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Email from Jay Johnson-Castro; original in red, white, and blue–gm

Hola y’all…

My friend, John Neck and I will be doing yet another protest walk. This time to Governor Perry’s hometown and home county of Haskell, Haskell Co., TX. John has been with me from the very first day that I set out on the Border Wall-K to stop Chertoff from building a fence on the Texas-Mexico border. I do the walking. Hundreds of others joined. John is the support crew.

On this walk to Haskell, we are going to be highlighting…exposing…the inhumane treatment of immigrants, asylum seekers…especially the young and innocent women that are being subjected to degrading abuse and sexual violations by the staff of the Emerald Correctional Management Corporation that runs the prison camp for Chertoff and the ICE Company. Our motive for the walk is to get the victims freed.
In order to do so…we are going to give Governor Perry a chance to show his leadership…or lack of it. So far, it does not seem like much of a coincidence that the Governor’s hometown and home county would have a debased prison camp that abuses human rights and human dignity while he sits quietly as the head of the great state of Texas . One hears rumors that he is actually trying to position himself to be Vice President of the United States . He either shows leadership NOW and champions the freedom of the victims in his hometown, in his home county, in his home state…or he can kiss his aspirations good bye.

[On Wednesday, Feb. 28] John and I will start this 60 mile walk north to Haskell from Abilene, TX . . We will hold a press conference at 9:00am at the park to the east of the Convention Center located at 1101 North 1st Street …between Cypress and Pine Streets. After the press conference, we will then head on over to Hwy. 83 and then start our trek to Haskell. Since Texas is such a vast state, John and I are starting in Abilene to help the state, national and international communities…as well as the media…gain a perspective of where the Haskell prison camp is.

View Google Map of “Huddled Masses” Walk

Here’s what’s behind our push to do this walk to the Haskell prison camp. It shocks, outrages and angers us what is being done to innocent people there. Rather than lose our cool and do nothing about it…we have learned that we can do something about it. Change things. Working together we all can. So…if you too would be shocked by a young woman being stripped naked and having her body invaded by the highest authority of this land…being paraded in front of criminal offenders who masturbate in front of them…please read the Texas Civil Rights Review story of Suzi Hazahza.

The violations of Suzi, her sister Mirvat…and countless other young women and immigrants imprisoned there…is occurring with impunity at the Rolling Plains Regional Jail…in what we will refer to as the Haskell prison camp. And this kind of demented conduct has been going on for a very long time. {Haskell prison camp contact info. Rolling Plains County Jail . 118 County Road 206. Haskell , TX 79521 . (940) 864-5694}

The grand lady…the Statue of Liberty …welcomes lowly immigrants saying:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

When did our state and federal governments forsake that global promise of the American dream? Right here in Texas …Governor Perry’s silence about the struggling people in the prison camps is deafening. How can he consider himself a potential national leader when he doesn’t know how to use his lofty position as governor to take care of the “Huddled masses yearning to breathe FREE”…like the ones who sit in a Haskell prison camp in his hometown…or the innocent children and their mothers who are imprisoned just 35 miles up the road from his exalted Capitol office and Texas White House…in the CCA Hutto prison camp in Taylor, TX? By the way. Is it surprising to anyone that In 2006…CCA gave $10,000 in campaign contributions to only one state elected official? Rick Perry? Might the Governor be an accomplice to this immoral and criminal for-profit prison system in Texas ? What does his silence say?

So our walk to the Haskell prison camp is a walk to liberate the “Huddled masses yearning to breathe FREE”. We start here in Texas . We will carry this liberation across the country. We are seeking freedom and independence for ALL the immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees…who come to this country based on the international promise by the Land of Liberty …only to fall victims to a perverted-for profit-money laundering-scheme that imprisons them and steal them of their dignity.

