Category: Uncategorized

By Nick Braune
Mid-Vally Town Crier
by permission

The July 8th front page of McAllen’s paper, The Monitor, had an article, ‘Border Patrol May See Surge,’ discussing a proposed increase (surge) in numbers of Border Patrol agents. This momentarily caught my attention for two reasons.

First, the U.S. has not done well with surges lately: ‘The Surge’ in Iraq has produced nothing but a resented brutal lockdown of Baghdad and its suburbs. And secondly, I always suspect there are too many Border Patrol agents already.

But the article kept my attention. I take it that a private contracting company, DynCorp International of Virginia, is sending out press releases (basically advertising itself) hoping to be hired by Homeland Security in this border region. It is offering ‘to train and deploy 1,000 private agents to the U.S.-Mexican border within 13 months, offering a quick surge of law enforcement officers to a region struggling to clamp down on illegal immigration.’

Note that the company thinks we don’t know that the 100,000 private contractors in Iraq, with at least half of them doing policing and fighting functions, have a horrible reputation. (See the documentary ‘Iraq for Hire.’)

DynCorp, it seems from The Monitor, is touting its mercenary — ‘we’ll fight anyone for pay’ — experience in Iraq and says that many of their cadre have law enforcement backgrounds and are licensed officers. (The company does not use the term ‘mercenaries’ however, preferring terms like ‘officers,’ ‘private agents,’ and ‘contract agents.’ The company also does not say what countries the mercenaries are ‘licensed officers’ in. These big contractors recruit from all over the world; Latin America and Fijian mercenaries have made the news lately.)

To the credit of the Border Patrol, their spokesman told The Monitor that they do not need outside help from private contractors like DynCorp and are recruiting and training new people every day. This claim, however, contains a untruth. The Border Patrol has already contracted ($50 million) to Wackenhut/GEO, a notorious private policing and jailing corporation, for transporting migrants back to Mexico. (Tucson Weekly, May 3, 2007)

So much for the claim that the Border Patrol doesn’t need help from private contractors; in the past, transporting migrants to Mexico was done by the Border Patrol itself. To the credit of The Monitor, it quoted a critic, a sociologist studying the border region, who said that private contractors wouldn’t have the proper training for this work. The critic was also quoted as taking a dig at the National Guard troops supplementing the Border Patrol, reminding us that three guardsmen recently were arrested on suspicion of smuggling immigrants in Laredo.

Three admittedly impressionistic responses:

First, on the Border Patrol itself: I am unconvinced that their agents, in contrast to the mercenaries, are much better trained and ‘professional.’ (I have watched their uniformed agents accepting free coffee and discounts on sandwiches…a sure sign of problems.) And I believe, once again, that there are actually too many of them driving around in vans and standing around at the checkpoints already.

Secondly, on the mercenaries — they’d be worse. Even if they were trained to Border Patrol standards, do we really want these mercenaries, who have been in Iraq (maybe helping at Abu Ghraib while reading ‘Soldier of Fortune’ magazine) patrolling our Valley? The humanist philosopher back in the 1500s, Erasmus of Rotterdam, referred to mercenaries as ‘vile excrement of criminality holding life less dear than a small piece of profit.’ (They could write caustically in those days.) The ‘for sale’ mercenaries Erasmus saw coming back from fighting in the Middle East seemed horrifying to him, emotionally contorted.

Thirdly, because border leaders have had such a bad experience with privatized prisons, I would think they would be wary of privatizing policing functions as well. Just last week a prison in Spur, Texas run by contractors (Wackenhut/GEO, which is part of the mercenary business.) was blasted in the press by the State of Idaho. Idaho has sent overflow prisoners to Texas, but one of them committed suicide recently causing Idaho to investigate the treatment. Investigators were shocked, calling it the worst facility they had ever seen.

