Category: Uncategorized

By Rep. Ciro D. Rodriguez (D-TX)
Congressional Record
June 12, 2007 (H6283-H6284)

My first and most important objective that I would like to address is regarding homeland security grants that would hopefully help the border cities and the law enforcement personnel that are on the border such as the police and the sheriff, the first responders, for stemming the tide of drug and human trafficking along our border. Chairman Price was instrumental in working with me and helping us to obtain $15 million for funding for Operation Stonegarden, a program that this administration failed to seek funding for and which had previously been funded in 2006.

Operation Stonegarden began as a successful pilot program in 2005 and helped 14 border States on these issues. The initiative gave the States the flexibility that the Department grants provided to enhance coordination among not only the States but local community and Federal law enforcement agencies that are drastically needed. This pilot program resulted in an estimated 214 State, local, and tribal agencies working 36,755 man-days on various public safety as well as border security operations on the border.

The budgetary constraints imposed on the committee precluded more funding in this area, but the bill language sends a clear message that programs such as Stonegarden are viable and will serve as a funding aid to the law enforcement communities along the border.

Stonegarden did not receive funding last year. The funding assists local authorities with operational costs and equipment purchases that contribute to border security. The funds are intended to be used for operations involving both narcotics and human trafficking.

The second objective regarding the fencing and the barriers that are necessary, I want to thank the chairman also for working with us in making sure we provide these types of barriers in an appropriate manner.

I believe that the bill reported by the full committee and under consideration by the full House represents the most viable approach that can be utilized. I want to thank the chairman for allowing us to be able to present this bill. And as you well know, Mr. Chairman, this is a bill that is critical, an area that we have been lacking in this country where the administration has failed to provide the appropriate resources on the border. So I want to thank the chairman for allowing us to do that.

The Showdown between American Democracy and American Tyranny of the ICE age…

Friday, April 13

9am – Press Conference at Texas Capitol, Speaker’s Committee Rm 2w.6

10am – Depart Capitol Steps

Route: Turn left, walk east on 11th Street to Rosewood; Turn left, walk past ACLU’s office. Continue on Rosewood which turns into Oak Springs Drive; Turn left, walk north on Springdale Rd; Stop at Springdale and 290.

Saturday, April 14

9:30am: Begin at Manor City Hall in downtown Manor (W. Parsons and S. Burnet); North on Old TX-20 which is also Hwy. 973; North on 973 to Rice’s Crossing (Hwy. 973 and FM 1660)

Sunday, April 15

9:30am, Start at Rice’s Crossing (Hwy. 973 and FM 1660); Turn right on 79; Turn left on S. Main; Turn left on Rio Grande Rd.; Turn left on Doak St .; Turn left on Welch St. to the Hutto Vigil VII in front of the Hutto prison camp;

Hutto Vigil VII: until 8:00pm. Like some previous Hutto Vigils…this will be a Sunset-Candlelight vigil. Let’s break the ICE. Let’s turn up the heat and melt the ICE.

By Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town Crier
by permission

Two important demonstrations took place last weekend, one nearby, in Raymondville
outside their immigration detention center, and one up in Taylor, Texas near
Austin, where the infamous T. Don Hutto detention center is located.

***

At the Raymondville detention center, there were 75 protesters, and they received very good TV coverage on one Valley-wide TV station and adequate coverage in the Harlingen daily paper. Univision was there, and perhaps more media. The demonstration was important because it publicly linked several Valley organizations on this issue.

Some endorsers that were listed on a leaflet: People for Peace and Justice, MEChA, Pax Christi, Student Farmworker Alliance, La Uni*n Del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), Border Ambassadors, a Mennonite community in San Juan and another in Brownsville, the “base community” of San Felipe de Jesus Catholic Church in Brownsville, Proyecto Libertad, UTPA Environmental Awareness Club, Veterans for Peace, Foro Socialista del Valle, El Tribuno, and Christian Peacemakers. For sure, this is not everyone in the Valley, but it is a big enough coalition to begin reaching everyone if the Raymondville Center is not shut down soon.

It was a lively demonstration with speakers denouncing the for-profit complex — it treats the immigrants, who have not been convicted of a crime, as convicted criminals. According to one speaker, because two thousand people are held behind razor wire in those big puffy tents, Raymondville can boast of having America’s largest concentration camp.

At one point demonstrators heard there were detainees in a corner exercise yard, so they took the bullhorns and walked down the road about a thousand feet. They called out and could see heads bobbing up as some prisoners leaped up to peak over the six foot wall and rolled wire.

***

The other demonstration was in Taylor, Texas at the Hutto detention center, which is particularly odious because it holds children. There were 500 protestors. I interviewed Sarnata Reynolds, the national immigration rights director of Amnesty International in Washington, DC, who attended the vigil.

Author: What primary commitment or concern led your group to support this demonstration?

Reynolds: Amnesty International USA is very concerned about the detention of children, asylum seekers, and migrants in prison-like facilities. It is hard to imagine a time that it might be appropriate to dress children in prison gear, deny them access to adequate schooling and recreation, or threaten that they’ll be separated from their parents if they don’t behave, but these are exactly the reports coming out of Hutto.

If a broad spectrum of United States citizens were aware that children are being incarcerated for months and years at a time, the outcry would be even larger. We hope that this World Refugee Day event educates more people about the U.S. policy of detaining children, and spurs on a growing movement against this practice in Texas.