This especially includes the liberating of Suzi and her sister Mirvat Hazahza…and the bright young college student, Samantha Windschitt. Why? Because we do not believe that any human is illegal on planet Earth…let alone innocent youth. (See attached photo with some freedom fighters, including Rosa Rosales, President of LULAC, who witnessed the Hutto prison camp first hand and pledged her national organizations resources to close all such dehumanizing prison camps.)

Our walk to liberate the “Huddled masses yearning to breathe FREE” starts on Wednesday, February 28th. We will walk for four days to arrive at the Haskell prison camp…to hold a Texas Independence Day Vigil at 3pm on none other than Saturday, March 3rd…Texas Independence Day.

As always…you are welcome…invited…encouraged…to walk a mile with us. You have 60 different miles to choose from. Take your pick. Bring your friends, family or neighbors. Feel free to forward or blog this invitation. Let your organizations know. Be part of this rapidly growing grass roots dissention of the atrocities that are being committed right here on American soil…under the American and Texas flags.

Join with us in not just reading about it…but in making a difference…in making history. What happens in Texas sets a precedent for the rest of our county. So…come walk a mile with us…

Jay

P.S. John and I are most willing to accept a meal, lodging or trip expenses. John comes from Brownsville . I come from Del Rio . We are not funded by any organization. We are grass roots folks like you. We do this on our own…along with your help. If you would like to help, you can call Sarah Boone at (830)768-1100…or e-mail her at sboone@stx.rr.com. She’s our “command center”. (:}) JJJ

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The Border Ambassador

Connecting.the.dots…making.a.difference…

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Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr.

Del Rio, Texas, USA
Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila , Mexico

The following commentary was previously posted in the announcement section.–gm

For further accounts of the disparity between what ICE says and what the Hazahzas have lived through, see Brett Shipp’s review of the T. Don Hutto press tour. We congratulate Shipp for validating the voices of immigrants in relation to ICE propaganda, but we are dismayed that Shipp’s report does not mention that his key sources, Juma and Mohammad, are desperately seeking reunion with their imprisoned family at the Rolling Plains prison.
Given the power of Shipp’s reach, and the natural connection between what ICE says and what the Hazahzas experience, omission of the family’s continued separation suggests a whiff of exploitation. Doesn’t ICE claim that it keeps families together? What would Mohammad and Juma have to say about that? We can only hope the debt will be repaid in short order.

To quote the Hazahzas and not mention Haskell? We don’t get it. Please show us Mr. Shipp that there is a larger plan of reporting here, because there is no excuse for knowing about Mohammad’s sister Suzi and failing to act today.

From one of our favorite correspondents, on one of our favorite stories. Never mind the laughable headline about “keeping families together.” In the case of the Ibrahims and Suleimans, the families were split three ways. Meanwhile, the Hazahza family is still divided. The Hazahza men are still unable to live together at Haskell, depite written requests. Get a pdf of the complete report on “Locking up Family Values” from the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children.–gm

Detention Facility for Immigrants Criticized:
Organizations Laud DHS Effort to Keep Families Together but Call Center a ‘Prison-Like Institution’

By Sylvia Moreno

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, February 22, 2007; A03

TAYLOR, Tex. — The day Mustafa Elmi turned 3 years old he had to report to his cell three times for headcount. To be able to get one hour of recreation inside a concrete compound sealed off by metal gates and razor wire he had to pin his picture ID to his uniform.

Such routines characterized Mustafa’s life, as well as that of his mother, Bahjo Hosen, 26, during their first seven months in the United States, the country to which they fled to escape political persecution in their native Somalia. They ended up in the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility, one of the nation’s newest detention centers for illegal immigrants that the Department of Homeland Security touts as an “effective and humane alternative” to keep immigrant families together while they await the outcome of immigration court hearings or deportation.
Before the facility opened, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) routinely separated parents from their children upon apprehension by the Border Patrol. Infants and toddlers were placed in federally funded foster homes; adolescents and teenagers were placed in facilities for minors run by the Department of Health and Human Services; and parents were placed in adult detention centers.

