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He was among the first reporters to be notified of the plight of immigrant families at T. Don Hutto prision camp in Taylor, Texas. At last, his editors appear to have given him permission to give the story the coverage it deserves, perhaps because a federal judge last week expressed exasperation in open court. Below are the first few paragraphs of a comprehensive overview posted Sunday morning at statesman.com (subscription).–gm

Familial bonds

Is government’s policy to detain immigrant families fair?

By Juan Castillo
AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Sunday, March 25, 2007

TAYLOR — Conversations with her mother and the son she left behind in Somalia because she feared for her life there. Visits to her grandmother’s tranquil vegetable garden. Walks past her grandparents’ house on her way home; they were always waiting to greet her.

These recurring images filled Bahjo Hosen’s dreams as she slept — with her 2-year-old son, Mustafa, curled up next to her — on a narrow metal bunk bed in a roughly 8-foot-by-12-foot cell with an open toilet and sink in the T. Don Hutto Residential Center.

On most mornings about 5:30, a guard’s rap on the door jarred Bahjo awake, drawing a dark curtain on her dreams and beginning another day of confinement while she and Mustafa pursued asylum in the U.S. immigration system’s slow-grinding bureaucracy.

“I never dreamed I would be in jail,” said Hosen, who fled a Somalian clan’s death threats, only to be locked up in the immigrant detention center in Taylor.

The former state prison is in the bull’s-eye of a growing controversy over a federal policy that requires families like Bahjo and Mustafa to be confined on immigration violations while they await outcomes of their asylum petitions or deportation. The waits can drag on for days, months, sometimes years.

The controversy raises two questions: Is it inhumane to confine children and families for running afoul of immigration laws? And are there better alternatives than locking people up?

Critics answer yes to both. Lawsuits filed on behalf of 10 children confined in Taylor accuse federal officials of illegally and inhumanely housing children, failing to meet the standards of a 1997 court settlement for the care of minors in immigration custody, and ignoring Congress’ orders to exhaust other options before detaining families — in homelike environments.

At a hearing on the lawsuits last week, even U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks expressed exasperation at the restrictions under which families are living at the Hutto facility.

“This is detention. This isn’t the penitentiary,” Sparks said. Detainees “have less rights than the people I send to the penitentiary.”

Sparks ordered that some restrictions on attorney visits with detainee clients be removed immediately. . . .

What would you consider a good reason to send a dozen armed police into a family home, arrest everyone age 11 to 60 and throw them in prison?

According to our source at the Dallas Federal Courthouse today, the reason turns out to be that the federal government claims it sent a letter to the father of the family asking him for a meeting to discuss his immigration status.
The federal magistrate judge presiding over the hearing asked if the feds sent the letter to everyone in the family? No, the letter was sent to the father only. Could the feds prove that they actually sent the letter to Radi Hazahza? No they could not.

“So this is why 15 people came with assault weapons into the Hazahza home, sticking gun barrels to their heads, arresting them and sending them to prison?” asks Jay Johnson-Castro, who stood vigil outside the Dallas federal courthouse Thursday morning.

He says courtroom observers described the magistrate as very distraught about the government’s case. The magistrate assured the US Attorney that if the Hazahzas lingered in prison past the six-month mark, the US Attorney would find himself ordered back to court to explain.

With about five weeks left until the six-month limit expires, some of the courthouse observers were hoping for an earlier release of the four Hazahzas who remain in the Rolling Plains prison of Haskell, Texas. Two of the Hazahzas were released from the T. Don Hutto prison earlier this year.

“If they keep the Hazahzas another month, that’s another seven-thousand-dollars per person that the prison camp gets to collect,” said Johnson-Castro in response to the day’s legal event.

“Everybody’s in agreement that what the US is doing is not legal,” he says. “The US Attorneys don’t want to defend the legality of these actions. But if what they are doing is not legal, then it’s illegal.”

Apparently one legal consequence of keeping this case at the level of “distraught magistrate” on Thursday is to evade an outright ruling by a federal judge, which would not be kind to this recent exercise of federal power. So why not free the Hazahzas on Friday?–gm

Email from Jay Johnson-Castro; original in red, white, and blue–gm

Hola y’all…

My friend, John Neck and I will be doing yet another protest walk. This time to Governor Perry’s hometown and home county of Haskell, Haskell Co., TX. John has been with me from the very first day that I set out on the Border Wall-K to stop Chertoff from building a fence on the Texas-Mexico border. I do the walking. Hundreds of others joined. John is the support crew.

On this walk to Haskell, we are going to be highlighting…exposing…the inhumane treatment of immigrants, asylum seekers…especially the young and innocent women that are being subjected to degrading abuse and sexual violations by the staff of the Emerald Correctional Management Corporation that runs the prison camp for Chertoff and the ICE Company. Our motive for the walk is to get the victims freed.
In order to do so…we are going to give Governor Perry a chance to show his leadership…or lack of it. So far, it does not seem like much of a coincidence that the Governor’s hometown and home county would have a debased prison camp that abuses human rights and human dignity while he sits quietly as the head of the great state of Texas . One hears rumors that he is actually trying to position himself to be Vice President of the United States . He either shows leadership NOW and champions the freedom of the victims in his hometown, in his home county, in his home state…or he can kiss his aspirations good bye.

