Category: Uncategorized

By Greg Moses

CounterPunch / UrukNet / DissidentVoice

For many miles of his protest walks, whether against border walls or children’s prisons, Jay Johnson-Castro has walked alone. His four-day walk from Abilene to Haskell, Texas this week may be no different, as he protests the cruel and unusual treatment of the Hazahza family and immigrant prisoners like them. But there are two things to remember about Jay’s walk this week. The first thing is how many people will be honking.

“There are literally thousands of people every day who honk, wave, and take photographs as they drive by,” Jay explains over the telephone from his home in Del Rio. “They don’t walk. Nobody wants to walk. But they honk in solidarity with no walls, with no prisons for children. By the time the walk against the wall got to McAllen and Brownsville, there was a chorus of horns nonstop from both directions. So if there is a perception that there is only one man walking, there is also the reality of the vast majority of people honking that they are offended and disgusted by a wall on American soil, or a prison for children.”

The second thing to remember is how cruel are the conditions at Haskell prison. It’s bad enough that convicted criminals are exported there from Wyoming. Who can justify such treatment for immigrant families whose only alleged wrongdoing is having an American address?
“Suzi Hazahza represents the kind of person we want in our country,” says Johnson-Castro. “Yet there is an element in our country that doesn’t want her here. That element is a minority, and lots of folks disagree with the way she has been treated by the highest powers in this country. Having her dignity violated physically, violated emotionally, violated intellectually, and having her family ripped apart by a country that’s for family values, this is a condition that cannot continue to exist. It will cease. And we the people will see to it that that it does cease.”

Ahmad Ibrahim agrees that the American people are going to oppose the harsh treatment of Suzi Hazahza at Haskell, just the way they opposed the treatment of his nieces and nephew at the T. Don Hutto prison. He tells two stories to make his point. On the one hand, there are Americans like the guards at Hutto prison who ate pizza in front of the children. When the children of Hutto put together some cash and asked the guards to order pizza for them, the guards told them no. The children would have to eat prison food.

“Those people are not only the minority in America,” says Ahmad Ibrahim, speaking by telephone from Dallas. “They are the minority of the minority. Most of the people would not treat children that way. Most of the people are like the teachers. When the children returned to school, the teachers welcomed them back. The teachers told them that they could make up their work and get through the year. The teachers gave them all big hugs that melted them right back in.”

Likewise, says Ahmad, the American people will reject the harsh treatment of 20-year-old Suzi Hazahza and her 23-year-old sister Mirvat, who have done nothing to deserve four months (and counting) of hard time in a place that nobody pretends is anything but a harsh Texas prison.

And how hard is life at the Rolling Plains prison? Speaking to that issue is Ralph Isenberg whose wife spent 52 days there at the command of US immigration authorities. Isenberg took phone calls that began with screams, or ended with screams, or had the screams of his wife in the background as she handed the phone to someone who was not in so much pain. Isenberg is a rich man, so he could afford to pay $10,000 for all the collect calls that kept him in touch with those sounds of misery.

When Isenberg heard about Suzi and Mirvat Hazahza spending their first 48 hours at Rolling Plains in a drunk tank without bed or toilet, sleeping on a concrete floor with a hole in the middle, he knew what he was hearing about.

Overcrowding, for one thing. There can be only one good reason for tossing sober honor students into a drunk tank for two days. All the prison beds were already full. Which means that technically, the first crime we can verify involving Suzi and Mirvat Hazahza, was the crime of delivering them to Haskell prison when it was already overcrowded.

Medical neglect, also. As a result of their two November nights on the cold concrete floors of the drunk tank, Suzi and Mirvat Hazahza came down with fevers. When they asked for a doctor, they were denied. Isenberg’s wife had it even worse. She had gall bladder complications and an abscessed tooth, which are infamously painful, and she received the same initial answers from Haskell authorities that Suzi and Mirvat received. We can’t get you a doctor, but here’s a pain killer for you.

