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

View a haunting greeting card from Oregon, inspired by the children of Hutto Jail.

“IT IS NO ACCIDENT that I have combined fotos/images/concepts from four different attacks on the Brown. It is in these “multiple theater” anti-brown moments that we can find cause to celebrate such a joyous Murkan Xmas.
“Merry Christ’sMask, little Macacas all over the world; you who have fallen under the crosshairs of this mighty and heartless nation. I love you all, and I offer my deepest empathy for you and your families’ sorrow this day and every day since you made the error of not bowing down before everything and anything that Murka wants.

“I will be thinking of you.”

By Greg Moses

Speaking on his cell phone from somewhere near the border, Jay Johnson-Castro is explaining how his lone walk from Laredo to Brownsville last October, “tore down the wall before it ever got built. That wall will never be built!”

Now it is Christmas Eve, and Johnson-Castro will be driving all afternoon from Del Rio to Taylor to join a vigil outside the T. Don Hutto jail for immigrant children. He is determined to shut it down.

“Can you hold on a minute?” he asks. “There’s a checkpoint.” “Are you a citizen of the United States?” comes a voice. “Where are you going?”

After answering the questions, Johnson-Castro is waved onward.

“Unfortunately this is one of the realities of living on the border,” explains Johnson-Castro, returning to the phone. “Nowhere else in the USA do you have to prove you’re a citizen just to drive down the road.”

I tell him that I’ve been to the Rio Grande Valley before, and I’ve heard stories that the police nuisance is getting worse by the year.

“And it’s getting worse by the year, because of the way the US government is dealing with it,” rejoins Johnson-Castro.

“Before the border walk I was the go-to guy for border tourism. Heritage tourism. I was all about tourism,” he explains.

“But look how we’re being treated on the border by our state and federal governments. We have 13,000 going on 19,000 border patrol agents here along the border with Mexico, while along the border with Canada, there are fewer than 1,000.

“But US policies are part of the reason why we have an immigration problem to begin with. US companies put up factories along the border in Northern Mexico where they pay workers $75 per week for 48 hours of work. Then they close the factories and move them to Indonesia. And many of the factory workers are single moms who live under desperate conditions. We created this situation.”

Citizens north of the Mexico border have “responsibility” for people who have served as “slave labor” in factories of the South, says Johnson-Castro. “And people who imprison the migrant workers are not any different from people who supported Hitler. No different. How far does it have to go?”

“How can I be silent?” asks Johnson-Castro. “At some point they might consider me an enemy of . . . “

The cell phone enters a dead zone. The voice of Jay Johnson-Castro disappears, but he keeps a hand at the wheel, driving to a Christmas Eve vigil that will go down in history some day as the spark that shut down detention camps for desperate Southern children, whose only crime was to join a social movement in search of work further North.

Teye & Belen Flamenco Gypsy Candlelight Christmas Eve Vigil for the Incarcerated Children [T. Don Hutto Jail, Taylor, Texas]

What initially seemed the most unlikely way to enjoy Christmas eve turned into one of the most beautiful and moving season celebrations I have ever
experienced.

Yes, it was raining, and it was cold. Cold and wet to break out a quality flamenco guitar and play it. Cold to do a performance out in the open air. We
were forced to improvise a makeshift construction to huddle under: consisting of our suburban, our lightshow stand, a microphone stand, a tarp and some
bungee cords, and in the end, with all the candles, it almost resembled a nativity scene.
Initially there were only a few of us, but as the hour of the vigil went by, more and more people came, local people but also those who drove in from Dallas, McAllen, Houston, Del Rio. (For those not familiar with either the vastness of Texas or its speed limits, we are talking three, four, even seven hours of driving in bad weather!)

People of all ages held a candle, huddled under the improvised canopy or held umbrellas, and we enjoyed the closeness that comes from a common cause.

