Author: mopress

Statement issued by the office of U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX).

“We are aware that Rrustem Neza was recently and suddenly detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is holding him for deportation on a date it will not disclose, though it informed us it will be sometime in August.

“After first indicating that no action would be taken until December, ICE has done nothing here to help its credibility. ICE has now also severely limited its communication on this issue. Though ICE seems determined to move quickly ahead with delivering this man’s life into imminent danger, I am continuing to fight against this wrongful deportation or at least find a better solution that won’t put his life in peril.

“I have and will continue to stay in contact with officials at the Department of Homeland Security to see what can be done to postpone or halt Rrustem’s deportation. I’m sure East Texans will also help me provide all the support we can for the Neza family during this very difficult time.”

“This report presents the first-ever system-wide look at the federal government’s compliance with its own standards regulating immigrant detention facilities, a view based on previously unreleased first-hand reports of monitoring inspections. The results reveal substantial and pervasive violations of the
government’s minimum standards for conditions at such facilities. As a result, over 320,000 immigrants locked up each year not only face tremendous obstacles to challenging wrongful detention or winning their immigration cases, but the conditions in which these civil detainees are held often are as bad as or worse than those faced by imprisoned criminals.”

Get the full report on “A Broken System” from the National Immigration Law Center

Join Free the Children Coalition on Aug.22, 2009, in Taylor, Texas, to close the T. Don Hutto Residential Center down and free the immigrant children being detained by the Department of Homeland Security and Corrections Corporation of America.

The Freedom Walk starts at 1pm from Heritage Park towards the detention center where a Protest/Vigil will take place from 2pm-5pm. For more info, contact:

texasindigenouscouncil@yahoo.com

Peace be with you,
Pedro Ruiz

www.youtube.com/pedroruiz21

Note: According to a report by Juan Castillo in the Aug. 8 Austin-American Statesman, the last family will not be removed until the end of 2009. The children are not gone from Hutto yet.–gm

A TCRR Sunday Sermon

By Greg Moses

For many months the right wing populist chatter box has been drumming up the spectre of a socialist radical president with no respect for civil liberties, due process, or property rights. Then as soon as the president says it is stupid to arrest a man on his own property for speaking his own mind, the right wing populist chatter box denounces the president for that.

Overnight, the fashion for denouncing the president is all the rage. Nobody worries anymore about private property, due process, or civil liberties. It is the uniformed officer who can do you no wrong. And just like that, America’s post-racial presidency has come to a windshield-smashing end. The color line is back.

One hardly knows how to defend the man who holds the most powerful office in the world. His defeat already shows on his face. Either one has already helped to defeat the president or one is already too late.

It is already too late to distinguish between racism as bigotry aforethought and racism as saturated cultural response. It is already too late to point out that the president said, “Now, I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that . . .”

It is already too late to ask how a career cop in Cambridge can approach the home of Skip Gates without already knowing who he is. It is already too late to undo the swift victory that white supremacy has won, with all its well-known right wing populist momentum.

The choosing time has passed. You already know which side you’re on. And if you’re on the president’s side this time, you know what comes next. The president will try to figure out how to appeal to the side that you and he are not on. He’ll try to appease the right wing populist rest. Say you’ve been on the president’s side before? ‘Nuff said.

With another three years of hard work left in this presidency, I think the shape of things going forward will depend upon the internal struggle now at play between the bulls and bears. As I’m working on that struggle internally in a fractal replay of things writ large, I have to think that the arrest of Skip Gates marks a bear market in the currency of respect.

By coincidence Skip Gates was returning home from the land of scholars when he encountered some difficulties at his own front door. “Slight the learned,” warned Mozi in 400 BCE, “and you will neglect the ruler and injure the state.”

Even in Cambridge Massachusetts the learned are not respected. Apparently they are not even well known. The ruler has been neglected, the state injured. Neat as a fortune cookie America, in the image of Skip Gates handcuffed, your future has just been read.