Category: Uncategorized

By Greg Moses

CounterPunch

Of the four men who actually made the final trek to the Rolling Plains prison camp at Haskell, Texas on Saturday afternoon, you could say whatever you want, but you’d be a liar to call them fair weather.

Jay Johnson-Castro had walked 60 miles to the prison, stepping off Wednesday morning in Abilene with southerly winds to his back and a temperature of 63. But Thursday, Friday, and Saturday winds blew northerly into his face, as morning temperatures chilled to 40.

Behind Jay’s walk was John Neck driving his brown pickup truck with the whirling yellow light on top keeping the bigger trucks away. And joining Jay in Haskell was one supporter from Dallas and one California doctor of psychology named Javier Iribarren. Count them on one hand with a finger to spare. Since everything was running a couple hours early, the four protesters had time for a long lunch before the final mile.
If the authorities could go back and do the whole thing over again, it would be interesting to see if they would still take so much trouble to keep this party out of sight. One journalist tried to catch up to them in a car, but roads near the prison were “under repair” and closed to traffic. So the lone journalist drew flashing lights from the Sheriff’s office, followed by a stern command to leave the scene.

As for the three conscientious walkers and their security driver, it must have felt like something to have a police escort and careful instructions not to approach any side of the prison that would allow the protest to be seen by prisoners.

“In Haskell County they immediately drew the line for us,” says Johnson-Castro via cell phone Saturday night. “The County Judge, the County Commissioners, the City Council, and the corporate partners from the Emerald Companies who run the Rolling Plains prison, all of them said we’re not even going to let you see the front of the prison, because we’re not going to let anyone on the inside know that anyone on the outside gives a crap. I think outside of prison there will be people who find that shocking.”

At the Haskell city limits on this cold and windy Saturday morning, Johnson-Castro was met by the Chief of Police. “Hey man it’s just me,” is how Johnson-Castro recalls his own end of the conversation. “Relax.” As he had done on Wednesday while talking to the Haskell County Sheriff, Johnson-Castro told the town’s Chief of Police that something was wrong in that prison. It had been turned into a hellish prison camp for immigrants. “Keep your ears open,” advised Johnson-Castro, because the story of the prison camp is going to come out.

Inside the Rolling Plains prison since early November are 20-year-old Suzi Hazahza and her 23-year-old sister Mirvat. They spent their first two chilly days at Haskell on the concrete floor of a drunk tank, because no beds were available. The sisters had been abducted and detained with their parents and three brothers by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during a pre-election roundup of immigrants called “Operation Return to Sender.” Mother Juma and 11-year-old brother Mohammad were shipped to the T. Don Hutto prison camp at Taylor, Texas. Father Radi and two older sons, Ahmad and Hisham, were shipped with the sisters to Haskell.

For the first five weeks of their detention at Haskell, the Hazahzas accepted a family visitor, but since week five they have all refused to risk the humiliating cavity searches that follow contact with outsiders. Meanwhile, the Hutto prison released Juma and Mohammad shortly before a press tour in early February.

On Saturday, Juma and Mohammad planned to cross paths with Jay in Haskell and visit Mohammad’s older brothers Hisham and Ahmad. Saturday is visitation day for the men. Radi was still holding out against the cavity search. The younger men “worked up their courage” says family friend Reza Barkhordari.

“11-year old Mohammad had been day-dreaming about seeing his brothers for the entire week,” writes Barkhordari via email. “He was up at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, excited with the hope of seeing his brothers after so long.” After a three-and-one-half-hour drive, Juma and Mohammad found themselves confronted by a maze of security precautions like Reza had never seen during his visits last November.

“The whole area was blocked by vehicles from the Prison Security Patrol and the Local Police,” writes Barkhordari. “I called the facility to find an alternate route. I was told that the roads are blocked because the Warden has declared a no-visitation weekend! When I asked for an explanation, I was told that the reason is confidential. I was asked for my name and the reason for my visit.”

