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Email from Jay Johnson-Castro

Day before yesterday…when the media toured Hutto … I was wrapping up a Border Caravan journey from San Diego , CA to Brownsville , TX . On every stop … before the media and the interested groups and political leaders … I spoke about all the innocent children and their moms in Hutto and the Ibrahim and Suleiman families. Folks rejoiced with me as we heard about the successful release of the entire Ibrahim family. Folks are outraged about the deportation of the Suleiman family. I can assure you the groundswell of opposition to this tyrannical rule by greedy fascism is growing faster than yeast can raise bread dough!
Later on today…I will send you pictures of something far more morbid than Hutto. I beg that you share this as I shared the plight of the Ibrahims and the Suleiman. Mass graves…fresh ones…on American soil … !!! Graves of desperate immigrants who died … one way or the other … on their quest for the American dream. If none of those here are not already on my e-mail list … let me know if you want those pictures.

Attached is a sample. If you use your power of reason and find yourself asking questions … basic questions … about what your mind sees in this picture … I hope you’ll help me crack this case wide open. I want to know about everyone that is supposed buried in this trench. How many men, women, children. Who pays to do this, who gets paid…and how much. Who did the autopsies…and how did these people die. Use your photo program and zoom in on this picture. Let your mind go beyond the superficial. And … why were so many buried at the same time … like the day before we were there. Ours are the first foot prints on this soil!

The truth must and will be told to the American public about these mass graves …. just as we successfully got the truth about Hutto and the Palestinian families out to the media … and we forced ICE to capitulate. We will do it again … and again … and again! Until … we break the back of this tyranny.

Also … PLEASE join us in Taylor tomorrow for Vigil V. There are hundreds of children more that need to be freed … just as the Ibrahim children are now free. We need treat this as a fire in the old days … with a bucket brigade of folks who want to save lives. We cannot simply do nothing. We must do all we can NOW to free the children. One more day of living in a cell … is one day too long.

Tu amigo…

Jay

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

The Border Ambassador

Connecting.the.dots…making.a.difference…

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Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr.

Del Rio , Texas , USA
Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila , Mexico

Jay renumbers Monday’s upcoming vigil to five, in consideration of those who protested during the Hutto media tour Friday.–gm

By Greg Moses

OpEdNews

“This is pathetically sickening. This is outrageously sickening. What is the government trying to accomplish by terrorizing people who want to be Americans?”

That’s how Jay Johnson-Castro responded by telephone to the front-page story in Saturday’s Los Angeles Times about the T. Don Hutto prison at Taylor, Texas.

He was specifically talking about news that a 9-year-old girl and her father were abducted from their home in Phoenix during a raid similar to the operation that imprisoned three Palestinian families in Texas. The father from Phoenix is married to an American citizen and had on the previous day stopped by an immigration office to see how he could fix his lapsed status.
“The fact that someone is in this country illegally doesn’t mean they have broken a law,” says Ralph Isenberg by telephone from Dallas.

“A person who is told one day that they have status and another day that they don’t is not a person who has broken the law,” says Isenberg. “It’s not the same as murder.”

“The Ibrahim family were told they were in the country illegally, but they were trying to appeal their status. Once that appeal was considered, instantly the family went from being unlawful to lawful,” says Isenberg.

“The same thing may happen with the Hazahza family very soon. We have asked Joshua Bardavid and Ted Cox to prepare their writ of habeas corpus,” says Isenberg. ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] should release the Hazahzas or shut down their prisons altogether, which would be just as good.”

Further South, Johnson-Castro’s voice crosses the border as he drives across an international bridge into Reynosa, Mexico.

He agrees that the public voice began to speak with the November elections, and he thinks that hard-right border policies had something to do with it.

In weeks leading up the November elections, Johnson-Castro started a campaign of conscience against a proposed border wall. Last week, when he returned to the Rio Grande Valley with activists from other border states, he found media and mayors eager to carry a message of border compassion.

If proponents of hard-line immigration policy think they are going to win with fear and prejudice, they need to think again.

“We have taken their trump card,” says Johnson-Castro. “And we have torn it up!”

Driving through Reynosa, Mexico, Johnson-Castro talks over the cell phone about the social and economic landscape.

“I have documentation that people here are getting paid eight to ten dollars a day for 9.6 hours of work, six days a week,” says Johnson-Castro

“Often they are not given their bonuses. If the factory they are working for changes hands, they lose all their seniority and have to start all over again from scratch,” he says.

“There are toxic waste dumps near these factories, and many of the workers are single moms,” he adds.

“Then when they want to cross the line to work for minimum wage, they are treated like criminals by the same powers who are exploiting them in their country back home.” Many of these Reynosa factories are American owned and pay dividends to American pensioners and other stock holders.

