Author: mopress

NEWS ADVISORY

For Immediate Release: November 19, 2007
Contact: Camm Lary – (512) 756-2156

Who: Concerned residents of Burnet County.
What: A public meeting with the Burnet County Commissioner’s Court.
When: Monday, November 19th at 7:00pm.
Where: Old courthouse on the square in Burnet, Texas.

Burnet County Residents Oppose Private Detention Center
Proposed 500-bed Jail Would Hurt Burnet’s Reputation

“No Private Jail” Group to speak at Monday meeting

Burnet, TX – This Monday, concerned Burnet County residents will hold a public meeting with Burnet County Commissioners to discuss their opposition to a proposed 500-bed private detention center. The meeting will take place Monday, November 19th, at Old Courthouse on the square in Burnet at 7:00pm.

Burnet County residents are concerned that the proposed jail will be operated by a Louisiana-based for-profit private prison corporation, that out-of-county prisoners will shipped to the prison, and that Burnet County has taken steps to float revenue bonds to pay for the prison, which could endanger the county’s future bond rating, without a public vote.

Private prison corporations have a track record that include human rights abuses, lawsuits, higher rates of violence, and financial mismanagement. Research shows that prison construction has no positive economic impact on communities. Counties that finance private prison construction have been held liable for abuses that take place in the prisons.

Houston Chronicle
AP Texas News

Nov. 15, 2007, 5:17PM
Immigrant child separated from mom at family detention center

By ANABELLE GARAY Associated Press Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press

DALLAS — An 8-year-old girl was separated from her pregnant mother and left behind for four days at a detention center established to hold immigrant families together while they await outcomes to their cases.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say they had to transfer the Honduran woman because she twice resisted attempts to deport her and was potentially disruptive. ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok said guards and ICE staff watched over the child after her mother was removed from the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility, a former Central Texas prison where non-criminal immigrant families are held while their cases are processed.

But others are critical of the agency’s handling of the case, saying it put the girl at risk and is yet another example of why the controversial facility should be closed.

“Here, it’s the government itself that has the custody of this child and then leaves her without proper supervision,” said Denise Gilman, who oversees the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, which provides legal services to Hutto detainees. “We certainly don’t want to see it happen again.”

The 28-year-old mother and child lost a bid for asylum and are back in Honduras. But Immigration Clinic attorneys plan to file a complaint with the federal government.

“There is something to complain about, because we’re talking about a child’s welfare,” said Michelle Brane, director of the detention and asylum program at the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children. “This is a perfect example of why family detention just doesn’t work.”

Since opening last year near Taylor, the Hutto facility has been exempt from state child-care licensing requirements. ICE officials told the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services that parents would be at the facility with their children and would be responsible for their care, so state regulation wasn’t needed.

But if the state’s child care licensing division receives a complaint indicating child care is being provided, it could investigate, said Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the Department of Family and Protective Services.

ICE officials have previously said detaining families at the facility is meant to help “children remain with parents, their best caregivers” while they are processed for deportation.

But Irma Banegas of Fort Worth said that’s not what happened in the case of her sister and niece. She asked that they not be identified by name due to concerns for their safety in Central America.

Banegas said the mother and daughter told her they cried inconsolably after they were awakened and separated.

“They’ve never been apart,” Banegas said of her sister and her niece.

Banegas said the pair fled Honduras earlier this year to escape an abusive relationship and growing gang violence in that country, including attacks that scarred her sister.

The girl and her mother had traveled from El Balsamo, Honduras to Mexico and then crossed by boat into South Texas, where they were apprehended in August.

The two were sent to Hutto, where they were held for about two months. They were waiting for a decision on their bid for asylum, which they eventually lost.

The agency attempted to deport the woman twice in October, but she wouldn’t comply. ICE officials didn’t reveal specifics about her efforts to resist deportation.

But as a result, Rusnok said, she was considered a high risk for disruptive behavior and moved to a South Texas detention center in Pearsall on Oct. 18.

“Such family separations at Hutto are extremely rare. ICE personnel took extraordinary care to minimize family disruption and separation time, while at the same time ensuring the good order of the family residential center,” Rusnok said in a statement.

Advocates agree that detainees who endanger themselves or others should be removed, but decry the lack of guidelines for transferring or punishing troublemakers.

“What that standard is, I think, is a gray area,” Brane said. “This is part of our concern with there not being any standards.”

During the separation, the girl continued her regular routine at Hutto and “felt comfortable and safe” at the facility, according to ICE.

Lawsuits filed earlier this year accused Hutto’s uniformed, handcuff-toting correctional officers called “counselors” of threatening to separate misbehaving children from their families. A settlement reached in August bans the practice and called for improving conditions at Hutto.

Those concerns have been rekindled as word of the most recent case spread through the facility, advocates say.

“That kind of fear it strikes to the heart of all other children,” Gilman said.

