Category: Uncategorized

By Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town Crier
by permission

Wednesday, June 20th, was the seventh annual World Refugee Day, honoring the spirit and courage of those who flee economic and political malaise. This official day was established through the United Nations.

Sometimes our country, for certain purposes, will hail the United Nations as important, demanding that other nations abide by its standards. Sometimes major US figures make speeches at the United Nations and occasionally mention the Declaration of Human Rights. But more often than not, concerning international rights and law, the US is a cheap scofflaw. I doubt World Refugee Day even crossed President Bush’s mind.

A former Dutch prime minister, Ruud Lubbers, who is the chief U.N. commissioner on these matters, stressed that helping refugees is “a moral and legal imperative” not just an “optional act of charity.” His World Refugee Day address criticized Western Europe, according to the New York Times, for “inflaming sentiment against refugees by calling them ‘bogus’ asylum seekers who are ‘flooding’ their countries.” Lubbers said that those who talked that way used to be associated with “small extremist parties” but now are in major ones. Lubber’s criticism should sting the US as well as Europe.

In Texas this weekend, I will join two demonstrations in sympathy with World Refugee Day. One (Saturday) is against the detention center in Taylor, near Austin, which is housing children, and another (Sunday) is against the Raymondville detention center, a tent city with maybe 2,000 people, from maybe thirty different countries, sleeping in bunk bed rows and getting outside one hour a day.

These centers are improperly holding people as if they were criminals, even though the inmates have not been convicted of crimes. Some inmates held productive jobs in this country for years and are stuck because of immigration paperwork technicalities; some came to this country recently asking for legal refugee status, having fled a miserable situation.

Amnesty International, co-sponsoring the demonstration in Taylor, states on its website that established conventions assume that asylum seekers are not to be “detained” unless warranted by special circumstances. Make no mistake, these detention centers are “detaining” people.

Raymondville’s tent city center was built adjacent to another prison and has armed guards who yell at the immigrants. It forces people to stand in line, does not have private shower stalls, makes no provision for those held inside to get to a mall or movie or church event. Immigrants are not just residing there; they are detained prisoners, and scared.

Private contractors who run these for-profit prisons are getting up to $10,000 per prisoner per month. (My source is Jay Johnson-Castro, a founder of Border Ambassadors, one of the groups sponsoring the weekend demonstrations.) Juicy federal money flows to Corrections Corporation of America and other companies, although it is known that other ways of monitoring immigrants while they wait for hearings, etc. are far less costly than incarceration.

Actually, detained refugees are treated worse than criminals in a sense. Although the UN 1951 Refugee Conventions state that a refugee should have the same access to courts as a national, we now have an increasingly politicized and capricious special immigration court system under the Justice Department. According to a study last year by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), getting asylum can depend simply on what judge one gets.

The TRAC report, according to Eunice Moscoso of Cox News Service, “directly challenged” the Justice Department that runs these immigration courts. The courts have a mission statement to provide “fair, expeditious and uniform application of the nation’s immigration laws in all cases.” But one Miami judge turned down 97 percent (!) of asylum requests between 2000 and 2005, while one New York judge only turned down 10 percent.

And there even seems to be a problem with the way immigration judges have been picked. (See my June 17 column examining partisanship in Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department). A Washington Post expose this month charged that the administration “increasingly emphasized partisan political ties over expertise in recent years in selecting the judges who decide the fate of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, despite laws which preclude such considerations.”

Studying immigration judges appointed by Alberto Gonzales and John Ashcroft, the Post article found the appointees greatly lacking in immigration law experience. (Republican fellowship seems like the main hiring criterion.) And with redress in federal courts extremely limited and habeas corpus suspended for immigrants, there goes a refugee’s right to have the same access to fair courts as a national.

Next week I will report on the demonstration at Raymondville’s detention center. I will be in Raymondville promptly at 6 pm Sunday, June 24, with my trusty notebook.

“There are currently 126 Harris County offenders under sentence of death in Texas. Only six states apart from Texas currently have more prisoners on death row – Alabama, California, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Between them, those six states account for 23 times the population of Harris County, and see thousands more murders take place in them each year than occur in Harris County. Together, these six states have executed 185 inmates in the past three decades, only twice the number of Harris County offenders who have been put to death.

“In Texas itself, Harris County is ahead of other local jurisdictions in ensuring a steady flow of individuals for the state’s lethal injection team to kill. The number of Harris County offenders executed or remaining on death row – 225 – is only equalled by grouping together the next seven largest Texas counties of Bexar, Dallas, Tarrant, Travis, El Paso, Hidalgo and Collin – counties whose jurisdictions include the cities of Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth and San Antonio and whose combined populations account for nearly five million more inhabitants than Harris County and around a hundred more murders each year.

