Author: mopress

I was arrested unexpected like. I was sitting in a folding chair outside the Reception Room of the General Consulate of India. I had brought the folding chair from the house I was staying in and I had my poster with Day 15 of a hunger strike posted and leaning against the wall. An armful of flyiers was in my lap and I had already passed out about forty. Very interesting reception that I was getting. Almost every Indian I talked with acted totally surprised that the situation in Bhopal still existed. Yes, it does, I said. 30 Bhopalis are dying a month from that release in l984. Over 25,000 dealths. Over 8 times the amount of Americans that were killed during 9-11. And the USA invaded two countries over that one!

That’s Diane Wilson blogging there. She wrote two blog posts about her civil mischief up at the Indian Consulate offices in Houston, and then they had her arrested. Now she’s back from the seventh circle of hell and blogging about that, too. Once again, the moral leader of the Laguna Madre (and co-mother of CODEPINK) is peeking into the dark spaces of jailhouse rot. Grrrl don’t miss a moment!

Unarrested Woman

NOTE: We posted a comment to Diane’s blog about how the report from the Harris County Jail was like Beatrice grabbing Dante by the ankle and taking him straight down to seventh hell (from the lofty consulate, no less).

Diane replied: “yep, it was indeed hell. Ive been in a few Jails but Harris County has its own peticular brutality. Not just the conditions of the jails, but the damaging way they treat prisoners — many many who have not seen a court or a lawyer yet. not charged with a crime. There’s an investigation going on but i wonder if they will be steadfast enough to see through the jail’s attempt at coverup.”

The death toll at the Harris County Jail, and the death toll from Dow / Carbide poison at Bhopal — global miseries linked across the bridge of Diane Wilson’s back. Who will be steadfast enough to lift us from these miseries? — gm

Keywords: Carbide Dow Bhopal Poisoning Harris County Jail Terrors Carbide Dow Bhopal Poisoning Harris County Jail Terror Carbide Dow Bhopal Poisoning Harris County Jail Terror . . .

Email from Bob Libal, Grass Roots Leadership–gm

[On Tuesday] Marc Moore of Immigration and Customs Enforcement wrote a letter to the Dallas Morning News defending the T. Don Hutto family detention center. The letter was written in response to a terrific op-ed authored by University of Texas Professor Barbara Hines in last Monday’s Morning News arguing that ICE’s three new proposed family detention centers are an inappropriate response to immigrant families, especially given the troubled history of T. Don Hutto. Both Professor Hines’ op-ed and Mr. Moore’s letter are below in their entirety.

Please take the time today, if possible, to write a letter to the Dallas Morning News stressing the inappropriate nature of family detention and Hutto. Letters can be sent using the site’s online form, and should be 50-200 words in length. Letters can include the following points:

1) Detention of immigrant children and their families is inappropriate, costly, and inhumane. The experience at Hutto, a converted medium security prison operated by a private prison corporation where children as young as infants have been held with their parents, demonstrates that detention of families is a tragic response to the immigration issue. In addition, at an estimated cost of more than $200 a day per detainee at Hutto, the financial cost of such detention is unreasonably high, especially when more humane and cost-effective alternatives exist.

2) Congress has called on ICE to fund alternatives to family detention, saying that detention of immigrant children and their families should be the last alternative, not the first. ICE should be listening to the wishes of Congress and implementing alternatives to detention rather than soliciting new family detention centers. These alternative to detention programs are effective at ensuring that immigrants return to their immigration hearings and are much less costly than detention.

Thank you for your continued efforts to end family detention and close the T. Don Hutto detention center.

—

Bob Libal
Grassroots Leadership
Austin, Texas
http://www.grassrootsleadership.org

Check out www.texasprisonbidness.org for news and info on the private prison industry in Texas.

*****

Barbara Hines: New ICE family detention centers a step in wrong direction

June 16, 2008

The federal government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is accepting bids today for contracts to construct three new privately run detention centers across the country for children and their families awaiting immigration proceedings.

These facilities, each to be built with up to 200 beds, will expand the system of family detention made controversial in recent years at the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas.

The proposal for new centers is a step in the wrong direction. Congress has repeatedly called on ICE, the agency within the Department of Homeland Security responsible for immigration matters, to implement alternatives to detention programs for families, stating that detention of families should be the last alternative and not the first.

In 2006, when I first went to Hutto, I was appalled by the living conditions. Children as young as infants, along with their families, were detained in a converted medium-security prison run by the Corrections Corporation of America, a for-profit prison management corporation. Children received one hour of education a day and wore prison uniforms. They were required to be in their cells for long periods during the day to be present for multiple cell counts.

Many of the detainees at Hutto have come to the United States fleeing persecution or social turmoil — asylum seekers fleeing civil conflict in Eastern Africa, Iraqi Christians targeted by fundamentalists and Central Americans seeking refuge from drug, gang and domestic violence. No detainee has been accused of a crime.

