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Email from Jay Johnson-Castro, Sr.

Hola ya’ll…

If we cannot free innocent children imprisoned “for profit” on American soil…right here in the “heart of Texas”…our State and our country are doomed.

We must free them!

Many of you have been there since day # one…and already know this. Many are just coming to discover the details. Many of you from all parts of the country have shared in solidarity with us in our quest to free the innocent children from the Hutto prison.

A year ago, May of 2006, Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff proclaimed the T. Don Hutto prison for immigrant families the prototype of many more to be opened across our great land. Hutto just so happened to be a privately owned prison…run “for profit”. Immigrant children would condemned to becoming a commodity for huge financial gain of the corrupt political-corporate world. A few informed Texans tried to find a way to expose and bring public awareness to this immoral, callous and criminal scheme.

At that time, children were confined to 8′ x 12′ cold cells for 23 hours a day in a medium security prison surrounded by razor wire walls. Often not with either parent, the children, ranging from 2-y-o and up, were forced to wear prison uniforms, stand for head counts starting at 5:30am and only allowed 20 minutes to finish a meal, often prepared with out of date food and spoiled milk products. They were getting sick on a regular basis and loosing weight.

Those were the conditions…up to early December, 2006 when an alliance of Central Texas organizations solidified to form Texans United For Families (TUFF) collaborated to hold a protest walk and vigil. Starting with a press conference, hosted by Texas State Senator, Carlos Uresti, at the Capitol building, the first Hutto walk was launched on December 14th. Arriving at 11:00am on December 15th, in Taylor, TX at the Hutto childrens prison, the walk joined the first Hutto Vigil…with some 150 grassroots citizens coming together for the first time to publicly condemn the Chertoff-ICE-CCA-Williamson County collusion to imprison children and their mothers for profit.

Since that time numerous vigils and walks have been conducted. The most recent walk, Hutto Walk III, went from the Hutto childrens prison in Taylor to the Williamson County Commissioners Court in Georgetown, in order to confront the commissioners about moral breakdown and their complicity of profiting from the imprisonment of innocent children.

Since the first Hutto Walk and Vigil, many things had come to light.

1. ICE funnels a minimum of $2, 800,000 per month to the private prison company CCA…Corrections Corporation of America.
2. Parents were often separated from their children.
3. Fathers are generally imprisoned in a different prison far away.
4. Hutto did not comply with Texas or US educational laws.
5. Hutto did not comply with Texas family and day care laws.
6. Women were not being given proper medical care.
7. Women were chained to beds while undergoing checkups.
8. Women were being sexually assaulted.
9. Media was not allowed to tour the facilities.
10. Hutto did not comply with the UN Rights of the Child.
11. CCA was grossing $7,000 per month per child.
12. WCC would make $1 per child per day.
13. No toys were allowed.
14. Mothers and children were threatened with separation as a form of punishment.

Under those conditions, at the end of January, 2007, the Williamson County Commissioners Court ignored the expressed concerns of a public with a conscience and extended their one year contract for two more years. But thanks to grassroots citizens, human rights organizations and media pressure, some of those things started to change as early as mid February. Razor wire started to come down, cells doors got painted lavender and the media was allowed to enter the facility…although they were not allowed the freedom of the press to interview the children or their mothers.

In March, the ACLU, TCRP and UT Law Clinic filed lawsuits against Chertoff and ICE, adding another level of legal and media attention.

On May 8, the UN Special Rapporteur, Jorge Bustamonte, of the Human Rights Commission, came to Texas to inspect the human rights violations of the children in Hutto. He was denied access by Chertoff.

On June 23, an Amnesty International coordinated Hutto Vigil X was held at which half a thousand folks peacefully protested this international crime against innocent children.

The ACLU effectively won their lawsuit against Chertoff…in the form of a settlement. Conditions for the children would be significantly better…but…any settlement would fall well short the rightful freedom for the innocent children that we the public demand.

Since there was a clear case of sexual assault by a guard on an immigrant woman in front of the woman’s child, the Williamson County Commissioners Court finally saw their could get caught with their pants down. Concern about exposure and “liability” became public. For a short time, the WCCC entertained termination of their contract with ICE and CCA as the money laundering mechanism for ICE and CCA. Yet ICE and CCA courted the WCCC to keep it in the loop…with CCA offering the WCCC a $250,000 line of credit and legally holding them harmless in the event of law suit. Not at all concerned with the moral or criminal aspects, or the international mockery they had become for imprisoning innocent children, WCCC unanimously accepted the offer of protection from “liability”.