SEE ALSO

Breastfeeding mom separated from baby in illegal immigration case

Friday, November 09, 2007
Robert L. Smith
Plain Dealer Reporter

When federal agents encountered Sayda Umanzor in a house in Conneaut two weeks ago, the 27-year-old woman admitted to being in America illegally, “without papers.”

She also pointed to her 9-month-old daughter, Brittany, whom she had been breastfeeding when agents rapped on the door.

The baby wailed as mom and dad were led away. And she cried incessantly over the next several days as she went without breast milk while mom was in jail, sick with worry.

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Nursing Mothers and Asylum Seekers — Both Groups Need Alternatives To Detention!

Cite as “AILA InfoNet Doc. No. 07111462
(posted Nov. 14, 2007)”

WASHINGTON, DC – In a welcome guidance memorandum this week, ICE Assistant Secretary Julie Myers highlighted the importance of ICE agents exercising discretion when making arrest and custody decisions for undocumented immigrants who are nursing mothers. The guidance arose after a case was brought to ICE’s attention in which a nursing mother was separated from her 6-month-old nursing baby and two young children, and imprisoned for more than 2 weeks before finally being released with an electronic monitoring device affixed to her ankle. The nursing mother was not even the object of ICE agents’ action, but was accidentally discovered by them in a home they came to search in pursuit of another undocumented person.

The Myers memo also reinforces and references a previous agency guidance memo regarding prosecutorial discretion that states that “officers are not only authorized by law but expected to exercise discretion in a judicious manner at all stages of the enforcement process-to promote the efficient and effective enforcement of the immigration laws and the interests of justice.” (DOJ/INS Memorandum, November 17, 2000.)

We applaud ICE and Ms. Myers for attempting to restore a modicum of reason and discretion to a system that seems bent on “enforcement at all costs” without the accompanying changes in the law that are necessary to make enforcement effective.

At the same time, we must question and object to another new policy memo, released Monday, that turns away from the sort of professional and reasonable approach contained in Ms. Myers November 7th memo.

The Monday memorandum turns away from the existing policy that favors release from detention for arriving asylum seekers who are determined to have a “credible fear” of persecution, who have established their identity and community ties, and who are deemed not to be a flight risk. The current policy makes eminent sense, applied as it is to individuals who are among the most traumatized of arriving immigrants-those fleeing persecution which often includes arrest, imprisonment and even torture-who are seeking safety and the preservation of their very lives by appealing to our government for protection.

The new policy will
r
equire these traumatized individuals to jump through yet a new set of hoops, and to fit into one of five very narrowly defined groups, in order to be released from detention. The new policy will severely limit the exercise of discretion and will prevent most credible asylum applicants from being released from detention while their claims are being considered. This turns the standard that should be applied upside down, is punitive, and serves no rational interest.

We urge ICE to reexamine its two recent memos, and to apply the thoughtfulness embodied in the policy guidance regarding nursing mothers to another deserving group-those seeking asylum in the United States.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association is the national association of immigration lawyers established to promote justice, advocate for fair and reasonable immigration law and policy, advance the quality of immigration and nationality law and practice, and enhance the professional development of its members.

For the information of you who are interested in the efforts of the US government to deliver Rrustem Neza, who identified the killers of Azem Hajdari, into the hands of those killers, here is an update.

Congressman Louie Gomert has promised to introduce a private bill in the Congress to stop the deportation.

The judge in whose court the government filed suit for permission to drug Rrustem has set a pretrial deadline of August 2008, and will set the trial for a date after motions for summary judgment have been submitted. I expect the government will be filing its motion for summary judgment any day now.

John Wheat Gibson
Dallas

PRESS RELEASE

Indigenous Peoples’ Border Summit of the Americas, Nov. 7 — 10, focuses on human rights and right of mobility

Del Rio, Texas, border and human rights activist Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr., among the speakers

TUCSON — A human rights crisis for Indigenous Peoples living along borders in the Americas threatens their survival, with rapidly expanding militarization and new laws which limit their mobility in their ancestral territories.

Responding to this crisis, the San Xavier District of the Tohono O’odham Nation will host the Indigenous Peoples Border Summit of the Americas II, Nov. 7- 10, with support from the International Indian Treaty Council.

Mike Flores, Tohono O’odham summit organizer, said, “It is necessary for Tohono O’odham and other Indigenous Peoples of the border regions to collectively address the adverse impacts that are increasingly occurring on tribal lands. The Border Summit of the Americas II will provide us the opportunity to do just that,” Flores said.

San Xavier District Chairman Austin Nunez joins Flores in welcoming Indigenous Peoples to the Border Summit on Tohono O’odham land, located near South Tucson.

The Border Summit will host a human rights workshop by the International Indian Treaty Council. The summit will be broadcast live on the Internet at http://www.earthcycles.net as was done in 2006.

