Texas Civil Rights Review

Category: Uncategorized

  • Prison is NEVER in a Child's Best Interest

    Email from Bob Libal, Grass Roots Leadership–gm

    [On Tuesday] Marc Moore of Immigration and Customs Enforcement wrote a letter to the Dallas Morning News defending the T. Don Hutto family detention center. The letter was written in response to a terrific op-ed authored by University of Texas Professor Barbara Hines in last Monday’s Morning News arguing that ICE’s three new proposed family detention centers are an inappropriate response to immigrant families, especially given the troubled history of T. Don Hutto. Both Professor Hines’ op-ed and Mr. Moore’s letter are below in their entirety.

    Please take the time today, if possible, to write a letter to the Dallas Morning News stressing the inappropriate nature of family detention and Hutto. Letters can be sent using the site’s online form, and should be 50-200 words in length. Letters can include the following points:

    1) Detention of immigrant children and their families is inappropriate, costly, and inhumane. The experience at Hutto, a converted medium security prison operated by a private prison corporation where children as young as infants have been held with their parents, demonstrates that detention of families is a tragic response to the immigration issue. In addition, at an estimated cost of more than $200 a day per detainee at Hutto, the financial cost of such detention is unreasonably high, especially when more humane and cost-effective alternatives exist.

    2) Congress has called on ICE to fund alternatives to family detention, saying that detention of immigrant children and their families should be the last alternative, not the first. ICE should be listening to the wishes of Congress and implementing alternatives to detention rather than soliciting new family detention centers. These alternative to detention programs are effective at ensuring that immigrants return to their immigration hearings and are much less costly than detention.

    Thank you for your continued efforts to end family detention and close the T. Don Hutto detention center.

    —

    Bob Libal
    Grassroots Leadership
    Austin, Texas
    http://www.grassrootsleadership.org

    Check out www.texasprisonbidness.org for news and info on the private prison industry in Texas.

    *****

    Barbara Hines: New ICE family detention centers a step in wrong direction

    June 16, 2008

    The federal government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is accepting bids today for contracts to construct three new privately run detention centers across the country for children and their families awaiting immigration proceedings.

    These facilities, each to be built with up to 200 beds, will expand the system of family detention made controversial in recent years at the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas.

    The proposal for new centers is a step in the wrong direction. Congress has repeatedly called on ICE, the agency within the Department of Homeland Security responsible for immigration matters, to implement alternatives to detention programs for families, stating that detention of families should be the last alternative and not the first.

    In 2006, when I first went to Hutto, I was appalled by the living conditions. Children as young as infants, along with their families, were detained in a converted medium-security prison run by the Corrections Corporation of America, a for-profit prison management corporation. Children received one hour of education a day and wore prison uniforms. They were required to be in their cells for long periods during the day to be present for multiple cell counts.

    Many of the detainees at Hutto have come to the United States fleeing persecution or social turmoil — asylum seekers fleeing civil conflict in Eastern Africa, Iraqi Christians targeted by fundamentalists and Central Americans seeking refuge from drug, gang and domestic violence. No detainee has been accused of a crime.

    The psychological toll on children in detention is significant. Often already traumatized by conditions in their home countries and the process of being uprooted during migration, children and parents at Hutto reported being threatened with separation from one another as a disciplinary measure.

    After widespread public advocacy against the facility, national media attention, a lawsuit and a settlement, conditions at the facility are significantly better. Children no longer wear prison scrubs, and they now receive seven hours of education a day. Also, they remain at the detention center for a significantly shorter amount of time.

    Fundamentally, however, family detention remains an inappropriate response to asylum seekers and immigrant parents and children. Advocates continue to be concerned about news reports from Hutto, such as an alleged sexual assault of a detainee by a guard and the separation of a child from her mother for four days. Both incidents occurred last year.

    Alternatives to detention include community-based, homelike shelters that provide access to counseling and legal services. Intensive-supervision programs also keep families together and out of detention. In fact, alternatives to detention programs have proved effective at ensuring that immigrants appear for their court hearings through a combination of telephone reporting and home visits. These programs are also substantially more cost-effective than detention.

    One study by the Vera Institute found that more than 90 percent of immigrants on a supervised release program attended their immigration hearings. The average cost of a supervision program was $12 a day, compared with $61 a day to detain an immigrant. The cost savings are likely more pronounced in the context of family detention, which is more expensive than detaining adult immigrants.

    Instead of contracting the construction of more family detention centers, ICE should seriously invest in alternatives to detention programs.

    Barbara Hines is a clinical professor of law and director of the Immigration Clinic at The University of Texas School of Law. She was co-counsel — along with the national ACLU, the ACLU of Texas and the law firm of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene and McRae — in the lawsuit challenging conditions at Hutto. Her e-mail address is bhines@law.utexas.edu.

    *****

    Hutto center picture incomplete

    Re: “There’s a better way – ICE should not be accepting bids to build new family detention centers, says Barbara Hines,” last Monday Viewpoints.

    Since its inception, the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Center has been a safe and humane alternative to separating the families who enter the country illegally.

