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From the Rio Grande Guardian and KGBT 4 TV Harlingen come two advance stories about next week’s walk. For background on the issue, also see subtopia and aztlan electronic news. Materials forwarded by Jay Johnson-Castro.–gm

Johnson-Castro walking in the Valley again, this time against immigrant detention camps

By Steve Taylor
Rio Grande Guardian

AUSTIN – Anti-border wall activist Jay Johnson-Castro, Sr., is heading back to the Rio Grande Valley next week… for another walk.

“I’m hoping many of the friends I made on my last Valley walk will join me on this next one,” Johnson-Castro told the Guardian, announcing details of the walk.
The walk starts in Brownsville on Wednesday, March 21, and ends in Raymondville on Sunday, March 25.

“This time I want to help give voice to the immigrants locked up in the children’s camp in Los Fresnos, the prison camp in Bayview, and the new tent city in Raymondville,” Johnson-Castro said.

The 60 year-old Del Rio bed and breakfast owner achieved international attention last October when he walked 205 miles from Laredo to Brownsville to protest the federal government’s plans to build 700 miles of extra fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Johnson-Castro also protested the border wall on a 55-mile walk from Ciudad Acuña to Piedras Negras in November and a caravan tour from San Diego to Brownsville in February.

However, much of Johnson-Castro’s focus of late has been directed towards what he claims is the inhumane treatment of immigrant children and families in prisons administered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

He has walked from Austin to Taylor and participated in a number of vigils to protest conditions for Other Than Mexican families detained at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor. Last week, the American Civil Liberties Uni*n filed a lawsuit over conditions at the center.

Johnson-Castro has also walked from Abilene to Haskell , Texas , to protest an ICE facility in Haskell.

Johnson-Castro said one of his main objections to ICE policy was the decision to award huge contracts to private prison operators.

“I just cannot understand how our government can pay private companies to imprison children. I do not know how to equate that in history. It’s like rounding up wild horses. It’s beyond my imagination,” he said.

Johnson-Castro said that in Raymondville, that meant awarding Management & Training Corporation (MCT) $7,000 a month per inmate. In Hutto, he said it meant awarding Corrections Corporation of America $126,000 a month for medical services the immigrants do not get.

Johnson-Castro said he was “encouraged” by all the attention the Port Isabel Detention Center in Bayview was getting in Massachusetts and in Congress.

ICE’s decision last week to round up hundreds of immigrants, mostly female factory workers, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and fly them to both Bayview and a detention facility outside El Paso, angered Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and many in the state’s congressional delegation.

Johnson-Castro said the BBC news network was interested in filming the Bayview facility.

“I cannot tell you how many folks contact me every day now from all over the state, the country and the world,” Johnson-Castro said. “They are waiting for this next walk. I believe that we will get special solidarity like never before.”

Johnson-Castro said he hoped groups that have supported him in the past, such as LULAC, LUPE, ARISE and the South Texas Immigration Council, would participate in the latest walk.

He said he planned to meet with the Valley staff of U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, before setting off on the walk.
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Protest Walk in the Valley

March 14, 2007 09:09 PM

reported by Ryan Wolf
KGBT 4 TV Harlingen

Action 4 News gets exclusive details on another protest walk coming to the Valley. It’s in response to government detention centers used to house illegal immigrants right here in the Valley.

Jay J. Johnson-Castro, the man who brought a protest walk last October in opposition of a border wall, says he’ll be staging a 5-day walk next week.

The self-proclaimed border ambassador says he was outraged to learn families were ripped apart during an illegal immigration sting along the east coast. Many were sent to holding centers in the Valley.

Johnson-Castro wants to highlight how the government facilities in Bayview and Raymondville translate into nothing more than prison camps… he calls it taxpayer waste.

We ask, “Jay, you’re going to have people who are going to say these people were illegally in our country and the government is doing what they need to secure our border… to this you say what?”

“I say the term illegal is a recent phenomenon… most of the people who came to this country… did so as a migrant… and most of them came illegally…. I don’t consider it illegal when looking for refuge . . . when looking for hope,” says Johnson-Castro.

