Category: Detention

CANCELLED: Hearing Rescheduled for Thursday

Attorney John Wheat Gibson writes: “Hearing is set for 08:30 Wednesday on the motion of Salaheddin Ibrahim for release from detention, in the immigration court at Dallas, Texas. The hearing is open to anyone who wants to attend.”

Mr. Ibrahim is the father of four children who, along with their pregnant mother, Hanan, were released from the T. Don Hutto prison on Saturday. Since the family’s abduction in early November, Mr. Ibrahim has been imprisoned separately from his spouse and children, at an immigration prison in Haskell, Texas.

When we asked why the release of Mr. Ibrahim was taking so long, attorney Gibson replied, “I have not obtained it yet.”–gm

Riad Hamad of the Palestinain Children’s Welfare Fund (PCWF) reports that the Suleiman family called him from Jordan on Saturday, “pennyless and with nothing but the clothes on their backs from the night they were hauled from their homes.”
Our archives on the Suleiman family indicate a family of five, including 61-year-old Adel Suleiman, a diabetic, who reported inhumane jail conditions in Oklahoma. As a result of those conditions, Suleiman requested that his attorney, John Wheat Gibson, do nothing to delay the family’s deportation. Gibson last week reported that his calls to the Suleiman deportation officer went unanswered.

Along with Adel and his spouse, Asma Quddoura, the family includes 17-year-old Ayman and 4-year-old twin daughters. Asma and Ayman were jailed together at T. Don Hutto prison. The twin girls, who are American citizens, were kept in foster care.

Hamad reports that “PCWF will be sending more contributions to [attorney Gibson] in order to help cover some of his costs towards the legal fees of the Ibrahim and Qaddoura family.”

In other news, today the Ibrahim family mother and children, who were released from Hutto jail Saturday, are expecting the release of husband and father Salaheddin from the immigration prison at Haskell, Texas.

And the Hazahza family, who have also been split between Hutto and Haskell, expect to hear news from the deportation officer this week regarding new papers they filed last week at his request.

Meanwhile, a border caravan, organized by Enrique Morones of the Border Angels and Jay Johnson-Castro of Del Rio, will enter Texas today for a week of stops along the Rio Grande. At several of the key cities along the way, the caravan will be greeted by mayors from both sides of the border.

We are hoping that English-language press coverage of the caravan will begin soon.

As for the part being played by the Texas Civil Rights Review in a discussion about funding, let me say one thing only. TCRR has always treated the emails of John Wheat Gibson with respect, because he is the attorney representing two of the families abducted by ICE last November, and we think the representative of these families should be heard.–gm

Email from Jose Orta:

A small group of us gathered in front of the T. Don Hutto facility in Taylor this bitterly cold Saturday morning of February 3rd to witness the release of the Palestinian family from the Dallas area.

Their plight was highlighted in the Austin American Statesman yesterday and today and word came early this morning that they were to be released at 10:00am. A family desperate to escape a land filled with civil strife, seeking the American Dream, found themselves living an American nightmare: false imprisonment, detention, separation and the loss of freedom. It was a total injustice.

A long black limousine drove into the prison parking lot and the family was unceremoniously and quickly rushed to the car. We clapped and cheered as they drove by on their way back home. Hopefully they saw that people out in the community were supporting them and were bearing witness to the injustice done to them.

It was a small victory. We need to continue to publicize what is transpiring in this prison in the name of Homeland Security.

A Sunday Manifesto

Not only has immigration policy been torn away from the common sense of communities who live along the border between the USA and Mexico, but the moral responsibility for leadership in this realm has also been outsourced. This morning’s New York Times reports:

On some of the biggest government projects, Bush administration officials have sought to shift some decision making to contractors. When Michael P. Jackson, deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, addressed potential bidders on the huge Secure Border Initiative last year, he explained the new approach.

“This is an unusual invitation,” said Mr. Jackson, a contracting executive before joining the agency. “We’re asking you to come back and tell us how to do our business.”

Boeing, which won the $80 million first phase of the estimated $2 billion project, is assigned not only to develop technology but also to propose how to use it, which includes assigning roles to different government agencies and contractors. Homeland Security officials insist that they will make all final decisions, but the department’s inspector general, Richard L. Skinner, reported bluntly in November that “the department does not have the capacity needed to effectively plan, oversee and execute the SBInet program.”

On the first day of a two-week border caravan that will traverse the USA border with Mexico, Jay Johnson-Castro reported on a “pathetic immigration system” that is grinding people’s lives past the point of no return into unmarked, mass graves along the USA border with Mexico.

As we see from the evidence above, and with our own eyes at the T. Don Hutto prison for immigrant families, such brutal chaos brought down upon the common life is happening in a context of actual chaos in responsibility from leadership.

Wherever we find such a situation we find the duality of crisis revealed as both horror and opportunity. It is time this week to seize the opportunity. We will not be ruled by profiteers. We will not accept a dominion of free trade without free people. Furthermore, there is no reason to expect that the chaos of profiteering can rule over the long run–if the people stay aware and active.

And, finally, the shocking brutality of power as revealed in the three-month imprisonment of the Ibrahim children, will ensure that the people do not fall to sleep unawares.–gm

An action alert and photos of the Ibrahim children, circulated by Rita Zawaideh, played pivotal roles in the growing awareness that made release of the Ibrahim family possible. Below is her press release just received–gm

The Ibrahim family mother and the children have been released

On behalf of the Arab American Community Coalition (AACC) of Seattle we want to thank all of those groups and individuals who have contributed to the release of the Ibrahim family from the Hutto Detention Center, and hopefully shortly from the Haskell Detention Center for the father.
We would like to particularly thank Ralph Isenberg of Dallas for his thoughtful and relentless efforts to bring this ordeal to this satisfactory conclusion.
Without his efforts, it is doubtful that this positive result would have been achieved.

We would also like to thank the legal teams , namely Theodore Cox, Joshua Bard avid, Domingo Garcia and John Wheat Gibson.

This ordeal should not have started, in the first place, since none of the detainees represented any danger to this community. On the contrary, they were positive contributors, in every respect, to their community. Furthermore, the Ibrahim family was subjected to transgressions in the application of many laws, not to mention the less than humane treatment at the Hutto facility, for children of such age.

We thank the members of the press for their attention to the plight of the Ibrahim family and who contributions must have alerted the officials to the proper attention this case should have gotten and to the fact that is was not going away.

We want to thank all the supports and organizations that wrote letters on their behalf and also supported them monetary for their legal fees.

We wish the Ibrahim family a normal and legal life, whatever they chose to live, in the immediate and the far future.

Wagih Abu Rish
AACC

Rita Zawaideh