From the southern Andes to the northern Arctic, corporations intent on seizing natural resources have increased the oppression and displacement of Indigenous Peoples, resulting in their forced mobility across national borders. Further, free trade agreements, mining and exploitive development have forced Indigenous Peoples into exile in the Americas, displaced from their lands where they farmed, hunted or fished for survival.

In the United States, corporate profiteering for private migrant prisons, experimental spy technology, poorly trained border agents, privatized security and new laws for immigration threaten the right of mobility in ancestral territories.

The human rights crisis at the southern border of the United States and Mexico has resulted in over 4,000 migrant deaths in recent years, including deaths of women from Guatemala on Tohono O’odham tribal land in Arizona who died walking with their children in 2007. Migrants, including Indigenous Peoples from Mexico and Central America, die of dehydration and severe temperatures while walking in search of a better life. The Border Summit speakers will include Tohono O’odham Mike Wilson, who puts out water for migrants on tribal land.

“No one should die for want of a drink of water,” Wilson said.

The privatization of prisons, including the T. Don Hutto Residential Center and Raymondville migrant tent encampment, both near Austin, Texas, reveals the sinister motivation of profiteering from the plight of migrants. Hutto imprisons migrant and refugee infants and children. Speakers will include Jay Johnson-Castro, Sr., of Texas, among those organizing protests against the prisons.

Johnson-Castro, was born in Portland, Oregon and raised in the Alaskan wilderness. He is tri-lingual (English-Spanish-Albanian) and has served on the Tourism Advisory Committee, Officer of the Governor, Texas Historical Foundation and Texas Hotel & Lodging Assn., Los Caminos del Rio and Val Verde County Historical Commission.

Residing on the border in Del Rio, Texas since 1992, Johnson-Castro has mostly been noted for promoting heritage tourism all along the Texas-Mexico border. He has also been championing the ecology and environment of the Rio Grande Corridor, submitting the Rio Grande as an endangered river and filing suit against the Federal Government to protect endangered species in the Rio Grande region.

Johnson-Castro has most recently become recognized internationally as a human rights activist for his hundreds of miles of Border Wall-ks and has traversed the entire US-Mexico border in protest against the border wall. He has also walked against the “for profit” prison camps of thousands of immigrant refugees, especially T. Don Hutto prison camp where untold hundreds of children have been imprisoned for profit.

A father of four grown children and grandfather of seven, Johnson-Castro is a sculptor, writer, photographer, pubic speaker and gourmet cook. He is the founder of Border Ambassador and Freedom Ambassadors. He is a columnist for the Rio Grande Guardian, “Inside the Checkpoints” (http://www.riograndeguardian.com/columns3.asp).

In May, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for migrants, Jorge Bustamante, was denied entrance into Hutto, and Johnson-Castro, with the support of Amnesty International coordinated human rights protests that followed.

The border wall and border vehicle barriers along the southern border have resulted in the removal of ancestors’ remains of the Tohono O’odham and Kumeyaay from their final resting places. Further, the barrier wall on Tohono O’odham land is a barrier interfering with an ancient annual ceremony.

Since ceremonial leaders from Mexico often lead ceremonies in the United States, new immigration laws threaten the survival of ceremonies, culture and languages. Because many Indian people are born at home, or lack funds for visas and passports, crossing the border has become a harsh ordeal.

Further, at both the northern and the southern borders of Canada and Mexico, federal border agents ransack and violate ceremonial items. Speakers on the right of mobility at the northern border include representatives of Mohawks and other Six Nations.

With the increased militarization and surveillance at the borders, the dangers from speeding border agents, aerial vehicle crashes and abuse and harassment by border agents increase. Women, children and elderly along the border are most often the victims of oppression and suffer most often from the lack of food, safe drinking water and medicines.

With the militarization and oppression increasing for Indigenous Peoples around the world, the Border Summit of the Americas invites Indian people to offer their testimony while receiving information and training on human rights.

The International Indian Treaty Council will present a human rights training, following the United Nations adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The US will be examined by the UN Committee for Racial Discrimination (CERD) Committee in March of 2008, in Geneva, Switzerland.

“This workshop will provide information as to how Indigenous Nations, tribes and organizations can use this historic opportunity to inform the CERD Committee on the true state of racial discrimination in this country and how it affects Indian Nations, Peoples and communities. This information will be very important to help the UN CERD experts get a more accurate picture of racial discrimination in the US and hold the US accountable to their obligations under international human rights law,” IITC said.

“An additional focus will be on strategies to defend our human rights, border rights, and protecting our sacred sites and traditional land rights using the newly-adopted UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples from the local to the international levels.”

The human rights workshop presenters will be Bill Means, Lakota cofounder of the Treaty Council; Andrea Carmen, Yaqui and Treaty Council executive director; Ron Lameman, Confederacy of Treaty 6 First Nations, and Francisco Cali, CERD Member and Treaty Council board president.

For more information: bordersummit2007@yahoo.com

Website: http://indigenousbordersummitamericas2007.blogspot.com

Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr. jay@villadelrio.com (830)734-8636