Texas Civil Rights Review

Category: Uncategorized

  • Email from the Arab American Community Coalition

    Dear Greg,

    I read with joy the article your wrote about the Ibrahim family. The Ibrahim family has suffered a brutal detention, thank God for their release.

    Greg, You gave credit to all parties who worked on the release of this family except the group who really worked hard, signed the contract and paid the retention fees to both attorneys. I am not trying to minimize the hard working individuals who worked on the release of that family. Let me introduce you to “Arab American Community Coalition” (AACC) of Seattle, http://theaacc.org

    The AACC is the modest organization who brought to the Nation; the release of the high profiled case of Safouh Hamoui and his family, after 10 months of detention in 2003.

    AACC is the only non-profit group of individuals (less than 10) who are volunteering their time and money to defend the human and civil rights of Arabs and Muslims. It is the only organization who has 24/7 hotline. When all other Arab/Muslim organizations go home at the end of the day, our hotline stays manned.

    I have and will appreciate your work. A little encouragement goes a long way at times.

    Regards,

    Ziyad Zaitoun
    Seattle, WA

  • Consumer Alert: English News is Already a World Apart

    Sure if you want to read about guns and prisons at the border, English will work for you just fine. But if you want today’s news about peacemakers trying to cut a path of sanity through the provocations and racist hysteria, then sorry, that kind of news is Spanish only.

    As I’m chatting these days with Jay Johnson-Castro about the caravan that he and Enrique Morones are bravely driving back and forth along the USA border with Mexico, it becomes a truth hotter than the Arizona desert. English speaking news audiences are being systematically taught to hate and fear the border.
    A January 3 “standoff” along the Arizona border between unidentified gunmen and the Tennessee National Guard–during which no shots were fired–is getting rehashed this week in a story by Associated Press writer Alicia A. Caldwell.

    But there are two problems with that report. First, Jay expresses doubt about the official story of the “standoff.” He cautions against believing the narrative as reported.

    Second, the reader gets the impression from the dateline and opening paragraphs that the story is about something that recently happened in Del Rio. The reader has to dig at least ten paragraphs down to find that this is a rehash of an Arizona story from Jan. 3.

    But why would a reporter file a story from Del Rio this week about a month-old incident in Arizona, when Del Rio’s favorite son, Jay Johnson-Castro is busy with widely announced plans for his border caravan?

    Aside from what we do find in the English-speaking news world today, consider what we don’t find. Not a single story about Morones or Johnson-Castro. Not a single story about their visits to the walls or cemeteries of San Diego. Not a single story about this weekend’s national leadership convention in Phoenix involving such heavy-hitting Civil Rights organizers such as Peter Schey, Isabel Garcia, or Rosa Rosales.

    Not a word about how the convention gave Morones a standing ovation.

    English readers beware. If you’re not consuming Spanish language news, then the language of guns and prisons is what you know, and what you know is only part of the story that’s being reported.–gm

  • Note from a Family Supporter Outside Hutto Prison

    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.

  • Family Expects Ibrahim Father to be Released Monday

    A source close to the Ibrahim family says they expect Salaheddin Ibrahim, the father of five-going-on-six children, to be released from the Haskell, Texas immigration prison tomorrow, putting an end to the family’s three month ordeal as prisoners of USA immigration authorities.–gm

  • From Outsourcing to Community: Crisis in Border Policy is Ours to Seize

    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