Category: Detention

Jay J. Johnson-Castro: (830)-768-0768
Teye and Belen: (512)922-0789

PRESS RELEASE

Austin, Texas. Along with Jay J. Johnson-Castro, two professional Flamenco performers, Teye and Belen, who are based in Austin (www.teyeandbelen.com), are organizing a Christmas Eve Vigil for the children who are incarcerated in the Hutto prison camp in Taylor , Texas .

Jay, who gained international media attention when he made a 205 mile walk from Laredo to Brownsville to protest the proposed border wall as well as the walk from the Capitol in Austin to Hutto prison camp last week, proposed the Christmas Eve Vigil so as not to forget the children over the holidays who are imprisoned there. Teye and Belen embraced the thought and offered to perform there.

The Vigil will be held on Dec 24, from 5-6pm, across from the entrance of the Hutto prison camp.

Teye and Belen will use their Flamenco talents to show their protest for the inhumane treatment of the inmates of Don Hutto Center in Taylor Texas, especially the 200 children that are imprisoned there. They will perform according to their best Gypsy Campfire traditions. Since there will be no campfire…it is requested that you bring your own candles.

Everyone is invited to attend the Christmas Eve Vigil for the children who are imprisoned in the Hutto prison camp. For anyone who does attend, Teye and Belen will be giving away a free autographed copy of their latest CD, “FlamencObsesionArte”.

Most folks who would be likely to support such a vigil will already have made plans for Christmas Eve with their friends and families and enjoying traditional holiday cheer. Recognizing that few will be thinking about imprisoned children here on American soil on this Christmas Eve, Jay, along with Teye and Belen will hold this special vigil…for these children. Even if only a few are able to attend, all will know that someone is conscious of their plight.

The intention of this vigil is therefore two fold. (1) To bring hope in during the Christmas holidays to children and their families in the Hutto and other prison camps throughout Texas and the United States and (2) to bring further local, state, national and international awareness to their plight.
Address of the Hutto family prison camp: 1001 Welch St. , Taylor , Texas (35 miles northeast of the State Capitol)

If you are not part of the media, please forward this to your media friends. View Map to Hutto Prison for Children, Women, and Profit, USA

Our favorite link-back today is from Latina Lista. Go there, hang out, add your comment. Say the Texas Civil Rights Review sent you.

Latina Lista on Hutto Jail Hats off to bloggers who manage comments. Spammers ran me out of that business.

Here’s a clip from Latina Lista correspondent Aztec:

As one reader tells Latina Lista today:

After reading your blog on the facility that holds families accused of being illegal under those terrible conditions, I decided to call Homeland Security to express my outrage through their “Citizen’s comment line.” What happened next is laughable though expected. I was transferred by the operator at Homeland Security to the comment line and received this automated message:

“I’m sorry, you cannot leave a message because the box is full.”

When I got the operator back, I was transferred several times to be told by one person: “Call back in a few minutes, an office assistant is ‘cleaning it out.’”

I replied, “What does that mean? Are you guys just deleting the comments to make more room!?”

Whereupon she hesitantly replied, “No, but we’re deleting the ones…well, you know….”

I said, “I do? So am I to understand that an office aide is assigned the task of deeming messages ” insignificant” versus “worthy? By the way, exactly who in the office listens to the screened messages?” ”

She replied, “Um, I’m not sure…”

It sounded by the tone of her voice, that the messages left are given little weight, if at all. Perhaps you should find out the answers to the questions I listed above before people try to call only to end up with their messages getting deleted for their trouble. I’m sure that would make interesting fodder for a blog.

good luck.
Aztec

The United Nations Child Rights Information Netwok (CRIN) has posted the BBC Mundo preview of last week’s protest and walk to Hutto jail.

“We’re making a change in history’s timeline!” says Jay Johnson-Castro, as he coordinates a Christmas Eve vigil at the Hutto jail, where at least one pregnant woman from Palestine and four of her children are being detained for their failure to win asylum in the USA. Since their midnight arrest on Nov. 3 by agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the children have been separated from their father who was sent to an Oklahoma county jail, and from their 2-year-old sister, who was ordered by authorities into foster care.

“Your articles are showing up and copied all over the cyber world, from Australia to Europe, the Americas to the Middle-East,” says Johnson-Castro. As it turns out, what affects Civil Rights in Texas affects Human Rights everywhere. –gm

To follow CCA’s lead and call the Hutto jail a “residential center” is newspeak we won’t support. Even “detention” seems less overt than it should be. We don’t object to Jay Johnson-Castro’s “prison camp,” but jail is so much easier to type over and over again.

At any rate, look what happens when search engines get to talking to each other. Google keyword, T. Don Hutto:

Hutto, Texas Guide to Local Hotels, Lodging, Restaurants, Real …
The T. Don Hutto Residential Center, a private detention facility in Taylor, Texas, is emblematic of new federal policy that detains all unauthorized …
huttotx.usl.myareaguide.com/ – 76k – Cached – Similar pages
On the subject of America as a Corrections Corporation, where half of the people can be hired to keep the other half locked up, here’s a summer recollection:

Down in Pinal County: The Pun’s on US As the company presents it: here is a March 2006 pitch in pdf format to a Lehman Brothers Conference.

The website for “United for Peace of Pierce County” in Washington State has posted materials from the Texas Civil Rights Review and others. In a summary of issues recently brought to light, Madeleine Lee and Hank Berger encourage contacting the jail to express your opinion:

“You can write to the T. Don Hutto Residential Center at 1001 Welch St., P.O. Box 1063, Taylor, Texas 76574; the phone number is 512-218-2400, and the FAX is 512-218-2450, according to the Corrections Corporation of America web site.”
Solidarity is always gratifying, but Pierce County also holds sentimental value for me as my place of birth. Thanks, Madeleine and Hank–gm