Texas Civil Rights Review

Category: Detention

  • In the Season of Giving, Ask them to Stop Taking Children to Prison

    News from Jay Johnson-Castro, Sr.

    In this period of giving…

    Can we share a few hours out of our holiday season and show solidarity with imprisoned immigrant children?

    Border Ambassadors and Freedom Ambassadors endorse the following notice and attached flier for a special toy and gift drive and vigil for the imprisoned innocent women and children in the T. Don Hutto “for profit” prison…

    Hutto is a money laundering facility between Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE)…with Williamson County Commissioners Court (WCCC) as the money laundering mechanism.

    No where in the world, let alone in America, should a child be locked up or forced to forfeit his or her freedom for a 8′ x 12′ prison cell. Perhaps, under a new President “Change we can believe in” will restore “Liberty and Justice for all”.

    We must press on with our demand that the end of the era of the current Administration’s immoral practice of imprisoning innocent children and their mothers…for profit.

    In solidarity with the women and children imprisoned in Hutto and all those who have fought for two years to free them…

    Jay
    Border Ambassasors
    Freedom Ambassadors

    Hutto Toy Delivery and Vigil to End Family Detention

    Saturday, December 20th, 3-5pm, T. Don Hutto Detention Center (1001 Welch, Taylor, TX)

    Please join organizations and individuals from across the state in the third annual December vigil to end family detention, Saturday, December 20th, from 3-5pm. Since May 2006, immigrant families with small children have been jailed in the facility while awaiting asylum or immigration hearings. The prison has been criticized by human rights organizations worldwide as an inappropriate facility for children and their families. Organizers will deliver more than 500 toys, books, and children’s clothes to the facility in time for the holiday season. Toys should be in their original packaging and not be on any recall-list to be accepted into the facility. Contact: Bob at (512) 971-0487 or blibal@grassrootsleadership.org

    Caravaning information:

    Austin caravan will leave PODER building at 2604 E. Cesar Chavez at 2pm for the Hutto detention center.

    San Antonio caravan will leave from the Cesar Chavez Learning Center,1414 E. Commerce Street, San Antonio. Arrive at 11am to get organized; the caravan will leave at noon. Please contact Carlos De Leon at 210-627-3647 for more information.

    Houston caravan will be leaving from the parking lot of Fedex Kinko’s (Magnum exit, Hwy 290, Houston) at around 10:30. Meet up at 9:30 if you would like to make posters for the vigil. Contact Maria Elena Castellanos at castellanoslaw1 [at] gmail [dot] com for more information

    Endorsed by: Texans United for Families, Grassroots Leadership, WilCo Family Justice Alliance, Austin Immigrant Rights Coalition, Border Ambassadors, CodePink Austin, Texas Indigenous Council, San Antonio Brown Berets.

    WCCC to vote on T Don Hutto Contract—12/23/2008

    Williamson County Judge Gattis announced this morning (12/16/08) that the vote on the proposed renewal of the contract(s) with CCA/DHS to operate T Don Hutto Detention Facility will take place on December 23 at the Williamson County Commissioners Court’s weekly meeting.

    After that announcement, several citizens spoke against the renewal, and WCCC was reminded that:

    Putting families in prison for infractions comparable to running a stop sign is “inappropriate.”

    The lack of oversight and assurance of humane treatment for families held at T Don Hutto is alarming, and contradicted by our national sense of right and wrong, —and does serious emotional damage to the young prisoners who end up gaining American citizenship.

    Communities that locate a prison in their borders suffer immense long-term economic damage because “clean” economic growth avoids them. The uglier the facility, the greater the damage.

    There are alternatives to locking up babies and families, and they are proven to be less expensive– and just as effective. But they provide no profit for the prison industry.
    So, between now and the eve of Christmas Eve, it is essential that those of us who oppose this corrupt contract:

    1. Contact anyone in the county hierarchy who might be able to help us; certainly the WCCC members, but also anyone who could talk to them with good audience.–minister, friends, family members, etc. WCCC contact info can be found at http://www.wiliamson-county.org.

    2. Write letters to the editor to the Williamson County Sun, Austin American-Statesman, Austin Chronicle, or other newspaper; contact your local TV affiliate station’s news department. Ask for folks to join our effort on the blogs and email lists.

    3. Consider getting a few other supporters to go with you to visit with your Williamson County commissioner–or go on your own; small settings can work far better than large, public ones because the commissioner needn’t be defensive of the issue.

    4. Come to Saturday, December 20 vigil in front of the Hutto facility from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. to show support and generate more.