Despite the change in policy, two national organizations decry the conditions at Hutto and have termed the facility “a penal detention model that is fundamentally anti-family and anti-American.”

The center, which the DHS opened last May, is an unacceptable method “for addressing the reality of the presence of families in our immigration system,” says a report written by the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, in New York, and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, in Baltimore, and scheduled for release Thursday.

“As a country that supports family values, we should not be treating immigrant families who have not committed a crime like criminals, particularly children,” said Ralston H. Deffenbaugh Jr., president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.

During a tour of Hutto this month, Gary Mead, the assistant director of ICE detention and removal operations, said the facility, which is operated under contract by the Corrections Corporation of America , averaged 380 to 420 detainees daily. That day, Hutto housed 180 children and 150 adults — four-fifths of them mothers — from 29 countries. Seventy-five families were being detained while they awaited the outcome of their political-asylum petitions.

The 512-bed facility is part of the Department of Homeland Security’s year-long push to build detention centers or contract them out to private companies to accommodate illegal immigrants apprehended along the Mexican border. A record 26,500 such immigrants are in detention daily — up from 19,718 a day in 2005.

Hutto, located in central Texas, is used for immigrants from countries other than Mexico who are awaiting “expedited removal from the United States .”

That process ended the policy known as “catch and release,” in which such people were given a notice to appear later before an immigration judge.

Mexican nationals caught in the United States illegally are routinely sent back almost immediately.

For some years, ICE has contracted with Berks County , Pa. , to run an 80-bed detention facility for families, and the report by the women’s commission and Lutheran service touched on that center but focused on the much larger Hutto.

The report lauded the goal of keeping families together but urged DHS to close the Hutto facility, saying that “prison-like institutions” are not appropriate for families. “Family detention is not one that has any precedent in the United States , therefore no appropriate licensing requirements exist,” the report said.

In response, ICE spokesman Marc Raimondi said that the Hutto and Berks facilities “maintain safe, secure and humane conditions and invest heavily in the welfare” of the detainees. He said that ICE detention standards exceed those set by the American Correctional Association, and that the agency’s practice of conducting annual reviews and weekly visits to detention facilities “significantly exceeds industry standards.”

The report recommended that ICE parole asylum-seekers while they await the outcome of their hearings. It also said that immigrant families not eligible for parole should be released to special shelters or other homelike settings run by nonprofit groups and be required to participate in electronic monitoring or an intensive supervision program that would use a combination of electronic ankle bracelets, home visits and telephone reporting.

The 72-page report also criticized the educational services for children; the food service and rushed feeding times for children; the health care, especially for vulnerable children and pregnant women; the therapeutic mental health care as insufficient or culturally inappropriate; and the recreation time as inadequate for children. The review said that families were being held for months in Hutto and for years in the case of the longer-established Berks facility.

The report also cited inappropriate disciplinary practices used against adults and children, including threats of separation, verbal abuse and withholding recreation or using temperature control, particularly extremely cold conditions, as punishment.

Hosen, who traveled with Mustafa on an inner tube across the Rio Grande from Mexico and insisted that a stranger in Texas call the Border Patrol so she could surrender to authorities, lived in Hutto from June 30 to Jan. 30.

Granted political asylum and now living temporarily in a home for immigrant women and children in Austin , Hosen said that she and other parents in Hutto were threatened regularly with separation from their children for minor infractions such as youngsters running inside the prison. She lost 30 pounds while detained, and her son lost weight and suffered from diarrhea.

Concerned about her son’s health, Hosen asked for a multivitamin for him but was denied the request, she said.

She recalled that the day she and Mustafa arrived at Hutto and she saw the word “residential” written on the facility’s sign, she was relieved after having spent almost two weeks in a detention center for adults in south Texas while her son was held in foster care. Hosen said that although she was reunited with him, little else changed. “It was just like the place I was — detention — nothing different,” she said.