Author: mopress

Grassroots Leadership Calls for Detention System to be Reformed to Prioritize Dignity and Release, Not Detention For-Profit

Austin, TX – Grassroots Leadership today expressed sadness and outrage at the alleged sexual abuse suffered by several immigrant women detained at the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas.

A prison guard employed by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a private, for-profit corporation under federal contract to detain immigrant women at Hutto, allegedly assaulted the women. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) disclosed the abuse to advocates on Friday afternoon. The CCA guard allegedly groped several women and solicited sex from at least one woman while transporting them to the airport for deportation.

The T. Don Hutto detention center is a private prison formerly contracted to detain immigrant families, including small children. Last August, in a victory for Grassroots Leadership and our allies, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that it would end family detention at Hutto as part of sweeping reforms to the detention system. The facility now detains women apprehended without children, many of whom are seeking asylum in the United States.

ICE has held up Hutto as a model detention center.

“We are saddened and shocked by this report of abuse,” said Bob Libal, Grassroots Leadership’s Texas Campaigns Coordinator. “While we were heartened that the administration took on reforming the U.S. detention system a year ago, this incident illustrates the inherent problems in an immigration detention system with no meaningful oversight. We hope that this latest news of misconduct in an immigrant detention facility will spur President Obama to action. His administration should should immediately take steps to scale back its growing and out-of-control detention system.”

The sexual abuse scandal is the latest in a series of such incidents at Texas detention centers. In 2007, a CCA employee was fired for inappropriate sexual contact with a female detainee who was held at the facility with her family. Earlier this year, a former Port Isabel Detention Center officer was sentenced to prison for sexual abuse of female detainees over a period of time in 2008.

In 2008, an expose by the WOAI news station in San Antonio reported sexual abuse of female detainees at the GEO Group’s South Texas Detention Center in Pearsall. Reports of sexual abuse against detainees have also plagued MTC’s Willacy County Detention Center.

“These reports show the vulnerability of detained immigrants, especially women, in ICE’s vast and largely private immigrant detention system,” said Donna Red Wing, Executive Director of Grassroots Leadership. “ICE should immediately re-evaluate its contracts with all private prison corporations, and speed the pace of reforms to its system. We are gravely concerned about the reality of women incarcerated for-profit and the impact of these closed corporate facilities on the lives, health and well being of women detainees.”

ICE’s release of information about the reported abuse before a holiday weekend also drew criticism. “ICE has touted its move towards transparency and accountability,” Libal said. “Releasing this report on a Friday afternoon before a long weekend and just hours after meeting with senior administration officials and key detention advocates at the White House is anything but transparent and accountable.”

“Immigration and Customs Enforcement should immediately stop the deportation of and release potential victims of sexual assault until a thorough investigation is completed,” Red Wing said. “ICE should also transform its detention system towards one that prioritizes release over detention for profit. That is the only way to ensure these tragedies do not continue.”

Dear Editor,

Thank you for your article. I was thinking similar thoughts on the anniversary of Dunkirk, the same day that Obama remarked that the government was in charge and doing everything it could.

Dunkirk, where 600,000 soldiers were rescued by the combined efforts of the British people and their leader against impossible odds and an implacable enemy–snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. And on the great achievements accomplished during the space race, not only reaching space but creating the impetus for the continuing electronic revolution.

Now “do” seems to have been redefined as “a 30 second sound bite to commiserate over some tragedy, to garner sympathy and to distract the public in order to continue doing the usual self-interested agenda.” This is more in the line of “do” as “to cheat” as in “The men are trying to do Tom in a card game” as opposed to “finish; start and complete” and other useful “do” meanings. (Small Common Words Defined, L. Ron Hubbard)

An entire, simple strategy could be accomplished with a call to arms to the peoples of this nation to rise up and do something about it, to make it happen, whether an unemployed fisherman or an engineer with helpful ideas, but united in concerted action and common goal to fix the problem and restore “that which surrounds us”, the environment.

Thanks again,

Mark Carberry

By Nick Braune

Over the last five weeks or so, there has been an attempt to get a story out to the public about the Port Isabel Detention Center close to Brownsville — a hunger strike has taken place there. One of the problems was that the authorities, (ICE and facility directors) simply denied to the press that any serious discontent existed. However, a number of activists in the Valley — and I am happy to say basically young people — have continued to be concerned and have been reaching the press various ways and speaking to groups about what they know.