The psychological toll on children in detention is significant. Often already traumatized by conditions in their home countries and the process of being uprooted during migration, children and parents at Hutto reported being threatened with separation from one another as a disciplinary measure.

After widespread public advocacy against the facility, national media attention, a lawsuit and a settlement, conditions at the facility are significantly better. Children no longer wear prison scrubs, and they now receive seven hours of education a day. Also, they remain at the detention center for a significantly shorter amount of time.

Fundamentally, however, family detention remains an inappropriate response to asylum seekers and immigrant parents and children. Advocates continue to be concerned about news reports from Hutto, such as an alleged sexual assault of a detainee by a guard and the separation of a child from her mother for four days. Both incidents occurred last year.

Alternatives to detention include community-based, homelike shelters that provide access to counseling and legal services. Intensive-supervision programs also keep families together and out of detention. In fact, alternatives to detention programs have proved effective at ensuring that immigrants appear for their court hearings through a combination of telephone reporting and home visits. These programs are also substantially more cost-effective than detention.

One study by the Vera Institute found that more than 90 percent of immigrants on a supervised release program attended their immigration hearings. The average cost of a supervision program was $12 a day, compared with $61 a day to detain an immigrant. The cost savings are likely more pronounced in the context of family detention, which is more expensive than detaining adult immigrants.

Instead of contracting the construction of more family detention centers, ICE should seriously invest in alternatives to detention programs.

Barbara Hines is a clinical professor of law and director of the Immigration Clinic at The University of Texas School of Law. She was co-counsel — along with the national ACLU, the ACLU of Texas and the law firm of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene and McRae — in the lawsuit challenging conditions at Hutto. Her e-mail address is bhines@law.utexas.edu.

*****

Hutto center picture incomplete

Re: “There’s a better way – ICE should not be accepting bids to build new family detention centers, says Barbara Hines,” last Monday Viewpoints.

Since its inception, the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Center has been a safe and humane alternative to separating the families who enter the country illegally.

Many positive changes have been made. Families have access to high-quality medical, mental health and dental care 24 hours a day. Children attend school seven hours a day with state-certified teachers who provide a curriculum based on state standards. There are many recreational and social activities for all residents and few restrictions on movement throughout the facility.

Many of the conditions mentioned in the column have not existed for some time. The razor-wire fence shown in the picture accompanying the column was removed more than a year ago. ICE has taken a proactive approach to enhancing the facility since it opened. Many of the improvements were in place, under way or planned before the lawsuit referred to in the column was filed.

Marc J. Moore, field office director, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, San Antonio

Press Release

HOUSTON — Police arrested activist Diane Wilson Monday at the Indian Consulate in Houston. Wilson is on an indefinite fast in solidarity with nine survivors of the Uni*n Carbide Gas Disaster in New Delhi, India.

Through her actions, Wilson, a fourth generation fisherwoman, has urged the Government of India to fulfill the survivor’s demands for clean water, health care and justice. She refers to the survivors “my sisters and brothers,” as she is also from a community polluted by Dow/Carbide in Seadrift, Texas.

On December 3rd, 1984, thousands of people in Bhopal, India, were gassed to death after a catastrophic chemical leak at a Uni*n Carbide pesticide plant; thousands more are now being poisoned by toxic waste from the abandoned factory site. Wilson believes firmly that the Indian government and Carbide parent company Dow Chemical must be held accountable for the ongoing disaster there.

Diane Wilson summed up her commitment to justice and connection the Bhopal survivors: “As one of the Bhopalis said, ‘What else can people do when their government ignores their pain and cries of injustice? Agitate, agitate!’”

Diane’s fast is part of an ongoing Global Fasting Relay, which is being supported by nearly 400 concerned individuals in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and India. (The full list of fasters available at http://www.bhopal.net) In North America, actions have taken place in Boston, San Francisco and Toronto, with further action planned at the Indian Embassy in Washington, DC. The brave yet perilous decision to begin an indefinite fast has been undertaken by Wilson and others only after numerous unsuccessful attempts to focus the attention of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh toward the grave situation in Bhopal.

Diane Wilson, a mother of five, became aware of the Dow/Carbide crimes in Bhopal after learning her own Texas County, located near several chemical plants including a Carbide/Dow plant, was the most polluted in the US. After Ms. Wilson was arrested after a protest at her local Dow facility, she toured the country refusing to go to jail until the former CEO of Uni*n Carbide was jailed. Former Carbide CEO Warren Anderson jumped bail after the Bhopal Disaster and has refused to face manslaughter charges in India.

Survivors are demanding the establishment of a special commission to deal with the issues that still plague the people of Bhopal. They are also demanding that the Prime Minister hold Dow Chemical legally liable, following Dow’s purchase of the initial disaster offender, Uni*n Carbide, in 2001. Though survivors have gained support from many influential lawmakers, as well as the Ministry of Law and the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, the Prime Minister Singh has not budged from his ongoing support of this rogue chemical company.