For the complete report and suggestions for a letter writing campaign to the Harris County District Attorney, see Amnesty International: One county, 100 executions: Harris County and Texas – A lethal combination–gm

By Rep. David Price (D-NC)
Congressional Record
June 6, 2007 (H6268)

[The DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008] addresses a major immigration vulnerability that exists today. It requires that ICE contact correctional facilities throughout the U.S. on a monthly basis to identify incarcerated immigrants who are subject to deportation. Although ICE deports some number of these individuals now, it is not systematically identifying and deporting them. There is simply no excuse for failing to identify every deportable alien and deporting them immediately upon their release from prison.

These are undocumented individuals who have served time in jail for committing crimes, and we are now, unfortunately, releasing them all too often back into the population. So asking prisons for information about these individuals so they can be deported should be among the first priorities in our illegal immigration enforcement strategy. This bill provides the direction and the funding to ICE to make this happen.

The bill funds the Secure Border Initiative at the requested level of $1 billion, while requiring the Department to clearly justify how it plans to use these funds to achieve operational control of our borders. For each border segment, the Department will have to produce an analysis comparing its selected approach to alternatives based on total cost, on level of control achieved, impact on affected communities, and other factors.

We are also requiring the Department to seek the advice and support of each local community affected by a border infrastructure project. I want to be clear that this does not give border communities a veto on border projects and it will not result in any project delays if the Department efficiently carries out its responsibilities. The provision simply requires the Department to actively and faithfully consult affected communities to ensure that our border security efforts minimize adverse community impacts. That is reasonable to ask of the Department, and the Department agrees that such consultation is appropriate.

We are also directing the Department to increase by over 40 percent the number of Border Patrol agents on the northern border to comply with the levels called for in the Intelligence Reform Act. In addition, the bill addresses a Customs and Border Protection staffing problem that we heard about on a February congressional delegation to the southwest border.

Because CBP officers are not considered law enforcement officers, despite the increasing role of law enforcement in their duties, they don’t receive the same benefits as DHS personnel who are considered law enforcement officers. This has made it extremely difficult to hold on to CBP officers. In a nutshell, the bill would allow eligible CBP officers to transition to law enforcement status beginning in fiscal 2008.

The Transportation Security Administration’s loss of the personal data of thousands of its employees is only the most recent example of the privacy problems plaguing the Department. The bill withholds funding for certain DHS programs until the proper privacy protections are in place because security and privacy can and should go hand in hand.

In conclusion, let me mention a few other provisions, Mr. Chairman. First, the bill includes language mandating that stricter State and local chemical security laws and regulations cannot be preempted by the Federal Government. Secondly, the bill mandates that all grant and contract funds comply with Davis-Bacon prevailing wage requirements. Thirdly, the $101 million in the bill for the new DHS campus facility at St. Elizabeth’s will not be available until the Department submits an explosive detection equipment spending plan and promulgates long overdue regulations on U-Visas for victims of domestic violence, rape, and involuntary servitude.

This withholding of funds should not be interpreted as a signal of lukewarm support for the development of the St. Elizabeth’s campus. On the contrary, the Department and the country would be better served by colocating most of its headquarters components onto this single campus. This is simply our way of signaling that any further delay on an explosive detection plan or on the overdue U-Visa rule is completely unacceptable.

By Rep. Harold “Hal” Rogers (R-KY)
Congressional Record
June 12, 2007 (H6269-H6270)

[DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008] includes a bold mandate for ICE to contact every correctional facility in the country, over 5,000 of them, at least once a month to identify incarcerated aliens and initiate deportation proceedings against them. That is a laudable goal, and I support the policy and the goal. But, Mr. Chairman, it is going to be very, very difficult to do mechanically and it is unfunded.

We are going to be asking the States and localities to pay, assumedly, for the review of who is in their jails.

Number two, they don’t have the authority nor the capability to determine whether or not Joe Blow in cell 18 is an undocumented alien or not. It’s not their job, and they don’t have the capability to do that. So I don’t know what will be the result of this mandate. It is unfunded, and it is going to be very difficult to put in practice. The Department already surveys routinely the most probable jails where the most probable criminal aliens are being held anyway.

Despite the requirement for ICE to report on the resources needed to carry out this unfunded mandate, I am concerned that the bill presupposes ICE can simply transfer or reprioritize monies from other sources within their budget, for example, the fugitive apprehension program. They are out there trying to catch the criminals on the streets that are loose. It seems to me they are a bigger danger than those incarcerated in the jails.