The hunger strike story finally surfaced a bit in the regional newspapers due to rallies held outside the center. And one public rally I attended was covered on the Rio Grande Valley’s Channel Five, although to my knowledge Channel Five has not followed up by visiting Port Isabel to interview detainees.

Information also circulated at the founding event of the new Amnesty International student chapter at South Texas College in Weslaco on May 5th; the forum drew about 100 attendees, consisting of students, teachers, and local activists.

The energetic new Amnesty club invited Ann Cass of Proyecto Azteca to speak on the border wall and invited Juan Guerra to speak on private prisons. He is the previous Willacy County district attorney who caused a stir last year by indicting State Senator Eddie Lucio and Vice-President Dick Cheney for profiting improperly on the construction and operation of taxpayer-supported private prisons. (Incarceration is a huge business, involving giant corporations, public money, and many slick consultants. Although Guerra’s indictments did not get very far and his opponents drummed him out of office last year, he is a convincing speaker, has the needed facts, and certainly seems to this reporter to be on the right trail.)

At the Amnesty event, members of the Student/Farmworker Alliance and
Southwest Workers’ Uni*n told the audience about the hunger strike and some of the issues which provoked it. The activists reported that there is a rolling hunger strike going on now, with some inmates taking turns refusing food so that they do not get too weak in the process. Anayanse Garza, a spokesperson for the activists, has spoken to several detainees and estimated that 100 to 200 have participated in the hunger strike one way or another.

One person she spoke to said he was retaliated against for participating in the hunger strike, basically put in the “hole” for not eating, even though he felt weak and should have been monitored by the infirmary. He has been at Port Isabel for two years. The activists interviewed several detainees and picked up many little stories of abuse: forcing the prisoners to stand in the sun in the recreation area when shade is obviously available, serving undercooked meat, delaying in answering written requests, and more serious things like roughing up prisoners and not providing proper medical attention.

Most of these people detained have not committed a crime and should not be in these centers. And several of the detainees to whom Garza and others in the campaign have spoken make it clear they are being held in detention even though they are not trying to stay in the States anymore; they want to go home.

The U.S. holds hundreds of thousands of immigrants in detention — it is a massive business — often keeping them indefinitely until some paperwork requirement is straightened out. Even though fewer undocumented immigrants have been entering the U.S. recently, there are three times more detainees than ten years ago. In summary: the centers are profitable, are run horribly, and are causing growing discontent.

Some good news in the fight against Port Isabel came out this weekend when Amnesty International’s Policy Director for Refugee and Migrant Rights, Sarnata Reynolds, sent out a letter to members announcing that AIUSA will meet with detainees and officials at Port Isabel within a week. They stressed that the hunger strike has placed an urgency on their decision. (This is the second most important breakthrough into the national scene that the local Port Isabel situation has achieved as far as I know. Previously, Amy Goodman on Democracy Now did an excellent piece on the situation.)

Two months ago Amnesty had put out a general report on detention centers in America. Severely criticizing the system; this report soon led them to Port Isabel. “We had no idea what was going to happen 64 days ago when we released new research detailing the harrowing conditions inside U.S. immigration detention centers,” said Reynolds in her public letter to Amnesty members. “The report brought to life the tragic stories of asylum seekers fleeing torture and even U.S. citizens being detained by an unjust, broken, and costly system.

“Within hours of the report going public, major news outlets picked up the story. One of those outlets, USA Today, ran an opinion piece on the research, and that article found its way to immigration detainees at the Port Isabel Detention Center in southern Texas.”
Reynolds believes that their report did give courage to those considering a hunger strike, and the organization does want to move quickly to reach the inmates.

There is considerable momentum building in opposition to the current operations, operations which violate international law, violate the dignity of those who migrate looking for work and a better life, and enrich the prison-industrial complex with taxpayer money. The Amnesty club at South Texas College has scheduled another forum for June 10th to discuss the detention center issues. Jay Johnson-Castro from Border Ambassadors, Anayanse Garza from Southwest Workers, and Jodi Goodwin, a Valley attorney specializing in immigration matters, will be on the panel.

[Part of this report appeared previously in the Mid-Valley Town Crier.]

By Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town Crier
by permission

When I heard about a planned discussion on the Border Wall being held at the Frontera Audubon Center, I called Scott Nicol of Weslaco. He lives in Weslaco and is a leader in the No Border Wall Coalition and has helped build many events and meetings up and down the Valley over the last year.