And sexual harassment. It’s true, says Isenberg, that prisoners are supposed to be strip searched after contact with visitors, but what kind of strip search is called for, and how professionally is it conducted? Something about the fifth search of Suzi Hazahza at Haskell jail had her pleading for no more visitors ever. She won’t even allow her mother or brother to visit.

For Isenberg, the conditions at Haskell prison have become something of an obsession. He has collected sworn statements from employees and ex-prisoners which he keeps safely stored for the day when an official investigation gets underway. With Jay on the outside and Suzi Hazahza on the inside, the day of that investigation may be near.

The problems with immigrant detention begin with transportation to Haskell from Dallas, says Isenberg. The vans are not always in great shape, neither are the tires. And occupancy limits are not strictly observed. If someone gets sick or throws up in an overcrowded van, there is only one thing to do. Drive faster. Imagine the experience of traveling in a van with worn tires at speeds over 80 miles per hour, with the smell of puke up your nose. Imagine being told it’s your job.

If prison employees want to complain about conditions in a facility that holds immigrants for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), they are supposed to be able to file something in writing. But Isenberg says that complaint forms are not always kept where employees can find them. Workers would have to ask a supervisor.

The prison at Haskell is neither owned nor operated by ICE. It is a privately contracted prison managed by the Emerald Companies of Louisiana, and it holds both male and female criminal convicts imported from Wyoming. Isenberg says the pressures of profit are felt throughout the operation.

Prisoners at Haskell can choose to work, but they are not always told that they are entitled to some pay. Food menus approved by ICE are not always the meals actually served. And sometimes food gets recycled from last meal’s waste to next meal’s serving. Three years ago, it was beans and rice, or rice and beans, three plates per day.

“Temperature control is a joke,” says Isenberg. In the winter it’s cold, in the summer hot. Isenberg attended “video court” in Dallas one day and watched the immigration prisoners at Haskell, dressed in winter coats with winter breath that you could see on the screen. At night, women would heat water bottles in a microwave to keep under their blankets for warmth.

Every prisoner gets one roll of toilet paper per week. But suppose that conditions of diet, temperature, and sanitation bring on a case of diarrhea? You don’t get a second roll. Or what if a prisoner has personal needs when the commissary is closed? You get one fresh pair of underwear per week. One t
owel. And y
ou’re lucky if you ever see clean sheets.

At a four-hour drive from Dallas (not to mention the distance from Wyoming) Haskell isolates its prisoners. Men can be visited on Saturdays, women on Sundays. If a family is held together, you spend the night sixty miles away in Abilene to visit both the men and women.

Phone conversations are monitored and if your topic strays from approved subjects, the line can go dead on you. Isenberg learned how to rush to his office and wait for his wife to call back on a business line after his home lines went dead.

In short, they kill your humanity at Haskell, or they try to. Programs have been whittled down to nothing. Going to Haskell is like going to hell.

“They destroy your will to live,” says Isenberg. “My wife spent 52 days there, and she has yet to fully recover from her experience. She has been diagnosed with post traumatic stress syndrome as have her daughter and myself. I can remember laying in bed for two or three days, and couldn’t get up. Thank god my adopted daughter would bring me food and drink. There are simply no words to describe the feelings of emptiness that go with being separated form loved ones with no reason.”

Of course, people want to know, what did Suzi and Mirvat Hazahza do to deserve this treatment? The Hazahza family fled persecution from Palestine, arrived in the USA with visas legally, and applied for asylum legally. The family’s asylum was denied, but there was no country that would take them. So they were living in the USA under a warrant of deportation that had never been presented. It’s not clear what ICE expects of the Hazahzas either as prisoners or free people. What exactly are they supposed to be doing?

“The Hazahzas weren’t given any restrictions to follow,” says Isenberg. “If ICE wanted them to stay in one place, they could have gone to their home and told them that. They could have asked them to phone in on a regular basis. They could have placed them under bond. But these alternatives have not been made available.”

Friday night Isenberg visited the Islamic Center of Irving, where he invited the community to join Jay’s vigil outside the prison on Saturday, March 3. Meanwhile Jay says that Rosa Rosales, President of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) has pledged support of Abilene-area chapters. On Monday, Jay will travel to Dallas to meet Isenberg and Ahmad Ibrahim for the first time.