YET…not one national television network has covered this international crime against children. While more concerned this past year with celebrity crimes, paternity DNA, panties, drunk driving, dog fights and heists and jail sentences…CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, Fox…national…have all refused to tell the story of innocent children being prisoners in a privatized “for profit” internment prison in the United States.

While we recognize that the national networks are complicit with an administration that would commit this dehumanizing crime against the most innocent and helpless of our human family, we applaud all of the local media here in Texas…along with those around the country and around the world. “Hutto” has gone from four Google search results one year ago…to tens of thousands today.

From Australia to Iran, Russia to Argentina, the media…radio, television, newspapers, magazines and blogsphere… have carried the message all across the planet of how children are being imprisoned in America…in the heart of Texas…for profit. Radio, newspapers, television and online news and blog sources…have faithfully published the story. We also applaud the vast national and international media that has tried to inform their audiences about this American tragedy. We look with cynicism upon the national networks that rebuff this international crime being committed by the administration on American soil.

We have also had Texas legislators try to condemn Hutto during the legislative session. Unfortunately, and that’s how corrupt politics is, legislators who are on the payroll of private prisons refused to allow the condemnation to be aired publicly.

This December 16th will be the anniversary of our first Hutto Vigil. We will indeed hold an anniversary vigil…regardless of the weather. Regardless of the weather, the children from upwards of 50 different countries have been imprisoned in Hutto. After months of being treated as criminals and slaves…we don’t even know what has happened to them, or where they are or how they are. Worse yet…the vast majority of our fellow Americans do not YET know that Hutto even exists.

What’s interesting about this vigil…we have come to learn that it coincides with December 18…the International Migrants Day. How fitting that we would be prote

sting the imprisonment of immigrant children in the land of the free.

So, we now notify you…and invite you…to join us on December 16th…in front of the T. Don Hutto prison for innocent children…for our Hutto Anniversary Vigil….and in honor of the International Migrant. We will hold the Anniversary Vigil from 2pm until dark. After sunset, the anniversary vigil will become a candlelight vigil.

T. Don Hutto is located at 1001 Welch St. in Taylor, TX, 35 miles N.E. of Austin. The following link can be used to get directions from your particular point of origin.

Before we sign off here, may we all, in total solidarity, make a personal appeal to the President of the United States. Would you join me in requesting his intervention in behalf of the innocent children imprisoned by his Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff? Would you join me in demanding that he order the immediate release…the freedom of the innocent children…from Hutto and from any other facility that detains them against their will?

Do you, as President of the United States, approve of the imprisonment of innocent children…in America…in Texas…”for profit”? If not, please immediately free them and their mothers.

If you actually do approve of the imprisonment of innocent children…in America…in Texas…and “for profit”…then we expect you to give them at least as good a deal as you gave Scooter Libby. After all, if you can pardon Scooter Libby…a convicted criminal…before he had to serve even one day in prison, surely you can free innocent children that are already imprisoned under your watch.

One December 16th…and our Hutto Anniversary Vigil…may we have a 1001 candles lit up and down 1001 Welch St.

In solidarity
Jay
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BorderAmbassadors
FreedomAmbassadors
“Connecting the Dots…Making a Difference”
Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr.
jay@villadelrio.com
Please read my column: Inside the Checkpoints

PRESS RELEASE

Indigenous Peoples’ Border Summit of the Americas, Nov. 7 — 10, focuses on human rights and right of mobility

Del Rio, Texas, border and human rights activist Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr., among the speakers

TUCSON — A human rights crisis for Indigenous Peoples living along borders in the Americas threatens their survival, with rapidly expanding militarization and new laws which limit their mobility in their ancestral territories.

Responding to this crisis, the San Xavier District of the Tohono O’odham Nation will host the Indigenous Peoples Border Summit of the Americas II, Nov. 7- 10, with support from the International Indian Treaty Council.

Mike Flores, Tohono O’odham summit organizer, said, “It is necessary for Tohono O’odham and other Indigenous Peoples of the border regions to collectively address the adverse impacts that are increasingly occurring on tribal lands. The Border Summit of the Americas II will provide us the opportunity to do just that,” Flores said.