Nicol said that he didn’t anticipate a formal agenda, but a number of people do want to get updated on the border wall situation. With activity popping up on several fronts, Nicol foresees more meetings like this, getting relevant groups on the same page. And he is right: there has been a lot of activity lately.

Two weekends ago, I joined 40 people at the Unitarian Church in San Juan for a workshop discussing different options in case border wall construction starts over the summer. A number of groups were represented: Border Ambassadors (their co-founder, Jay Johnson-Castro, woke up at 2 a.m. to drive down from Del Rio to the morning workshop), People for Peace and Justice, The Student/Farmworker Alliance, LUPE, a group of Valley Quakers (Friends), the Holy Spirit Peace and Justice Community, and others.

No special actions were planned, but the San Juan workshop included an important discussion of tactics and the spirit and history of civil disobedience. This sort of discussion was needed. If construction were to start on the wall tomorrow and I wanted to stop the bulldozers, I suppose I could run up some hill and just lie down in front of the bulldozers until someone dragged me away and the work could begin. It would perhaps delay the construction five minutes.

But real opposition to the wall will take more than a dramatic action.
The facilitators of the San Juan workshop suggested things to do before doing anything else: learn our legal rights, get our arguments straight, and make sure those we are working with are committed to the same sort of principles of non-violence as everyone else.

(I’m reminded that Labor and protest history in this country has always warned of the “provocateur,” that supposedly militant fellow who pops up, doing some extravagant action which is immediately used as an excuse for the police to step in. The provocateur usually has planned his actions with the police ahead of time.)

If real opposition to the wall is intended, we will need more than dramatic actions; we will require renewed commitment to reach broad layers, using possible court challenges, reaching the press, and doing some research. Concerning research, if there is going to be opposition to building the wall, we should find out and publicize who the greedy construction companies are, who they are connected with, how they got the contracts, etc.

A second thing going on of late: A new lawsuit has been filed challenging the constitutionality of an action by Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff.

The lawsuit contends that Chertoff has unconstitutionally circumvented thirty-six Acts of Congress! Using hidden provisions in the recent Real ID Act and intending to speed up construction of the unpopular border wall, Chertoff last month waived the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, National Historic Preservation Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act, etc., etc.

Over decades, Congress wrote these thirty-six laws precisely so citizens could block construction of monstrosities like this border wall and could wield some power in disputes with the government.

Although no terrorists have come over the Mexican border to my knowledge, Chertoff justified all this suspension of law as an “emergency” measure for border security.

I asked Scott Nicol about the constitutional challenge, and he said that the new suit argues that the executive branch (Chertoff/Bush/Halliburton) cannot just annul the work of the legislative branch, violating the separation of powers and limiting our access to the courts.

Nicol says the new suit has been filed at the District Court in El Paso, where judges will be asked to declare Chertoff’s use of the Real ID Act to be unconstitutional. (Chertoff’s decree even preemptively overrules any opposition based on state or local laws as well, stopping any possible opposition from irrigation districts. Building the wall will involve a number of serious water issues.)

Nicol believes this suit does have the potential to halt construction of the wall. Although Nicol’s group, No Border Wall Coalition, is not a plaintiff, the Frontera Audubon Society is. Two wildlife refuges and the County of El Paso, and others have joined in. These plaintiffs are asking as their remedy that the border wall construction be halted. The case could go to the Supreme Court very quickly.

Some quotes from the press release announcing the lawsuit being filed in El Paso:

“In their suit, the organizations ask the court to declare section 102 of the Real ID Act unconstitutional and to prevent the Department of Homeland Security from building walls, roads, or other infrastructure on the border that do not fully comply with all of our nation’s environmental laws.”

“Jim Chapman, Board President of the Frontera Audubon Society, said, ‘To instantly dissolve 96 years of environmental laws and protection with a mere wave of the hand is nothing short of monstrous. If laws can be so easily swept aside on the border, the same precedent could be applied anywhere, from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to Yellowstone National Park. If our nation’s laws are optional, they aren’t really laws.’”

“The Frontera Audubon Society, the Friends of Santa Ana National Wildlife refuge, and the Friends of Laguna Atascosa national Wildlife Refuge are joined in this effort by a diverse group of plaintiffs along the Texas-Mexico border: El Paso County, the El Paso County Water Improvement District No. 1, the Hudspeth County Conservation and Reclamation District No. 1, the Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo, and Brownsville’s Galeria 409 owner Mark Clark. The law firm of Mayer Brown LLP will be representing them.”