Here’s a look at where his 5-day walk will take him. On Wednesday March 21st… Johnson-Castro says he’ll leave from Brownsville and walk his way to the Bayview Detention Center arriving on Thursday March 22nd. From there, he’ll head West to Harlingen and then North to the Raymondville Detention Center, arriving on March 25th.

Johnson-Castro encourages anyone from the public to join him on his quest… he says he’ll provide more details as the walk draws near.

By Greg Moses

CounterPunch / DissidentVoice

The night before his five-day walk to protest immigrant prisons of the Rio Grande Valley, Jay Johnson-Castro drove to Los Fresnos to get an advance glimpse of International Educational Services, Inc. (IES).

“Where’s the school?” he asked, as a guard approached him in the parking lot.

“What school?” said the guard, explaining that IES was a detention center for “young adults” whose mothers were being held at the nearby Port Isabel Immigrant Detention Center.
When Johnson-Castro explained that he was against prisons for children, the guard replied that IES wasn’t really a prison.

“Can they go to the mall?” asked Johnson-Castro.

“No,” replied the guard.

“Can they go to the theater?”

“No,” again.

“Can they dress the way they want to?”

For the third time, “no.”

“If they can’t get out,” Johnson-Castro asked the guard, “what do you think it is?”

On his walks Wednesday and Thursday, Johnson-Castro heard from local folks that the IES facility holds about 100 boys and 60 girls who have been picked up with–and separated from–immigrant parents. If the children turn 18 years old they are transferred to an adult jail.

“One source who has been inside told us there could be worse places for the children,” said Johnson-Castro. “At least they are fed and clothed. But they are also very sad because they are not free. They are prisoners.”

“IES was the forerunner to the T. Don Hutto prison camp in Taylor, Texas,” explains Johnson-Castro. “They built Hutto in order to keep the children with their mothers, but IES is still here, still holding children separately. We still have the problem that Hutto was supposed to fix.”

Inside are Mexican children arrested near the Mexico border, but also a child from Brazil, and one from Korea. One source reported seeing a 16-year-old girl pregnant. When did the girl get pregnant? Who is able to speak Portuguese or Korean?

“We keep unfolding things,” says Johnson-Castro. “The more we ask, the more we have to ask.” For example, why are there sixty cars in a parking lot outside a prison for 160 children? If IES is not a school inside, what kind of education is being provided? If activists are troubled by the imprisonment of children at Hutto, why are they not raising issues about IES?

An Internal Revenue Service Form 990 posted online in pdf format shows that IES had a budget of $5.6 million dollars in 2004. As far as Johnson-Castro is concerned, the budget is what drives the operation.

“Sixty cars and 160 kids?” he asks. “There are a lot of families dependent for their livelihood on the imprisonment of children. And the cost of all this is that we lose our morality and conscience when we imprison children or any human being for money. And who wants it that way? The people who profit want it that way—not the rest of us.”

As with his walk to the Rolling Plains prison of Haskell, Texas, Johnson-Castro was treated to a police escort on the first day of his walk. First, the Brownsville Police, then Los Fresnos police. And on the second day, when Johnson-Castro completed the walk from IES to the Port Isabel Immigrant Detention Center, he found swarms of mosquitoes and a half dozen federal cars waiting for him at a blockaded gate.

The protest walker had been walking alone all day, without a single reporter or photographer. But there were three cars that had fallen in behind the truck of John Neck who always follows Johnson-Castro to keep him protected from traffic. So the feds had the protesters outnumbered.

“Don’t tell me you did all this for us,” said Johnson-Castro to a federal guard at the Port Isabel gate.

“Yes, we did, sir,” replied the guard.

“Well, I’m complimented. One guy walking alone.”

“Anytime you have something like this we have to take precautions. You can’t go in there.”

“No way I want to go in there willingly. I’m here to bring attention to you. This may not look like a real big event, but before you know it, what’s happening here will be known. Do you know why we’re here?”

“Yes sir, I’ve been told.”

