Author: mopress

It was quite an honor to be invited by Flashpoints host Dennis Bernstein to speak via telephone about three Texas families who have been abducted and imprisoned by Immigration and Customs Enforcements. The live program from the New College of San Francisco aired Jan. 19 on KPFA and other Pacifica stations. The segment of the show about the Texas families runs from minutes 5:30 to 18:10. Visit the Flashpoints website or go directly to the audio file. Note to listeners: Haskell is NorthWEST of Dallas–gm.

A photo of the Ibrahim girls during happy days at home in Richardson, Texas. (From left) Zahra, Rodina, Faten, and Maryam. In early November, the girls were abducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Zahra (an American citizen) was placed into the care of her uncle Ahmad, while Rodina, Faten, and Maryam were jailed with their pregnant mother and older brother. They remain in jail at the T. Don Hutto Prison Camp in Taylor, Texas where they are clothed in orange prison uniforms. Their father is jailed in Haskell, Texas. Despite the family’s pending appeal for asylum, US authorities are seeking deportation. You will find materials about the intolerable Ibrahim ordeal archived here.

EXCERPT from Salaheddin Ibrahim’s petition for asylum.

During summer 2000 the Israelis attacked Al Fandaqumiyah with tanks, airplanes and gunfire. I was away from the house when the attack started, and ran home. I went up on the roof. The Israelis fired gas bombs and one of them broke the window of my kitchen and fell inside the house. I came down from the roof and threw the bomb back outside. It was hot, but not too hot to scoop up and quickly throw out. The children were sick and Hanan and I ran with them out of the house. Maryam, who was two years old, was overcome by the gas and unconscious.

I ran with the children and my wife with shooting all around us, and the children were crying and my wife was crying. We stayed outside in the olive grove until the Israeli troops left the village. Then we went back in the house. Maryam had awakened but she was very sick. She had great difficulty breathing. I called my neighbor and asked him to come with me to the pharmacy to buy medicine for Maryam. I was afraid and wanted the neighbor Abdel Ba Set Raba to come just so I would feel safer. I intended to explain the problem to the pharmacist so that he could provide what Maryam needed.

I drove to the pharmacy. There were two others from my village in the pharmacy, but while we were in the pharmacy the Israeli soldiers came in and ordered us out. When we went out they confiscated our identity cards. The soldiers told me to go remove an object in the street, but I told them I had to take medicine to my daughter. They thought the object might be a mine or a booby trap. They cursed me and told me to do what they ordered me to do.

I refused and they shot near my head and demanded that I go. I went and recovered the object that was in the street. It was just a bag. Then they forced us to sweep the street clean. After about 45 minutes the soldiers left. I went into the pharmacy and got some pills that were supposed to enable Maryam to breathe. I gave her the medicine and she recovered….

Maryam is 4 years old. She is afraid of policemen in uniform, but the older children understand that they are safe in the United States. In Palestine, when the older children heard shooting or saw helicopters or Israeli soldiers, they would cry and run into the house and pull the bed clothes over their heads. They often were afraid to go to school, and, if they were too terrified to go, we would let them stay at home.

Read the full petition forwarded by attorney John Wheat Gibson.

In 2003, Good Jobs First and Grassroots Leadership collaborated on a 56 page report about Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). Get the pdf report from the Good Jobs First Corporate Research Project. Grassroots Leadership, you may recall, spurred the isssue of the T. Don Hutto prison camp by organizing a mid-December vigil. Jay J. Johnson-Castro walked to that vigil from the Texas Capitol, and the rest is history.
Thanks again to Jay J. Johnson-Castro for sending along the link.–gm

To view “detention standards” for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), see this web page at the Department of Justice (DOJ):

http://www.usdoj.gov/ofdt/standards.htm

Here you will find a summary of nine general areas of concern, along with a link that you can follow to a 194-page pdf file (pbds-1-25-06-ta-wpdbtb_verison.pdf).

The DOJ page reports that the detention standards were adopted in Jan. 2001, but it does not acknowledge that the American Bar Association (ABA) helped to negotiate the standards, apparently in the context of a lawsuit.

“As a result of 1996 immigration law amendments that mandated the detention of certain immigrants and asylum seekers,” reports the ABA Commission on Immigration, “ICE now detains more than 200,000 people annually at over 200 sites, the majority of which are county and local jails. Immigration detainees are the fastest growing group of people incarcerated in the United States. In 2006 ICE will receive $3.7 billion for immigration law enforcement, including detention and removal.”

The ABA Commission on Immigration has several pages and publications. See the commission’s home page at:

http://www.abanet.org/publicserv/immigration/home.html

As reported elsewhere, the ABA Commission on Immigration has announced intentions to visit the T. Don Hutto prison for immigrants.

Meanwhile, DOJ says its Office of the Federal Detention Trustee “will conduct Quality Assurance Reviews in 12 non-federal facilities and 9 private facilities” during fiscal year 2007. Hutto is a private facility managed by the Corrections Corporation of America and named after the company’s co-founder.

A study released during the 2006 holidays by the Homeland Security Office of Inspector General found a range of detention issues worth reporting (see TCRR story: USA Inspectors Cite Problems with ICE Prisons, Jan. 16, 2007). Home page for detention standards review book:

http://www.usdoj.gov/ofdt/reviewbook.htm