Category: Uncategorized

Christmas afternoon, 2006

Dear Friends,

Further to my emails yesterday regarding the Palestinian children and their families in the Hutto detention center please find below some more details and action required to help these innocent people.

I went to the detention center yesterday and talked to one of the women and provided her with cash for phone calls and snacks for the children since the jail officials are providing them with mainly pork and ham that they do not eat.

Today, another one of the members of the family called me from the detention center and informed me that that all three families in the detention center were in the United States legally and ALWAYS filed their immigration related forms and paid the required fees and taxes.

The woman also indicated that two of her children are United States citizens and are now with their aunt in Dallas but with not much financial support.

Apparently, after 2001 some of the procedures were changed, but they were not informed of these changes, and their attorney failed to file the appeal on their behalf, and that is how their status changed.

All three families had male breadwinners who were working legally with work permits and earned money to stay off welfare or any other related social services.

According to one of the women, her husband suffers from a severe case of diabetes and was deprived of his medication for several days and when he contacted his attorney to inquire about his medication, he was beaten along with the three other male Arab detainees and no one has been able to know his whereabouts or his medical condition. The family of the man contacted the detention facilities in Haskell, Texas and Oklahoma where he was jailed but both facilities deny that he is there now.

Next steps: I will be retaining local immigration lawyer tomorrow morning to attempt and get a release of the women and the children and to determine the location of the men. Also, we will be providing the women and children with more money to help them cover the cost of food purchased from the commissary of the detention center due to the absence of Islamic Halal food. We need your help by forwarding this email to your friends and colleagues and asking them to donate for the legal costs of releasing these families as it has already reached more than 5000 dollars and could easily reach 50 000 dollars since the members of the families in jail are more than 6 adults and 14 children.
I will be providing you with the contact information for the federal authorities in charge of the detention centers in Haskell and Oklahoma to determine the location of Adel Suleiman, the missing man with a severe case of diabetes.

If any one is interested in helping these families please email me and will provide you with my phone number to assign you tasks and pursue financial and material support for these families. All donations will, be listed on our website to ensure transparency and that the families and the children receive the full amount of the donations collected for them and for their legal defense. The expenses will also be listed as they become available and you will be notified of any changes.

Looking forward to hearing from you and THANKS for your generosity, work and support for the children in Palestine.

Riad Elsolh Hamad
Austin, Texas

Donations can be made online at http://www.pcwf.org
Or by sending a check favoring pcwf and indicating that the money is for the Legal Defense of the Children in Hutto to

Riad E. Hamad
Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund
Austin
Editor’s Note: For background on the families and the history of their legal representation, see the following items, archived at the Texas Civil Rights Review–gm:

AFFIDAVIT OF ADEL SAID SULEIMAN

Attorney John Wheat Gibson’s Press Release on Two Palestinian Families that he Represents

Hola y’all…

This is about a historical 5000 mile journey that begins in three weeks. We wanted you to have a heads up.

You are being sent this e-mail because you are (1) opposed to the border wall, (2) if you are interested in putting and end to incarcerating women and children in prison camps on American soil…(3) if you’re interested in preventing the death toll that is as a result of failed immigration policies in this country…(4) some of, or (5) all of the above.

The Attached is the schedule for Marcha Migrante II-Border Caravan which will focus on (5)…“all the above”.

Link to Jan. 12 version of schedule

One of the features of the Marcha Migrante II is that the Border Caravan will not only go from San Diego, CA all the way to Brownsville, TX…it will also swing up to Taylor, Texas…where 400-600 women and mostly children are imprisoned behind razor wire walls, in prison uniforms and are kept in cells for 22 hours a day.

Taylor is just 35 miles northeast of the Texas Capitol city of Austin . There we will hold a third vigil at the Hutto prison camp. By doing this we will be able to show our unrelenting opposition to the imprisoning of helpless women and innocent children in FOR PROFIT prison camps.
I am providing you with a video link of the Christmas Eve Vigil that was conducted this past December 24 at the Hutto prison camp in Taylor , TX and sponsored by my Flamenco artist friends, Teye & Belen, and me. This video clip is provided the young documentary film maker, Jesse Salmeron. www.jessesalmeron.com

This schedule remains a work in progress. As we progress, more precise details, such as departure and arrival times and locations, will be easier to determine and we will therefore post them.