Nearly half a million people were exposed to poisonous methyl isocyanate during a runaway chemical reaction at the Uni*n Carbide plant in Bhopal in 1984. Since then, more than 22,000 people have died and 150,000 survivors continue to be chronically ill, as the Indian government and Dow have repeatedly failed to address their liabilities in the atrocities of the world’s worst industrial disaster.

The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB) is a coalition of people’s organizations, non-profit groups and individuals who have joined forces to campaign for justice for the survivors of the gas leak. The Campaign for Justice in Bhopal is active in more than 20 cities in the US, UK, France and India.

To view who has signed up for the fast worldwide, visit www.bhopal.net/2008hungerfast.html.

For more information about the history of the gas disaster, visit the following websites: www.bhopal.net, www.studentsforbhopal.org, and www.truthaboutdow.org

By Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town Crier
by permission

In my recent columns a theme has emerged: how ICE, Border Patrol and other Homeland Security agencies have been criminalizing the immigrant population, from raids in Iowa’s meatpacking plants to “Operation Streamline” in Brownsville.

Yesterday I received a call from a colleague of mine, Caren Smith. She wondered if I would be interested in another little story about our bureaucratic, mean-spirited, governmental operations. “Surely,” I said.

Ms. Smith, who is also the new president of the Unitarian Universalist Church in San Juan, got an email request from a Unitarian in Europe: Could someone contact a young fellow who is being held unfairly? He is in a Raymondville, Texas detention center, run by ICE (Immigration/Customs Enforcement). I interviewed Ms. Smith.

Nick Braune: Yesterday you mentioned that this young fellow from Europe is an artist, travelling around the country to network with fellow artists.

Caren Smith: Yes, his name is Dutch [not his real name], and he’s a 26-year-old who came here to travel and learn more about independent film-making. His visa had expired recently and he was intending to renew it when he was picked up in western Texas and shuttled to Raymondville early in May. Dutch was actually waiting for a check from home, as I understand it, to pay the fee to extend the visa. He was on his way to a youth hostel in New Mexico.

Dutch has been incarcerated now — excuse me, they use the word “detained” — since that time. Those of us at the church did not know him — we only got wind of his presence in Raymondville from the Unitarian overseas who emailed me — but our group wanted to help, so off we went from the church trying to at the least support this young man through visits.

Braune: I have protested outside that Raymondville (Willacy County) center several times, and last year there was a tornado of bad publicity about it: spoiled food, mismanagement, financial shenanigans, etc. But I’ve never been inside — what’s it like?

Smith: The visitation environment is utterly ridiculous: Dutch was kept behind a glass wall that holds a malfunctioning microphone — it all looks like something out of a black-and-white film noir — you expect Edward G. Robinson to appear any minute.

Braune: The glass wall separating visitors is more evidence that Homeland Security is off kilter. When someone is out of compliance on their visa, it has always been a civil offence not a criminal offence. These detention centers — Raymondville’s holds two or three thousand people at a time — are not for convicted criminals or even accused criminals awaiting trial.

I remember the 1960s and ’70s, when there used to be thousands of European young people traveling around the country. One would see them at tourist places and universities. Now apparently they are treated as criminals.

Smith: Yes, and it has really depressed Dutch, of course. He told us that when they took him to the airport, ICE officers had him handcuffed and foot-shackled. He had a visa, remember, and was simply late renewing it. He wasn’t arrested for assault or accused of stealing something. He felt totally humiliated.

My son, a Galveston Police Detective, once transported a murderer from Pennsylvania back to Texas for arraignment, and he did not shackle him in the airport. Trying not to draw attention to the convict, they purchased a sweat-suit top with a front pocket where he could hide the fact that he was handcuffed. This protected their mission from the press, the general public, and so forth, and the arrested party was respected as a human being.

Braune: Any other signs of mean-spiritedness?

Smith: Yes. Thanks for letting me vent. First, Dutch is discouraged and was supposed to have been sent home on June 18th — he has a ticket — but they have postponed it until they can have a marshal available to escort him.

Second, Dutch’s mother in Europe has been worried about his psychological state — he is depressed and had a brother who committed suicide. Our fellowship includes one of the Valley’s finest psychologists, who asked to visit Dutch, but the detention center has been stalling his visit. Why?

Third, despite filling out the proper forms, Dutch has not been to the library — nothing to read for six weeks — nor has he seen the chaplain.

Fourth, we saw a sign, as we entered the Raymondville center, warning people not to come in if they were susceptible to chickenpox. (Exposure to chickenpox can severely affect the unborn.) We saw several pregnant women visitors, and we’ve heard that pregnant women are detained there.

Braune: Thank you. And I applaud your activist church group.