Category: Detention

The following email was circulated by Riad Hamad on Christmas Day, 2006. Originally posted as article #715 at the Texas Civil Rights Review.–gm

Dear Friends,

Further to my emails yesterday regarding the Palestinian children and their families in the Hutto detention center please find below some more details and action required to help these innocent people.

I went to the detention center yesterday and talked to one of the women and provided her with cash for phone calls and snacks for the children since the jail officials are providing them with mainly pork and ham that they do not eat.

Today, another one of the members of the family called me from the detention center and informed me that that all three families in the detention center were in the United States legally and ALWAYS filed their immigration related forms and paid the required fees and taxes. The woman also indicated that two of her children are United States citizens and are now with their aunt in Dallas but with not much financial support.

Apparently, after 2001 some of the procedures were changed but they were not informed of these changes and their attorney failed to file the appeal on their behalf and that is how their status changed. All three families had male breadwinners who were working legally with work permits and earned money to stay off welfare or any other related social services.

According to one of the women, her husband suffers from a severe case of diabetes and was deprived of his medication for several days and when he contacted his attorney to inquire about his medication, he was beaten along with the three other male Arab detainees and no one has been able to know his whereabouts or his medical condition. The family of the man contacted the detention facilities in Haskell, Texas and Oklahoma where he was jailed but both facilities deny that he is there now.

Next steps: I will be retaining local immigration lawyer tomorrow morning to attempt and get a release of the women and the children and to determine the location of the men. Also, we will be providing the women and children with more money to help them cover the cost of food purchased from the commissary of the detention center due to the absence of Islamic Halal food.

We need your help by forwarding this email to your friends and colleagues and asking them to donate for the legal costs of releasing these families as it has already reached more than 5000 dollars and could easily reach 50 000 dollars sine the members of the families in jail are more than 6 adults and 14 children.

I will be providing you with the contact information for the federal authorities in charge of the detention centers in Haskell and Oklahoma to determine the location of . . . , the missing man with a sever case of diabetes.

If any one is interested in helping these families please email me and will provide you with my phone number to assign you tasks and pursue financial and material support for these families.

All donations will, be listed on our website to ensure transparency and that the families and the children receive the full amount of the donations collected for them and for their legal defense. The expenses will also be listed as they become available and you will be notified of any changes.
Looking forward to hearing from you and THANKS for your generosity, work and support for the children in Palestine.

Riad Elsolh Hamad
Austin, Texas

In the email below, Riad Hamad describes his ongoing support for the Palestinian families at Hutto prison. The email was received at 9:16 p.m., Jan. 23, 2007.–gm

Dear friends,

As you know Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund has been assisting the Palestinian families in the Hutto detention center through the payment of some of their legal fees, meals in the center and phone cards. We just received a phone call from one of the families advising us that the immigration authorities just informed them that they will be deported to Jordan on Monday.

The family . . . will leave the United States on Monday via Dallas and their young twin girls ages 4 will accompany them. Both girls are United States citizens and were staying with their aunt in Irving pending the end of this nightmare that started November 3rd, 2006. PCWF contributed to the legal fees incurred by their competent and compassionate lawyer, Mr. John Wheat Gibson and will be paying for the airline tickets of the two children who will have to leave with their parents next week.

PCWF would like to encourage you to contribute to the purchase of the airlines tickets of these two children to avoid separating them from their famiy. You can send your contribution to the address listed on the bottom of this email or you can donate online and specify that you want the money to go towards the Palestinian families in Hutto.

Additionally, PCWF will continue to provide support for the remaining two families till their legal cases are resolved. We are aware that the Ibrahim family can not leave the United States yet since the Isreali and the Jordanian governments refused to accept them or allow them to go back. You will receive more information as it becomes available and will try to update you about their status promptly.

We will also be glad to provide you with the contact information for the families if you wish to help them directly if you have any doubts regarding the destination of your donation

Looking forward to hearing from you and THANKS again for your generosity, work and support for the children in Palestine.