Author: Thank you for your work.

Also in the crowd at Hutto was the director of District 7 LULAC, Rita Gonzales-Garza. I asked for a quick interview.

Author: What concern or commitment brought you here?

Gonzales-Garza: I was drawn to this Hutto vigil, first, because of my extreme disgust with our federal government’s practice, especially under the current administration, of imprisoning persons who are seeking asylum or who are here to search for a better life for their family.

Secondly, this practice has become a multi-million-, if not billion-, dollar industry. Prior to this administration, certain immigrants and most asylum seekers who were apprehended were not imprisoned; they were required to register with the U.S. government and provide information on their residence and information on other persons who would know their residence. They could stay in this country until their immigration hearing took place and the outcome was determined. Now they are imprisoned, for profit.

This detention/prison center in Taylor is a horrendous violation of human rights because here it jails women and their children. How can a government that used to be a “beacon of justice” do such a thing? It is all about the mighty dollar and putting that dollar in the hands of friends and supporters of the administration. Even Halliburton’s subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, with whom Vice President Cheney is associated, has gotten into the business of building private prisons for immigrants and asylum seekers.

Author: And the companies operating the prisons get paid $3,000 a month — and I’ve heard way higher figures — per detainee.

Gonzales-Garza: Yes. It’s a multi-million dollar, perhaps billion dollar, industry now. All in the name of “securing our borders from terrorists.” What a sham!

Author: Any new plans?

Gonzales-Garza: Yes, we are beginning a campaign to educate Congress about this issue and to press this issue with presidential candidates.

Author: Good. Thank you.

Interview with Corinna Spencer-Scheurich
of the South Texas Civil Rights Project

By Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town Crier

Several weeks ago I heard a powerful presentation on why poor people in the Valley have a difficult time building up a “nest-egg” to get out of poverty. It was given by an attorney for the South Texas Civil Rights Project, Corinna Spencer-Scheurich, who has an office behind the United Farm Workers (UFW-LUPE) hall in Alamo. Meeting her again at the May Day immigration rights march, I arranged this interview.

Author: By way of introduction, your organization is a “Civil Rights Project,” and yet you are working on poverty issues. What’s the connection?

Spencer-Scheurich: Civil rights and economic justice are profoundly connected. It is difficult to worry about, let alone exercise, your 1st Amendment rights if you are struggling to make ends meet. But, it is also hard to critique and change the economic forces that are working to keep people, minorities in particular, in poverty if you are not able to march, write, and speak about what is happening to you. So, to be the human rights organization we hope we are, we must address both issues.

Author: In the speech I heard, you gave some startling data on the general gap between rich and poor. Please go over it again.

Spencer-Scheurich: Well, in the U.S. in 2001, the median net worth of white families was $120,989. But for Latino families it was $11,458. What a huge difference! And because economic assets, like inheritance, land, and education, are often passed from one generation to the next, the deck keeps being unfairly stacked against low income, minority families.

Author: And along the Border, the deck has been stacked for generations, through social habits, discriminatory laws and policies.

Spencer-Scheurich: Yes, for example, after the US-Mexican War, it is estimated that as many as 80% of Mexican-Americans lost their land to Anglo-Americans, because they were not able to prove their title in courts run by Anglo judges and juries. Then the 1933 Social Security Act did not cover farm workers, laborers, housemaids, and other service workers. And since many Latinos worked in these occupations, they lost out on this security net in their later years.

After the US Border Patrol was created in 1924, many Mexican American citizens and their families were exported, and again, with Operation Wetback in 1954, even families with native-born children were deported. Factor in the historic segregation in schools limiting the futures of many Latino children, affecting generations to come. These are just a few historic examples of how Latino families have been divested of their wealth in prior generations, setting the stage for the current situation where Latinos lag behind Anglo whites in all categories of wealth and economic security.

Author: Building on that history, you spoke about various things working against the poor today, such as consumer issues that make getting out of poverty, building a nest egg, very difficult. Is that right?

Spencer-Scheurich: Yes. There are a number of examples of the stacked deck today. Studies have shown that, on average, low income people pay more than higher income people for basic consumer goods and services. Low income drivers will pay more on average for car insurance. Studies even show that low income neighborhoods are charged more for certain grocery items than upper income neighborhoods.

Low income people are more likely to use predatory financial institutions that charge extremely high interest rates for short term loans, and the poor often use check cashing services as opposed to mainstream banks. Low income families are more likely to use a rent-to-own store to buy a television on a high interest rate than to be able to find a great deal on one.

This inequality does not just happen because low income people are higher credit risks. Many times it is because low income families have less access to information, fewer choices of businesses in their neighborhoods, become targets for unscrupulous businesses, and have less ability to get transportation to better deals in other places.

Since low income families pay too much for their necessities, they have an even harder time saving for the education of their children or for a car that will allow them to have a better job – keeping them in the cycle of poverty and stacking the deck against future generations.

Author: Where should we start on these issues?

Spencer-Scheurich: Immediately, we should encourage individuals and groups to start examining which businesses are having a positive effect on the community and which are predatory and sucking important capital and resources away. United, we can wield power as consumers, and we have local power to choose leaders who will draw good businesses and mainstream financial institutions into our communities and discourage predatory businesses.