This is the second scandal in a Wackenhut/GEO prison in Texas triggered by a suicide. A previous suicide, in Val Verde County, apparently resulted from sexual abuse. Our political leaders should be wary of private contractors promising to provide low cost social services.
(Here are the first two sentences of a 1999 Gregory Palast article on Wackenhut: ‘New Mexico’s privately operated prisons are filled with America’s impoverished, violent outcasts – and those are the guards. That’s the warning I took away from confidential documents and from guards themselves who nervously spoke on condition that their names never see the light of day.’)

The importance of The Monitor article: using private contractors directly for border immigration policing is now being publicly floated. Beware. The article even reports that one congressman, Mike Rogers (R-Ala), is authoring legislation mandating the use of ‘contractors’ by the Border Patrol, if hiring goals are not met. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rogers wants to deputize the Minutemen.

KXAN learned Wednesday the alleged misconduct that resulted in the firing of a guard at the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor was sexual in nature.

The center is one of only two in the country that detains children and families for non-criminal immigration violations.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, or ICE, officials gave the media a look inside earlier this year, but this week Williamson County investigators took a closer look.

In a statement issued Wednesday the sheriff’s office confirmed they investigated a report of officer misconduct, and it was sexual in nature.

It went on to say their findings would be turned over to federal investigators, because the misconduct did not fall under local or state statute.

“Technically, you’re not looking at people who are convicted of crimes, and this isn’t an entity that’s subject to the sort of state and municipal control as other detention facilities should be,” said attorney Wayne Krause of the Texas Civil Rights Project. . . .

By Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA)
Congressional Record
June 12, 2007 (H6324)

Homeland Security was an agency created after 9/11, and as admitted by many Members on the other side of the aisle, the agency itself was the biggest bureaucracy created. As you remember, it just took employees from all different agencies, including Department of Agriculture, and put it into one agency called Homeland Security. And we created an appropriations committee and essentially just funded it with what it asked, without all the first instance.

And I remember Mr. Rogers, who was the first chairman of that committee, bringing to the Appropriations Committee the bill last year and indicating this is a huge bureaucracy. It has almost 200,000 people in it, very hard to wrap your hands around it, just sort of hold your nose and vote for it. There were no earmarks in the bill, as there aren’t any earmarks here tonight, and we adopted it.

What happened with the new chairmanship with Mr. Price is that first thing he did was ask, we better look at what this is all about. Homeland security for what? Security, what are we fighting? So we invited in all these experts to sort of give us an overview of what is risk, what is fear, what should we be looking at, and it was very sensible.

What they suggested is that you’re talking about people that are going to respond to incidents, and in an incident like Katrina, an incident like a disaster, like a terrorist act, you’re going to need to prepare responders, people in the Intelligence Community, people on the ground in local communities. And in essence what they said is that homeland security is really hometown security, and you need to have your towns prepared for this, and you need to do it on a risk management basis; just don’t throw money at everything.

And Chairman Price went on CODELs seeing what disasters were like, going to Katrina, going to New Orleans and later along the border, where we put a lot of money, and what we learned in the committee, ironically, was that the only terrorist that was ever apprehended or found evidence of was not on the border that we’ve all been looking at, which is the Mexican-U.S. border, but, in fact, on the Canadian border where we were doing very little, if anything, on homeland security. The committee found that very interesting and put a lot of money and assets and said let’s start securing the northern border as well as the southern border.

The chairman took a bipartisan CODEL along the whole border from Tucson to San Diego, every inch of it, flew it, saw all the assets we have. My God, you’d think that we had the entire war in Iraq being fought on the Mexican border. We have everything from aircraft of all kinds, helicopters, we have ATVs, we have dogs, we have horses, people on horseback. We are covering that border like you can’t believe.

In San Diego, we even found a Border Patrol out on the boats in San Diego Harbor. It was everything. We saw fences, all kinds of fences, vehicle fences, human fences, and areas that it’s just unbelievable, as far as the eye can see. This border is longer than the distance between Washington and San Francisco.

What we found is that we had better do this thing wisely. Let’s listen and let’s use some smart risk management.

It all comes down to this bill tonight. What this bill is all about is, this is the best Homeland Security bill this country has ever had. We are spending all this time just on procedural delays.

