Category: Detention

National leaders from LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens) and Amnesty International will join people from all over Texas for a march and vigil at T. Don Hutto Detention Center in Taylor, Texas on World Refugee Day, June 20, 2009.

The vigil will begin with a 1 pm walk from Heritage Park at 4th Street and Main in Taylor.

Participants will then gather for a vigil at 2 pm at the T. Don Hutto detention center at 1001 Welch; there will be speakers, music and other activities to honor the refugee families inside and around the world.

Those who don’t want to march are invited to come straight to the detention center on the outskirts of Taylor at 2 p.m.

Since T. Don Hutto, a former medium-security prison, re-opened as a family detention center in 2006, immigrant children and their families from over 40 countries have been detained at the facility. Many are refugees from Central America, Africa, or Iraq fleeing religious or political persecution.

The Hutto prison is a for-profit private prison operated by Corrections Corporation of America. In 2007, after a year of protests, the ACLU and University of Texas Immigration Law Clinic won a lawsuit settlement from Immigration and Customs Enforcement that improved conditions at the facility. However, that settlement expires in August 2009, and advocates are concerned that pre-settlement conditions may return.

ICE has also proposed three new family detention centers across the country, an effort that family advocates and human rights organizations have decried as a step backwards.

Activists are advocating for more-humane, less-costly alternatives to detention programs that keep families together and out of prison-like detention centers. A study by the Vera Institute found that more than 90% of immigrants on a supervised release program attended their immigration hearings. The average cost of a supervision program is $12 a day compared to reportedly over $200 a day to detain a person at Hutto.

Advocates will call on the Obama administration, specifically Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and ICE special inspector Dora Schriro, to close Hutto and end the practice of family detention.

Advocates will also call on the new administration to uphold to international standards as they relate to immigrant and children’s rights, including ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Protestors are expected to join caravans from Austin, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, College Station, the Rio Grande Valley, and Del Rio to join the World Refugee Day protest.

Check out TDonHutto.blogspot.com for more information.
Or call Bob Libal of Grassroots Leadership at (512) 971-0487; Diana Claitor of Texas Jail Project at (512) 597-8746; or Jay Johnson Castro, Sr., Border Ambassador, at jay@villadelrio.com or (830)734-8636

A caravan will leave Austin to go to Taylor at 11:30 am, leaving from PODER at 2604 E. Cesar Chavez.

Hutto Vigil Nine: Please join us in our ninth effort to end the incarceration of families with children in prison cells 35 miles to the northeast of us in Taylor, Texas.

WHEN: Saturday, June 9, 2007, 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM

WHERE: T. Don Hutto Prison, 1400 Welch, Taylor

Humanity has no Borders

Humanity is priceless. No matter how rich and powerful corporations may be, they do not own our Humanity. Being financially well off does not make you more of a human, just as being an asylum-seeking refugee does not make you a lesser human. We have one thing in common, one thing that makes us all equal: our fragile humanity.
We Native People know of the inhumanity of this government. Our ancestors were the first people in America’s prison camps. The reservation system has been and continues to be a horror. Today’s Private Prisons for Profit may not be murdering people outright, but the imprisonment of families, children in particular, kills the human spirit in all of us: victims, perpetrators, exploiters, facilitators, and all those who do nothing to stop it.

We invite musicians, artists, poets, rappers, comics, street writers, students, teachers, activists, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles . . . people who care to join us this coming Saturday. Take a stand for JUSTICE and help Free The Children!!

Contact: Antonio Diaz, San Antonio, Texas Indigenous Council, 210-396-9805 or call 866-598-0699 for car pooling from Austin.

SPONSORS: Free the Children Coalition: Cesar E. Chavez March for Justice, Texas Indigenous Council, MADRES, LULAC District 7, Brown Berets of San Antonio, Southwest Workers Union, Children and Families Humane Treatment Alliance, Fuerza Unida, Texas Criminal Justice Coalition

DIRECTIONS: Take IH35 exit 253 for 79 east to Round Rock. The town of Hutto is a few miles west of Taylor and not to be confused with Hutto prison. Keep driving. One mile past Maxwell Dodge on right, take exit 79 North/Rockdale. Continue .7 mile, look for Williamson Co. Equipment Co, and turn left on Edmond shortly thereafter. Edmond ends at Welch. Right onto Welch, parking lot is about 1/10 mile on right.