What was our cause? We were there to protest the incarceration in concrete prison cells, in prison uniforms, of CHILDREN, in a for-profit prison,
with our tax money ($ 95 per detainee per day, that amounts to more than two million dollars a month for this prison alone), right here in the USA, self-proclaimed most special of all countries on earth.

We were here to provide a ray of hope to those inside the prison (for although our initial offer to the prison
of a free Flamenco performance for the detainees and staff went unanswered and we were forced to do it on the street, rumor of such a gathering will surely
find its way into the cells!) and to let them know that there are many Americans who care and will put an end to this.

We were here so that these facts may be broadcast
around the world via the internet, and that eventually the mainstream media will have to pick up on it and that by national and international outrage these
practices will stop. News has traveled fast on the Flamenco internet community and has cast a wider net from there.

While organizing this Vigil, we’ve come upon NEW AND DISTURBING FACTS (thanks Jay Johnson, for the research):

–The prison took it out on the detainees: it has taken away recreational privileges as a direct result of last weeks’ march and vigil. You may ask, why go ahead with the Christmas Vigil? According to a lady who is in touch with those inside, the detainees much preferred their privileges on hold over the feeling of total isolation that they had experienced before.

–The phenomenon of putting children in concrete cells is spreading like an ugly cancer. People who reacted to the Flamenco Newsletters that we sent out all
over the world have informed us that the Netherlands, Great Britain, France, Australia, are now all doing it. Some further research quickly revealed that the
prisons in those countries are all built and run by… THE SAME CORPORATIONS AS THOSE WHO RUN THEM IN THE USA. Globalization at its finest.

–These are For-Profit-Prisons indeed: the ONLY way for the detainees to contact anyone on the outside is by means of telephone. And while the actual cost of a phone call is known to us all, the detainees’ only way of calling out is by purchasing a $ 20 PHONE CARD, good for 20 MINUTES. First, this makes it impossible for those who do not have $ 20 to call outside, second, for someone who may not speak the local language, 20 minutes is nothing, third, the corporation makes additional profit by selling 20 minutes for 20
dollars.

–Initially, the number of detainees in the prison in Taylor was given as 400, half of whom are children. It turns out however that at the time of writing, this prison is filled over capacity: more than 650 detainees
are inside, over half of whom are children.

Please let it sink in: 350 CHILDREN IN CONCRETE PRISON CELLS AT CHRISTMAS 2006, IN THE USA, 35 MILES FROM THE CAPITOL OF TEXAS. Merry Christmas.

–Supposedly the children and their mothers are in the concrete cells so that the families may be together (according to the official statement). How to explain then, that the fathers were shipped out to different prisons, in Colorado and elsewhere?

–The prison as it exists in Taylor today is in grave violation of … their own contract with Williamson County, where it states explicitly: “NO RAZOR
WIRE”. Of course, since razor wire is a cheap and secure way of preventing escape, and since this is a prison that must make profit, rolls and rolls of razor wire have been installed.

Please don’t take my word for it! Just take highway 79 North (it branches off from Interstate 35, about a dozen miles north of the State Capital of Texas, Austin) and drive into Taylor. Take a left somewhere before the railroad overpass, and you will soon gaze upon the marvel that, in Good Newspeak, is called the Don Hutto Residential Center.

Believe me, it does not look like a place where you nor your family would want to reside.

WHAT CAN YOU DO???

I am positive that you will be outraged after reading this. Regardless of what one’s feelings are on the difficult subject of immigration, NO ONE agrees to
putting children in concrete cells. So what can you do to help end this?

Nothing could be simpler. Just spread the word. This is understandingly kept low-profile. Two million dollars a month is good income, and the corporations are of course fully aware that imprisoning children will not sit well with most taxpayers, so the last thing the orporation wants is for this to be common knowledge.

And that is where YOU come in. If we ALL SPREAD THE WORD, THIS WILL STOP. Period.

Thank you very much, and a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

–Teye, Austin, Dec 25, 2006