That’s when Johnson-Castro reminded the guard, there was a time when it was legal to buy and sell human beings. “This is just a 21st Century version,” explained Johnson-Castro, the man that the Rio Grande Guardian calls Quixotic. In place of plantations we now have prisons. And it’s all done for profit.

“Can I talk to the prisoners?”

“No sir.”

“Can the media talk to the prisoners?” (A Quixotic question today.)

“No sir.”

“So where are the freedoms of speech or press? Where are these inalienable rights guaranteed by the Constitution? And why are these rights being denied to these people in a country that is supposed to be free?”

When the guard deferred the question as something that should be addressed to other federal officials at another time, Johnson-Castro replied: “This includes you.”

Not far from the prison gate at Port Isabel is a housing development for federal guards in training, but for reasons unknown the guards don’t live there now. Nobody does. The houses are all boarded up with plywood.

For Johnson-Castro and his friend John Neck, the empty houses are a sure sign of what’s not being done right. Locked up in the immigrant prisons are painters, landscapers, and carpenters. “Give us this place for the immigrants who are now in prison, and we’ll make a city out of this.”

On Friday, day three, Johnson-Castro and John Neck take their steady caravan into Harlingen on their way toward the infamous Raymondville tent city prison camp, where they plan to arrive for a 1:00 pm vigil on Sunday. The walk did get advance coverage on KGBT-TV, so the people of Harlingen should be prepared for what they are about to see.

Email from Joshua Bardavid, Esq.

Hi All:

I have been receiving many telephone calls of individual Americans outraged by the detention of the Hazahza family, as well as the existence of the T. Don Hutto prison and asking how to help. One of the
things I am suggesting is a letter writing campaign. I encourage everyone to write letters expressing their outrage. Below is a sample letter if people want to use as a template to write their own:

John P. TORRES
US-ICE Headquarters
Post-Order Detention Unit
801 I Street NW, Suite 900
Washington, DC 20536

RE: Radi HAZAHZA, A95-219-510
Mirvat HAZAHZA, A95-219-508
Hisham HAZAHZA, A95-219-507
Suzan HAZAHZA, A95-219-506
Ahmad HAZAHZA, A95-219-505

Dear Mr. Torres,

I am writing on behalf of Mr. Radi Hazahza and his four children held in prison at the Rolling Plains Detention Facility.

I strongly believe that the Hazahza family should be released immediately from the detention
center, so they can be reunited with Nazmieh Juma (wife to Radi and mother of the children) as well as Mohammad Hazahza, the eleven year old
child that ICE already released from prison.

The Hazahza family has been awaiting deportation since being ordered removed in 2002, yet there is no possibility of removal since both Jordan and the Palestinian Authorities have confirmed that travel
documents will not be issued for them.

The Hazahzas are asylum seekers who sought freedom and safety in the United States. They have provided the government proof of employment offers, as well as extensive ties to the United States including Mirvat
Hazahza’s U.S. citizen husband and Suzan Hazahza’s U.S. citizen fiancé.

In addition, several sponsors have stepped forward to ensure the Hazahza’s appearance upon demand by the government and to ensure that they obey any terms of supervised release.

The Hazahza’s continued detention costs taxpayers over $600.00 per day, as estimated by the government. That means that, to date, at least
$60,000 in government funds have been turned over to the Emerald Corporation, the private company that owns the jail in Haskell. This amount does not include the money spent on litigation and other expenses
related to the continued detention.

This detention is a waste of taxpayer money, particularly since the Hazahzas present no danger to society, have provided suitable alternatives to detention, and there is no purpose in continued detention as there is no likelihood of obtaining travel documents.

Please release Mr. Hazahza and his family from the Rolling Plains prison.

Sincerely,

cc: U.S. Customs & Immigration Enforcement
Attn: Officer Kelvin Meridith
8101 North Stemmons Freeway
Dallas, Texas 75247

We are receiving emails indicating that sources close to the Hazahza family say they have heard nothing regarding a court ruling in their case.

In an earlier post we cite a source saying the federal magistrate court is expected to support the detention of the Hazahza family, and we have editorialized our dismay.

At this point we have no reason to retract the earlier post, because it is from a good source. But friends of the family believe the source has been misinformed.–gm