Let’s close Hutto Prison and let the Children and Their Mothers Free.

Esta es Nuestra Tierra. Esta es Nuestra Lucha;

This is our Land. This is Our Struggle. Si se Puede.

Coming soon: Hutto Vigil Ten, a nationwide gathering to be cosponsored by Amnesty International and a coalition of other human rights groups at T. Don Hutto on June 23rd. Details in coming weeks.

See Hutto:
youtube.com/watch?v=Q8goTR8LUIA

Grassroots Leadership Calls for Detention System to be Reformed to Prioritize Dignity and Release, Not Detention For-Profit

Austin, TX – Grassroots Leadership today expressed sadness and outrage at the alleged sexual abuse suffered by several immigrant women detained at the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas.

A prison guard employed by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a private, for-profit corporation under federal contract to detain immigrant women at Hutto, allegedly assaulted the women. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) disclosed the abuse to advocates on Friday afternoon. The CCA guard allegedly groped several women and solicited sex from at least one woman while transporting them to the airport for deportation.

The T. Don Hutto detention center is a private prison formerly contracted to detain immigrant families, including small children. Last August, in a victory for Grassroots Leadership and our allies, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that it would end family detention at Hutto as part of sweeping reforms to the detention system. The facility now detains women apprehended without children, many of whom are seeking asylum in the United States.

ICE has held up Hutto as a model detention center.

“We are saddened and shocked by this report of abuse,” said Bob Libal, Grassroots Leadership’s Texas Campaigns Coordinator. “While we were heartened that the administration took on reforming the U.S. detention system a year ago, this incident illustrates the inherent problems in an immigration detention system with no meaningful oversight. We hope that this latest news of misconduct in an immigrant detention facility will spur President Obama to action. His administration should should immediately take steps to scale back its growing and out-of-control detention system.”

The sexual abuse scandal is the latest in a series of such incidents at Texas detention centers. In 2007, a CCA employee was fired for inappropriate sexual contact with a female detainee who was held at the facility with her family. Earlier this year, a former Port Isabel Detention Center officer was sentenced to prison for sexual abuse of female detainees over a period of time in 2008.

In 2008, an expose by the WOAI news station in San Antonio reported sexual abuse of female detainees at the GEO Group’s South Texas Detention Center in Pearsall. Reports of sexual abuse against detainees have also plagued MTC’s Willacy County Detention Center.

“These reports show the vulnerability of detained immigrants, especially women, in ICE’s vast and largely private immigrant detention system,” said Donna Red Wing, Executive Director of Grassroots Leadership. “ICE should immediately re-evaluate its contracts with all private prison corporations, and speed the pace of reforms to its system. We are gravely concerned about the reality of women incarcerated for-profit and the impact of these closed corporate facilities on the lives, health and well being of women detainees.”

ICE’s release of information about the reported abuse before a holiday weekend also drew criticism. “ICE has touted its move towards transparency and accountability,” Libal said. “Releasing this report on a Friday afternoon before a long weekend and just hours after meeting with senior administration officials and key detention advocates at the White House is anything but transparent and accountable.”

“Immigration and Customs Enforcement should immediately stop the deportation of and release potential victims of sexual assault until a thorough investigation is completed,” Red Wing said. “ICE should also transform its detention system towards one that prioritizes release over detention for profit. That is the only way to ensure these tragedies do not continue.”

Email from Jay Johnson-Castro.

Hola y’all…

Exciting news in the making. Freedom Ambassadors has been contacted by yet another coalition. The Valley Coalition…of the Lower Rio Grande Valley. This is a coalition of. La Uni*n Del Pueblo Entero(LUPE), People for Peace and Justice, Veterans for Peace, MEChA, Student Farmworker Alliance, Pax Christi, Holy Spirit Peace and Justice Committee, Mennonite Central Committee, UTPA Environmental Awareness Club, Foro Socialista del Valle.