“So, I called a second time and asked for the Warden,” continues Barkhordari. “Her assistant took the call and said that the Warden is not taking any calls today but we can reach the facility via a detour. We took the detour and found the other road to the detention center area to be blocked as well. This time we were approached by the Rolling Plains Security Guards. When asked to let us get through, they said that the warden has ordered all the roads leading to the facility blocked and that nobody knows the reason why.” After a third call to the prison, Barkhordari, Juma, and Mohammad headed back home.

“By the time we drove back, there were two additional State Trooper vehicles guarding the entrance,” reports Barkhordari. “This all seemed like deja vu to me. This was not the first time I had been told to leave without a reasonable explanation. I received a call from Suzi and her sister shortly after we departed and was told that everyone is in a lock-down this weekend.”

“As I was trying to give comfort to Mohammad, I realized how greatly public awareness can effect the world we live in. Today, I saw one of the most beautiful and powerful statements that one man made; a man walking 60 miles on foot and determined to bring light to the public eyes and awareness to their minds regarding the wrongful imprisonment and mistreatment of an immigrant family.”

A habeas corpus motion filed for the Hazahzas in late February alleges sexual harassment, medical neglect, isolation, and other prison cruelties handed to a family whose alleged wrongdoing has something to do with their attempt to seek asylum from their war-torn homeland in Palestine. While the Hutto prison in Taylor, Texas has been sometimes defended as a “family detention” center, the prison at Haskell is nothing but a regional prison hard enough to contain convicted criminals imported from Wyoming.

Along the highway to Haskell, Johnson-Castro has picked up a few stories from local folk. There was the former prisoner who said Haskell is actually better than some other prisons you could find yourself in. But they do like to hold onto people. Every time his release date got close, said this hardtimer, there would be a new reason to keep him locked up a little longer. And of course, the longer people are locked up, the more money changes hands.

“This needs to be done,” said the former prisoner to the walker about the walk, giving his thumb’s up. “Somebody’s got to do it.” He didn’t think it was wrong that he had been sent to prison, but there were people inside that should not have been sent there. There was a man from the Rio Grande Valley who didn’t have an ID, so ICE put him away.

He saw immigrants at Haskell prison who only wanted to go back home if they could, but they couldn’t, and he thought it was unfair how long they were kept in prison under those conditions.

One woman at a restaurant talked about her uncle being a prisoner there. She said the guards could be unkind, and they did seem t

o like keeping people inside.

These anecdotes suggest the awful conclusion that Suzi Hazahza’s hell is being funded and extended for profit. What could be a justifiable reason to keep her locked up for one more day if not to prove that the lengthy detention of immigrants is a profitable policy, no matter who you think you are.

“This is no different than what Eisenhower warned us about when he talked about the military-industrial complex,” says Johnson-Castro. “And just like you have wars waged because there are people who profit, so there are prisons built–and people put in them–for the same motive.”

“People honked, people waved,” recalls Johnson-Castro. “People approached us and complimented us for what we were doing. At Haskell one lady was coming back from a funeral for her mom. She came out and said, ‘I want to compliment you for doing this. I know things are wrong there. But nobody does anything about it.’ She invited us to talk with her. We said we can’t stay long, but she asked some questions anyway.”

“A diversity of people encouraged us,” says Johnson-Castro. “Which tells us that there is an element that would like to connect and be heard together. I’ve got to say that this is a part of Texas that all Texans should be proud of. Here is the Texan who is making the earth productive. It is a dying breed in our county or anywhere in the modern world. And they are trying to prove that humans can get along. It would be a violation of their conscience to see this happen to Suzi. It may look like they are guilty, but they aren’t. It’s not the people. It’s a partnership between the federal government, county government, state politicians, and corporate interests.”

“If the people recognize it, they will talk. But the people have been kept in darkness. They are good people. And this kind of operation there has to be a pact of secrecy, just like we saw manifest at Hutto. And just like Hutto, it is hard for me to believe that the majority of these people wouldn’t be outraged to know that atrocities are being committed in the Governor’s hometown of Haskell.”

“If I’m right,” says Johnson-Castro, “Haskell’s end is in view, because the voice of people will win. But their voice hasn’t been heard yet because people have been misinformed.” Back at the Haskell town square after the walk, the lone journalist found Johnson-Castro and told the story about how he had been run off by the Sheriff.

