Author: mopress

By Pedro Ruiz

Protest at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center was on June 20, 2009. We marched through the town of Taylor, Texas, to the detention center. The march started at about 1:10 p.m. as we arrived to the detention center at about 1:35 p.m. We had about 175 people in attendance at the demonstration. The platform of speakers and musicians was from 1:40 p.m. to about 3:50 p.m. People started to leave about 4:30 p.m. at the end, in which we took this picture.

There is a yellow line that you are not supposed to cross, as I had approached the van earlier in which they threatened to arrest me for wanting to take a picture of the facility owned by Corrections Corporation of America.

Free the Children! Shut Hutto Down! Picture of Antonio Diaz of the Texas Indigenous Council and Pedro Ruiz.

Marching to the T. Don Hutto Residential Center through the detention center’s backyard.
Marching for the first time over the downtown bridge in Taylor, Texas. Free the Children-Shut Hutto Down sign.

The Beyond Point in which only authorized people are allowed beyond this marker at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center. Antonio, Pedro, and Chuck.

People demonstrating their freedom of speech in front of the entrance to the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, completely blocking the entrance from any vehicles entering the detention center.

For more information on the movement to Free the Children, please visit the website www.tdonhutto.blogspot.com or see Tlazocamati – Ollin Quetzalcoatl 21 at myspace.

Also, please read the article I was in exposing Lulac’s connection to Corrections Corporation of America.

UNI0N transit workers in Austin were told on Tuesday that they would either have to give up raises they won in a recent strike or give up more bus routes to non-UNI0N employees.

According to a story in Thursday’s Austin American-Statesman, the UNI0N replied to Capital Metro management by requesting (1) financial information on top administrative staff and (2) a complete accounting “of how the agency in the past six years spent a reserve fund of more than $200 million that is nearly gone.”

“We want to see how the money has really been spent before we make that determination,” said UNI0N local president Jay Wyatt. “We’re not going to make it blind and in the dark.”

The Amalgamated Transit UNI0N Local 1091 represents more than 800 Capital Metro drivers, mechanics and maintenance workers.

UNI0N workers are scheduled to get a 1.5 percent raise July 1 and another 1.5 percent in January.

Transit management says the system needs the UNI0N to give back those hard-won raises in order to offset declining sales-tax revenues.

According to the newspaper report: “Outside contractors Veolia Transportation and First Transit furnish bus drivers and mechanics for 21 of Capital Metro’s 71 regular routes. The number of outsourced routes has increased steadily in recent years, including four routes shifted to contractors in January.”

Note: our anti-hacking security at TCRR bans a word from our database which we therefore spell in upper case with a zero: UNI0N.–gm

By Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town Crier
by permission

About 75 people attended what became a full-scale briefing on America’s crude
immigration detention centers. The student club of Amnesty International at South Texas College, Weslaco, convened this public event on June 10, inviting three important speakers.

Jay Johnson-Castro, founder of Border Ambassadors and director of the Rio Grande International Study Center based at Laredo Community College, spoke on the need to shut down the Hutto detention center, the notorious institution near Austin that imprisons about 200 children. Although Homeland Security has said it is not bothered by imprisoning children because the parents are in the prison with the children, and although conditions are better now than two years ago before an ACLU emergency lawsuit forced some changes, Hutto continues to be a disgrace: punitive and unnecessary. Johnson-Castro and many others want it closed. (On June 20, International Refugee Day, there is a planned protest rally at Hutto.)

A second speaker, Anayanse Garza, from the Southwest Workers’ Uni*n, described how her group had gotten involved recently in publicizing the hunger strike of inmates at Port Isabel’s detention center. (An Amnesty International report on injustices in detention centers was published in the spring, and good-sized coverage of it appeared in USA Today; this article reportedly circulated hand to hand inside Port Isabel and emboldened some inmates who organized and sustained the hunger strike for a good while.) Garza described how her group (SWU) contacted people inside and held several rallies outside the center, generating press coverage for the actions. Garza also detailed the case of Rama Carty, one of the leaders of the hunger strike; she said that Homeland Security has retaliated against Rama, moving him to Louisiana and trying to deport him quickly to Haiti, although he has never lived in Haiti in his life of 39 years.

Because of activists like Johnson-Castro and Garza, Hutto and Port Isabel have been in the news a bit lately, but I had virtually forgotten about the situation in the massive Raymondville immigrant internment camp, 50 minutes north of Brownsville. The third speaker at the Amnesty club forum, immigration attorney Jodi Goodwin, described the Raymondville situation. Up to 3,000 refugees and immigrants with contested legal status are held, out of sight, in spirit-breaking prison conditions behind barbed wire.