Salamat
Riad Hamad

In this email, Riad Hamad explains how his support of the Hutto families has been necessary and exceptional. It was received at 9:05 pm, Feb. 6, 2007. Two days later, Riad Hamad drove one of the Palestinian families to the Austin airport. They had been set free shortly before a scheduled media tour of the Hutto prison.–gm

Dear Friends,

I hope that all of you are safe and well and enjoying a peaceful week with your families. As you probably heard the . . . family was deported to Jordan on Monday of last week and they are now in Amman, Jordan penny less with no home, no car, no clothes and no jobs which is not very encouraging..

Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund works ONLY inside Palestine and we made an exception for these families due to the severe hardship imposed on them and the fact that children were put in jail which wass unbelievable and moved us to provide help to them.

[The father of the deported family] called me three times from Jordan so far asking for help in shipping their furniture in order for them to have some sort of normalcy back into the lives of the children and to give them some sense of security. PCWF paid for the airlines tickets for the children to accompany their mother as they are U.S citizens and the government would not pay the tickets to deport them. On the other hand, we contributed to their personal expenses and legal fees which is mounting and taking away from funds that we usually send to the children in Palestine who are in dire need these days.

Please let me know if any one from the Arab, Muslim or Palestinian community is willing, able or desire to help in any way to send money for the family to eat and live with dignity till the man finds a job in Amman.

Also, we need some help in finding a shipping company to send their furniture as so far, we can only find companies that charge nothing less than 4000 dollars to pick up the furniture from Dallas to Houston and then to Agaba, Jordan and then to Amman.

Personally, my financial situation is in shambles due to my commitments in Palestine and beyond any means of helping this family anymore. I would greatly appreciate any ideas from you on how to get help for these families and I will be glad to provide you with their account number in order for anyone to put the money directly in their accounts.

It is very important that we live up to our promise to them when they were in jail that we will help them and for the sake of the children who were forced out of their homes, schools and deprived of their dignity for several months. We will be glad to forward the money to them on your behalf and provide you with a tax exemption if you wish and like always, ALL the donations will be posted on the website for transparency and accuracy.

Looking forward to hearing from you and SHUKRAN in advance for your generosity, work and support for the children in Palestine

Salamatz
Riad Hamad

Austin media this evening are reporting allegations contained in a search warrant affidavit that was just released in the matter of Riad Hamad. Here is how the Austin American-Statesman is describing the document:

According to a search warrant affidavit, Hamad operated the Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund, which bills itself as an organization to improve the lives of Palestinian children.

It said that Hamad received $633,965 in donations and that he sent some of the money — about $527,000 — to the Middle East. But the affidavit said authorities “can not determine the ultimate disposition of these funds at this time.”

The affidavit said authorities think Hamad was using the donated money for personal use and not paying federal income tax on it.

The document also said that Hamad failed to file several income tax returns from 2000 to 2006 and did not pay any taxes on earned income during those years.

Hamad also gave copies of unfiled federal income tax returns and false documents to various universities in Texas to obtain federal loans in the amount of $135,000, the affidavit said.

The lead paragraph of the story says federal authorities “could not trace the whereabouts of more than $500,000 he received for his charity”; yet the body of the article says that $527,000 was sent to the Middle East. Surely, the editors are aware that the impression they create in the lead paragraph is defamatory, especially by comparison to the facts that follow.

There is a curious use of the word “some.” It is used, for example, to describe most of the money raised, yet not used to describe the smaller sum in question that could have “allegedly” been used for personal purposes. We would have preferred the report to say “most” of the money went to the Middle East (83 percent says our calculator), while “some” of the remaining money is still under investigation.

If it is the case that Mr. Hamad secured loans on the basis of tax forms not actually filed, then perhaps the loans in question are student loans? Mr. Hamad was a lifelong student with several graduate degrees.

A local Fox News package (that is not yet posted online) mentioned the word “fraud.” As the narrator of the news report at 9pm talked about money allegedly going into family accounts, the screen zoomed to a high six-digit figure. But the news account from the Statesman suggests that 83 percent of the money raised went to the Middle East.

Nothing is yet clear about what federal officials allege regarding the $135,000 that did not go to the Middle East. For example, we believe (and reporters should know this much) that he spent some money on Palestinian refugees in Texas. He made it very clear at the time that he was making an exception to his usual rule that all money goes to the children of Palestine. But they were locking up Palestinian children at the T. Don Hutto prison, and Riad Hamad responded to their needs — without hesitation. He talked about driving to the prison and bringing care packages.