San Xavier District Chairman Austin Nunez joins Flores in welcoming Indigenous Peoples to the Border Summit on Tohono O’odham land, located near South Tucson.

The Border Summit will host a human rights workshop by the International Indian Treaty Council. The summit will be broadcast live on the Internet at http://www.earthcycles.net as was done in 2006.

From the southern Andes to the northern Arctic, corporations intent on seizing natural resources have increased the oppression and displacement of Indigenous Peoples, resulting in their forced mobility across national borders. Further, free trade agreements, mining and exploitive development have forced Indigenous Peoples into exile in the Americas, displaced from their lands where they farmed, hunted or fished for survival.

In the United States, corporate profiteering for private migrant prisons, experimental spy technology, poorly trained border agents, privatized security and new laws for immigration threaten the right of mobility in ancestral territories.

The human rights crisis at the southern border of the United States and Mexico has resulted in over 4,000 migrant deaths in recent years, including deaths of women from Guatemala on Tohono O’odham tribal land in Arizona who died walking with their children in 2007. Migrants, including Indigenous Peoples from Mexico and Central America, die of dehydration and severe temperatures while walking in search of a better life. The Border Summit speakers will include Tohono O’odham Mike Wilson, who puts out water for migrants on tribal land.

“No one should die for want of a drink of water,” Wilson said.

The privatization of prisons, including the T. Don Hutto Residential Center and Raymondville migrant tent encampment, both near Austin, Texas, reveals the sinister motivation of profiteering from the plight of migrants. Hutto imprisons migrant and refugee infants and children. Speakers will include Jay Johnson-Castro, Sr., of Texas, among those organizing protests against the prisons.

Johnson-Castro, was born in Portland, Oregon and raised in the Alaskan wilderness. He is tri-lingual (English-Spanish-Albanian) and has served on the Tourism Advisory Committee, Officer of the Governor, Texas Historical Foundation and Texas Hotel & Lodging Assn., Los Caminos del Rio and Val Verde County Historical Commission.

Residing on the border in Del Rio, Texas since 1992, Johnson-Castro has mostly been noted for promoting heritage tourism all along the Texas-Mexico border. He has also been championing the ecology and environment of the Rio Grande Corridor, submitting the Rio Grande as an endangered river and filing suit against the Federal Government to protect endangered species in the Rio Grande region.

Johnson-Castro has most recently become recognized internationally as a human rights activist for his hundreds of miles of Border Wall-ks and has traversed the entire US-Mexico border in protest against the border wall. He has also walked against the “for profit” prison camps of thousands of immigrant refugees, especially T. Don Hutto prison camp where untold hundreds of children have been imprisoned for profit.

A father of four grown children and grandfather of seven, Johnson-Castro is a sculptor, writer, photographer, pubic speaker and gourmet cook. He is the founder of Border Ambassador and Freedom Ambassadors. He is a columnist for the Rio Grande Guardian, “Inside the Checkpoints” (http://www.riograndeguardian.com/columns3.asp).

In May, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for migrants, Jorge Bustamante, was denied entrance into Hutto, and Johnson-Castro, with the support of Amnesty International coordinated human rights protests that followed.

The border wall and border vehicle barriers along the southern border have resulted in the removal of ancestors’ remains of the Tohono O’odham and Kumeyaay from their final resting places. Further, the barrier wall on Tohono O’odham land is a barrier interfering with an ancient annual ceremony.

Since ceremonial leaders from Mexico often lead ceremonies in the United States, new immigration laws threaten the survival of ceremonies, culture and languages. Because many Indian people are born at home, or lack funds for visas and passports, crossing the border has become a harsh ordeal.

Further, at both the northern and the southern borders of Canada and Mexico, federal border agents ransack and violate ceremonial items. Speakers on the right of mobility at the northern border include representatives of Mohawks and other Six Nations.

With the increased militarization and surveillance at the borders, the dangers from speeding border agents, aerial vehicle crashes and abuse and harassment by border agents increase. Women, children and elderly along the border are most often the victims of oppression and suffer most often from the lack of food, safe drinking water and medicines.