These enforcement activities involve many duties, duties that include tracking down at-large criminals, investigating smuggling networks, preventing child pornography, preventing the exploit of sensitive national security technology, and taking down employers who are exploiting illegal immigrants to the point of abuse.

From which of these critical missions should ICE take monies in order to comb the Nation’s jails and correctional facilities, most of which never have any criminal aliens in them anyway? So to suggest that ICE should refocus its resources almost exclusively on jailed illegal aliens at the expense of trying to catch fugitives on the street who are raping and plundering seems to me as short-sighted as it is potentially very dangerous.

There must be a balance among ICE’s many critical missions. And I am concerned this bill falls short in that regard. I am hopeful the Chairman will work with me and others to develop a more realistic implementation of this policy as we move forward.

I have other concerns as well. Any immigration policy starts out with securing the border. If we can’t control who crosses our Nation’s borders, all other possible immigration initiatives will fail. To address this critical issue, Congress has authorized and appropriated for substantial infrastructure on the southwest border. But the bill contains a number of onerous restrictions on funding for fencing and other tactical infrastructure along our borders until the Department performs certain actions.

At first glance, these individual fencing and tactical infrastructure requirements appear to be based upon sound policy. However, added together, they are a series of obstacles that can potentially impede installation of critical border security systems. I fear that securing the border will be greatly deterred.

---

By Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA)
Congres
sion
al Record
June 12, 2007 (H6272)

One of the things Mr. Rogers mentioned that I would like to just disagree with, all of our local law enforcement say that the biggest problem they are having is they arrest people who don’t have papers and then they release them because nobody from INS will come around and check it out. Everybody on the committee was concerned about the fact that there wasn’t enough effort put into what they call “jail checks,” and this committee bill addresses that.

email from Jay Johnson-Castro

Just got this. I’m repulsed.

Rather than heed the voice of the people…the Raymondville concentration camp will be expanded…by 50%. 1,000 More beds.

1,000 more beds? Hell! One thousand more refugees and immigrants every day. None of which have ever been charged with a crime. $5000 of our tax money will be paid per month per immigrant to “for-profit” MTC and $2.25 per person per day…time 3000…to Willacy County due to political corruption. The people commiting this crime against humanity are the real criminals…the real “illegals”.

Please feel free to share this with your respective groups…

In solidarity…

Jay

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

ICE plans for expansion

Allen Essex (Valley Morning Star)

July 12, 2007 – 10:14PM

RAYMONDVILLE — Willacy County officials have taken preliminary steps to build a 1,000-bed expansion to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center.

Planning for three permanent buildings is in the works, rather than additional Kevlar dome tent-type structures that are used now, Willacy County Sheriff Larry Spence said.

“They’ve been having meetings with Homeland Security and ICE,” said Spence.

“They’re wanting to expand. They’re waiting (for federal approval). At least they’re laying the groundwork for it.”

District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra said county commissioners violated the Texas Open Government Act this week by discussing the detention center in closed session and then voting for it afterward without discussion.

Guerra said Thursday that commissioners illegally approved the “$40 million project.”

In a letter to Gov. Rick Perry last month, County Judge Eliseo Barnhart said commissioners have had to hire outside attorneys to advise them because Guerra hasn’t attended a county meeting for months.

Spence said Guerra did attend part of Monday’s meeting, but said Guerra, the district and county attorney, has rarely attended county meetings in the past several months.

Commissioner Eddie Chapa would only confirm that an “economic development” item was passed Monday after discussion in closed session.

That item was listed as No. 5 on Monday’s Commissioners Court agenda:

“EXECUTIVE SESSION as authorized by Texas Government Code Section 551.087, discussion and consideration of an Economical Development Project and approving an amendment to the agreement between Willacy County, U.S. Homeland Security, and Immigration Customs Enforcement Contract No. DROIGSA-06-0031HSCEOPTG00004 and authorize the County Judge to execute the agreement.”

Meeting minutes provided by County Clerk Terry Flores show that Chapa made the motion to approve the agreement, which was seconded by County Judge Pro Tem Emilio Vera.

Commissioner Aurelio Guerra abstained from voting. Barnhart was absent.

Neither Barnhart or Vera could be reached for comment.

When the first phase of the federal detention enter opened in August 2006, federal officials said it was designed to hold 500 illegal immigrants.

Carl Stuart, spokesman for Management and Training Corp., the company that operates the Willacy detention center under a contract with ICE, said he could not comment on future plans at the center without clearance from federal officials.

ICE spokeswoman Nina Pruneda in San Antonio said media inquries about the project have been forwarded to officials in Washington.