“If that’s how they treat you as a law abiding American, imagine how they would treat people on the inside,” said Johnson-Castro. “I think he took it to heart, and was kind of blown away.”

On the same day that Senate subcommittees were collecting testimony about growing threats of violence along the US-Mexico border, the National Academies released a study on how the USA might harvest the "demographic dividend" of the rising Hispanic population while the second generation is still young (averaging 12 years of age) and in school.

Were US policy makers to concern themselves with democracy now, the alternative of education, education, education would be the urgent call of the day, to catch the rising population while they are in school. And yet, here in penny-wise Texas, visitors to this website are still split 50-50 on the question of income taxes to support schools.–gm

Excerpt below from executive summary, "Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future". Marta Tienda and Faith Mitchell, Editors, Committee on Transforming Our Common Destiny: Hispanics in the United States, National Research Council…
By 2030, 25 percent of U.S. residents will be of retirement age or older, but Hispanics are a youthful population. In 2000, their median age was just 27, compared with 39 for non-Hispanic whites. Furthermore, today the median age of the Hispanic second generation, the nation’s future workers, is just over 12. Rising numbers of Hispanic young people will slow the nation’s overall population aging and can partially offset the growing burden of dependency produced by an aging majority. But their success in doing so depends on the level of their earnings, which in turn depends on their education and acquisition of job-related skills. Currently, Hispanics’ representation among highly skilled U.S. workers is below the national average.

Perhaps the most profound risk facing Hispanics is failure to graduate from high school, which remains unacceptably high. The share of Hispanic high school students 16 to 19 years old who failed to graduate fell only marginally during the 1990s, from 22 to 21 percent. Foreign-born Hispanic youths 16 to 19 years old are significantly more likely than nativeborn students to drop out of high school—34 compared with 14 percent in 2000—but being foreign born is not the main reason that they fail to graduate. Many immigrant students who drop out are recent arrivals who were already behind in school before arriving in the United States. In addition, in the urban schools that many Hispanics attend, low graduation rates are typical. Fully 40 percent of Hispanic students attend high schools that serve large numbers of low-income minority students and graduate less than 60 percent of entering freshmen.

Hispanic college enrollment is on the rise, but still lags well behind that of whites. In 2000 Hispanics accounted for 11 percent of high school graduates, but only 7 percent of students enrolled in 4-year institutions and 14 percent of enrollees in 2-year schools. Hispanic students are more likely than whites to attend 2-year colleges, which decreases the likelihood that they will complete a bachelor’s degree. As a result, the Hispanic-white college gap is increasing, despite the fact that Hispanic college enrollment is on the rise.

Hispanic students who fail to master English before leaving school incur considerable costs. English proficiency is mandatory for success in the labor market and is vitally important for navigating health care systems and for meaningful civic engagement. How to ensure proficiency in English remains highly controversial: there is no consensus on how best to teach non-English-speaking students across the grade spectrum.

The significance of Hispanics’ high school dropout rates, low enrollment rates in 4-year colleges, and need to master English cannot be overstated because the fastest-growing and best-paying jobs now require at least some postsecondary education. In 1999, nearly 6 of 10 jobs required college-level skills, including many that had not required college training in the past. In rapidly growing occupations, such as health services, nearly three in four jobs now require some college education. These trends bode ill for Hispanics as their college attendance and graduation gap with whites widens.

Additional challenges for Hispanics are posed by new developments that affect families and children. The number of Hispanic mother-only families is growing, as it is for other ethnic and racial groups. Because mother-only families are significantly more likely to be poor, this trend signals heightened vulnerabilities for a growing number of youth. Moreover, it is too soon to tell what the long-term effects of welfare reform will be on Hispanics—especially on groups that rely most heavily on public benefits.

Young people are also at risk of failure because of the rising numbers of Hispanic families that lack health insurance. Expansions of federally subsidized programs such as Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program appear unlikely in an era of unprecedented federal budget deficits. Continued immigration of Hispanics from Mexico and other countries in Central and South America, coupled with their geographic dispersal to areas unaccustomed to providing care for diverse groups of patients, will challenge current approaches to providing health insurance coverage and health care to low-income Hispanics, particularly to recent immigrants.

