Category: Uncategorized

On Sunday, December 7, at 4 p.m. a peaceful coalition of individuals and groups opposing Willliamson County’s participation in the detention of asylum seekers will gather on the Williamson County Courthouse steps in downtown Georgetown.

Although federal law requires the “least restrictive setting possible” for immigrant families, in 2006 Williamson County contracted with Corrections Corporation of America, a private for-profit prison company, to incarcerate non-criminal women and children in the T. Don Hutto detention facility in Taylor. The contracts between ICE, Williamson County, and CCA are up for renewal in January.

Please help us show Williamson County, Homeland Security, and the private prison industry that imprisoning innocent children will no longer be tolerated in the United States of America.

We will meet in the parking lot on Austin Ave. between 4th and 5th Streets in Georgetown at 3:30 p.m. and walk 3 blocks to the County Courthouse to hear community leaders speak in support of alternatives to the incarceration of families awaiting asylum or immigration hearings.

There are currently 385 detainees in T. Don Hutto including 92 children. As a result of the lawsuits brought by ACLU and the UT School of Law Immigration Clinic, detainees are now allowed to wear their own clothing. Thanks to a recent intervention by the UT School of Law Immigration Clinic, ICE has also agreed to allow detainees to use phone cards given to them rather than having to buy the cards through CCA.

If you would like to bring a gift to the vigil, suggestions include new toys in their original packaging, books, music players, music, lotions, shampoos, candy, phone cards, and clothing such as sweaters and warm socks.

For further information or to sign up to speak, please contact Sherry Dana at sdana787@gmail.com. 512-868-5181

Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town
Crier
by permission

I admittedly was caught off guard twice over the last week or so. Distracted by the gorgeous fanfare of the international Olympics, I did not expect Georgia to brazenly invade Ossetia. But another thing caught me off guard, right here in Hidalgo County: the conviction of Christopher Hughes.

Christopher’s conviction was surprising, and depressing. First, he was convicted of killing his mom and got 45 years; secondly, he was 16 when the crime was committed. I think 45 years in prison for something one does at 16 is excessive, nuts, but I admit I still live in the past, when there were proud juvenile courts and some commitment to saving youth from the adult criminal justice system. I know. I live in the years of Jane Addams and the advent of social work, not the fiercely retributive, zero-tolerance, sock-‘em world we live in now.

Although often a maverick, I am mainstream enough to condemn killing. And if someone kills his mom, I think the state should step in and take appropriate action. But Christopher was not an adult criminal, despite the prosecutor declaring him one; this was a kid in a very troubled moment in his teen years. A father figure in Christopher’s life died of cancer in February, 2007. He was the husband of Laura Doyle, the teen’s mom, and within months Christopher was in police custody.

The Monitor reported, “In the months after [the father’s] death, the relationship of Laura Doyle and her son quickly grew volatile. Deputies responded to several domestic violence calls at the trailer home they shared, where the sheriffs found mother and son fighting about his drug use and past attempts to steal a family car. In March, Laura Doyle received two years of probation for felony drug possession. She had previously been convicted of reckless conduct, resisting arrest and unlawfully carrying a weapon.”

February and March must have been insane months for Christopher. Let me play Jane Addams, the founder of modern social work and of the now fast-disintegrating juvenile justice system: Where was our state and the help from the brave authorities during those two months? It isn’t like Hidalgo County didn’t know…authorities responded to “several domestic violence calls” during that time. Christopher was 16 and his father was dead and his mother was wacko and maybe scary, and now Hidalgo County, which didn’t intervene properly with social workers, feels righteous giving the kid a “fair trial” and 45 years in lock-up, reminding everyone not to kill their emotionally disturbed mothers.

Since I started this column by saying I was surprised by things recently, readers might ask why I was surprised by the jury’s verdict. Didn’t child advocate Jane Addams die in 1935? Well, here’s more on the conviction. Toward the trial’s conclusion — I followed the excellent reporting from The Monitor’s Jeremy Roebuck — it became obvious that the prosecution’s case was disintegrating. First, there was no physical evidence against the kid, and the body had decayed badly before being found.

Secondly, Christopher’s lawyer made a brilliant case that the sheriff’s deputies were virtually fixated on Christopher, pressuring teen friends to testify against him. Several friends testified that the deputies coaxed them for evidence against Christopher, and they said that things they told the deputies were massaged in the written reports. “They came at me like they were trying to scare me,” said Christopher’s best friend. “Like I had done something wrong.” (The Monitor, August 8th)

Thirdly, the sheriffs and prosecutors dropped to the bottom of the barrel and used a jail house snitch against Christopher. (The national Innocence Project — see their site — claims this jailhouse snitch practice has contributed to many false convictions.)

