Letters to the Editor
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If anything Rowyna is understating the case
Australia's treatment of refugees is truly appalling. We have innocent children who have been in detention all their lives, kids attempting suicide, parents sewing their own mouths shut in despair.
The irony is many of these refugees were fleeing Saddam Hussein's Iraq, but apparently Iraq was not an oppressive nation then.
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Beyond words
This is one of the most shocking and deplorable scandals I have ever read about. To even contemplate such a situation as this exists in this country is beyond comprehension.
I pray it isn't so. I fear it may be. My disgust is beyond words.
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Where is Child Protective Services on this?
At the least, some of these children are legal United States citizens even if their parents are not. How can you detain United States citizen any proper legal oversight? If they were adults, they would not spend a moment in that place.
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Correct me if I'm wrong
I did a quick search to get a better understanding. It seems that the Hutto facility is in violation of something called the Flores Settlement (1996) that says children must have the following when they are in care of a "facility" in these circumstances:
1. There has to be "residential, group, or foster care services for dependent children."
2. It cannot be a prison. They use the words "non-secure as required by State law."
3. It must comply with reasonable standards of "medical care, education, supervision, and nutritition."
But the State of Texas did an end run around that by exempting the facility from state oversight. With good reason. It is apparently quite a mess. For instance, the teachers there are not necessarily certified. It is clearly a secure facility. There are bars and people are locked in. I call that "secure" -- as in prison.
So the State of Texas is apparently trying to avoid any responsibility for the Department of Homeland Security's new policy. (But they will take the money.)
Poor children.
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Kiddie prisons and an absence of outrage
Where is our rage? Where are the people who can see what the government is doing to take our rights but do nothing? They just say "tsk, tsk." Can we make them really mad? Can we begin a ground swell of public outcry against this immoral confinement FOR PROFIT? What is the government/Hutto afraid of that it can't allow a UN inspector inside? Doesn't that tell us conditions must be at least as bad as reported?
We need a public outcry for many, many things foisted upon us by this administration. The incredible thing is WE HAVE JUST SAT HERE AND LET THEM. They have abused every part of our Constitution and our Bill of Rights. They have done it boldly but gradually so we wouldn't get riled up all at once. LOOK BACK 6 YEARS AND SEE WHAT WE'VE LOST since that more naive and innocent time. It simply is mind boggling.
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Been like this for a while.
This used to happen all over the country.
I worked at a youth detention center in Montana for several years. INS would bring in kids for immigration issues, and we would book them like our other kids. They got strip searched and put into 8x8' cells with 300-pound steel doors and a security light that never turns off (so we could check them at night). These kids often spoke little English, and few of the staff had even a basic knowledge of Spanish, usually making the whole process even more awkward than usual. In a facility where the other youths had to be charged with either misdemeanors or felonies, the INS kids were simply here for not having the proper paperwork.
Our administrator made a point to let us know that the feds paid our facility more money than state and county agencies, and so we were to never turn them down if we had room.
The worst situation I remember involved a girl who kept crying in her cell for hours, stopping only to beg: "Ayudame! Ayudame!" My simple Spanish ability stood no chance against her panicky, rapid-fire questions. She had no clue what was going on, and none of us could articulate it well enough for her to understand.
Now that INS has become a part of ICE, the youth detention facilities in Montana no longer hold these kids unless they have committed crimes. It's sad to know that they're simply in a new location with all the same problems.
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The for-profit prison industry vs. common decency
In the face of a scheduled site visit, Michael Chertoff has put Hutto off limits to the U.N. Human Rights investigator. More information about this hell hole can be found at the website for the Private Corrections Institute. Go to "T. Don Hutto Correctional Center" in the "Texas Hall of Shame: http://www.privateci.org/texas.htm CCA's troubles for the past year at Don Hutto have been well publicized.
The treatment of immigrant families rivals the Japanese internment in WW II. History repeated itself as one old internment camp for Latin American ethnic Japanese in Crystal City Texas, in fact, was turned into a for-profit prison. It was welcomed as "economic development" by a town beyond embarrassment.
CCA has had a 24-year history of gruesome treatment of prisoners including the recent beating death of a woman by four guards in Tennessee. In just a five month period in 2004, the corporation experienced four major riots in four states. Its Youngstown Ohio prison was closed for years after murders and escapes fueled statewide horror and resistance to continued operation. Its friends in the Bush Administration overlook multi-million dollar overcharges. Bush has revived the stock prices of CCA and its industry that was headed for the toilet on 9/11, filling its hugely expensive prisons with countless maids, gardeners and busboys as well as refugees from the NAFTA disaster.
In a startling example of the prison-industrial complex, CCA's vice-president for Corrections is a former Bureau of Prisons Deputy Director and a Congressman sat on its Board of Directors.
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FREE THE CHILDREN!
Corporate prisons are profiting on human misery and are driving how America views crime and the law. ICE will become their greatest "customer" as contracts are handed down to all these fascists. Profiting on human misery - especially on the reprehensible detention of children - is a new breed of greed. The UN inspector should be given access to anyone in this facility and should castigate the State, sanction the US government and shut down Hutto and all other such facilities. Ten years ago the writing was on the wall: privatization of public correction could only lead us one way - down to the darkest chambers of our collective soul. We have arrived.
ABOLISH PRIVATE PRISONS! ABOLISH ICE! FREE THE CHILDREN!