Last week, there was hardly a major newspaper that did not cover the topic of immigration prisons in Texas. It was a good week of news coverage, topped by Friday’s edition of Democracy Now! If the media follow Jay to Haskell, the American people will come around. Half the Hazahza family have been released from Hutto. It would be a crying shame not to see Suzi Hazahza out of hell next week. Every day that passes at Haskell cuts a permanent scar of injustice for everyone to see.

“My wife still has nightmares, and so do I,” says Isenberg. It’s too cruel to put people through this. If you can’t walk from Abilene to Haskell, be sure to honk for Suzi’s freedom.

NOTE: On Friday, a federal magistrate judge in Dallas gave ICE two weeks to show cause for keeping the Hazahza family at Haskell. Following up on inquiries prompted by a Friday appearance on Democracy Now! Joshua Bardavid circulated a sample letter to ICE calling for immediate release of the Hazahzas (see below).

By Greg Moses

This strange tale begins with an eye on the Abilene Reporter News of March 15, just checking to see what might be happening on the Texas Rolling Plains. And this is where we see a heated letter to the editor in which a local landlord is advised to move his holdings to Iraq. That way he won’t have to hear the word “Jesus” again.

Curious about what might have provoked such advice, we turned back the pages of the Abilene Reporter News to Feb. 17, where we found a letter from 80-year-old Seymour Beitscher who complained that the so-called Christian identity of Abilene can be offensive. “It is offensive when we, non-Christians, must endure any prayer ending in the name of Jesus Christ during a public affair,” wrote Beitscher, identifying himself as Jewish.

There have been two other letters responding to Beitscher. “This country is a Christian nation, founded on Christian beliefs,” says a correspondent on Feb. 28. Not so fast, says a reply on March 14, the principles of the USA are not Christian, but Judeo-Christian. “The founding fathers were primarily Deists, not Christians; there were even a number of Jewish individuals involved as well.”

Turning back the pages of the Abilene Reporter News just a little further we find a Jan. 28 column by former editor Terri Burke where she describes newsroom drama over the publication of a story and photo about a notorious “Ghetto Party” at Tarleton State University, in which white students mocked the MLK holiday by dressing up as Aunt Jemima, etc.

Describing her part in the debate, Burke wrote: “We, I said, have a chance to show Abilene and the surrounding area that even folks who call themselves a ‘Christian, loving, welcoming community,’ open their arms, really, only to a limited few.”

As you can see, Burke’s reference to “Christian, loving, welcoming community” is a citation of a phrase often heard around Abilene town, home of Abilene Christian College, etc. Beitscher’s complaint slightly misreads Burke, since the columnist and former editor never says “we” say such things. She says “folks” do.

Nevertheless, Beitscher makes clear that he had heard “we Christians” too often in Abilene circles, and his complaint can be read as advice to the would-be tolerant. Please be mindful that we are not all Christians.

Which brings us to the gumballs. We picked up the gumball reference from the website of “The Traditional Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” In preparation for their rally at the Stephenville courthouse Saturday, they urge you to view the popular gumball video by Roy Beck.

For anyone schooled in basic fallacies of manipulation, the Beck gumball video offers a classic demonstration of selective framing. But fallacies work well on audiences nevertheless, as the video is diligent to show.

Some stories we dislike from the pit of the stomach. Klan stories. Stories about student “ghetto parties”. Tedious analysis of right wing propaganda. We’d rather not choose to write about such things, so long as we can spend time on other things closer to hard-fought civil rights frontiers.

There are two reasons why we will now move on. First, we agree that there is some danger is adding more coverage to areas adequately documented already. Second, there is something too easy about slamming the Klan, even the Traditional Christian kind.

If we are to repay tribute to MLK, we will remember what he wrote in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

If we don’t miss the point that King makes, it will not be the bigot or Klan of the Rolling Plains that angers us most, but the white moderate these days.