A convicted killer being held in the juvenile center testified that he had heard Christopher admit to the murder. This sort of evidence is unacceptable and should be inadmissible, and the prosecution should lose the case for trying to sway a jury with it. A 16-year-old like Christopher is expected to act tough in jail. Part of surviving there is to say you are a killer. Jailhouse talk, reported by a convicted teenage murderer, is hardly a “confession.”

Fourthly, The Monitor reported other possible suspects: Laura Doyle had told police before her death that she feared someone was “watching” her and “breaking in.” Also a 22-year-old convicted drug dealer, who once sold drugs to her, was found with a gun which might have been the weapon used. And Christopher’s older half-brother, who “discovered” the corpse, took pictures of it and called friends before calling the police.

I was surprised…This case had “reasonable doubts” stamped all over the package. And another journalist told me that two “alternate jurors,” (back-ups who watched the whole trial) said they too were surprised.

By Greg Moses

In Texas the top-to-bottom ratio is ten-to-one. For every pre-tax dollar earned by a family among the bottom twenty percent, a family in the top twenty percent earns ten dollars and forty cents.

Only two states, New York and Mississippi, outscore Texas on the raw top-to-bottom scale. Massachusetts is tied with us. In California and New Mexico, every single bottom dollar is matched at the top by ten dollars and twenty cents.

Over time the pattern only gets worse. In Texas over a period of 17 years (from 1988 to 2005) the average pre-tax income for families of the bottom fifth grew by 13 percent or about $1,800 in annual income; whereas, for families in the top fifth, pre-tax incomes grew by about 31 percent or $38,000 in annual income.

Tax policies tend to narrow the top-to-bottom ratio by a couple of points. But whether you’re looking at the top-to-bottom ratio before taxes or after, the gap between the top fifth and bottom fifth grows tenaciously year by year.

The same trend holds between top incomes and middle incomes. During the first five years of the 21st Century, middle income Texas families managed to increase their incomes by about one percent or $500 in annual income (after taxes); whereas families from the top fifth added about nine percent to their incomes or about $10,000 (after taxes).

If the business of America is business, then the business of business in America is inequality. And this poses an environmental hazard to civil rights. What can it mean to fight for equality, equity, or equal opportunity in a society where everyone is daily experiencing inequality on the rise?

In a 2008 report co-authored by Arthur B. Laffer, Ph.D., the tax policies of Texas were declared to be better than California’s based upon a supply-side matrix. It was another way of saying in so many words that we should keep a state income tax off the table in Texas.

But what’s interesting about the tax policies of Texas and California from a top-to-bottom point of view is that the tax policies take both states from their top five positions in pre-tax inequality and move them down the scale to where they are tied around 17th place for growth in inequality after taxes.

The tax policies of the Lone Star State have not only satisfied the supply-side guru, but since Texas families start off more unequal than California’s in pre-tax numbers, we have also managed to eliminate slightly more inequality in the process.

In both states, we might add, the top-to-bottom gap in after-tax incomes stands above 13-to-one if by “top” we mean top five percent instead of top fifth. Would it be too radical to suggest notching this number down via tax policies to a more polite dozen-to-one?

Notes

Numbers for the top-to-bottom study (in 2005 dollars) were released last Spring in a joint study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute. See PULLING APART: A State-by-State Analysis of Income Trends by Jared Bernstein, Elizabeth McNichol, and Andrew Nicholas, April 2008 [in pdf format].

For the “Laffer Report” see, COMPETITIVE STATES, Texas v. California: Economic Growth Prospects for the 21st Century, Arduin, Laffer & Moore Econometrics, August 2008, Texas Public Policy Foundation [in pdf format].

PS

Laffer and associates have also been busy in Oklahoma. A Tulsa Today Staff Report of Nov. 21 covers a supply side review of Oklahoma taxes dated January 2008 [in pdf format]. The report offers fond remembrances of Laffer’s prophetic support for “Prop 13,” the California property tax revolt that signaled the advent of the Reagan Revolution worldwide.

Email from Bob Libal, Grass Roots Leadership–gm

[On Tuesday] Marc Moore of Immigration and Customs Enforcement wrote a letter to the Dallas Morning News defending the T. Don Hutto family detention center. The letter was written in response to a terrific op-ed authored by University of Texas Professor Barbara Hines in last Monday’s Morning News arguing that ICE’s three new proposed family detention centers are an inappropriate response to immigrant families, especially given the troubled history of T. Don Hutto. Both Professor Hines’ op-ed and Mr. Moore’s letter are below in their entirety.