It’s ironic that you are going to be hoisted on your own petard, because this process that Mr. Obey and the leadership has put in the process requires each one of you, when you ask for something that’s called an earmark, some people call it pork, it’s essentially that thing that you think is important. You have to disclose why you are asking for it.

Mr. Chairman, we had to fill out forms that were never, never ever in the history of the U.S. Congress asked for more disclosure and everything.

The committee rightfully has stated that this is not the bill to attack earmarks, because there haven’t been earmarks in this bill. So if you want to continue to delay this, rather than getting to the point of adopting an appropriations bill to allow the Department of Homeland Security to do its job, then let’s get on with it.

I think this has been a night of ridiculous waste of time on something that is very, very important on a bill that is very important, the first appropriations bill we have had here, one that must pass if, indeed, we are going to have homeland, hometown security.

By Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL)
Congressional Record
June 12, 2007 (H6325)

Mr. Chairman, I want to take you back, because I know as you are sitting there today you have an independent recollection of what it was like to come here in your first term. Many of us in this Chamber came just in January, took the oath of office, and now what we find is that every week is a new week, all new process we are learning.

So we come in, those of us who are not appropriators, we come into our conference, and we hear this is the appropriations week. Wow, sit down with our staff, staff gets us up to speed, and we hear about earmarks, heard about them a lot in the campaign, and start to get the staff briefing on what are the tools that we have in earmarks.

I heard a lot about them. If you talked to people in Illinois’ Sixth Congressional District tonight, and they are awake, and you asked them about earmarks, you would get their attention. They would focus. It was a symbol of an abuse of the process.

So when you sit down as a freshman and your staff comes in, they say, Congressman, this is what you do. You can offer amendments. You can argue with these things. You can challenge them on the floor. As iron sharpens iron, so one makes another better.

So that process, that winnowing process, is what this is all about. That’s what every Member has the right to do, except now, because now what ends up happening is our staff tells us, oh, no, but there is this new process, Congressman.

What you get to do is you get to write a letter. Oh, yes, you get to write a letter to the chairman of the committee; and the chairman of the committee is going to open up that letter, and he’s going to make a decision about th

e merits of you, an independent elected Member of Congress. That is who you get to talk to.

You don’t get to argue on the House floor. You don’t get to light up 435 people. You don’t get to talk to millions of people. You get to write one letter. That’s where you get to go.

You know, if you think about that, that’s absurd. There are all kinds of great things in this bill. No doubt about it. My prior colleague from the State of Illinois articulated many good things in this bill. It’s my hope that we can come together and drive towards those things.

But to act as if the earmark process is insignificant is really patronizing. It’s patting people on the head and saying, off with you, be lively, you get to write your letter to the chairman, and the chairman will make a declaration on whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea.

Well, one of our colleagues on the Internet recently said this. He said, to his constituents, he said, I will remain no one’s Congressman but yours. Doesn’t that sound great? I mean, that’s great stuff, that’s rich. You know, that is rich in the Chamber of Commerce meetings; that’s rich in front of the Rotary groups; that’s rich in front of the coffee groups. And you go door to door, I’m going to be your Congressman.

But you know what? You end up ceding that responsibility. You end up ceding that opportunity to one person, and that’s only if you are lucky enough that he reads your mail.

Well, I say “no” to that.

Email from Dr. Asma Salam

Dear Mr. Moses,

I am sorry for not giving you the follow up for last 2 weeks. I was not feeling well and this protest with the worst weather season of Texas plus my meetings to raise the awareness and to make everything possible to help these families in immigration detention centers have kept me too busy and very preoccupied.

Following are my few thoughts with prayers and update of the vigil,
I wish and Pray that Hazahza’s are released on May 2nd, and may God shut down all these centers and put an end to this evil inhumane selfish moneymaking monster that is destroying our national values and integrity. I do not understand how could we be proud as Americans by putting innocent children and women in abusive conditions and making money out of their pain and misery. I wish more people understand the depth of this issue. “ICE” is literally the tip of the iceberg, that majority of public have no idea of its depth. If these centers are not shut down we will soon become a nation of shame on the global picture. These immigration detention centers will destroy our foreign relations and our respect in the eyes of the world as we are proudly making global enemies through detaining innocent children and women from all over the world and abusing human rights in our own state of Texas and in our own homeland America.

