Author: mopress

By Nick Braune

If you spend ten days in jail in Harlingen, Texas, you will not get a chance to shower, according to a KRGV Channel Five news report last Thursday.

The report said, “Municipal judges are putting people behind bars in a jail that’s not prepared to protect or care for them…Families tell us the cold and crowded jail doesn’t have pillows, soap or showers.”

KRGV’s report points up a number of interesting problems. Although the jail is really not prepared to hold someone over a day or two (no kitchen to prepare food, no medical facility, no shower), people are still being ordered to spend a week there for not paying traffic fines and for other offenses. KRGV questioned the head jailer, who pointed the finger at the local judges. But the judges refused to speak on camera.

City Manager Gabe Gonzalez seemed defensive speaking to the reporters: “We can’t tell judges how to sentence prisoners. We can’t interfere in that process. There isn’t anything saying that we can’t hold them there for 10 days or more. Let me make it clear, we’re not violating any policy by keeping them there for that many days.” However, that apparent lack of policy is one of the problems.

KRGV concluded that “no set safety standards or rules exist to protect inmates in municipal jails.” Channel Five interviewed Adan Munoz, the head of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, but he is charged only with watching County Jails. Munoz says there is “no state oversight at all” over municipal jails.

Munoz told KRGV that it is just a matter of time before there is going to be a lawsuit, that someone who is kept there for five or ten days without the basic necessities like mattresses is going to become ill or get an infection. He raises the question of how someone who is diabetic is treated; the article says that the jailers go out and pick up sandwiches off the shelf and cookies for the inmates. There seems to be no concern about nutrition. One person reported their meal was a cream filled cookie and coffee; others report having a sandwich for breakfast. KRGV also interviewed one woman whose sister is diabetic and being held for eight days.

I did a quick interview with Corinna Spencer-Scheurich, an attorney from the South Texas Civil Rights Project.

Braune: I noticed that you were quoted on air that STCRP is watching the situation. It was a really good TV news piece.

Spencer-Scheurich: Yes it was, and I hope there is a follow-up, but one angle didn’t come up that I would like to mention. There may be thousands of outstanding warrants in Harlingen and poor people are being thrown into jail for nonpayment. Some protection has to be granted to the indigent — the criteria for which is that the person is receiving public benefits (food stamps, Medicare) or their expenses exceed their income — these people are being put in jail essentially for failure (inability) to pay. Going over the speed limit or failing to fasten the seatbelt is hardly a jail-able offence. But they are in jail for not paying fines or missing payments on them. They shouldn’t be in jail. Judges should not put the indigent in there. The founders of this country intended to protect us from debtors prison.

Braune: Do you think it may be worse in Harlingen than other places?

Spencer-Scheurich: Yes. So far, it does seem worse, egregious. Why are they using jail stays so much, and why such long stays? I’m not sure at this point. They do have a new jail, maybe they just want to make sure it’s used.

Braune: I agree with Adan Munoz of the Texas Commission, it probably won’t be much longer before there is a lawsuit on this.

Spencer-Scheurich: Well, we are hoping people come forward to tell their stories now.

* * *

Mayoral candidate Joe Rubio, who spent years on Harlingen’s police department and has some fame for asking difficult questions of city leaders, posted a follow-up on a local website. He asks if there is consideration given to pregnant women held for three days in the cold cells and only receiving a cookie and two sandwiches. And what if a young man vomits all over his shirt and the jailer throws away his shirt? Isn’t he left shirtless with his complaints unheeded? Rubio says people wait outside in rain or heat for over an hour to bring a relative a bag of chips — this is allowed — but one person’s gift was rejected last week because the bag was too large: “You are limited to a small bag of chips and one drink.”

Link to TCCA documents of Dec. 17, 2008

EDITORIAL

Thanks to help from our friends at Rembrandt-We-Ain’t Web Services, we’re getting a clearer picture of what’s happening at the Texas State Board of Education (TSBOE). See the visualization here.

One obvious flaw in the democratic structure of the TSBOE is the way it purports to represent Travis County, the premiere educational community of Texas.

Dallas and Houston each have urban districts which reflect Democratic and minority voices. South San Antonio is appended to South Texas for a fair representation of party and ethnicity, Even El Paso is able to claim long-standing representation. But not Austin.

Not only have liberal Democrats been robbed of fair representation to the Texas State Board of Education as part of the Travis County voter pool, but urban Black and Hispanic children of Travis County are now paying the price of this democratic oversight with the prospect of an increasingly hostile curriculum.