Habeas Writ Details Allegations of Sexual Harassment, Medical Neglect, Overcrowding, and Isolation Techniques at Haskell

By Greg Moses

IndyMedia Austin , Houston / CounterPunch / DissidentVoice

There are different kinds of angry. Jay Johnson-Castro has tears in his eyes when he thinks about Suzi Hazahza at the immigration prison of Haskell, Texas.

But he’s not going to cry without doing something, so next week, Johnson-Castro will walk sixty miles from Abilene to Haskell and hold a vigil for the release of Suzi Hazahza and “anyone else” being mistreated for their desire to be American.
“I’m almost in tears trying to tell you how angry I feel,” says Johnson-Castro via cell phone as he drives home to Del Rio, Texas on Tuesday evening following three weeks of border protests.

He’s talking now about 20-year-old Suzi Hazahza and how she was subjected to body searches so humiliating that she has refused all visitors since early December. In a federal habeas corpus brief that will be filed Wednesday in Dallas, lawyers allege that both Suzi and her 23-year-old sister Mirvat have been subjected to repeated humiliations at the hands of prison guards. And according to Suzi’s fiance, the searches got even worse after his fifth visit when Suzi called begging not to be visited again.

“I can”t believe a fellow American would do that to anybody,” says Johnson-Castro. “But I’m afraid that’s the policy not the exception.”

Dallas real-estate developer Ralph Isenberg has seen the pattern before. It happened to his wife in Haskell under similar circumstances. She was imprisoned for immigration violations stemming from “bad lawyering” and once Isenberg started making noise about things he didn’t like at Haskell, his wife, too, was subjected to a full body-cavity search. To this day, he recalls the sound of the scream that the search provoked.

In protest of Suzi Hazahza’s treatment and confinement, Johnson-Castro will begin his freedom walk in Abilene on Wednesday, Feb. 28, arriving at the Rolling Plains prison in Haskell for a vigil on Texas Independence Day, March 3.

Ralph Isenberg says he’ll host Johnson-Castro in Dallas prior to the walk and introduce him to some people he has helped to free. During the walk, Isenberg pledges to join Johnson-Castro for a time, and if he can get enough people together, Isenberg plans to meet Johnson-Castro at the Haskell prison on Texas Independence Day with a bus full of people from Dallas.

“The good people of Haskell have no cognizance of what’s happening to sweet innocents such as Suzi Hazahza,” says Johnson-Castro. “And when they find out, they will rise up like the people of Williamson County did against the Hutto jail.”

Outrage at the jailing of children at the T. Don Hutto immigration jail keeps growing, joined this week by Dallas Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson and the chair of the House subcommittee on immigration Zoe Lofgren (D-CA). Both of them told WFAA reporter Brett Shipp that child imprisonment is flat wrong, period.

And grassroots distaste for immigrant jailings sparked a new protest Tuesday from honor students of Fort Worth’s Tarrant County Community College who are angry that a wonderful fellow student has also been tossed into Haskell jail for “bad lawyering.”

The Fort Worth protest for 19-year-old immigration prisoner Samantha Windschitt was covered by two Metroplex television networks, which is a story in itself.

“The good news is that all the insane things that have been happening in a disconnected way are finally being connected,” says long-time immigration activist Isenberg, reflecting on the protest and news coverage.

“I honest to gosh believe that everything we have done up to now is adding up to something bigger,” says Johnson-Castro, who helped ignite protest in mid-December with a walk from Austin to the Hutto prison. In Haskell, he plans to make the most of the date and place.

“It’s Texas Independence Day and it’s the Governor’s home town,” he says. “We’re going to be looking for freedom for people who are trying to be Americans. And we are going to Gov. Rick Perry’s hometown and free the people that need to be freed, and not incarcerate them so that someone can make a profit.”

The Rolling Plains immigration jail in Haskell is managed by the Emerald Companies of Louisiana (see: emeraldcompanies.com).