    5. Attend the December 23 WCCC meeting that starts at 9:30 a.m.; come early ( CCA often tries to pack the place before it starts), bring others, and seriously consider speaking. Write a three-minute speech to deliver.

    The new faces and voices who have recently come out against the contract renewal have had a huge impact. We can’t lapse now; let’s celebrate Christmas with the gift of an end to imprisoning innocent families and babies in Williamson County —-in Texas—-in the United States of America.

    Please stay in touch if you see a road-block or an in-road; we need to maximize our chances in these final few days! My email is maryellenkersch@verizon.net

    MaryEllen Kersch

  • Thousands of Mexican Children Deported and Dumped by USA

    Email from Jay Johnson-Castro, Sr.–gm

    Afternoon Hutto champions…

    My heart breaks again, like it broke when I first learned about Hutto.

    For some time now, we’ve been fighting to expose and close Hutto, where the immigrant children have been imprisoned in 8′ x 12′ cells for profit… currently at the tune of about $10-15K per month.

    Since we started protesting Hutto, the population has dropped significantly. Most of this year, I’ve been saying that Hutto is more like a symbol of darker reality. While we are justifiably focused on Hutto, innocent children are being swept up en mass all across the country during cruel ICE raids and at the border…and all the while the Hutto population is decreasing.

    I keep asking myself and others where they’re being taken…in conformity with the Reno vs. Flores case. Even the SAVE Act (HB 4088) asks for more Hutto like facilities. All we have to do is look at the numbers and realize that not even a few more Huttos could ever handle the thousands of children caught up in the Endgame raids.

    The incredible reporting here, both in English and Spanish, confirms my deepest concerns about the immigrant children.:

    La Jornada, Aug. 11

    Texas Observer, Aug. 15

    This information has been out there since the first of the year and I have yet to see any grassroots efforts to expose and deal with it…until Melissa’s article.

    We must do something about this! We WILL. A child imprisoned, maltreated or dumped on the other side of our southern borders by our government is being done by all of us…if we do not stand up to it. Chertoff, DHS and ICE are robbing America of all moral dignity when our country can cruelly commit such crimes against children with impunity.

    In America…children must be free, treated with all tenderness and protected. No child should be left behind…bars!

    For a America to be free…we must…

    Free the Children.

    Jay

  • TCRR Fall Quarter Retrospective 2008

    Our quarter-year of absence at the Texas Civil Rights Review has coincided with the electoral revolution led by Barack Obama, so we couldn’t be more pleased to have a picked a season during which little more needed to be said.

    Yet the time of absence wasn’t chosen so much as it was delivered with a bundle of priorities that left not a spare minute to type in. At one point, it was only thanks to a delayed airplane that I was able to hammer out a fast note to a contributor. The competing priorities this past quarter were entirely welcomed, so worry not; our energies are well, our spirit intact.

    In the short time I have to write tonight, I’d like to reflect upon what usually goes on here, and why we miss it.

    The Texas Civil Rights Review was founded in 1997 as on online archive dedicated to racial equity in the Land Grant system of higher education in Texas, and, by proxy, across the USA. Thanks to that work in the 1990s some real progress was made for some real people. And as we look forward to Change, please remember Mr. President that equity in the Land Grant system is still possible, still worthy, and perhaps more than ever a timely theater for economic and democratic renewal of ourselves and our posterity.

    After a few years of exile from Texas politics (perhaps not unrelated to our successes in the Land Grant establishment) we returned in 2003 with a hopping mad interest in what had happened to affirmative action policy, and we proudly outed a blue-ribbon report from a Land Grant college committee that recommended affirmative action in admissions. (We still like to call it integration, remember?)

    As Summer turned to Fall in 2004 we covered the trial for public school funding in an Austin District Court, and documented the courageous struggle of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) to uphold the principles of equitable funding, especially for impoverished Hispanic children.

    On Christmas Eve 2004 we posted our first of many letters from federal prisoner Ramsey Muniz. We still say it would be a righteous act to pardon Ramsey and set him free.

    In the opening months of 2005 we covered the hearings that officially certified the election of Hubert Vo to the Texas House of Representatives. We followed up on the Vo hearings with a massive review of the hearing documents. (Rep. Vo has since been re-elected twice. In 2008 he won a comfortable 56 percent of the vote.)

    In April of 2005 we reported on thousands of pages of documents that we reviewed at the office of the Texas Secretary of State regarding the construction of a statewide voter database that was built to satisfy the so-called Help America Vote Act (VAWA).