[On Wednesday, Feb. 28] John and I will start this 60 mile walk north to Haskell from Abilene, TX . . We will hold a press conference at 9:00am at the park to the east of the Convention Center located at 1101 North 1st Street …between Cypress and Pine Streets. After the press conference, we will then head on over to Hwy. 83 and then start our trek to Haskell. Since Texas is such a vast state, John and I are starting in Abilene to help the state, national and international communities…as well as the media…gain a perspective of where the Haskell prison camp is.

View Google Map of “Huddled Masses” Walk

Here’s what’s behind our push to do this walk to the Haskell prison camp. It shocks, outrages and angers us what is being done to innocent people there. Rather than lose our cool and do nothing about it…we have learned that we can do something about it. Change things. Working together we all can. So…if you too would be shocked by a young woman being stripped naked and having her body invaded by the highest authority of this land…being paraded in front of criminal offenders who masturbate in front of them…please read the Texas Civil Rights Review story of Suzi Hazahza.

The violations of Suzi, her sister Mirvat…and countless other young women and immigrants imprisoned there…is occurring with impunity at the Rolling Plains Regional Jail…in what we will refer to as the Haskell prison camp. And this kind of demented conduct has been going on for a very long time. {Haskell prison camp contact info. Rolling Plains County Jail . 118 County Road 206. Haskell , TX 79521 . (940) 864-5694}

The grand lady…the Statue of Liberty …welcomes lowly immigrants saying:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

When did our state and federal governments forsake that global promise of the American dream? Right here in Texas …Governor Perry’s silence about the struggling people in the prison camps is deafening. How can he consider himself a potential national leader when he doesn’t know how to use his lofty position as governor to take care of the “Huddled masses yearning to breathe FREE”…like the ones who sit in a Haskell prison camp in his hometown…or the innocent children and their mothers who are imprisoned just 35 miles up the road from his exalted Capitol office and Texas White House…in the CCA Hutto prison camp in Taylor, TX? By the way. Is it surprising to anyone that In 2006…CCA gave $10,000 in campaign contributions to only one state elected official? Rick Perry? Might the Governor be an accomplice to this immoral and criminal for-profit prison system in Texas ? What does his silence say?

So our walk to the Haskell prison camp is a walk to liberate the “Huddled masses yearning to breathe FREE”. We start here in Texas . We will carry this liberation across the country. We are seeking freedom and independence for ALL the immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees…who come to this country based on the international promise by the Land of Liberty …only to fall victims to a perverted-for profit-money laundering-scheme that imprisons them and steal them of their dignity.

This especially includes the liberating of Suzi and her sister Mirvat Hazahza…and the bright young college student, Samantha Windschitt. Why? Because we do not believe that any human is illegal on planet Earth…let alone innocent youth. (See attached photo with some freedom fighters, including Rosa Rosales, President of LULAC, who witnessed the Hutto prison camp first hand and pledged her national organizations resources to close all such dehumanizing prison camps.)

Our walk to liberate the “Huddled masses yearning to breathe FREE” starts on Wednesday, February 28th. We will walk for four days to arrive at the Haskell prison camp…to hold a Texas Independence Day Vigil at 3pm on none other than Saturday, March 3rd…Texas Independence Day.

As always…you are welcome…invited…encouraged…to walk a mile with us. You have 60 different miles to choose from. Take your pick. Bring your friends, family or neighbors. Feel free to forward or blog this invitation. Let your organizations know. Be part of this rapidly growing grass roots dissention of the atrocities that are being committed right here on American soil…under the American and Texas flags.

Join with us in not just reading about it…but in making a difference…in making history. What happens in Texas sets a precedent for the rest of our county. So…come walk a mile with us…

Jay

P.S. John and I are most willing to accept a meal, lodging or trip expenses. John comes from Brownsville . I come from Del Rio . We are not funded by any organization. We are grass roots folks like you. We do this on our own…along with your help. If you would like to help, you can call Sarah Boone at (830)768-1100…or e-mail her at sboone@stx.rr.com. She’s our “command center”. (:}) JJJ

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Border Ambassador

Connecting.the.dots…making.a.difference…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr.

Del Rio, Texas, USA
Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila , Mexico

The following commentary was previously posted in the announcement section.–gm

For further accounts of the disparity between what ICE says and what the Hazahzas have lived through, see Brett Shipp’s review of the T. Don Hutto press tour. We congratulate Shipp for validating the voices of immigrants in relation to ICE propaganda, but we are dismayed that Shipp’s report does not mention that his key sources, Juma and Mohammad, are desperately seeking reunion with their imprisoned family at the Rolling Plains prison.
Given the power of Shipp’s reach, and the natural connection between what ICE says and what the Hazahzas experience, omission of the family’s continued separation suggests a whiff of exploitation. Doesn’t ICE claim that it keeps families together? What would Mohammad and Juma have to say about that? We can only hope the debt will be repaid in short order.

To quote the Hazahzas and not mention Haskell? We don’t get it. Please show us Mr. Shipp that there is a larger plan of reporting here, because there is no excuse for knowing about Mohammad’s sister Suzi and failing to act today.