Meanwhile, New York attorneys Joshua Bardavid and Ted Cox are scheduled to arrive in Dallas Wednesday morning to file federal habeas corpus motions in behalf of Suzi, Mirvat, their father, and two brothers, who have all been held at Haskell since “armed and armored officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a middle of the night ‘raid’ ” of their home on November 2.

According to the habeas writ that will be filed Wednesday, the Hazazha family arrived in the USA with temporary visas from Jordan during the summer of 2001, and they applied for political asylum. Once the appeals for asylum had been exhausted, the family was placed under a warrant of deportation in the summer of 2005, but the family was not notified about the warrant until they were abducted during pre-election immigration raids known as “Operation Return to Sender.”

Suzi’s mother Juma and youngest brother Mohammad were released Feb. 6 from the Hutto jail only days before a media tour of that facility. But on Feb. 12 ICE filed notice that it intended to keep the rest of the family imprisoned at Haskell as “flight risks.” Where they would flee to is a good question since Jordan refuses to take the family back, while Palestine and Israel have declined to reply to requests for deportation there.

At Haskell prison, lawyers say housing units meant to house eight prisoners are frequently supplemented with sleeping bags or “boats” that allow for ten to fourteen prisoners to spend the night. When inspectors arrive, the “boats” are hidden from view.

When it comes to culturally appropriate food for Muslims, the prison serves eggs for breakfast, lunch, and supper. At prayer, the Hazahzas report they have been mocked by guards and threatened with suspension of prayer privileges.

Lawyers are only allowed to visit with prisoners for thirty minutes at a time, and only “within regular hearing distance of a stationed guard.” The three Hazahza men have never been allowed to live together “despite written requests to be united in the same, or adjacent, pods.”

17-year-old Ahmad Hazahza was placed in solitary confinement for three months because he was a minor at Haskell’s adults-only facility. When Ahmad began urinating blood shortly after his arrival, guards mocked his medical condition and “told him that he was ‘probably dying’ of a disease and that there was nothing that could be done to save him.” For ten days, his requests to see a doctor were denied.

Suzi and Mirvat spent the first 48 hours at Haskell sleeping on the concrete floor of a drunk tank, because no beds were available. They both ran high fevers for two weeks after that, and were also denied requests to see a doctor.

The sisters were “strip searched” each time they met with an outside visitor, including humiliating inspections that took place in full view of male guards “on multiple occasions.” When taken to the recreation area, they were made to “walk the gauntlet” in front of male prisoners who sexually harassed them with techniques that included exhibition and public masturbation–while guards laughed.

The prison population at Haskell is a mix of immig

rant detainees from Texas and felony convicts imported from Wyoming.

As with the attorneys’ previous habeas corpus motion filed in behalf of the Ibrahim family, Bardavid and Cox argue that ICE has had no legal authority to arrest or detain the family; therefore, the five Hazahzas should be immediately released.

Another family released from both Hutto and Haskell following the last Texas visit by Bardavid and Cox have been spending time on Isenberg’s schedule these days. Isenberg says he’s helping the Ibrahim family put together their immigration petitions so that they can stay and work. He says working with the family took several hours Tuesday. It’s not the first time he’s said that. And the way things look, it won’t be the last time–not for weeks to come.

Border Wall-ker presses for resolutions against splitting immigrant families

By Steve Taylor
Rio Grande Guardian (subscription)

BROWNSVILLE – Border Wall-ker Jay Johnson-Castro is asking border legislators and the cities he is currently walking through to follow the City of Chicago’s lead and pass resolutions opposing the separation of immigrant families.

Johnson-Castro, a bed and breakfast owner from Del Rio, said his latest walk, which started Wednesday morning in Brownsville, aims to “free the Huddled Masses.”

The walk takes in vigils outside the IES facility in Los Fresnos that houses immigrant children, and the Port Isabel Detention Center in Bayview, where immigrants from Massachusetts were recently sent.

The walk ends in Raymondville on Sunday at the new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement-run detention facility commonly referred to as Tent City….

[[Note: next week Jay Johnson-Castro will join Dallas vigils calling for reunification of the Hazahza family, which has been split since a roundup in early November.–gm]