    During the summer of 2006 we filed an open records request with the Texas Governor seeking documentation for the deployment of the Texas National Guard to the border with Mexico. We were told there were no documents. Later that year, we followed a rising flood of immigration issues that culminated in the federal roundup of several Palestinian families from the Dallas area who were cruelly treated regardless of age or pregnancy status.

    In 2007 we let fly a few thousand words over the converging issues of immigration injustice in Texas, symbolized by the Hutto family prison and the border wall reflex. If Change means anything, it should make a difference on both of these issues.

    Earlier this year we covered the federal harassment of Albanian refugee Rrustem Neza, who was finally released to live with this wife and children after a year of meaningless imprisonment at Haskell. And we reported on the shocking detention of Bujar Osmani who was nabbed by federal agents while taking a bathroom break at a law office.

    As the summer of 2008 turned into record swelter, we reported the death, the federal documents, and the dreams of Riad Hamad, ebullient champion of Palestinian children.

    In these stories and others, we have been very nearly alone in our commitment to documentation and detail. So yes, there was something to miss when we were absent during the Fall quarter of 2008. If you missed us, you weren’t alone. We kind of missed us too.

    As for the future, we remain realistic. The amount of time devoted to the Texas Civil Rights Review these past five years will not be sustainable, but the reasons for this are good ones. Your editor has not given up or burned out. I’m just busy.

    Whenever I do have a few spare hours, you’ll know it. I’m here. I keep my eyes open. I may be out of the office a lot, but I ain’t giving up the lease. — gm

  • Vigil for Families in Detention

    On Sunday, December 7, at 4 p.m. a peaceful coalition of individuals and groups opposing Willliamson County’s participation in the detention of asylum seekers will gather on the Williamson County Courthouse steps in downtown Georgetown.

    Although federal law requires the “least restrictive setting possible” for immigrant families, in 2006 Williamson County contracted with Corrections Corporation of America, a private for-profit prison company, to incarcerate non-criminal women and children in the T. Don Hutto detention facility in Taylor. The contracts between ICE, Williamson County, and CCA are up for renewal in January.

    Please help us show Williamson County, Homeland Security, and the private prison industry that imprisoning innocent children will no longer be tolerated in the United States of America.

    We will meet in the parking lot on Austin Ave. between 4th and 5th Streets in Georgetown at 3:30 p.m. and walk 3 blocks to the County Courthouse to hear community leaders speak in support of alternatives to the incarceration of families awaiting asylum or immigration hearings.

    There are currently 385 detainees in T. Don Hutto including 92 children. As a result of the lawsuits brought by ACLU and the UT School of Law Immigration Clinic, detainees are now allowed to wear their own clothing. Thanks to a recent intervention by the UT School of Law Immigration Clinic, ICE has also agreed to allow detainees to use phone cards given to them rather than having to buy the cards through CCA.

    If you would like to bring a gift to the vigil, suggestions include new toys in their original packaging, books, music players, music, lotions, shampoos, candy, phone cards, and clothing such as sweaters and warm socks.

    For further information or to sign up to speak, please contact Sherry Dana at sdana787@gmail.com. 512-868-5181

  • Archive: Hutto Protest

    The following item previously appeared in the announcements section of TCRR–gm

    This message is from Antonio Diaz of the Texas Indigenous Council in San Antonio. He and his sisters and brothers have been leaders in the campaign against the TDH immigrant family prison since early in the protests, which began in December, 2006:

    “Native people celebrate death as it is apart of the circle of life, there is no need to fear physical death, the death of innocence on the other hand is a sad thing indeed. We will be going to Taylor on Sat. Nov.1st to recognize the Death of innocence of the Children Detained at T.D.Hutto Prison, Nov.1st is known as “Dia de los Inocentes”.

    “Dia de los Muertos from Nov 1st to Nov 2nd. This loss of innocence due to incarceration because of greed of private prison corporations like Corrections Corp. of America must be addressed and the policy of fear and division that allows for rampant greed to dictate immoral immgration legislation must come to an end. Reinstating the Catch and Release program will be the first step to bringing justice into immigration reform. Join us if you are able 6 to 8 pm in Taylor TX. at T.D.Hutto Res. Ctr. — for more info (210) 396- 9805
    Antonio Diaz”

    T. Don Hutto is at 1001 Welch St., Taylor, TX (map). From Austin, take I-35 north to Round Rock. Exit Hwy 79. Turn right on 79 and drive east to Taylor. Just before you enter Taylor, go right on the 79 bypass (sign says to Rockdale). Take the first left onto S. Edmond St. Edmond ends at Welch. Go right on Welch and you can’t miss the prison.

    Solidarity,

    Leslie Cunningham

    “Las luchas obreras/No tienen fronteras.”