Author: mopress

The headline said something like “Top Fundraiser to Fill President’s Chair at A&M,” and I thought, oh no. But a quick check of the story revealed they were only talking about Eddie Davis. I mean, who doesn’t know Eddie Davis? So while we’re in that honeymoon mood, let us say right away that it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Congratulations, Eddie, and good luck!–gm

By Greg Moses

Can there be a clearer sign of policy failure than a prison for children whose parents have been made unwelcome in America?

We stand with Dallas attorney John Wheat Gibson who says look not to the criminality of the people who fill these detention centers, but look at the cold-hearted stupidity of the people who think this is some kind of righteous solution. Shame on America. Shame on you and me.
Fortunately an answer to our idiocy is at hand. It is not a difficult answer to comprehend, but for some reason it has been systematically neglected by the baby boom generation. The answer is education.

So, yes, there are simple solutions. As Angela Davis said recently in Houston, the clear alternative to prison is education.

In a just-released report from the Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corporation we find that most of the students of Texas struggle at or near low-income levels, yet most of them still manage to prepare themselves for college.

Yet, when compared to college-prepared students from high-income families, prepared students from low-income families have half the chance of eventually completing a college degree. And the reason has a lot to do with stingy public priorities.

To those who would answer that family priorities, not family incomes, are the truly decisive reasons for college completion, the report replies that family expectations for college are shaped by family income.

In a society that does not clearly support college students, the burden must fall back on the families, that is true. But if a society knows very well that half the families (or more) cannot pay for college, and if that society continues to wag its fingers at the families, then, once again, as in the case of prisons for immigrants, it’s the finger-wagger who needs the dose of reality.

The report is clearly hopeful about the trend of Texas education. Thanks to steady improvements at the High School level, more Texas students are better prepared for college.

But the report leaves us with the question of how hopeful we dare to be about the wisdom of education policy, when the legislature comes to Austin in a few weeks.

As the report shows clearly, Texas college students are showing up to do the work. But behind them, what do they have? Finger-waggers who blame them for their families’ poverty, and who might as well be anchors tied to their ankles? Or enablers who say, here you go, do well, we seriously need you to be educated for the future of us all? “Ready, willing, and unable: How financial barriers obstruct bachelor-degree attainment in Texas.” A report to the 80th regular session of the Texas Legislature. Prepared by Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corporation Research and Analytical Services (December 2006.) Get the pdf here

In response to an editorial in the Austin American-Statesman (pasted below under “Read More”), Dallas attorney John Wheat Gibson fired off the following email.

It is his second email to the Statesman in two days. The first one tried to correct the erroneous claim that frames the editorial in the second sentence: the claim that immigrants jailed at Hutto belong to families who entered the USA illegally. Gibson’s clients, two Palestinian families, entered with visas and applied for asylum.

In the email below, Gibson works on another phrase, and we quote:

“Age of terrorism,” my ass. The incarceration of the Palestinian families at Hutto has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism, except that they came to the United States fleeing terrorism by the Israeli Occupation Forces in Palestine. It has absolutely nothing to do with “keeping tabs on illegal immigrants.” The Department of Homeland Stupidity at all times knew the correct address–had “tabs on”–the victims, because the scrupulously reported promptly every change in their addresses to the Department.
Nobody wants to admit that their leaders might do evil. Germans hearing of atrocities in the 1930s would say, “Der Furher does not know about it. He would put a stop to it if he did.”

But the fact is that, as the Germans learned and I hope we Americans are not too stupid to be learning, that governments do lie and terrorize their own populations for political purposes and to silence dissent.

There is no legitimate purpose whatsoever in keeping the Palestinian children or their parents in prison in Hutto or anywhere else. The roundup on November 3 when they were arrested at their homes was nothing more or less than a Kristalnact terror aimed at the American people, as the press release the DHS issued makes clear in calling these children “criminals and absconders”.

It is time the Statesman faced reality and stopped cooperating with the DHS’s anti-Muslim hate propaganda, of which the incarceration of children is only one recent, but particularly cynical example.

