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Email from Jay Johnson-Castro.

Jay,

I don’t know if you know but it looks like the judge has said no to the Hazahza situation. What I read was that the courts think they should stay in jail for six months. Please let me know your thoughts,
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My thoughts are simple…

I’m saddened…disappointed. And…what will they do with them after six months? Further destroy their lives?

The greed for money and the collective complicity is manifest. $7000 per month per victim x 6 months amounts to $42,000. There are 4 Hazahzas. $42,000 x 4 = $168,000.

The people who commit this are immoral, un-American…and ultimately criminal. It was legal to own, raise, and sell slaves at one time, too. They have just found a new way to enslave people for money. As in the case of slavery…a lot of humans suffered at the hands of those with political power over their lives. Lives are being ruined. Families are being ruined. Communities are being ruined.

I will be shortly sending out an insider’s report on how all this has come about. There are too many people who siphon money off of this immoral and inhumane design. When we break this mold…there will be a lot of people who will long remember. They’ll remember who committed these crimes against humanity…and who didn’t do anything. I will not be in either of those categories. I will continue to fight to free the victims.

Haskell will always be remembered for being a prison camp of people who never committed a crime. I only hope the people of the City of Haskell and Haskell County separate themselves from those who fail to protect innocent people…and even oppose such a travesty.

I am going to be doing a walk against such prisons in Cameron and Willacy Counties this next week. Not long after that…we will bring even more attention to Haskell to hold a vigil. When we do…the Haskell prison camp will be an embarrassment to the state, Perry and to the nation.

That’s my take…and thanks for asking.

Jay The Hazahza imprisonment began in early November. A six-month term would not end until late April.–gm

Sunday Sermon

By Greg Moses

OpEdNews / RioGrandeGuardian (subscription)

One reason why we have too many prisons locking up too many people for too many reasons is that rural America has too many workers looking for good-paying jobs. And prisons promise steady paychecks.

The only reason why 20-year-old Suzi Hazahza and other young immigrant women from the Dallas area are still locked up at the Rolling Plains prison of Haskell, Texas is not because they are threats to society. But if the feds keep people like Suzi in jail, they can spend a budget of $7,000 per prisoner per month to keep the prison empire propped up.
But if we are not to become a nation in which half of the population is paid to keep the other half locked up, we need to activate our imaginations and vaunted American know-how to figure out where prison money might be better spent on better jobs with better human consequences.

And so we have been talking with Jay Johnson-Castro of the Rio Grande Valley who next week will walk in protest of two, maybe three prison camps for immigrants in South Texas. We asked him what the Rio Grande Valley really needs. First on his list is a Veterans Administration Hospital. “Can you believe we don’t have one? But when you ask people around here why we don’t have one, they say there’s not enough money.”

Money flows without impediment into immigrant prisons, yet can’t find its way to a V.A. Hospital? Surely this is something easily fixed by a budget.

The next most obvious public need is education. With Latin America surging northward, we should greet people with classrooms and teachers, not guards and cells. If you go look at the geography of things near the Statue of Liberty, there is no end to the colleges one can choose from. And when the Ellis Island crowds were overflowing, some of the nearby public colleges were open for free.

So we are pleased with this morning’s news in the Rio Grande Guardian that one Hispanic lawmaker from the Rio Grande Valley has been appointed to a House Select Committee on Higher and Public Education Finance. Says State Rep. Ryan Guillen, D-Rio Grande City:

“This year I am fighting for funding for two new technology training centers in Starr and Zapata counties because students there need other options than they have today. I thank Chairman Craddick for the appointment and we will work hard to find a way to provide more educational opportunity for all students in Texas.”

Continuing the list of things that can be done with willing hands, Johnson-Castro says the Rio Grande Valley, like New Orleans, is a river delta. And like New Orleans, the Valley has levees that need work before the next hurricane disaster strikes.

Oh, and Highway 83 could be expanded in recognition of the fact that the Rio Grande Valley is a major metropolitan area with international traffic jams.

Finally, on this short list of things people need more than jail cells is running water. The Magic Valley teems with fruits and vegetable crops because of water, and a healthy, public water supply could use some upkeep.

Smarten up, America. If you can’t figure out anything better to do with willing hands than to criminalize them for profit, then your days of freedom leadership are sadly numbered.

Thanks to John Wheat Gibson for bringing this story to our attention–gm

Canadian boy caught in Texas detention:
Aircraft’s chance landing in U.S. calamitous event for 9-year-old, his Iranian parents

Feb 16, 2007 04:30 AM

Michelle Shephard
Rick Westhead
Staff Reporters, Toronto Star

A 9-year-old Canadian boy is in a Texas detention centre after his flight to Toronto made an unscheduled stop and U.S. officials detained his family.