We obviously need to have some flexibility on this 5000 mile journey. We hope to have a website available to track our progress. When we do, we’ll notify you. (As always…if you prefer to not receive this information…we will accommodate your wishes.)
and we will therefore post them.

If you or an association that you are affiliated with would like to provide food, lodging…or would simply like to show solidarity with us in any way, please contact us. Please feel free to share and forward this to your friends, families, organizations, political and religious representatives and those that you know in the media.
and we will therefore post them.

Most especially…if you are able to arrange it…please join us…anywhere along the way…
and we will therefore post them.

Hasta entonces…

Jay

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

Border Ambassador

Connecting the Dots…Making a Difference

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

Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr.

Del Rio, Texas

Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila , Mexico

The brother of a jailed Palestinian man whose children and pregnant wife are being held in a Texas jail says he will stage a small protest with his 3-year-old niece Friday morning outside the San Antonio offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at 8940 Fourwinds Dr.

[Editor’s Note: date and time changes have been made to the story below–gm]

Note: there are several resources archived at this site regarding the plight of three Texas families of Palestinian heritage who were abducted and imprisoned in early November. This morning we received the latest information from an attorney for two of the families, the Suleimans and Ibrahims.–gm

email from John Wheat Gibson (Jan. 13, 2007)

Mr. Suleiman told me he cannot stand any more and wants right away to be deported to Jordan. He has been in solitary confinement since December 20,
(yesterday, when I finally found him and telephoned him, he said was the first time in 24 days he was allowed out of his 8×5 foot cell) apparently to
punish him for telling me on the telephone about conditions in the Garvin County, Oklahoma Jail. [Mr. Suleiman was moved to the Oklahoma County, Oklahoma Jail, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and that is where attorney Gibson found him.]

Ayman, the son, having grown up in Texas, being
a high school senior, does not want to go. Apparently the BICE [Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement] now has the travel documents from Jordan it needed to deport the Suleimans, and is making airline arrangements. Because Mr. Suleiman asked me not to, I have not pressed the BIA [Board of Immigration Appeals] to grant the motion to stay deportation that I filed for him last year. The BIA will dismiss it as moot after the deportation.

The Ibrahims almost surely will not be deported. They cannot be deported to Jordan because Jordan refuses to cooperate with the BICE. They cannot legally be deported through Israel, although in the past Israel has assisted the BICE illegally to deport people to the Occupied Territories.
Considering how hard Israel has been trying in the past couple of years to finish the ethnic cleansing of the Palesinians in the Occupied Territories, I do not see why Tel Aviv would help BICE send the Ibrahims back to Palestine, unless they just want to make sure they can kill them.

In any event, there remains not even a pretense of legality in the continuing incarceration of the Ibrahims. The BICE officers will review their detention after 90 days (I calculate February 1) but, because they work
for the sadistic racist Chertoff, will almost surely refuse to release them.

After 180 days, they must be released pursuant to the US Supreme Court decision in the Zadvydas case, but since the monarchists have packed the courts, there is a chance the BICE (executive branch) will fight to
keep them in jail anyway. Still, I intend to file the Zadvydas habeas corpus petition after 180 days, since it is a straightforward legal argument based on established law, and I can base the pleadings on pleadings that I have filed previously with good results….

A more serious challenge to the detention of children
generally, however, must be filed by somebody like the ACLU, who has the resources to do it right and see it through to the end. At this juncture, it is more than I can manage, since if I undertook it I would find myself
practicing law out of a shopping cart under a bridge.

I do appreciate your disseminating my letter to [Austin American-Statesman Reporter Juan] Castillo. I think it aroused the interest of many folks, and it appears the bureaucrats are receiving lots of e-mails, letters, and phone calls as a result. There is a lot of media interest, including San Antonio Express, Houston
Chronicle, and nationally In These Times and New American Media. Of course, the San Antonio Express and Houston Chronicle reporters assume these children
must be terrorists, since the king can do no wrong.

John Wheat Gibson, P.C.