The Raymondville detention facility is a “tent city” — I have seen it from the outside, counting about a half dozen billowy tents apparently divided into “quads” — built in only 90 days in the summer of 2006. Made of cement slabs, steel ribcage, and canvas, this type of temporary housing has been used in Iraq to house soldiers for a few days at a time, between assignments, but, explained Goodwin, we are talking here of incarcerating people for 6 months to over 2 years in these tent monstrosities. Goodwin said that the Management & Training Corporation and Willacy County make a fortune from this facility and they found that 2,000 beds were not enough, so they built a more “traditional structure” behind the tents with an additional 1,000 beds. (This put Raymondville to work, a broken town of about 5,000.) There is more bed space in the detention centers south of San Antonio than in the rest of the U.S. combined, Goodwin explained.

But how much legal defense do these thousands get? Virtually none, according to Goodwin. Only one attorney and two paralegals are available in the major pro bono organization doing legal work here in the Valley. (And its activities are somewhat limited, as I understand it, by Bar Association rules.) At immigration court, individual detainees are not given a lawyer. No one here has the famous “right to an attorney, and if you cannot afford one, one will be provided.” Because of a loophole — deportation and related proceedings are considered civil matters and not criminal — the expected right to an attorney does not apply to these incarcerated thousands. If one is lucky enough to find a pro bono lawyer to take the case, great. If not, one needs to find one’s own private attorney and provide the funds. And all together in the Valley, with thousands of detainees, there are still only three attorneys who are actually board certified in immigration law!

The choice of the Valley for mass processing of immigrants was intentional on the part of ICE and DHS. Up in the Northeastern states, there are many firms doing pro bono work and more lawyers and support networks for this type of legal practice. That is why DHS moves prisoners down here, packing flights daily. The government can process these people — or as is often the case, delay processing them for six or eight months at will — with little intrusion by pesky lawyers.

I’ll save some of the details Goodwin related for later — mental health issues being ignored, some foot fungus problems ignored, poor food, poorly trained staff, etc — all hidden under tents.

“Aggie Snake Pit” From the Editorial Board of the Dallas Morning News (June 16, 2009)

Disarray in the administration of Texas A&M does not befit the great university that loyal Aggies typically rise to defend.

It’s impossible for many of them to defend A&M today.

President Elsa Murano’s resignation under duress drips with embarrassing irony. She was boosted into the job over three outsider candidates who, unlike her, made a search committee’s finalist list as sitting university presidents. Now, 17 months later, Murano has been squeezed out by the regime of chancellor and regents who handpicked her from her job as agriculture dean.

A&M’s board and Chancellor Mike McKinney apparently didn’t know what they were getting when they promoted her and didn’t know what to do with her afterward. This is not to indict Murano’s short tenure. This simply addresses the leadership breakdown that stewards of a legacy institution are expected to avoid.

One sub-theme is perceived string-pulling from Gov. Rick Perry, Texas’ most prominent A&M alum. Key administrators have strong ties to the governor, most notably McKinney, a former Perry chief of staff. Murano had complained of being surprised by developments within her purview. If true, that would represent meddling that no chief executive ought to tolerate.

Other moves by top administrators bordered on underhanded. McKinney mused to the Bryan-College Station Eagle recently that perhaps A&M didn’t need a president. Perhaps, he said, the job could be combined with his duties of overseeing a system of 11 universities.

The ostensible reason was saving money, though some on campus said they were unaware of a fiscal crisis that would call for such drastic action. The effect was to undermine the university president at a time she was smarting from emergence of her written job review. The Eagle obtained and published McKinney’s hand-written evaluation of Murano. It has the look of a paper that a professor graded on his way to class, with scribbles in the margins and crossed-out remarks.

Even if McKinney hit the mark with the low grades he gave her, the process deserved an effort respectful of the office.

As for Murano’s performance, her first months on the job merited her inclusion among finalists for the annual Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year feature for 2008. Accomplishments included a new program for tuition-free education to students with family income below a certain threshold.

Murano’s tenure was rocky at times, including charges of dishonestly during her clumsy hiring, unhiring and rehiring of a vice president – a former Perry classmate – whose candidacy had not been vetted by campus stakeholder groups.

But Murano’s bosses have taken personnel clumsiness to new heights, shortchanging the university mightily at a time it aims to measure up to its ambitious Vision 2020 plan. The job of A&M president must now look like a snake pit to top talent capable of leading a university of distinction.

Editor’s Note from the Texas Civil Rights Review: Sources have been quoted to the effect that a new President for Texas A&M at College Station will be named within six months’ time. But keeping that deadline is not the most important thing to the institution. What is more important is an autonomous and dignified international search that is clearly anchored from within the community at the College Station campus–a search that is spot free from even the appearance of willful shenanigans in high places.–gm