When federal officials claim in a document that they don’t know “at this time” exactly where the $527,000 went after it got to the Middle East, it is not clear how they are using their investigative power. They are apparently not saying that they know the money was mis-spent. If they had said such a thing clearly, wouldn’t the news reports have been more straightforward?

Fox News interviewed a neighbor who wanted to think the best things about Riad Hamad. And we venture to guess that anyone who ever met Riad Hamad shares his neighbor’s best hopes.

Riad Hamad is dead. He can’t make any further use of his good reputation with people who knew him. Nevertheless, we would very much appreciate more careful and respectful reporting on the life of a man who by all accounts was generous from inside out.–gm

Additional reporting from KVUE has been posted:

A federal search warrant reveals what Hamad was being accused of.

According to an investigator with the Internal Revenue Service, “… Riad Hamad, with the assistance of his son, Abdullah Hamad, his ex-wife, Diana Hamad, and his daughter, Rita Hamad, are using the ‘donated funds’ for personal use and not paying federal income taxes on these funds.”

Authorities believe Hamad was operating three organizations from his Southwest Austin home — The Palestinian Children’s Welfare Fund, Clean Air of Austin and kKnder Kreative Konsultants.

The search warrant shows donations totaling more than $633,000 were collected. Investigators also traced $892,000 in cash being deposited into Hamad family bank accounts. It’s believed these are proceeds from donations to the Children’s Welfare Fund.

SOURCE: “Teacher found in lake investigated for spending donated money” (03:50 PM CDT on Thursday, May 1, 2008)
By MELISSA MCGUIRE, KVUE News

Just as we were googling to find what happened at the “invitation only” press pool tour out at the T. Don Hutto prison for immigrant women and children, the motive for the tour was not difficult to find. It kept the press away from this story–gm

OVER 80 ORGANIZATIONS JOIN IN OPPOSITION TO LEGISLATION DETAINING IMMIGRANT CHILDREN

Contact: Christopher Spina
(202) 657-0677
(202) 674-2450 (mobile)

April 22, 2008

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, in a letter to the House of Representatives, over 80 federal, state, and local organizations from across the nation expressed their strong opposition to the Secure America through Verification and Enforcement (SAVE) Act (H.R. 4088) of 2008, legislation that explicitly calls for the creation of a family detention facility that will result in the “incarceration” of immigrant children. The letter was spearheaded by First Focus, a bipartisan children’s advocacy organization.

The SAVE Act disregards recommendations repeatedly made by Congress that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should “release families or use alternatives to detention…whenever possible.” Instead, the SAVE Act encourages the practice of detaining innocent children who are often caught in the crossfire of U.S. immigration policy, holding them in facilities that resemble prisons instead of nurturing home environments.

Recently, the Act was subject to a discharge petition, a procedural maneuver which, if a simple majority 218 Representatives sign a petition in support of the bill, shall allow the legislation to bypass the committee process and be placed on the House floor for a vote, despite objections by House leadership. Currently, the petition has over 150 signatures. The Act was introduced by Reps. Heath Shuler (D-NC), Brian Bilbray (R-CA), and Tom Tancredo (R-CO).

“The outpouring of opposition to this bill should send one message to the House of Representatives – placing children in prison-like settings is not who we are as a nation and we will not sit idly by while legislation that would do so is slipped onto the House floor through procedural maneuvers,” said Bruce Lesley, President of First Focus. “The sad fact is this bill calls for the creation of a detention facility modeled after the controversial T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility, which has been found to be an ‘inappropriate and disturbing setting’ to hold families. The inappropriate setting and inadequate living conditions of these facilities have led to poor childhood development, education, health care, and nutrition, as well as minimal time for recreational activity and threats of separation from parents. We hope this letter, supported by a broad cross section of organizations from across the nation, will convince many Members of Congress to oppose this ill-advised legislation.”

The letter has been signed by 32 national organizations, including First Focus, National Council of La Raza, the National Education Association, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and the Episcopal Church. Moreover, over 50 state and local organizations from across the country also signed the letter.

From CAUSA