Now the boy’s Iranian parents are pleading with Canadian officials to help secure the family’s release from the immigration holding facility, which has come under fire for allegedly detaining children in sub-standard conditions.
“All the time he is asking me, `Why am I wearing the uniform? Why I am here?’” the boy’s mother said, as she sobbed during a telephone interview from the detention facility yesterday.

“We didn’t do nothing. My child is innocent.”

The parents, who have no status in Canada, asked that their names not be published out of fear of eventually being returned to Iran, where they say they were previously imprisoned and suffered physical and sexual abuse.

The family’s complicated journey began after the couple fled Iran and arrived in Toronto in January 1995. They lived here for 10 years while seeking asylum, giving birth to a son. But on Dec. 6, 2005, with all legal avenues exhausted, the parents were deported back to Iran.

The boy’s father claimed he had been originally persecuted in Iran after he was discovered with novelist Salman Rushdie’s book. Once they were sent back there from Canada, they were detained and tortured for three months while the boy lived with relatives. Once released from custody, they again fled, reaching Turkey with the help of relatives. They bought fake passports and eventually travelled to Guyana, the parents said.

On Feb. 4 they boarded a direct flight from Guyana to Toronto aboard Zoom Airlines, planning to seek refuge again in Canada. The boy’s father said the plane was diverted to Puerto Rico after a passenger suffered a mid-flight heart attack.

Once they disembarked, U.S. officials discovered the family was travelling with the fake Greek passports. They were detained for five days, then flown to the T. Don Hutto Family Detention Center in Taylor, Tex., the boy’s father said.

Immigration rights groups have condemned the detention facility since it opened last May and last Saturday, officials opened its doors to the media to try to deflect some of the criticism. The New York Times reported that the American Civil Liberties Uni*n is studying conditions there as it considers filing a lawsuit contending that the laws protecting detained juveniles are being violated.

On Tuesday, the boy’s father phoned the University of Texas’s immigration clinic and spoke with Matthew Pizzo, a student worker there. Pizzo then called the Canadian consulate in Dallas, where an unnamed employee told him the consular officials would investigate the detainment.

When he didn’t receive a return call, Pizzo said he called back late Wednesday and left a message. There’s been no further word from Canadian officials and consulate spokesperson Henry Wells could not be reached for comment yesterday.

“The interesting issue here is they weren’t even trying to get into the U.S.,” said Francis Valdez, a supervising attorney at the university’s immigration clinic. “They were just trying to get back to Canada.”

The parents said they hoped to reapply for asylum in Canada armed with evidence of what happened to them in Iran after they were deported.

Authorities at the Hutto detention centre have acknowledged holding 170 children there, says Barbara Hines, a University of Texas law professor.

It’s a frightening experience for children, she said. Families are held in prison cells that have had the locks taken off. Laser beams detect when people get out of their beds, the professor said.

“Families get 15 minutes to eat and then the food is thrown out,” Hines said. “Have you tried to feed a child and then yourself in 15 minutes?”

Immigration: Dad Can Take Bodies to Mali

Wednesday March 14, 2007 10:46 PM

By VERENA DOBNIK

Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) – The man whose wife and four children killed in a fire in the Bronx won special permission Wednesday to return to the United States after taking their bodies to his African homeland for burial.

Mamadou Soumare had faced the possibility of not being able to accompany his family’s remains for fear he wouldn’t be allowed to return to New York.

A space heater was blamed for the fire last week in the building that Soumare’s family shared with Moussa Magassa, the father of five other children who died in the blaze.

On Wednesday, the federal Citizen and Immigration Services office in Manhattan gave Soumare a so-called “advance parole” that will allow him to return to the United States from Mali.

“We’re happy we’re able to do it,” said an agency spokesman, Shawn Saucier.

Saucier would not say what Soumare’s current immigration status is or why he needs the parole, citing federal privacy laws.

Soumare had applied for asylum in 1992, but the case was never adjudicated, said Sen. Charles Schumer.
Rep. Jose Serrano said after Monday’s funeral for the 10 fire victims that some members of the Soumare family may be living in the United States without immigration papers.

Advance parole for re-entering the country typically is issued to people living in the United States who have applications pending for legal residency.

Soumare’s family is to be flown back to Mali later this week and buried in his remote village of Tafaciriga. In addition to the four children who died, Soumare has three sons in Mali.

“He goes home to three children. This is a day of light in what was a week of hell for this man,” immigration lawyer Michael Wildes said after his client received the re-entry permit.

The Magassa children were buried in New Jersey.

Three surviving fire victims are still hospitalized in good to fair condition.