With the militarization and oppression increasing for Indigenous Peoples around the world, the Border Summit of the Americas invites Indian people to offer their testimony while receiving information and training on human rights.

The International Indian Treaty Council will present a human rights training, following the United Nations adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The US will be examined by the UN Committee for Racial Discrimination (CERD) Committee in March of 2008, in Geneva, Switzerland.

“This workshop will provide information as to how Indigenous Nations, tribes and organizations can use this historic opportunity to inform the CERD Committee on the true state of racial discrimination in this country and how it affects Indian Nations, Peoples and communities. This information will be very important to help the UN CERD experts get a more accurate picture of racial discrimination in the US and hold the US accountable to their obligations under international human rights law,” IITC said.

“An additional focus will be on strategies to defend our human rights, border rights, and protecting our sacred sites and traditional land rights using the newly-adopted UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples from the local to the international levels.”

The human rights workshop presenters will be Bill Means, Lakota cofounder of the Treaty Council; Andrea Carmen, Yaqui and Treaty Council executive director; Ron Lameman, Confederacy of Treaty 6 First Nations, and Francisco Cali, CERD Member and Treaty Council board president.

For more information: bordersummit2007@yahoo.com

Website: http://indigenousbordersummitamericas2007.blogspot.com

Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr. jay@villadelrio.com (830)734-8636

by Greg Moses

CounterPunch / T Don Hutto Blog

About 100 people protesting the imprisonment of immigrant families at the T. Don Hutto Prison in Taylor, Texas on Sunday evening marched across a parking lot to the front door of the prison and then entered the prison lobby with toys and wrapping paper.

Jaime Martinez, National Treasurer of the League of United Latin American Citizens called for the march shortly after 5:30. Carrying a bullhorn, Martinez informed the protesters that prison officials had made a promise to come out and get the toys at 5 p.m.

When Martinez called for the people to take the toys to the children, the crowd pressed forward across a yellow line painted on the driveway marking official prison property.

“Bring the toys!” called Martinez from the prison door as volunteers grabbed boxes and bags of toys along with rolls of wrapping paper and rushed to the prison door.

One of the volunteers, Georgetown resident Peter Dana, later described carrying a box of toys through a metal detector. He said he thought about helping to engineer a metal detector years ago.

Inside the lobby, prison officials appeared to be accepting the toys for the children inside. Previous reports from various sources say that Hutto houses about 400 immigrants, half of them children.

The toy march was the high point of an active day that began with a longer march from downtown Taylor to the prison that lies upon a large, flat field at the outskirts of town, across the tracks.

Local LULAC Secretary Jose Orta began the day’s preparations by parking a rented trailer across the street from the prison. The trailer served as a stage for speakers during an afternoon rally.

At sundown, the final speaker of the day, Rev. Jim Rigby of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, asked the people to turn around and face the prison. By that time, most of the participants were holding lit candles as part of a sundown vigil.

Shortly after the crowd had turned around, Martinez began walking among the people with his bullhorn.

“Free the Children, Now!” chanted the crowd with Martinez.

“The children were out playing when we first marched here from town,” said Orta, recalling the day’s events. “They saw us, but they were taken inside.”

The Department of Homeland Security says the Hutto prison is dedicated to immigrant families with children.

Organizers and protesters agreed that eventually they want to close the prison and end the imprisonment of children altogether.

After the toy march, filmmakers Matthew Gossage and Lily Keber transformed the chilly night darkness into a screening of their new film, “Hutto: America’s Family Prison” which can be viewed at: americasfamilyprison.com/Hutto.mov. Keber was taping the day’s protest, including the toy march, so perhaps a sequel will be forthcoming.

Near the end of the screening, a few people made two more attempts to deliver more toys to the front door of the Hutto prison. The first attempt was rebuffed by a security guard, but the second attempt succeeded as a young man carrying a child took the bags past the guard to the front door. Inside the lobby, it appeared that people dressed in civilian clothes were processing the toys for delivery to the children inside.

Sunday’s protest marked the first anniversary of protests outside the Hutto prison. During more than a dozen protests since Dec. 16, 2006 security guards have jealously guarded the perimeter of the prison to discourage protesters from walking on prison grounds.

See also:

KVUE: “Detention center still subject of protest one year later”

News 8 Austin: “Anniversary march at T. Don Hutto”