Author: mopress

Christmas afternoon, 2006

Dear Friends,

Further to my emails yesterday regarding the Palestinian children and their families in the Hutto detention center please find below some more details and action required to help these innocent people.

I went to the detention center yesterday and talked to one of the women and provided her with cash for phone calls and snacks for the children since the jail officials are providing them with mainly pork and ham that they do not eat.

Today, another one of the members of the family called me from the detention center and informed me that that all three families in the detention center were in the United States legally and ALWAYS filed their immigration related forms and paid the required fees and taxes.

The woman also indicated that two of her children are United States citizens and are now with their aunt in Dallas but with not much financial support.

Apparently, after 2001 some of the procedures were changed, but they were not informed of these changes, and their attorney failed to file the appeal on their behalf, and that is how their status changed.

All three families had male breadwinners who were working legally with work permits and earned money to stay off welfare or any other related social services.

According to one of the women, her husband suffers from a severe case of diabetes and was deprived of his medication for several days and when he contacted his attorney to inquire about his medication, he was beaten along with the three other male Arab detainees and no one has been able to know his whereabouts or his medical condition. The family of the man contacted the detention facilities in Haskell, Texas and Oklahoma where he was jailed but both facilities deny that he is there now.

Next steps: I will be retaining local immigration lawyer tomorrow morning to attempt and get a release of the women and the children and to determine the location of the men. Also, we will be providing the women and children with more money to help them cover the cost of food purchased from the commissary of the detention center due to the absence of Islamic Halal food. We need your help by forwarding this email to your friends and colleagues and asking them to donate for the legal costs of releasing these families as it has already reached more than 5000 dollars and could easily reach 50 000 dollars since the members of the families in jail are more than 6 adults and 14 children.
I will be providing you with the contact information for the federal authorities in charge of the detention centers in Haskell and Oklahoma to determine the location of Adel Suleiman, the missing man with a severe case of diabetes.

If any one is interested in helping these families please email me and will provide you with my phone number to assign you tasks and pursue financial and material support for these families. All donations will, be listed on our website to ensure transparency and that the families and the children receive the full amount of the donations collected for them and for their legal defense. The expenses will also be listed as they become available and you will be notified of any changes.

Looking forward to hearing from you and THANKS for your generosity, work and support for the children in Palestine.

Riad Elsolh Hamad
Austin, Texas

Donations can be made online at http://www.pcwf.org
Or by sending a check favoring pcwf and indicating that the money is for the Legal Defense of the Children in Hutto to

Riad E. Hamad
Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund
Austin
Editor’s Note: For background on the families and the history of their legal representation, see the following items, archived at the Texas Civil Rights Review–gm:

AFFIDAVIT OF ADEL SAID SULEIMAN

Attorney John Wheat Gibson’s Press Release on Two Palestinian Families that he Represents

The brother of a jailed Palestinian man whose children and pregnant wife are being held in a Texas jail says he will stage a small protest with his 3-year-old niece Friday morning outside the San Antonio offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at 8940 Fourwinds Dr.

[Editor’s Note: date and time changes have been made to the story below–gm]

By Greg Moses

CounterPunch / ElectronicIntifada / IndyMedia Austin, NorthTexas / InternationalMiddleEastMediaCenterNews

The brother of a jailed Palestinian man whose children and pregnant wife are being held in a Texas jail says he will stage a small protest with his 3-year-old niece Friday morning outside the San Antonio offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at 8940 Fourwinds Dr.

“I am an American citizen, and I know what America is made of,” said Ahmad Ibrahim, speaking by telephone Wednesday afternoon. “America is made of good people.”

Ibrahim will take the family’s case to the streets, asking for release of his niece’s three sisters, teenage brother, and pregnant mother–all of whom have been held in jail since their midnight arrests on Nov. 3.
Marc Jeffrey Moore, San Antonio field office director of the Detention and Removal Office for ICE, referred all questions from the Texas Civil Rights Review to the ICE public affairs office, which has not yet returned our call.

Ibrahim said he had just heard from Moore’s office Wednesday afternoon that applications to renew the family’s passports from Jordan had been denied, and they would have to wait another month in jail while ICE contacted the Israeli embassy.

Ibrahim was skeptical that Israel would be forthcoming with the needed travel approvals, and anyway, he said, it would be dangerous for his brother’s family to present Israeli travel papers as their documents for re-entry to Palestine.

“Either deport them, or fix their status,” said Ibrahim. Either way, he says, they should not be in jail.

“We are not poor. We have family, a home, and money.” Ibrahim said that he and his family in Palestine would do whatever is needed to take care of the jailed family as soon as they are released.

“We will meet them at the airport terminal with tickets, if that’s what it takes,” he said.