With institutional investments, Hispanic immigrants and their children can acquire the education and language skills necessary to realize the Hispanic demographic dividend, namely the higher earning potential of a youthful Hispanic workforce. In 2000 the 2-year average educational gap between all Hispanics and whites cost about $100 billion in lost earnings. Given the growth in the Hispanic populations that is projected to occur over the next 30 years, the cost of this education gap could rise to $212
billion in current dollars by 2030, taking into account the generational shift.

Failure to close Hispanics’ education and language gaps risks compromising their ability to both contribute to and share in national prosperity. How these risks and opportunities play out over the decades ahead will define not only the kind of future Hispanics will inherit, but also the economic and social contours of the United States in the 21st century.

Excerpt from article by LULAC Director of Policy and Legislation Gabriela Lemus, Ph.D.

Several recent polls have demonstrated that the American people are not averse to allowing people to stay and work in the United States as long as they obey the laws, learn English and integrate into the system. Yet, there is also a darker, meaner side as reflected by the negative campaign run by Jerry Kilgore in Virginia or highlighted nightly by such pundits as Lou Dobbs on CNN – “illegals” abuse our tax system, hurt our economy, ruin the environment and create rampant crime.
In the midst of these arguments are the businesses that require workers in order to function and to grow, the workers and their families. Foreign workers are a growing presence in the United States and hold an ever growing percentage of the jobs in this country. As of 2004, one in seven workers is foreign-born compared to the 1990s when one in ten workers was born abroad. U.S. workers are retiring in ever significant numbers and foreign workers are needed to fill their jobs. According to an October 2005 study by the Congressional Budget Office, more than 21 million workers were born abroad and almost 40 percent of those were born in Mexico and Central America and 25 percent were born in Asia.

Many of our foreign-born workers are undocumented – depending on who is counting, the estimates range from 8 to 11 million. Of these, a large number are commonly referred to as essential workers who take jobs such as digging ditches, building homes, cleaning houses, and feeding the country. While this segment of the workforce has grown, we are also witnessing a decline in the growth rate of the U.S. workforce. Between 2002 and 2012, the labor force aged 25-34 is projected to increase by only 3 million. Additionally, workers from the baby-boom aged 55 and older will increase by 18 million between 2002 and 2012 growing from 14.3 percent to 19.1 percent of the workforce. Retirees are expected to number around 77 million in 2010 and by 2030, one in every five Americans will be a senior citizen.

Yet, the focus of many legislators seems to revolve around law enforcement and preventing these essential workers quite simply from working. The costs of patrolling and enforcing federal immigration law has increased more than five times since 1992 growing from $300 per border arrest to $1,700 in 2002. Assuming that 20 percent of immigrants were to leave voluntarily, it would cost around $41 billion per year to deport the rest – that is more than the entire budget for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

By doing nothing aggressively humanistic or economically innovative regarding the immigration challenge means that tax payers are being asked to spend more money with less satisfactory results. The borders are no more secure now than they were a decade ago. The need for essential workers continues to grow at a steady pace. It is very difficult for workers to obtain the appropriate documentation because of the large lines, expense and bureaucratic demands of the process, which in turn grows the deficit of needed workers who resort to risking their lives with human traffickers across a dangerous border.

Politically, government officials are equally trapped in a series of election cycles whereby only in years when there are no elections is it opportune to engage in the immigration debate. In translation this means that the cycle of discussion becomes shorter and shorter for each individual bill. In the meantime, the media and anti-immigrant groups portray the immigrant community as illegal and dangerous to our nation’s safety, meshing the issues of immigration and terrorism while calling for a closing down of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Appearing on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal on the day after his Senate testimony, border union president T.J. Bonner repeated his pleas for a crackdown on employers and a single national ID that would specify employment eligibility.

While Bonner’s approach to border issues seems to represent the sincere experience of border agents who take their state boundaries seriously, callers to the program often expressed poisonous opinions about the character of immigrants and the undesirability of their presence. A few callers, however, place their mistrust elsewhere.

