Category: Uncategorized

By Greg Moses

An 18-year-old immigration prisoner at the Rolling Plains jail at Haskell, Texas has made a formal request to be housed with his 23-year-old brother.

Ahmad Hazahza made the request shortly before 8:30 Saturday evening according to a Sergeant who was reached by telephone at the facility.

Ahmad and his brother Hisham have been jailed at the Haskell facility, along with their father and two sisters, since they were abducted in a raid last November by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
For the first eleven weeks of detention, Ahmad was held in “alternative housing” because of his status as a minor among adult prisoners. A friend of the Hazahza family called it “solitary confinement.” No explanation has been given as to why Ahmad was not initially sent to a jail such as T. Don Hutto, where other minors are being kept.

Sgt. Baldwin said housing units usually contain either 8 or 24 people. Each of the three male members of the Hazahza family is being detained in different housing units, he said.

The Haskell jail is a medium security prison managed by the Emerald Companies of Louisiana.

The Texas Civil Rights Review contacted the Haskell facility because of a news tip that Muslim prisoners in one housing unit had been threatened with restriction of their prayer privileges. But Sgt. Baldwin said the men were at the Mosque praying, and his report was later confirmed by our source.

Release of the Hazahza family members from Haskell has become a top priority for activists since Hazahza family mother and youngest son, Juma and Mohammad, were released last week from the T. Don Hutto prison in Taylor, Texas.

Along with the father, Radi, and two adult sons, Ahmad and Hisham, there are two adult Hazahza family daughters at Haskell, 19-year-old Suzan and 23-year-old Mirvat.

New York attorneys Joshua Bardavid and Ted Cox are reported to be preparing a federal habeas corpus plea for the remaining Hazahza family, much the same as they did for the recently released Ibrahims.

For us, Williamson County resident Angela Kopit has become the face of Vigil III. When word went out about the release of the Ibrahim family last week, she was one of the local folks who gathered at Hutto jail to signal solidarity with the family. In a Dallas Morning News report on the family’s release, Kopit was quoted: “The things that my parents were fighting for in the ’60s are being taken from us now,” said Taylor resident Angela Kopit, who came with her three sons. “This is the fear of immigrants in its ugliest form.”–gm

Hi Greg, I didn’t actually see my quote in the Dallas Morning News, I hope it was worthwhile.

The morning’s events were lovely [Feb. 3, during the release of the Ibrahim mother and children from T. Don Hutto prison]. The crowd was small, but it was
quite moving to see the family back together and away from that place.

We were cheering their release and had at least one sign showing that we were supporting their release. We didn’t get close enough to actually talk to the family, but I think it was clear we were supporters. I heard from a friend in LA that our little prison made the front page of the LA TIMES today.

The article was not flattering to CCA or the facility in general. She’s sending me the front page. Our seed of dissent is growing.

Angela “Immigration’s net binds children too: Hundreds of minors are being held with parents caught illegally in the U.S. The facilities and conditions are like jail.” By Nicole Gaouette and Miguel Bustillo, Times Staff Writers. February 10, 2007. Los Angeles Times.

The story features 9-year-old Khadijah and her father “Sebastien Bessuges, 30, a Frenchman who last year married an American …. Bessuges had visited a federal immigration center last month to see what forms he needed to extend his stay in the U.S. The next day, immigration agents raided his suburban Phoenix home and detained him and Khadijah.”

The story also says a hunger strike was waged last week at Hutto over the poor quality of food and “other conditions.”

“People are really gearing up for the vigil Monday evening,” says Jay Johnson-Castro by telephone. He has just finished a 2,000 mile border caravan from San Diego to Brownsville. And he says Rio Grande Valley media will be following his travel north to the T. Don Hutto jail for Vigil IV at 5:30 pm, Feb. 12.

“Valley media have given wide coverage to the border caravan in English and Spanish, on the television, radio, and print,” says Johnson-Castro. “It is front page news at the Brownsville Herald.”
Media have also been busy with the story of Hutto prison since yesterday’s press tour of the facility hosted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“Now that we have the media in there, we still have hundreds of innocent children and moms in prison cells. Until they are free we are going to keep putting up pressure,” promises Castro as the sound of heavy rain comes through the phone with his voice.

“And we want to get everybody to say which side they are on. Are they in favor of imprisoning children for purposes of national security or does this shock you and offend you? What kind of America do you want our future to be?” he asks.

“I feel in my heart that the power of the American people will put an end to this demented policy.”

When he hears how the Suleiman family have lost their first home to a policy of deportation, he pledges to get their home back, and get them back in it where they belong with their 4-year-old American twin daughters.

“We have gone up against the most powerful force in human history and we have won,” says Johnson-Castro regarding the release of the Ibrahim family father Friday, the Suleiman mother and son Wednesday, and the Ibrahim mother and children last Saturday.

“We have to get what is right. And the Department of Homeland Security is going to have to back down. What they are doing with their power is criminal.”–gm