Category: Uncategorized

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.

By Rep. David Price (D-NC)
Congressional Record
June 12, 2007 (H6284)

Mr. Chairman, I rise to indicate that we will accept this [King amendment to cut $79,000 from the Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff], but I want to explain my reasoning, if I might, and explain it very carefully.

For 2 hours now we have sat in this Chamber and have heard Republican Members railing against the Bush administration. Member after Member after Member has risen in this Chamber to condemn Bush administration bureaucrats in unsparing terms, and not one voice on that side of the aisle has been raised in opposition, not one.

So, we are asking ourselves, how long are we going to defend a very carefully crafted bill that deals with the administration’s legitimate needs to administer its Department?

By Greg Moses

“I’ve got to show you something I’m proud of,” says Jay Johnson-Castro, pulling a stack of business cards from his pocket and dealing off the top. “The Border Ambassador,” says the card, with a neatly cropped photo of Jay walking, foot up, head down, hat brim filled with sunlight.

“Jane Chamberlain, a very, very frail Austinite made these cards for me. She’s one of the lady champions of this thing. That was a long-distance photograph that John Neck had taken when Teye joined me for the first day of the first Hutto walk four months ago.”

John Neck is the driver who usually accompanies these walks, protecting Jay’s back. But this weekend John is tending to a medical emergency in the family as Jay returns for a second walk from Austin. Over three days time, Jay will walk from the Capitol to the T. Don Hutto prison for immigrant families. On Sunday evening the walk will end with a vigil until 8pm.

On Saturday morning Jay sits inside a cozy Austin cafe, sipping a cup of coffee before he drives to Manor for the walk of the day. An impatient wind from the NorthWest chills the faces of the very few who walk the avenue outside.

Last week, before launching his walk from the Capitol, Jay met with the staff of Austin Rep Eddie Rodriguez to get a status report on a House Concurrent Resolution (HCR 64) that would, “respectfully request the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to reconsider all alternatives to the detention of immigrant and asylum-seeking families with children.” Rodriguez co-filed the resolution with Dallas Rep. Raphael Anchia on Feb. 5. The resolution was referred to the State Affairs Committee on Feb. 12 where it today still sits on the desk of chairman David Swinford (R-Amarillo).

In a widely reported move at the end of March, Swinford announced that he was going to take immigration off of the agenda at the statehouse, effectively killing about 30 bills, including HCR 64.

“Hopefully we elevated the awareness a little bit, however small, but at least it’s on record that these guys have sat there for two months, let babies be imprisoned, while they continue their cushy lives of authority. I find it kind of appalling.”

“And yet we have 19 representatives, 17 sponsoring and 2 co-authoring, but unfortunately most of them are Hispanic” (sponsors are: Alonzo, Bolton, Burnam, Castro, Escobar, Farrar, Garcia, Gonzalez-Toureilles, Hernandez, Herrero, Donna Howard, Martinez-Fischer, “Mando” Martinez, Rick Noriega, Olivo, Quintanilla, Veasey, and Villarreal). “Of the 17 who have signed on, 14 are Hispanic, which makes it look like a Latino deal, and it shouldn’t be a Latino deal.”

Does it say something about the white voters?

“The white voters I’m talking to are shocked.” At a music gig Friday night in South Austin, Jay met one woman who works with children who said she would try to show up on Sunday. Another woman who runs an international art gallery gave Jay her card and promised to forward information to her clients.

“They’re blown away. They say ‘yeah, I’ve heard about Hutto, that’s terrible.’ But my big thing is to try to figure out how do you get that ‘God, that’s terrible’ into some kind of action. ‘That’s really terrible, now let me get back to my enjoyable life, my routine, my every day stuff,’ you know? I have good friends who joined me on the first walk, but they say they don’t want to get too involved, because they have their lives to live, you know?” Jay laughs a little.

“I’m subjective at this point. I’m not even objective anymore. I’m just focused. So I think I’m like the converted smoker who says everyone ought to quit smoking. Now that I’ve become aware of the children, I think everyone ought to join in, but it isn’t going to happen.” Jay’s brown eyes reach across the table. “I think it should.”

“I had some good interviews. Sharon from SisterSpace interviewed me and that will be on the web. And then Pacifica radio. I had my second interview with them. They interviewed me the first time from Los Angeles when I did my Raymondville walk. This time a producer with Flashpoints called me the night before and asked me great, great questions. So we had that interview yesterday. And then the Spanish-language producers at Pacifica called me and interviewed me in Spanish about 45 minutes later.”

“On Thursday morning I was on a call-in show for a Spanish-language radio station in Phoenix, and the calls were lining up, and it was really neat, and I know it was a listened-to show, because I’ve hosted a radio talk show, and sometimes you get the calls and sometimes you don’t. There was just a long stream of call-ins.”

“There was only one that was kind of questioning. He was an an immigrant who became a citizen, got his green card. And he says this is really a great country, why do people say that it’s not? My response is, it is a great country, but we’re losing our greatness. There’s an element within the government that’s doing this. But anyway, everybody else was pretty well responsive.”

“Every time something like that happens tells me that maybe a few hundred, maybe a few thousand more people are hearing this message, and overall the response is the same. There are very few people who would defend this policy. And I’m not sure what gets people the most. When I tell them about the incarceration of children, they say, ‘oh really, wow, that’s terrible.’ Then I say it costs $7,000 per month and they say, ‘God, that’s gross!’ Is it because of the money? I think everybody believes it’s wrong, it’s immoral, but then it’s almost like they’ve become really sleazy when it’s for money.”