Category: Uncategorized

By Greg Moses

The family of imprisoned asylum seeker Rrustem Neza tells the Texas Civil Rights Review that he was visited Friday by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Lufkin).

The visit comes as welcome news for Rrustem’s brother Xhemal (pronounced Jehmal) Neza who was shocked by the way Rrustem looked during a visit on Thursday.

After seeing his brother Rrustem at the LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, Louisiana on Thursday evening, Xhemal drove to Dallas Friday morning to swear out an affidavit of his impressions.

“When I saw him he was wasted,” says Xhemal about Rrustem in the affidavit provided by attorney John Wheat Gibson of Dallas. “He was wearing the same clothes he had on when he was arrested two weeks ago. His face looked as if he were dead. It made me very weak to see his face.”

The affidavit alleges that since his arrest on Aug. 5 Rrustem has been kept in “a hole” or solitary confinement in a room of about three feet by six feet with a slit on the door but no window to the outside.

“I believe Congressman Gohmert saved Rrustem’s life by his intervention,” says Friday’s affidavit. Xhemal says he approached the facility two times prior to Thursday seeking to visit his brother, but it was only after Rep. Gohmert’s office stepped in that a successful visit was completed.

The Neza brothers applied for asylum in the USA after they fled Albania following a political assassination. Xhemal’s asylum was granted, but Rrustem’s was denied. The family believes the difference in treatment can be explained chiefly by the difference in attorneys handling the cases.

Rrustem and his brothers fear that a forced return to Albania would endanger his life.

The LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, Louisiana is operated by the GEO Group, Inc. under a “perpetual” contract between the LaSalle Economic Development District (LEDD) of LaSalle Parish and the federal bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

A recent $30 million dollar expansion of the former juvenile facility has increased the capacity of the center from 416 beds to 1,160, according to news clips archived online at privateci.org.

“The contract is expected to generate approximately $23.5 million in annualized operating revenues for GEO at full occupancy,” stated a Business Wire press release of July, 2007.

The Texas Civil Rights Review will continuing to monitor developments in this case.

By Nick Braune

There is much discussion of an education bill in the Texas legislature, HB 3 – SB 3, which has some good aspects and some bad ones. I recently interviewed Rev. Bob Clark, a peace and justice advocate in the Valley who is a Methodist pastor serving the economically hard-hit San Juan/Pharr area.

Braune: Rev. Clark, you told me about a bill you are tracking. It apparently has a lot of supporters and some who have worries about it. It would allow, if I understand it right, two types of high school diplomas in the state. What is the issue and how are you looking at it?

Clark: For the last twenty-five years the state of Texas has been dealing with education accountability, bringing us successively the TAAS and TAKS tests; this new bill (HB 3 – SB 3) is the latest installment in the state’s ongoing crusade to fix students and rate our schools.

While the new bill is a slight improvement (doing away with mandatory retention) there are some glaring problems. Of these, one that is of special concern is this: if passed in its present form, the bill would create a two-track system in our schools. One group of children would be aimed at university and the other at tech-school or a job. There would actually be two different diplomas issued depending on which track the student completed.

Braune: How do you answer those who simply respond that everyone is not ready for college?

Clark: While it is true that not everyone will go to college, and on the surface, it seems good to identify those students who will not be “college ready”, such a plan is ripe for abuse. Here in the Rio Grande Valley, we are painfully aware of the negative effects of tracking. For years Hispanic students were automatically tracked toward “job readiness” while Anglo students were all tracked toward University. (As we know, abuses like that are what created the famous Edcouch/Elsa High School Walkout in 1968.) And tracking assumes that through testing one can determine the future potential of a student, even as early as in eighth grade. Imagine the loss to the world had Albert Einstein, who could not pass high school algebra, been tracked toward a career as a Wal-Mart greeter.

Braune: Is it going to pass?

Clark: There will be a fight. Backers of the current bill include champions of industry and commerce, the business community. Why? In a word, profit. A two diploma system creates an underclass marked as workers and a higher valued class destined to become professionals. Those with a “Texas Diploma” will automatically be considered of higher value than those with the inferior diploma. An inferior diploma translates into lower wages for workers and by extension higher profits for big business. In the same way that a person with a B.A. can be hired for a lower wage than a person with an M.A., a person without a “Texas Diploma” can be hired for less.

Additional note: After learning about this issue from Rev. Clark, I spoke to State Representative Armando Martinez about it. Already alert to the problems in HB-3, he and some other legislators are hoping to x-out that sort of “two-track” talk from the bill. I also spoke with Terry Brown of Valley Interfaith. Her organization does considerable lobbying and is worried about the bill, and she told me about a conversation she had with a Valley school superintendant who is dead-set against the two-track approach. There is growing opposition.

[The interview with Rev. Clark previously appeared in the Mid-Valley Town Crier.]

By Nick Braune

July 8, Brownsville Herald: “A federal grand jury has returned a two-part indictment against Rama Carty Tuesday, charging him with assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating or interfering with Lt. Eric Saldivar and detention officer Hector Buentello, Jr. in the performance of their official duties, the court record shows.” The article says Carty may face 16 years in prison and a $500,000 fine for his alleged violence last month at the Port Isabel Detention Center in southern Texas.

The next day, in response to the Herald article, I proudly joined a quickly-called morning picket line in McAllen outside the Federal Building, where Homeland Security has its offices; on the sidewalk about 14 of us chanted for justice and demanded that Carty be freed and that the frame-up charges be dropped.

The background is fairly simple. Rama Carty, 39, had been held in the Port Isabel Detention Center for about a year. After reading coverage of an Amnesty International report in the spring about the lack of due process in immigration detention centers, the poor conditions, and the disorganization of the system, Carty was invigorated and tried to get Amnesty to visit and take testimony at PIDC. He soon became somewhat of a spokesperson among the detainees and a key figure in a hunger strike trying to draw attention to the problems involved.

