motions in behalf of Suzi, Mirvat, their father, and two brothers, who have all been held at Haskell since “armed and armored officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a middle of the night ‘raid’ ” of their home on November 2.

According to the habeas writ that will be filed Wednesday, the Hazazha family arrived in the USA with temporary visas from Jordan during the summer of 2001, and they applied for political asylum. Once the appeals for asylum had been exhausted, the family was placed under a warrant of deportation in the summer of 2005, but the family was not notified about the warrant until they were abducted during pre-election immigration raids known as “Operation Return to Sender.”

Suzi’s mother Juma and youngest brother Mohammad were released Feb. 6 from the Hutto jail only days before a media tour of that facility. But on Feb. 12 ICE filed notice that it intended to keep the rest of the family imprisoned at Haskell as “flight risks.” Where they would flee to is a good question since Jordan refuses to take the family back, while Palestine and Israel have declined to reply to requests for deportation there.

At Haskell prison, lawyers say housing units meant to house eight prisoners are frequently supplemented with sleeping bags or “boats” that allow for ten to fourteen prisoners to spend the night. When inspectors arrive, the “boats” are hidden from view.

When it comes to culturally appropriate food for Muslims, the prison serves eggs for breakfast, lunch, and supper. At prayer, the Hazahzas report they have been mocked by guards and threatened with suspension of prayer privileges.

Lawyers are only allowed to visit with prisoners for thirty minutes at a time, and only “within regular hearing distance of a stationed guard.” The three Hazahza men have never been allowed to live together “despite written requests to be united in the same, or adjacent, pods.”

17-year-old Ahmad Hazahza was placed in solitary confinement for three months because he was a minor at Haskell’s adults-only facility. When Ahmad began urinating blood shortly after his arrival, guards mocked his medical condition and “told him that he was ‘probably dying’ of a disease and that there was nothing that could be done to save him.” For ten days, his requests to see a doctor were denied.

Suzi and Mirvat spent the first 48 hours at Haskell sleeping on the concrete floor of a drunk tank, because no beds were available. They both ran high fevers for two weeks after that, and were also denied requests to see a doctor.

The sisters were “strip searched” each time they met with an outside visitor, including humiliating inspections that took place in full view of male guards “on multiple occasions.” When taken to the recreation area, they were made to “walk the gauntlet” in front of male prisoners who sexually harassed them with techniques that included exhibition and public masturbation–while guards laughed.

The prison population at Haskell is a mix of immig

rant detainees from Texas and felony convicts imported from Wyoming.

As with the attorneys’ previous habeas corpus motion filed in behalf of the Ibrahim family, Bardavid and Cox argue that ICE has had no legal authority to arrest or detain the family; therefore, the five Hazahzas should be immediately released.

Another family released from both Hutto and Haskell following the last Texas visit by Bardavid and Cox have been spending time on Isenberg’s schedule these days. Isenberg says he’s helping the Ibrahim family put together their immigration petitions so that they can stay and work. He says working with the family took several hours Tuesday. It’s not the first time he’s said that. And the way things look, it won’t be the last time–not for weeks to come.