“We now have labor camps that are American owned a couple of minutes from the USA, we have prison camps for profit from the USA. We have plans to build a Berlin wall on USA soil–for profit!

“Prsident Bush is going to totally militarize the Texas-Mexican border, doubling troops and equipment for profit.

“Now we have secret cemeteries where people are buried who die along the border. We don’t know who they are, yet they are buried for profit.

“Where have we seen all this before? Let’s learn form the Germans and tear it all down before it’s built.”

On Monday evening at 5:30 Johnson-Castro will resume a series of nonviolent vigils outside the Hutto prison camp.

“People with true American spirit who recognize they are immigrants or descendants of immigrants will stand up to these imperialistic, nationalistic, supremacistic, and racist tactics,” says Johnson-Castro. “And I think it will happen fast.”

Indeed the placement and tone of news stories about the Hutto prison are evidence that a certain line has been crossed among news audiences across the country.

Back in Dallas, Ralph Isenberg reflects on his long-standing battles with ICE and the way he has been treated by business partners and friends.

“Not one has complained about my cause this time,” says Isenberg. “My business partners and friends are saying, ‘go do what you need to do; this is wrong.’ “

"She stands up and waves,
As a flower she poses
but she is never still,
knows no rest.
Her heart is always in flight.
With her hand she makes signs,
with her eyes she beckons.
She moves her eyes in an arch,
she smiles, goes about laughing and
loving passionately,
shows her charm and love.

Tezcatlipoca

By Ramsey Muñiz

I am man and Mexicano enough to share my writing of this most spiritual letter as tears cover my Mexika face. They are tears of sadness and unbelievable pain as I heard the evening news that Corettta Scott King had just died. Yes, she died physically but has risen spiritually once again for all the oppressed and confined humans in America. How can I forget my meeting Coretta Scott King in Dallas during a march against the brutal attacks against Blacks and others by the police? Her face glowed of spirituality, and I could feel the love and power in her heart from the Reverend Martin Luther King, her husband, is presently awaiting her arrival this very second as I share this letter.

The Reverend Ralph Abernathy was also one of the main speakers at this event for freedom and respect as human beings in this country. Coretta King’s rebirth as an archangel of liberation and justice will be even greater now because she left a legend of strength, courage, patience, compassion, and love — not only for mankind, but for women of all races in the 21st century. I continue to advocate and predict that the 21st century will be led in the world by women of all races and countries. This is not only because of their intelligence and consciousness for humanity, but for the power of life and spirituality as they give life to this world of ours.

Personally, I will be fasting for the next three days, praying and seeking the enlightenment of the Reverend Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King into my heart.

I will never forget when I finished speaking on behalf of nuestra raza. She came to me and spoke these words I shall treasure forever saying, "Son, do not ever give up the struggle for justice of all people."

Here I am in the dungeons of this oppressor and regardless of how dark or cold it becomes, I will never give up the struggle for justice and freedom of all oppressed people. In Topan (heavens) there are many liberators of humanity who this very night are providing the energy, strength, spirituality, and power in our hearts and minds in order that we who find ourselves in the battle against oppression, discrimination, and confinement can be able to carry out the destiny that in reality was part of our lives since the time of our birth.

I love and have been loved. Everywhere in the heavens a woman’s soul of liberation and justice has come to bless and sweeten my exhausted life in this mode of cruel darkness. I pray tonight to Coretta Scott King that when she enters into my world here in this unjust darkness, I want only to show her something I have seen and to tell her something I have heard…that here in these oppressed dungeons and there in the world and now and then in ourselves, there is a new creation! It is a new creation of those who are seeking freedom, seeking the truth of spirituality, the practice of spirituality, and the embrace of spirituality once and for all.

It is a very sad night indeed, but at the same time I feel a certain light of happiness knowing that Mrs. Coretta Scott King, her husband, and all liberators are clearing the path of injustice, and providing for us the positive energy of not ever giving up this struggle, regardless of the chains and shackles bounding our bodies. Regardless of how we are unable to touch the hands and hearts of those we love so dearly, regardless of how some of us are indefinitely imprisoned for a crime never committed against mankind, she will be with us forever and her spiritual rebirth will become part of our cultural consciousness and awareness. Que viva Tonantzin! Que viva Coretta Scott King! Que vivan las mujeres de este mundo!

In exile,
Tezcatlipoca
*****************
http://www.freeramsey.com

Message dated 1/31/06; received via email from Irma L. Muñiz Feb. 11, 2005.–gm

We got the tip from Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr., who writes, We’ve wondered where the next Hutto would be.”

Apparently there is federal contract up for bid to build a new detention center for immigrant women and children. And an “undisclosed” company would like to put the project outside Las Cruces, NM.

Here’s a link to the story by Todd G. Dickson posted at the Las Cruces Bulletin.