The first caller (from Texas) warned that the more border enforcement we have, the more problems we’re likely to see. She suggested more peace observers, because the border patrol "can get away with anything they want to." Bonner replied that 11,000 agents are not enough to patrol 8,000 miles of border. "We need to turn off the employment magnet so that people stop crossing the border," said Bonner.

A Republican caller from Maryland complained that the mayor of Baltimore wants to put trailers in for day workers and her US Senator wants to give more green cards, "So what is the point of border security? They’re going down and they’re getting killed for what? It’s our politicians playing games. They don’t want them here, but yet they bring them here."

"The Democrats can’t control the African Americans anymore. They figure they have them in their pockets, so now they’re using Mexicans." At which point the call was terminated.

Bonner kept his poker face on and highlighted the caller’s concern about the double standard of immigration policy, that, "employers are addicted to illegal alien labor; exploitable, cheap labor; and that has to stop if we are going to gain control of our borders."

In reply to a follow up question by the African-American host of Washington Journal, Bonner explained that Homeland Security structure removed interior enforcement of immigration from border enforcement, so stepping up enforcement on employers within the country is not an option for the border patrol agency, "and that’s part of the problem."

An Independent caller from Vermont suggested that money spent on border enforcement might better be used to subsidize employment opportunities in Mexico.

Bonner first criminalized the problem by noting that from 2 percent to 10 percent of border crossers were criminals. "and some of those are very serious criminals".

"Also, you have massive corruption in those countries. Mexico for example has great natural wealth, but it doesn’t take care of its own people, perhaps because we serve as a pressure release valve for them, and take millions of their citizens and give them jobs, and billions of US dollars go back to Mexico, so there’s no reason for them to take care of their own people. But 95 percent of the wealth in that country is controlled by 17 families. That’s not healthy for their economy. Just pouring money into that problem is not going to solve it."

In response to the moderator, Bonner explained that border agents in the field have good working relations with local law enforcement, but in Washington the fact of that close working relation is minimized, "because it exposes the fallacy of their lie that the border is under control. Anyone who lives along the border knows that is simply not the case."

A Republican caller from Long Island complained that he could not take his lovely daughter to his home town for fear she might be raped by illegals. He was sick and tired of reading about illegals causing crime and would soon have them all deported. While we’re chasing Bin Laden and the Taliban, illegals are committing more crimes per month than the three thousand killed at the World Trade Center.

"Crime by illegal aliens is a serious, serious problem," answered Bonner. Across the country there are fewer than 5,500 criminal investigators said Bonner (referring to Homeland Security?); of those only about 2,000 are "fully trained" in immigration matters and only about 10 percent of those are working on cases.

A caller from North Carolina noted that with the crackdown on suphedrine in the US, methamphetamine production has moved to Mexico where the product is quite pure and harmful. Bonner agreed that meth production has moved south of the border and pointed out that drug interdiction only catches about ten percent of the total traffic.

Fencing is not the answer, said Bonner in reply to the moderator. "Fences slow people down, but if you don’t have the agents in place to get them and send them back," said the labor leader, "it’s pretty ineffective." Bonner recalled catching the same group of people four times in a single 8-hour shift. Until we turn off the employment magnet, "people making $4 per day will continue to come across the border by the millions every year."

From Tallahassee Florida came a suggestion that farming could be further mechanized or prison labor could be put to work in the fields instead of migrant workers, and that would turn off the tap. And why give migrants social services like health care and rental assistance? Bonner thanked the caller for her "very insightful" comments.

A Phoenix caller wanted to know what laws were already on the books to penalize employers and why we weren’t enforcing them. The problem said Bonner is that in order to bust an employer the current law requires proof that the employer knows an employee is illegal, and there are about 100 documents that the employer can accept as proof that the worker is legal. Some bills would narrow the documents to two, but "two is too many" said Bonner as he criticized the McCain-Kennedy plan to provide a database for employment eligibility. What you need is a single document.

A caller from Ohio suggested that next time the Mexican military steps in the USA, a detachment of US Marines should be sent in "to wipe them out." And why not ship all the convicted felons back?

"Well actually we recommended that the US military be sent down to the border on standby to deal with military incursions," said Bonner. But we should not deport alien criminals before they have served their time here, because Mexico will just set them free to cross the border again.