Author: mopress

Indymedia Austin

First in a series of comments recorded by the Texas Civil Rights Review at the Camp Mabry protest against the militarization of the border (June 24, 2006):

Will Harrell, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Uni*n of Texas:

“We oppose the militarization of the border.
“We know that many of these women and men, these national guardsmen are probably headed down to the border, and they don’t really have a choice. Of course they can consciously decide not to go at all, but those who are not in a position to do that are going to head that way.

“We hope they will at least go down there with a consciousness that these are not enemy combatants that surround them, these are human beings who’ve lived there for generations upon generations and that they should be respected.

“We’re very concerned about the potential for violence, and we’ve been here before. Everytime for whatever pop reason the national leadership sends the guard or the military to the border, somebody gets hurt. I think that the last time we went through this there were eight shootings. And we’re very fearful that there will be shootings.

“But even short of shootings, it creates sort of an atmosphere of siege and fear and concern and stress, particularly on kids to be surrounded by men with M-16s. It just does damage to the human psyche. So for all sorts of levels we are opposed to the policy of sending the military to the border.”

Q: On the question of task forces. I know the ACLU has protested the task forces, and overnight we got word that the El Paso sheriff had taken down some of the checkpoints in his task force.

Harrell: “Yes, indeed, it was a glorious victory, but it’s simply a battle, the war is long and continuing. We’re still considering litigation, because damage has been done. And frankly, we’re encouraged and we salute this move, but it is only temporary, he says. And we need it to be permanent. If it’s not permanent, then we’ll be going to court, for sure.

“He also tried to mislead the public by saying wait a minute we never enforced immigration laws, and then he said, well we did, but there was only a secondary purpose. Well our position is number one he did in fact enforce immigration laws, or attempted to do that. And whether it was a primary or secondary purpose, it was still illegitimate.

“He didn’t do us any favors by stopping what he shouldn’t have done in the first place, but we’re glad he stopped. And we are continuing to monitor that.

“People are still scared you know. We were just out there. We just got back the night before last and people aren’t reporting crimes in the community, people aren’t going to church. Some parents won’t even take their kids to school for fear of being subjected to harassment by the Sheriff’s department.

“That fear will continue to linger. Just saying we’re not going to do that anymore isn’t enough. The sheriff’s going to have to actively engage the community, acknowledge publicly the error of his ways and try to rebuild those fences.”

Our first open records request for Operation Jump Start has come back empty-handed, with the governor’s office of Texas saying it has no documents responsive to requests for evidence of the governor’s approval of the mission, a dated memo that actually inaugurates the operation, or any other documents that would help to establish a documentary trail of the governor’s involvement.

As for Use of Force rules, the Governor’s office does have that, but wants to not turn it over, so the Texas Attorney General will be asked to rule.

In my many years of experience with open records requests, this is a quite peculiar result.

Here’s the letter from the governor’s office:

We received on June 8, 2006 your request under the Public Information Act (the “PIA”) for the following information:

“…provide the following documents referenced in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) released by the Governor’s office June 4, 2006. By term document I intend to reference both paper and electronic forms of communication, including pdf and email.

(1) The first phrase of the MOU says “In response to a request”. Please provide the document that initiates the request.

(2) Item five of the MOU references “disbursement of Jump Start funds”. Please provide all documents that cover any disbursements to date (June 8, 2006.)

(3) Item five of the MOU references “approval of missions” by the Governor. Please provide all documents issued by the Governor approving missions to date (June 8, 2006.)

(4) Item six of the MOU references Rules for Use of Force “attached”. Please provide the Rules.

(5) Item eight of the MOU references “date of signature”. Please provide the dated document that officially authorizes the commencement of Operation Jump start. In addition to these documents related to the MOU, I would like to follow up on a comment made by Guard Chief Gen. Blum in a May 16 press conference (posted at the DHS website) indicating that legal review of Operation Jump start was already underway with state –level authorities.