Ibrahim says he was with his brother some 18 months ago when an immigration lawyer called to apologize for missing a filing deadline regarding the family’s asylum. And he says a ruling on the case is still pending.

The brother, Salaheddin Ibrahim, was separated from his family, and is being held at another jail.

Ahmad Ibrahim says his 5-year-old niece shares her cell with her pregnant mother, Hanan Ahmad, while the 7- and 12-year-old girls share a cell with each other. The 15-year-old boy is in a third cell. All of them are incarcerated at the T. Don Hutto jail in Taylor, Texas.

Ibrahim says the 5-year-old gets into trouble with guards during population counts that are taken four times daily. She is supposed to sit still for the counts, but she doesn’t.

“She is a very active child,” explains Ibrahim. He says reprimands from the guards sometimes bring the little girl to tears.

One chilly morning, says Ibrahim, the girl wrapped a blanket around her as she walked out of her cell, but a guard told her that the blanket didn’t belong to her.

“It’s my blanket!” answered the little girl.

The 7-year-old has also been upset to the point of tears, because she cannot sleep in the same cell with her mother. At 10:00 p.m. the 7-year-old is ordered to the cell she shares with her 12-year-old sister.

Showers for the women are provided every morning at 5:30, but at least on one occasion, says Ibrahim, the pregnant mother was feeling sick and tired, so she asked not to go. A guard reportedly threatened the mother with disciplinary action that would include separating her from the 5-year-old, so the mother took the shower as ordered.

With four girls and one boy already in the family, Ibrahim said that his brother paid a fertility expert $7,000 to ensure that a boy would be born this time, so they are “99 percent” sure that the next child will be a boy.

Meanwhile, Ibrahim holds a letter of suspension for the 15-year-old boy, who has missed too many days of school. Except for the 3-year-old, all the other children were attending schools before they were jailed by ICE.

“He’s holding the whole thing together,” says Ibrahim of the 15-year-old. “He calls me every day.”

Ibrahim says he is composing a letter to First Lady Laura Bush.

“This is a small immigration violation, and an attorney could fix this easily,” he says. “They are not a threat to society.”

Plus, he says, it would be cheaper for the government if the family were allowed to live outside the jail. A report in the Sunday Sun of Williamson County said ICE is paying $95 per day per inmate for imprisonment services provided by Corrections Corporation of America at the Hutto jail–a cost of $14,000 per month for the five family members held there.

“I have never myself heard of anywhere in the world where this kind of thing happens,” said Ibrahim. “Jailing a mother with her children is very demeaning.”

Ibrahim’s protest will be the fourth in two weeks related to the Hutto jail. On December 14, South Texas businessman Jay Johnson-Castro began a 35-mile walk to the jail from the Texas Capitol. On December 16, Johnson-Castro joined a vigil at the jail sponsored by Texans United for Families. On Christmas Eve, Flamenco artists Teye and Belen performed for a dedicated group of protesters in inclement weather.

All three actions have received some coverage from corporate media, but the story of Palestinian families has yet to be mentioned in that coverage. Stories and editorials usually assume that the jail is filled with detainees who entered the country “illegally.” At least two Palestinian families being held at Hutto jail entered the USA legally with visas, says their attorney, but they have run into legal difficulties securing asylum. In both cases, the men have been separated into different jails from the women and children at Hutto.

“Don’t forget that being a Palestinian in this period of history is truly being the weakest of the weak,” adds Ibrahim. “Since you don’t even have a country, like 99.9 percent of the whole earth, to ask about you, or to defend you, or help you with your basic needs.

“And people such as Marc Jeffery Moore–instead of going after the terrorists and the criminals–he is going after some children and mothers, not caring about the image of our great America.”

Ahmad Ibrahim faxed the following letter to the White House yesterday in hand-written form. This morning, over the telephone, he read the letter to the Texas Civil Rights Review:

Dear Mrs. Bush,

Hello. A Palestinian mother and four children are in jail in Taylor, Texas for two months at Hutto detention center (215) 218-2400.

The mother and 5-year-old child are held in the same cell. They count them four times a day. The mother tells me it’s the most demeaning thing to be lined up with your children and counted. The children are ages 5, 7, 12, and 15.
The immigration came and arrested the whole family on Nov. 2, 2006, and they have been in jail until now. Their lawyer said they are here legally. They came to America on a 5-years visiting visa, issued from the American embassy in Jerusalem, and they filed an asylum case which is still pending.

And the husband [my brother] has a work permit, and he is held now in another jail in Haskell, Texas. The man in charge of the jailing of the children is Marc Moore (210) 967-7175.

I hope this letter will reach you. (Names and ages of family members in jail.) One child is with me, because she is born in America [not in jail].

This is a terrible time for our family, and I hope you can help the children be out of the jail and in the school where they belong, and in the playground.

Sincerely,
Ahmad Ibrahim