    Many positive changes have been made. Families have access to high-quality medical, mental health and dental care 24 hours a day. Children attend school seven hours a day with state-certified teachers who provide a curriculum based on state standards. There are many recreational and social activities for all residents and few restrictions on movement throughout the facility.

    Many of the conditions mentioned in the column have not existed for some time. The razor-wire fence shown in the picture accompanying the column was removed more than a year ago. ICE has taken a proactive approach to enhancing the facility since it opened. Many of the improvements were in place, under way or planned before the lawsuit referred to in the column was filed.

    Marc J. Moore, field office director, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, San Antonio

  • One Vote Away from Absolute Ruling Power

    Is it possible for a constitutional structure of governance, founded in the name of democracy, to willingly discard the principle of a human right to habeas corpus? In a 70-page ruling in the matter of BOUMEDIENE v. BUSH, the US Supreme Court (on Thursday) came within one vote of declaring the US President an absolute sovereign in his relations with citizens of the world.

    So it was with special regard that we read the following passage from the concurring opinion written by Justice Souter, and joined by Ginsberg and Breyer. We thank the stars on the flag for these three of nine justices, who declared that it is “a basic fact of Anglo-American constitutional history:

    “that the power, first of the Crown and now of the Executive Branch of the United States, is necessarily limited by habeas corpus jurisdiction to enquire into the legality of executive detention.

    “And one could explain that in this Court’s exercise of responsibility to preserve habeas corpus something much more significant is involved than pulling and hauling between the judicial and political branches.

    “Instead, though, it is enough to repeat that some of these petitioners have spent six years behind bars. After six years of sustained executive detentions in Guantanamo, subject to habeas jurisdiction but without any actual habeas scrutiny, today’s decision is no judicial victory, but an act of perseverance in trying to make habeas review, and the obligation of the courts to provide it, mean something of value both to prisoners and to the Nation.”

    For what it’s worth, Justices Souter, Ginsberg, and Breyer, we’d like to say that, as we prepare to reflect upon the meaning of “flag day,” the Nation stands ready to persevere with you.

    We stand with you in this matter partly because we think that Edmund Burke long ago made a good point when he argued that the history of Anglo-American Constitutional Law is founded upon a contract to which all subject peoples are rightful parties.

    As Burke would put it, locking people up without them having a right to seek judicial review — this is no “mere mischief” — it is the kind of action that breaks the contract between the government and the people. That famous statesman who drew a line between good and bad causes for revolution would say that wherever the essential principles of the contract had been broken, the executive would have in fact “abdicated” his Presidency, and the office would be “thereby vacant.”

    Come to think of it — a curious irony indeed — it would eventually take a Justice (Souter) appointed by Daddy Bush to support an opinion on habeas corpus that would protect the Office of the President from being vacated on account of the tyrannical whims of George, Jr.

    Finally, on this strictly nonpartisan basis, we could say that John McCain’s anti-habeas reflex, exampled in his intemperate denunciation of the Court ruling (although he said he had not had time to read it yet), says at least 51 percent of what we shall need to know come November.–gm

    Flag Day P.S.: The White House is reportedly seeking ways to limit the scope of the Court’s habeas ruling. Does the White House not notice that its antagonism to habeas corpus is sufficient evidence that its whole global agenda of aggression cannot be viewed as an intention to promote greater democracy?

  • Diane Wilson: Two Blog Posts per Arrest

    I was arrested unexpected like. I was sitting in a folding chair outside the Reception Room of the General Consulate of India. I had brought the folding chair from the house I was staying in and I had my poster with Day 15 of a hunger strike posted and leaning against the wall. An armful of flyiers was in my lap and I had already passed out about forty. Very interesting reception that I was getting. Almost every Indian I talked with acted totally surprised that the situation in Bhopal still existed. Yes, it does, I said. 30 Bhopalis are dying a month from that release in l984. Over 25,000 dealths. Over 8 times the amount of Americans that were killed during 9-11. And the USA invaded two countries over that one!

    That’s Diane Wilson blogging there. She wrote two blog posts about her civil mischief up at the Indian Consulate offices in Houston, and then they had her arrested. Now she’s back from the seventh circle of hell and blogging about that, too. Once again, the moral leader of the Laguna Madre (and co-mother of CODEPINK) is peeking into the dark spaces of jailhouse rot. Grrrl don’t miss a moment!

    Diane Wilson up in the tower with the Houston Indian Consulate

    Unarrested Woman

    NOTE: We posted a comment to Diane’s blog about how the report from the Harris County Jail was like Beatrice grabbing Dante by the ankle and taking him straight down to seventh hell (from the lofty consulate, no less).

    Diane replied: “yep, it was indeed hell. Ive been in a few Jails but Harris County has its own peticular brutality. Not just the conditions of the jails, but the damaging way they treat prisoners — many many who have not seen a court or a lawyer yet. not charged with a crime. There’s an investigation going on but i wonder if they will be steadfast enough to see through the jail’s attempt at coverup.”