As you will see from the attached press release…this coalition has scheduled a vigil at the largest and ugliest concentration camp on the planet…in Raymondville (see attached pic).

The date of the Raymondville Vigil II coincides with the Amnesty International sponsored Hutto Vigil X. The vigil would be held on Sunday, June 24th…the day after the Hutto Vigil X. It too is scheduled at the end of the week of the June 20th International Day of the Refugee.

The Raymondville is a concentration camp of 10 vinyl tents, with 200 refugees each. The 2000 immigrants are men and women from some 50 different countries…no one who has been charged with a crime. It is there that spoiled milk is served, raw sausage is served with white bread, sewer lines back up with maggots crawling out…and no medical help is available.

It is the intent of many from the Valley Coalition to attend the Hutto Vigil X…in solidarity with freeing the innocent children. It is the intent many of us from the Hutto Vigil X to attend and…in solidarity…support the Raymondville Vigil II. Some of us will make a weekend of it….in honor of the international refugee…and show that we feel that imprisoning innocent children, women and people from around the world is immoral and is a human rights violation on an scale that is shocking internationally.

Please disseminate this notice to all the groups and coalitions within Freedom Ambassadors and allied organizations like LUPE and CAFHTA. Let’s make June 23rd and June 24th two meaningful and historical days…in total solidarity with the international refugees who are victims of tyranny right her in our country.

Lado al lado. Side be side…

Jay

********************

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Vicky Lorraine (956)-605-6036

For Immediate Release: May 31, 2007

Coalition of community groups calls press conference to address the detention of undocumented immigrants in Raymondville

McAllen, Texas

Time: 12:15pm

Date: Monday, June 4, 2007

Location: Outside The Monitor’s office

(1400 E Nolana Ave
McAllen, TX 78504)

Who: La Uni*n Del Pueblo Entero(LUPE), People for Peace and Justice, Veterans for Peace, MEChA, Student Farmworker Alliance, Pax Christi, Holy Spirit Peace and Justice Committee, Mennonite Central Committee, UTPA Environmental Awareness Club, Foro Socialista del Valle.

What: Press Conference

Why: To announce an upcoming protest/vigil in solidarity with other community groups across the state of Texas, in conjunction with ‘International Refugees Day’. To protest the unethical incarceration of thousands of undocumented immigrants (including children) in the private, for-profit, prisons in Raymondville(“Tent City”) and elsewhere in Texas.

The star reporter on the death of Riad Hamad is Ann Fowler. Her reports at the Oak Hill Gazette appear on Fridays. In this week’s report she talks to Ayman Suleiman.–gm

“Ayman Suleiman is one of the Palestinian youths helped by Hamad. He told the Gazette, ‘I first met Riad when I was in Hutto.’ Suleiman and his family were picked up by authorities and spent months in detention, awaiting deportation. ‘I was 16 at the time and I was about a month away from graduating early from high school, and going either Baylor med or SMU the next semester. That was what most bothered Riad and he had promised me that he will not only help get admittance to a medical university but will pay for my studies all the way through. I was brought to tears when I heard these words from him, for I was sure all the hard work and dreams of going to medical school had been shattered.’

“Remembered Suleiman, ‘[Hamad] got me a laptop to help me with finishing high school (which was from his organization) and he would call a lot here to check out how the family was doing and if there was anything we needed. Words could never describe Riad and his actions–he was a true hero.’

“Suleiman is one of those who will never accept the ruling of suicide. He said, ‘If there’s anything I do know it’s that Riad would never commit suicide. Why not? Because Riad was a very religious person. In Islam, suicide is something huge. Anyone who commits suicide in the Qur’an goes straight to hell. Why would a very religious man, who helps many children and people all over the world–with a very loving family and people all over the world that admire him–commit suicide?’ ”

Read the full story: “Memorial for Riad Hamad
Riad Hamad.” By Ann Fowler. Oak Hill Gazette (09.MAY.08).