Please take the time today, if possible, to write a letter to the Dallas Morning News stressing the inappropriate nature of family detention and Hutto. Letters can be sent using the site’s online form, and should be 50-200 words in length. Letters can include the following points:

1) Detention of immigrant children and their families is inappropriate, costly, and inhumane. The experience at Hutto, a converted medium security prison operated by a private prison corporation where children as young as infants have been held with their parents, demonstrates that detention of families is a tragic response to the immigration issue. In addition, at an estimated cost of more than $200 a day per detainee at Hutto, the financial cost of such detention is unreasonably high, especially when more humane and cost-effective alternatives exist.

2) Congress has called on ICE to fund alternatives to family detention, saying that detention of immigrant children and their families should be the last alternative, not the first. ICE should be listening to the wishes of Congress and implementing alternatives to detention rather than soliciting new family detention centers. These alternative to detention programs are effective at ensuring that immigrants return to their immigration hearings and are much less costly than detention.

Thank you for your continued efforts to end family detention and close the T. Don Hutto detention center.

—

Bob Libal
Grassroots Leadership
Austin, Texas
http://www.grassrootsleadership.org

Check out www.texasprisonbidness.org for news and info on the private prison industry in Texas.

*****

Barbara Hines: New ICE family detention centers a step in wrong direction

June 16, 2008

The federal government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is accepting bids today for contracts to construct three new privately run detention centers across the country for children and their families awaiting immigration proceedings.

These facilities, each to be built with up to 200 beds, will expand the system of family detention made controversial in recent years at the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas.

The proposal for new centers is a step in the wrong direction. Congress has repeatedly called on ICE, the agency within the Department of Homeland Security responsible for immigration matters, to implement alternatives to detention programs for families, stating that detention of families should be the last alternative and not the first.

In 2006, when I first went to Hutto, I was appalled by the living conditions. Children as young as infants, along with their families, were detained in a converted medium-security prison run by the Corrections Corporation of America, a for-profit prison management corporation. Children received one hour of education a day and wore prison uniforms. They were required to be in their cells for long periods during the day to be present for multiple cell counts.

Many of the detainees at Hutto have come to the United States fleeing persecution or social turmoil — asylum seekers fleeing civil conflict in Eastern Africa, Iraqi Christians targeted by fundamentalists and Central Americans seeking refuge from drug, gang and domestic violence. No detainee has been accused of a crime.

The psychological toll on children in detention is significant. Often already traumatized by conditions in their home countries and the process of being uprooted during migration, children and parents at Hutto reported being threatened with separation from one another as a disciplinary measure.

After widespread public advocacy against the facility, national media attention, a lawsuit and a settlement, conditions at the facility are significantly better. Children no longer wear prison scrubs, and they now receive seven hours of education a day. Also, they remain at the detention center for a significantly shorter amount of time.

Fundamentally, however, family detention remains an inappropriate response to asylum seekers and immigrant parents and children. Advocates continue to be concerned about news reports from Hutto, such as an alleged sexual assault of a detainee by a guard and the separation of a child from her mother for four days. Both incidents occurred last year.

Alternatives to detention include community-based, homelike shelters that provide access to counseling and legal services. Intensive-supervision programs also keep families together and out of detention. In fact, alternatives to detention programs have proved effective at ensuring that immigrants appear for their court hearings through a combination of telephone reporting and home visits. These programs are also substantially more cost-effective than detention.

One study by the Vera Institute found that more than 90 percent of immigrants on a supervised release program attended their immigration hearings. The average cost of a supervision program was $12 a day, compared with $61 a day to detain an immigrant. The cost savings are likely more pronounced in the context of family detention, which is more expensive than detaining adult immigrants.

Instead of contracting the construction of more family detention centers, ICE should seriously invest in alternatives to detention programs.

Barbara Hines is a clinical professor of law and director of the Immigration Clinic at The University of Texas School of Law. She was co-counsel — along with the national ACLU, the ACLU of Texas and the law firm of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene and McRae — in the lawsuit challenging conditions at Hutto. Her e-mail address is bhines@law.utexas.edu.

*****

Hutto center picture incomplete

Re: “There’s a better way – ICE should not be accepting bids to build new family detention centers, says Barbara Hines,” last Monday Viewpoints.

Since its inception, the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Center has been a safe and humane alternative to separating the families who enter the country illegally.

Many positive changes have been made. Families have access to high-quality medical, mental health and dental care 24 hours a day. Children attend school seven hours a day with state-certified teachers who provide a curriculum based on state standards. There are many recreational and social activities for all residents and few restrictions on movement throughout the facility.

Many of the conditions mentioned in the column have not existed for some time. The razor-wire fence shown in the picture accompanying the column was removed more than a year ago. ICE has taken a proactive approach to enhancing the facility since it opened. Many of the improvements were in place, under way or planned before the lawsuit referred to in the column was filed.

Marc J. Moore, field office director, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, San Antonio