We’re not lawyers here, but we think there are clear Constitutional principles involved, including the God-given rights of children, affirmed in Brown v. Board, to be treated to educations that are respectful and uplifting, not demeaning to their aspirations of leadership, responsibility, and self-esteem.–gm

By Nick Braune

On January 9, some 70 people attended a rally/prayer vigil protesting the “tent city” immigration detention center in Raymondville, Texas. It was lively — although I was out of town, I saw a video clip of the event — with vigorous picketing, signs demanding that human rights be respected and calls on the megaphone for an end to the failed, cruel, immigration system.

The event was convened greatly by various United Methodist ministries and teams including the United Methodist Women Immigrant and Civil Rights Initiative. Watching the video, I recognized people joining in from Pax Christi in Brownsville, the Southwest Workers, People for Peace and Justice and Border Ambassadors.

The press release stated, “We call for closure of for-profit detention centers like Raymondville, which have a history of denying basic civil and human rights to immigrants. We call for basic rights for all immigrants.

“We call for an end to detentions and deportations until just immigration reform is in place. The reform should include a pathway to citizenship for migrants in the U.S.; protection of workers’ rights regardless of status; the unification of families, and humane border policies that respect human rights. The Willacy County detention center has had a series of allegations of horrendous conditions and abuse, including alleged sexual assaults on female detainees by guards, reports of detainees being fed rotten food and inadequate food, and poor access to medical and mental health care.”

The press release emphasized a “faith-based” approach, using the Pauline principle that, despite status and nationality differences, humans are fundamentally connected and “when one member suffers, we all suffer.”

I called Cindy Johnson, an organizer of the event and a deaconess for the United Methodist church. I had two questions for her, one about follow-up and one about the response of the guards. Answering the first question, she assured me that her group intends to keep the pressure on Raymondville, on ICE and their private contractors. She has been getting messages from people urging more public events, and smaller events are scheduled hopefully leading to a major one in May. (Johnson also told me she plans to attend the Valley-wide People for Peace and Justice “Gathering” in Weslaco on January 30th, the theme of which is that the fight against the Iraq and Afghanistan War and the fight for immigrant rights are connected.)

The other question I asked her concerned the guards. About two months ago there was a rally where some Raymondville guards became strangely belligerent and pulled out guns. Cautious because of that previous incident, Cindy’s group, before their vigil, took a lawyer to the site; they determined that there could be no reason for authorities to prevent demonstrations there. Johnson indicated that even the local sheriffs seemed to agree. The vigil went well and the guards behaved themselves.

(Incidentally, about two years ago, Amy Goodman, producer of a national media group, Democracy Now, was ordered away from the Raymondville detention center by a guard pointing a rifle at her. I interviewed someone who accompanied Goodman, and it was obvious that the guards were way out of bounds. The guards are poorly trained, as is the whole private staff running the fiasco there. It is operated by a Utah-based management and training corporation which is cost-cutting for extra profits wherever possible, at the expense of the immigrants and the whole tax-paying public.)

Because the rally was intended to help break the silence on detention centers, it was encouraging when the day after the rally the New York Times ran another critical report on America’s detention centers. The story has upped the ante considerably, reporting a trove of documents the paper and the ACLU had gathered, specifically looking at the 107 deaths of detainees nationwide (according to an ICE count) since 2003.

“Silence has long shrouded the men and women who die in the nation’s immigration jails,” said the Times. “For years, they went uncounted and unnamed in the public record. But behind the scenes, it is now clear, the deaths had already generated thousands of pages of government documents, including scathing investigative reports that were kept under wraps, and a trail of confidential memos and BlackBerry messages that show officials working to stymie outside inquiry.”

One incident found in documents newly released to the Times: In New Jersey a detained Guinean tailor was left in isolation for 13 hours without treatment after suffering a skull fracture. Eventually an ambulance was called. “While he lay in the hospital in a coma after emergency brain surgery, 10 agency managers in Washington and Newark conferred by telephone and e-mail on how to avoid costs of his care and the likelihood of ‘increased scrutiny and/or media exposure.’”

Documents show that they discussed sending the tailor back to Guinea, but they couldn’t because he hadn’t regained consciousness and he had tubes connected to him; they also discussed renewing his work permit so he could be eligible for Medicaid; they thought about a nursing home, but it would cost too much. Eventually they settled on a “humanitarian release” to relatives in New York who objected that they had no way to care for him. The issue became easier for agency managers when he died.

[This article also appears in Nick Braune’s column in the Mid-Valley Town Crier.]