Not shy, he was soon in touch with some Rio Grande Valley activists around the Southwest Workers Unicn (SWU) who helped publicize problems at PIDC, and he was interviewed on Democracy Now and by Texas Monthly.

Amnesty International leader Sarnata Reynolds announced that she was going to personally visit Texas to speak to detainees at PIDC, making it clear that she believed a hunger strike had taken place – PDIC kept denying that it happened. Then on June 3, Amnesty visited, and Reynolds sent out a letter to supporters that very evening that she had met inmates, including Carty, and that she believes there are significant problems at PDIC, referencing Amnesty’s spring report.

(Amnesty reports are carefully prepared, taking the time to provide documentation, and they have considerable public weight because they are prepared well. Although over the years I have often wished Amnesty would take up different issues than it does, I do realize how limited their resources and personnel are and the large numbers of people internationally vying for Amnesty’s immediate attention on particular issues. Incidentally, I have been particularly pleased this decade with their 2005 report criticizing the egregious U.S. policy of imprisoning people for “life with no parole” for crimes they committed as children and was very pleased over this last month with their report strongly criticizing Israel’s brutal attack on Gaza last winter.)

The very day after Carty was interviewed, awfully early in the morning, Carty was roused from his sleep to be transferred to a Louisiana center, and from there to be shipped back to Haiti. It is obvious that the PDIC wanted to get rid of this nuisance who had been making waves for several months.

Apparently, according to one report I heard about, two of the guards who were assigned to process him became angry when he “went limp” in standard civil disobedience style, and they proceeded to rough Carty up as they moved him out. There was a report by inmates that there was blood on the floor. The SWU local members heard of the event from detainees who called them, and they began rousing their members and friends to make phone calls protesting this.

Amnesty, which was scheduled to speak to more inmates that day — it was a two-day visit – protested to the PDIC officials and demanded to talk to the guards who took Carty away that morning. The PDIC authorities were not cooperative and insisted that nothing was amiss, that the transfer of Carty had been planned for over a week and was not in response to their visit.

After the Brownsville Herald this week said that Carty was being charged with assault, resisting, etc., the Port Isabel prisoners and Rama’s supporters outside were of course shocked and angry. One prisoner communicated to the network outside. His comments: “I spent most of my days with Rama Carty in the library; not once had he ever gotten into a physical or verbal fight with anyone; his demeanor [was] refreshing. I can clearly say that the charges are trumped up.” There were also prisoners who witnessed the officers taking him out, and they verify Carty’s version of the story, although they were not allowed to get their version into the grand jury room.

One thing that may be behind the assault charges is that DHS had hoped to ship the hot potato Carty off to Haiti after they got him to Louisiana. But Haiti officials said they did not want him; he knows no one there and he is actually not from Haiti. True, his parents are Haitian, but he was born in the Congo and lived in Africa only his first year, moving to spend the rest of his life in the States.

Because Carty had been held in detention all these recent months supposedly to process him out of the country, when DHS found out he could not be deported to Haiti, they should have released him. Not having papers is a civil not a criminal offence, after all. Unable to send him to Haiti, however, DHS is apparently now arranging to send Carty to prison.

By Greg Moses

The office of Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Lufkin) has confirmed that the Congressman drove four hours Friday evening to visit with Albanian asylum seeker Rrustem Neza who is being held by immigration authorities at a federal detention facility in Jena, Louisiana.

Meanwhile, Rrustem Neza has told his brother Xhemal via telephone that he has been released from “the hole” or solitary confinement and returned to the general population at the LaSalle Detention Facility in LaSalle Parish.

Rrustem had previously reported that he was kept in “the hole” from Aug. 5 until Thursday evening, Aug. 20. Xhemal’s third attempt to visit his brother at LaSalle was successful on Thursday evening after Rep. Gohmert personally intervened.

Rep. Gohmert called Xhemal at 2:15 Thursday afternoon to tell him that a visit would be possible that same evening. Xhemal and another brother drove four and a half hours from their Lufkin home to Jena to meet with their brother for an hour and ten minutes.

Xhemal returned from the visit deeply upset over Rrustem’s apparent condition and drove from Lufkin to Dallas Friday morning to swear an affidavit of his impressions. He also called Rep. Gohmert’s office Friday morning to express concern over Rrustem’s condition.

On Friday afternoon, Rep. Gohmert and an aide drove from Lufkin to Jena to visit with Rrustem, arriving at about 7p.m. according to the Congressman’s staff.

The tone of Xhemal’s voice changed considerably in telephone conversations with the Texas Civil Rights Review after hearing about Rep. Gohmert’s personal visit to his brother.

“Mr. Gohmert has saved my brother’s life,” said a relieved Xhemal Neza speaking by cell phone from the family’s restaurant, Joe’s Italian Grill in Lufkin.

Rrustem and Xhemal Neza applied for asylum after they fled from Albania in the wake of a series of political assassinations. Xhemal’s application was approved, but Rrustem’s was denied.

The Neza family has drawn support from their East Texas neighbors who call “a thousand times a day” says Xhemal.

In addition to the support of neighbors and Rep. Gohmert, the Neza family has also drawn editorial support from the Lufkin Daily News which editorialized once again in favor of asylum.

“Keep screaming, Louie,” said the Wednesday editorial. “We believe Neza deserves to continue living and working in East Texas, and we hope ICE will hold off until the Department of Justice and/or 11th Circuit Court of Appeals will take the time to hear his appeal.”

“All we ask is to look at the facts,” said Xhemal before returning to work on Saturday. “My brother is a good man with a lovely wife and two lovely boys.”