(6) Please provide documents that indicate the earliest requests for involvement of the Governor’s Office of General Counsel in the operation that has come to be know as Operation Jump Start.

(7) Please provide documents that indicate the earliest request for involvement of the Governor in preliminary assessments of Operation Jump Start.”

Our search revealed that we only have documents responsive to Item number 4 of your request. However, we believe that the responsive information is excepted from disclosure under the PIA.

Therefore, pursuant to Section 522.301 of the PIA, we have requested an opinion from the Attorney General. A copy of that request is enclosed for your review.

By Greg Moses

Although the president and Southwest border governors says the National Guard mission at the Mexican border as non-lethal, activists say the very same kind of activity resulted in one Texas killing in 1997. Elected leaders should stop the militarization, they say, before another life is put at risk.
Twenty activists from Brownsville will stage a protest against the militarization Saturday at 11:00 am outside Texas National Guard Headquarters at Camp Mabry, Austin.

“They say the operation will include listening posts and observation,” says Ray Ybarra of the American Civil Liberties Union. “But these are the exact same things that were being done by Joint Task Force Six when Esequiel Hernandez, Jr. was killed by a Marine” (see link to official report below).

“It’s the exact same scenario,” emphasized Ybarra (speaking by telephone from the Austin airport Thursday afternoon), “and we don’t want it in our backyards. Border communities do not want to live in occupied territories.”

One problem with the summer’s plan to militarize the border, says Ybarra, is that the agenda is being driven more by politics than military policy, and this means that training for the border missions is in danger of not being thoroughly prepared..

“It’s happening way to fast,” said Ybarra. “In the rush to make a political statement, resources are not being looked at. Politics are coming before human rights.”

For Saturday’s protest, Ybarra says his group is trying to get a permit to protest inside Camp Mabry, but so far the permit has not been granted, so the group is planning their protest along the 35th Street sidewalk outside the main entrance to the base.

For Ybarra, this will be the second action of Texas protest this week. Tuesday evening June 20 the ACLU demonstrated in El Paso against the Operation Linebacker program coordinated by the county sheriff. Special Task Forces such as Operation Linebacker are endangering human rights, says the ACLU, so the program was selected as one target for a national day of action that accompanied release of an ACLU report to the United Nations on human rights issues in the USA.

The El Paso task force is also subject of a lawsuit and press conference from the recently opened Paso del Norte Civil Rights Project. The lawsuit claims the task force is profiling Hispanics for immigration enforcement. And the press conference alleged that migrant women had become fearful of reporting domestic abuse to law enforcement for fear that immigration enforcement would be enforced by deputies and police officers.

Links:

Official report on the 1997 killing of Esequiel Hernandez, Jr.

ACLU report to the UN on Human Rights in the USA

PNCRP press conference on violence against women

PNCRP / TCRP Press Release on Operation Linebacker lawsuit
The first paragraph has been edited to replace “Texas National Guard” with “president and border governors” in order to focus on the primacy of a civilian (and civil) struggle, the point of this issue not being the existence of a National Guard as such or its ultimate duty to obey civilian commands but the just use of its soldiers and powers as tools of civilian political affairs.

In this case, the Texas Civil Rights Review takes the clear position that the plan to deploy thousands of guard troops to the border this summer is political misdirection that aggravates a logic of excessive militarization.

“There are military people,” said my old mentor Manuel Davenport, “and there are militarists.” Isn’t it clear that our national tantrum of militarism should come to an abrupt end everywhere? Perhaps, the beginning of that end has come home to roost in Texas. We hope so.–gm

From a mysanantonio.com roundup of South Texas military spending:

Texas State University in San Marcos would receive $1 million to train National Guard members for civil disorder missions.

Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, called the program an “invaluable tool for helping law enforcement learn how to respond to terrorism, violence and other emergency situations.” The funding was opposed by Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who offered up a number of amendments to block what he said are unneeded projects and wasteful spending.

“Simply put, every dollar we spend on earmarks in the defense appropriations bill is a dollar we can’t spend on the military,” Flake said.