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The UN Special Rapporteur for the Rights of Migrants, Jorge Bustamante, conducted an official tour of the USA in April and May of 2007. A report on that visit was released to the Human Rights Council on March 7, 2008. Below are sample findings from the report and a directory to sections of the report as archived here at the Texas Civil Rights Review.–gm

118. Children should be removed from jail-like detention centres and placed in home-like facilities. Due care should be given to rights delineated for children in custody in the American Bar Association “Standards for the Custody, Placement, and Care; Legal Representation; and Adjudication of Unaccompanied Alien Children in the United States.”

121. Whenever possible, migrant women who are suffering the effects of persecution or abuse, or who are pregnant or nursing infants, should not be detained. If these vulnerable women cannot be released from ICE custody, the Department of Homeland Security should develop alternative programmes such as intense supervision or electronic monitoring, typically via ankle bracelets. These alternatives have proven effective during pilot programmes. They are not only more humane for migrants who are particularly vulnerable in the detention setting or who have family members who require their presence, but they also cost, on average, less than half the price of detention.

Sections of the Bustamante Report archived at the Texas Civil Rights Review

Summary: Banned from Hutto without Satisfactory Explanation.

I.A.: Rights to Fair Deportation Hearings Violated

I.B.: USA ‘Long Way Out of Step’ with Rights to Liberty

II.A. & II.B.: The Spriri of 1996 and Mandatory Deportations

II.C.: Forty Local and State Agencies Recruited for Immigration Enforcement

II.D. & II.E.: A System of Morning Raids and Mandatory Detentions

III.A. & III.B.: Rebuilding New Orleans upon Migrant Labor Abuses

IV. & V.: Punitive, Inconsiderate, and Expensive Policies Should be Reversed

We have also converted the report of UN Special Rapporteur Jorge Bustamante to pdf format. (Get it here: 250kb).

We are awaiting permission to identify the author. –gm

Dear Editor,

I am afraid that, as an historian, I must respectfully disagree with some of your praise for The Great Debaters. Although I congratulate Winfrey and Washington for bringing the story of a authentic hero such as Melvin Tolson to the attention of the general public, I still must object – strongly – to their “improvements.”

There is a universe of difference – mental, moral, spiritual, and ethical – between defeating a USC debate team (my alma mater, incidentally) in Bovard Auditorium and vanquishing Harvard in Sanders Theatre – the same difference that would hold if the Wiley College football team had actually beaten the Crimson in Harvard Stadium while the film showed them beating the Trojans in the Coliseum.

But the real problem is the question of being true to historical fact. I have no doubt that racists will latch on to the rather cheap melodramatic substitution of Harvard for USC in order to attack the veracity of the movie’s portrait of Jim Crow.

A similar case arose with Anne Frank’s diary. Because Anne’s father removed some of her most intimate entries dealing with sexual matters, the Holocaust deniers declared that the entire diary was a fraud, and a team of scholars had to waste everybody’s time and money performing an exhaustive inquest in order to prove the reality of the diary. So it is important to get the facts right.

Two quick responses from the CounterPunch audience. Both stand clearly on the side of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The first one is short and sharp:

is the rev. wright not a truth sayer? are not his arguments entirely valid here? politically they may be a disaster for obama, proof that all his talk about hope and cooperation is spurious in a racist society.

The second reply opens with a question: was I likening Sen. Obama to Saint Peter when I said that he denied Rev. Wright three times with the phrase ‘as if’? Well, I was thinking about the three denials that are recalled during the Christian holy week. Then the reader turns to liberation theology:

The mostly secular mainstream didn’t want to hear about liberation theology when Latin American Christian base communities were being slaughtered with weapons and training provided by Uncle Sam, and most won’t want to hear about it now. Nevertheless, when it comes to Truth, there is always and everywhere no time like the present.

Thank you for pointing out the parallels between Liberation Theology and the theology of certain African American pastors. And now in the Spirit of the Season, some food for thought from an Arab Christian:

‘Persecution does not make the just man to suffer, nor does oppression destroy him if he is on the right side of Truth. Socrates smiled as he took poison, and Stephen smiled as he was stoned. What truly hurts is our conscience that aches when we oppose it, and dies when we betray it.’ — Kahlil Gibran

To both readers, thank you. Without contradicting anything you have said, I offer an experiment in hope, that an ethic of toleration might be applied toward a more respectful treatment of Rev. Wright than the one we have thus far witnessed from too many parties and players in the Great American Presidential Election Game–gm

Note: Following Thursday’s burning of the American embassy in Belgrade, we were reminded of nearby Albania and a Texas veteran of the Albanian democratic movement. This month marks one full year that Rrustem Neza has spent at the Rolling Plains Prison of Haskell, Texas while federal officials have toyed with his life.

While Neza’s brother has been justifiably granted asylum in the USA, owing to real dangers to his life, brother Rrustem has been treated to the dark side of federal immigration enforcement. Acting with icy indifference to Rrustem Neza’s well being, the feds are now attempting to gain a court order that will allow them to drug the Albanian refugee and throw him onto an airplane. Meanwhile, two children (ages 6 and 8) in East Texas live without their father.

With the weight of these facts in mind, we asked Mr. Neza’s attorney John Wheat Gibson to send us a statement as to why Rrustem Neza should be immediately released to his children.–gm

Dear Editor,

In what kind of society is it necessary to explain why children need their parents? Rrustem Neza’s children do not have their father because der Fuehrer says he must be deported. There is oil and gas in Albania, and
so unserer Fuehrer does not want to embarrass the organized crime syndicate
that controls Albania and Kosovo. Therefore the father of the children cannot be released from prison. Instead, he must die to make sure the oil and gas concessions go to Conoco or British Petroleum instead of some
Chinese company.

The bureaucrats who carry out the orders of der Fuehrer are afraid to exercise any judgment or morality of their own. If they did, it could affect their advancement in the federal bureaucracy. Instead, they chant,
“Zieg, heil!” and “Heil Georgiepoo!”

John Wheat Gibson, P.C.
Dallas

“Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law” (From Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948).