    The death toll at the Harris County Jail, and the death toll from Dow / Carbide poison at Bhopal — global miseries linked across the bridge of Diane Wilson’s back. Who will be steadfast enough to lift us from these miseries? — gm

    Keywords: Carbide Dow Bhopal Poisoning Harris County Jail Terrors Carbide Dow Bhopal Poisoning Harris County Jail Terror Carbide Dow Bhopal Poisoning Harris County Jail Terror . . .

  • As if it's not Still a Man's World for Hillary, too

    I almost wrote something about sexists often having good intentions, but no. There is really no excuse for wondering whether Hillary Clinton lives in a sexist world. This is especially true in a Google world where all you have to do is search under “hillary sexism.” Melissa McEwan is righteous insightful. Back in February she already had logged 62 examples on her Hillary Sexism Watch. The New York Times this week qualified for example 107. And as McEwan says, this is just a sampling.

    There is much more to say about the typical evasion strategies of the “oh-no-it-can’t-be-sexism” crowd. And some of them, being anti-racist, should have known better how to keep their concepts in focus.

    If we all share a sexist world, what kind of armor do you think Clinton wears that would be able to shield her from the pervasive effects of patriarchy?

    In these matters (racism, sexism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism, etc.) the course of wisdom runs in the direction of self-reflection not self-deflection. We all of us have more to learn about how to get over these things together. And more of us should have taken the opportunity of the Clinton candidacy to educate ourselves about how sexism keeps working.–gm

  • Forcing the Border Patrol to Answer a Question

    By Nick Braune
    Mid-Valley Town Crier
    by permission

    A petition was filed in federal court this July with a very simple request. Please instruct the Border Patrol to answer this question: Are you going to be conducting immigration ID checks in the event of a hurricane evacuation? It’s a very good question. If tens of thousands of cars start leaving the Valley together and crowds arrive at the bus stations, won’t there be huge lines while IDs are checked? And what if I can’t find my ID? I interviewed someone working on the issue, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, Corinna Spencer-Scheurich.

    Nick Braune: The Monitor reported that a number of groups, including LUPE and Brownsville’s Proyecto Digna, have filed a suit to find out evacuation procedures and policies. One lawyer was quoted as saying that the Border Patrol is being “reckless” and that they would be “creating a danger for everyone” if they start asking people for identification during an evacuation. Are those comments too strong?

    Corinna Spencer-Scheurich: No, I don’t think they are too strong. Border Patrol is being reckless because the most important thing in advance of a disaster is to have a plan that everyone knows. We saw what happened when Houston residents tried to evacuate before Hurricane Rita. It took more than 24 hours for people to reach Dallas. Only half of the residents ended up evacuating. Luckily the main force of Rita did not hit Houston. What is clear is that in the event of a hurricane evacuation, everyone needs to be prepared and we have to get people to safety as quickly as possible.

    Can you imagine the additional hold up at the Falfurrias checkpoint if Border Patrol is checking IDs? Holiday weekends are bad enough! And some people will not evacuate, risking harm, because they know they might run out of gas because of the gridlock or because they might have other problems. People who might have trouble proving their immigration status or have family members with that problem are also not going to flee. This is a humanitarian disaster waiting to happen.

    Braune: Is it really necessary to go to a judge on this? Won’t the Border Patrol answer its phone and explain its evacuation procedures?

    Spencer-Scheurich: We have asked several times in many different ways. We even asked again before we filed this lawsuit. I don’t think that the Border Patrol has realized the potential devastation that it might cause by not being clear and not working with the community on a humane evacuation plan.

    Braune: If the judge rules on your side, what would be a possible next step?

    Spencer-Scheurich: It depends on what Border Patrol’s plan is. If the Border Patrol will step aside in the face of an impending natural disaster, then the community groups who are plaintiffs in this case, like LUPE and Proyecto Digna, will be able to work with their members to help assure that we don’t have a loss of human life. But if the plan is to stop everyone evacuating and check their ID at the checkpoints, then we have some constitutional issues to grapple with.

    Why are they only checking here in advance of a natural disaster and not in Florida or Louisiana? We believe that would be a violation of constitutional rights to Equal Protection based on national origin discrimination. It also might cause a deprivation of life, liberty and property in violation of the 5th Amendment. Once we know their plan we will take action accordingly.

    Braune: In my column, I denounced the recent Postville, Iowa immigration raid as mean-spirited and confrontational. And I think Homeland Security’s push for the Border Wall, when our Valley is overwhelmingly opposed to it, has the same mean, confrontational quality. Do you think the Border Patrol’s tactics (demanding identification during the mock evacuation drill earlier this year) and the general “zero-tolerance” Operation Streamline are intentionally vicious?

    Spencer-Scheurich: It is sad but true. I believe that immigration policy is being set for purely political reasons. It is being determined without regard to the experience that people have in their communities, without an understanding of the economic and social costs, and without even taking into account that similar policies have not worked in the past. It is shameful and hateful. I think we will look back at this period like we do to the days of segregation and Jim Crow laws, 19th Century treatment of Irish immigrants, and the Japanese internment camps during WWII. I just hope that by saying “enough is enough,” the nonprofit organizations in this lawsuit will be able to help their members, no matter what their immigration status is, to avoid life-threatening danger.