04.13.07
Who Is And Is Not Being Locked Up At T. Don Hutto
Yesterday the AusChron had an article about T. Don Hutto, Refugees Remain in Taylor Prison. The paragraph on the ACLU lawsuit I will excerpt here but pay special attention to the highlighted part at the bottom:
On March 6, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit against the Department of Homeland Security and its secretary, Michael Chertoff, calling the Hutto facility in violation of Flores v. Meese, a 1997 settlement that established a minimum of standards for the care of minors in federal immigration custody. The suit is filed on behalf of 10 kids who were incarcerated at Hutto; six have since been released with their families: Kevin Yourdkhani, Richard Carbajal, Angelina Carbajal, Aisha Ibrahim, Mohammed Ibrahim, and Bahja Ibrahim. Deka Warsame, mother of the Ibrahim children, must wear a tracking device until her immigration status is determined, “further confirmation that alternatives to detention are viable,” says Amy Everhart-Davis, communications director of the ACLU of Texas. “And [it] poses the question of why such alternatives are not employed in the first place.” Congress has stipulated that the detention of kids should only occur after all other alternatives have been exhausted. Furthermore, as Michelle Brané, the director of the WCRWC’s Detention and Asylum Program, pointed out in testimony before Congress less than a month ago, immigration violations are civil offenses, not criminal ones. Yet DHS arrests more than 1.6 million undocumented people each year in this country, of whom more than 230,000 are detained.
The reason that part is highlighted is because many, many people have the false impression that these are “illegal immigrants” that are imprisoned at TDH. These are people who came here from another country seeking asylum. They’re looking for freedom, have done nothing wring, and are sent to prison immediately. These are not the people that are coming here “stealing our jobs”. But the two comments to this article which will be posted below the fold, show that false impression being dispelled:
Re: “Deported Immigrants’ Kids Face Dilemmaâ€
It is a tragedy that these illegal aliens place their children’s in this situation, but we need to enforce the laws
Any one that said that no matter how we feel about immigration reform, leaving children abandoned and violating a person’s constitutional rights is wrong.
I ask the ACLU, how do we suppose to enforce the laws, should we turn loose all the criminals because they have children?. I never see the ACLU leaders being concern for Americans that are send to jail such as Ramos and Compean.
God forgive them for being selective as to how the law should be applied, mercy for the criminals and jail for the ones that are enforcing the law.
Juan Reynoso
Juan Reynoso’s comment by guest
Mr. Reynoso,
Could you please explain your multiple references to “criminals”? The vast majority of people at the Hutto facility have never been accused or convicted of any crime. Many of them arrived at the border or at an airport and turned themselves in to immigration authorities to request protection from political persecution and torture back home. You say it is a tragedy that they placed their children in this situation, but do you really think it would have been better for them to leave their three-year-olds in the very country that they just fled?
Political prisoners, refugees! You know “.. your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..” These are not the people that so many are lambasting as “illegal immigrants”. These are people coming here fleeing tyranny.
I would recommend everyone go watch the press conference from yesterday that kicked off the latest Hutto Walk and Vigil to the family lock-up in Taylor. They are demancing for the facility to be closed. They are also asking for Rep. Swinford, chair of the State Affairs Committee, to allow a public hearing in his committee on the resolution Rep. Eddie Rodriguez filed (HCR 64) to stop the incarceration of families and children who have committed no crime. During the press conference they also highlighted the fact that this is being done by corporations (Which include CCA, Wackenhut and KBR), who are making this profit from the us, the US taxpayer.
This is un-American and must be stopped.