Author: mopress

Report Shows Laredo “Superjail” Unnecessary, Group Calls For No Action Alternative

Report Also Questions Impact of Superjail on Region’s Economy

LAREDO, TX – On July 24, 2006 Grassroots Leadership released “Ground Zero: The Laredo Superjail and the No Action Alternative,” a new report showing that the controversial 2,800 bed US Marshals Service detention center near Laredo is largely unnecessary. Analyzing US Marshals data, the report confirms that spikes in detention levels in the Laredo region are largely due to disproportionately increased prosecution of non-violent immigrants, and could be avoided with a shift in prosecutorial emphasis.
“This report concludes the USMS prison expansion in or near the Laredo area is unnecessary, and the best course of action is the no action alternative,” said Nicholas Hudson, the report’s author. “The data analyzed in this report indicates immigration-related detention is disproportionately represented compared to every other type of offense in the Texas South USMS district.”

The report also questions the assertion of the draft EIS that the region’s economy would benefit from the construction and operation of the detention center.

“The most authoritative evidence indicates the Laredo superjail would have no positive economic impacts on any of the proposed sites,” said Bob Libal, field organizer for Grassroots Leadership. “The region could experience detrimental economic impacts.”

KEY FINDINGS

⇒ A dramatic increase in prosecution for low-level immigration charges is primarily responsible for the increased levels of USMS detention in Texas south. In 2003, 53% of USMS detainees in Texas South were held on immigration charges. By 2004, almost two-thirds (62%) of the individuals detained in Texas South by the US Marshals were there on immigration-related charges.

⇒ Many of these detainees are held on “illegal entry” charges, and serve an average of 30 day sentences before being deported. Detainees on immigration charges made up 90% of the detention growth in the Texas South USMS region. http://www.stoppcoalition.org/

“I happen to still believe in the open records law in Texas,” says Mayor Will Lowrance of Hillsboro, 55 miles south of Dallas. He’s referring to the Governor’s steadfast refusal to disclose “proprietary” documents related to planned construction of the Trans-Texas Corridor.

The Mayor says he’d like to see the documents before making an informed decision on the mega-highway-railroad-real-bad-news-for-racoons plan.

Meanwhile, “Grandma” Carole Keeton Strayhorn is also dogging the Gov at mega-highway hearings, criticizing him “for his ‘secret contract with a foreign company’ — the U.S.-Spanish consortium that the state has approved to build and operate the $184 billion corridor, which would parallel Interstate 35. The Perry administration is now battling an attorney general’s ruling to fully disclose the contract.”

Which reminds us that we also would like to see some documentation from the Governor’s office: plans for Operation Jump Start. We agree wiith the Mayor: citizens ought to be able to watch their democracy at work, the better to tinker with it as they see fit.
If the Governor is going to tell everybody that Operation Jump Start is on schedule, and if the Governor is going to retain formal command of the troops, then doesn’t it follow that the Governor should show us the schedule we’re on? Instead, he says he doesn’t have one.

We were just about to give up on higher principles during the coming campaign season. Thanks, Mayor. Thanks, Grandma.

See AP story: “Corridor could be roadblock for Perry: Plan nettles more than just farmers, but aide dismisses campaign risk” posted at WFAA com.

Also: “Strayhorn becoming a regular at highway public hearings.” Tuesday, July 25, 2006. By Noelene Clark. Waco Tribune-Herald staff writer.

How do we respond to the news from the Boston Globe? Just read the chapter on Civil Rights in Dime’s Worth of Difference. It’s all there.

Civil rights hiring shifted in Bush era
Conservative leanings stressed

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | July 23, 2006

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is quietly remaking the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, filling the permanent ranks with lawyers who have strong conservative credentials but little experience in civil rights, according to job application materials obtained by the Globe. Like we say, nothing more to add.

But we ain’t on it. Texas earned three mentions Friday from Frida Berrigan as she briefed Amy Goodman on the role of the USA in supplying Israeli weapons.

Texas gets attention from Berrigan as the location where Lockheed-Martin co-manufactures the Sufa F-16 fighter, a double-seated holy terror of incoming air attacks.
Lockheed Martin does the finishing work on these 45-million-dollar weapons after they are started in Israel. The contract to build 102 Sufas will be financed by taxpayers of the USA. When the Sufas are completed, Israel will have a stock of 362 F-16s, second largest only to the US Air Force.

Boeing and Raytheon also make Berrigan’s list of arms suppliers to Israel. Both companies make missiles. Boeing, as we know, also makes planes and helicopters.

When Berrigan mentions these big names in weaponry, she hits three of the five finalists for the huge SBInet border contract that is scheduled to be let in the Fall of 2006. Is it not deeply chilling to think that these powers are competing for security along the Rio Grande?

I think we have to dissent while there is still time. We should seek to grow better things than these in the name of homeland security.

Rahul Mahajan, the former Green Party candidate for Governor, had courage enough to campaign for a de-militarized Texas.

“Homeland Security is part of a pre-planned program for domestic repression, occasioned, among other things, by fear of the possibilities of the so-called anti-globalization movement,” said that former candidate for Governor.

We now have quite a spectacle of candidates we’ll be hearing from lots and loudly. By comparison to Mahajan, ain’t they all whistlin’ Dixie?