Nothing much happened except that I was invited by Mr. Gene Lantz on the “Workers Beat” program of Radio KNON on April 11 to talk about immigration detention center issues. He also invited me to attend the Board of directors meeting of Jobs for Justice to spread the word around, following is the link for this meeting.

http://www.labordallas.org/jwjmtg041107.htm.

You might already have this info

http://www.labordallas.org/salam.htm.

One lady stopped her car and asked me about ICE and she was shocked to hear that these immigration detention centers exists in Texas. Now I am getting prayers(God bless you for doing this),and lots of other supporting gestures for protesting against inhumane treatment of children and families by immigration customs enforcement agency, from lawyers,and general public who cross the road or pass by protest site.

Mrs Alanzo took me to her brother in law Steve Salazar(city County official) mother’s rosary and I had a dinner meeting with Mr. and Mrs Alanzo about the immigration detention center issues. I did not get much help other than my faithful friends who have been showing up from the beginning of the protest. These few friends are my biggest support.

Please feel free to edit it, rearrange my message, or just post my thoughts. Please let me know if you have any question or concern.

Thank you so much for your help in supporting this protest and increasing the awareness about this important issue.

Best regards
asma

*****************

Following is the summary of radio interview written by Mr. Lantz.

Families are Abused in Detention Centers

By Gene Lantz

Dr. Asma Salam amazed the April Jobs with Justice meeting with her description of the treatment of detainees in the centers run by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).

Dr. Salam said that almost anybody is likely to be thrown in a center, if there is the slightest question about their citizenship status: “If their case is in doubt, they will be put in those detention centers.” Unfortunately, the centers have been privatized and are being run for profit: “It’s not about trying to solve a problem it’s about money.” One of the corporations involved in ICE centers is the infamous Halliburton, she said.

Immigrant families are thrown into some facilities with actual criminals. They lack medical care, proper hygiene, and decent nutrition. She summarized,
“There is nothing humane about those detention centers.”

Dr. Salam has a vigil at the Dallas federal building, 1100 Commerce, every week day from 9 AM to 4 PM. A few people are slowly beginning to find out about the issue and are joining her. She thanked Women in Black,Liz Branch, Laray Polk, Trish Majors, Minster Dianna Baker, Patricia Juarez , Rev Ronald White, Mrs Sylvana Alonzo, Reverend Peter Johnson, as spending time on the vigil and Mr. Roberto Alanzo and Rafael Anchia both Texas state representatives for their great support in this important issue of our nation.

Ralph Isnberg has backed this cause for the past three years, since his own wife suffered 52 days of detention. He says there has been no improvement in ICE treatment during those three years. He appeared with Dr. Salam on the “Workers Beat” program of Radio KNON on April 11. They zeroed in on the West Texas detention center at Haskell.

One of their most shocking revelations was that the root of the suffering at Haskell is not a search for justice nor a search for a solution to immigration problems. The root is corporate greed. ICE privatizes its detention centers, according to Salam and Isenberg. “They are making money out of the ICE Centers,” Isenberg said, “A lot of money.” He recounted the very personal way in which he became involved: his wife was taken by ICE and spent 52 days in “hell hole” conditions! Since then, he has devoted his time and resources to freeing detainees, one at a time.

Dr. Salam said, “I am surprised very few Americans know this issue. No one seems to know what ICE and immigration detention centers are. I look forward to increasing the awareness about this serious issue of our nation that has been going unchecked for few years and has the tendency to destroy our values and integrity.” Of course, the government’s excuse for mistreatment at detainee centers, as everywhere, is the terrorist events of September 11, But Salam says, “They cannot differentiate between a threat to this country and innocent people. They don’t want to differentiate because it is all about money!”

For more information, Dr. Salam tells audiences to go to http://www.texascivilrightsreview.org

Asma Salam MD
Arlington, TX

asmasalam -at- sbcglobal.net