John Wheat Gibson, P.C.

Dallas, Texas

http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/12/19/19taylor_edit.html

EDITORIAL
Putting children behind bars in Taylor

EDITORIAL BOARD
Tuesday, December 19, 2006

There has to be a better way. It cannot be right to imprison children guilty of nothing more than following their parents into the United States illegally.

The American-Statesman’s Juan Castillo recently reported on a private prison in Williamson County where families of illegal immigrants are held to await disposition of their cases. It is one of two Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in the United States holding non-Mexican unauthorized immigrants on noncriminal charges.

The facilities also are living testimony to a broken system for adjudicating immigration cases. There are 215 federal immigration judges serving in 53 immigration courts across the country. Last year, they handled more than 350,000 specific matters, including 270,000 individual cases.

The backlog is so strained that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, the grandson of Mexican immigrants, noted: “The department and the federal courts are straining under the weight of an immigration litigation system that is broken. Under the current system, criminal aliens generally receive more opportunities for judicial review of their removal orders than noncriminal aliens.”

In short, illegal immigrants who commit crimes get speedier legal attention than these children, who have done nothing wrong other than follow their parents.

Nothing will change until reforms are initiated, and Congress has done little to fix a broken immigration policy and the machinery to enforce it. The result is the private prison facility in Taylor and a smaller one in Pennsylvania .

According to those familiar with the families in the private prison, children of those apprehended are dressed in prison jumpsuits and receive only one hour of schooling and one hour of recreation a day. The trade-off is that they get to remain with their families.

Hard information on the program and the private prison is difficult to come by. The company running the prison refers questions to the immigration office, and the immigration office has had little to say about the situation.

News of the 400 people — 200 of them children — being held in the T. Don Hutto unit in Taylor has sparked protests from several groups interested in immigrant issues. They are concerned about everything from care and feeding of those being held to the psychological effect of incarceration on children and families.

Federal authorities began detaining all unauthorized immigrants last summer. The reason for the detention was that so many who were charged with unauthorized entry into the United States never appeared for their court dates. They melted back into the population.

It is understandable in this age of terrorism that authorities want to keep tabs on illegal immigrants and ensure their appearances in courts. But there should be a way to see that they have their day in court without imprisoning their children.

Keeping families intact would appear to be a humane policy, as well. But the result of the new detention policy has been to jail children, and that is not acceptable. Those who have visited the detainees, some of whom are seeking political asylum, say the detention is damaging.

Little kids in prison jumpsuits and nametags presents a sad picture. Children are truly at the mercy of their parents, and incarceration cannot be good for their physical, mental or emotional health.

For reasons of security and the law, a close watch on the nation’s borders is warranted. But what isn’t acceptable is jailing mothers and children awaiting a hearing on their status.

There has to be a better way.

Hola y’all…

Here’s the most recent news links about the imprisonment of children in the Hutto jail in Taylor , Texas …

I’d like to commend all three of the following. The Editorial Board of the Austin Statesman didn’t pussy foot around with this issue. Greg Moses of the Texas Civil Rights Review seized detailed specifics from immigration attorney, John Gibson, and laid it out very succinctly for us. Daniel Lai of the local paper in Taylor didn’t water anything down in his report. Here goes…
From the Editorial Board of the Austin American Statesman.
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/

editorial/stories/12/19/19taylor_edit.html

From Greg Moses (digging deeper):
http://texascivilrightsreview.org/phpnuke/
modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=691

From Daniel Lai of the local paper right in Taylor :

http://taylordailypress.net/articles/2006/12/18/news/news01.prt

Keep the fire against imprisonment of innocent children and refugees…by Chertoff and Company…ablaze.

Shame on ICE…for bringing its Gulag onto American soil…and right here in Texas …in the shadows of the State Capitol…

Please share…

Jay

P.S. The attached pic shows the razor wire prison walls… jjj

[See photo on right sidebar–gm]