Letters to the Editor
-
They're NOT illegals?
"Before ICE opened the Hutto facility, alien families caught illegally crossing the border were often released with “Notices to Appear” before federal immigration judges. However, they rarely appeared for these hearings. This “catch and release” policy created a border vulnerability that alien smugglers sought to exploit by bringing children across the border along with groups of smuggled strangers, attempting to pass the groups off as family units. By bringing the children, the smugglers hoped to avoid detention if captured. "
Yes, they are...
-
Dear anonymous
Please cite your sources and provide links.
It helps keep a discussion moving in a reasonable, civil way.
Better yet -- please go to the ACLU page on Hutto and educate yourself on the facts.
http://www.aclu.org/immigrants/detention/hutto.html
There are links to profiles of the children.
You might be surprised by what you learn.
Also -- are you aware that your tax dollars are funding this scam to line the pockets of CCA and politicians?
It costs seven thousand dollars a month to lock up each kid. To contrast, putting an ankle bracelet for electronic monitoring on the parent would cost $660 a month.
Electronic monitoring is suitable for accused rapists and murderers... I'm sure folks seeking political asylum are much less dangerous to society.
Again -- these women and children are not "illegal."
-
What's next? Toddlers on chain gangs?
I live in Williamson County where this prison is located. I have been at the vigils. There are some exaggerations in your story, but the general tone of the situation is correctly reported. The major problem in this abuse of authority is not that those inside are abused or mistreated, as serious as that is. The affront to all of us and our system of jurisprudence is that children are being imprisoned. Just the bald fact of toddlers and children being held in prison in America is an outrage. Our system of government is based on the fact that to be a criminal you have to have knowingly broken the law and we acknowledge that children and babies are not capable therefore of criminal acts. These children are innocent of wrongdoing, but we lock them up anyway. On what grounds? If an American child is so naughty as to take his parents car for a job ride and ends up destroying the neighbors' property, he is not handcuffed and frog marched off to jail. We don't incarcerate children in America. Why are they behind bars?
-
re: We don't incarcerate children in America. Why are they behind bars?
because their parents are morons who dragged them into an illegal situation - what is the US to do - let the kids free by themselves?
-
Bush, Where is your compassion?
The compassionate conservative government of Bush and company is anything but. The children in the facility must be let out. Their parents, who are seeking political asylum, should be dealt with promptly. Denying the UN representative a visit is reprehensible.
-
Dear anonymous...
Again, the parents are seeking political asylum.
They are not "illegal."
No one in the cells at T. Don Hutto is charged with a crime.
What should we do with the children?
Many children become wards of the state. There are minimum standards of care for these children. Hutto violates them all.
Even children who murder are not kept in cells unless they are tried as adults and convicted. Young children are not capable of forming the mens rea required to be guilty. Jailing children is illegal and immoral.
The ACLU case has been called a "slam dunk" by the judge.
Think about it.
There are many alternatives for taking care of these children -- many of whom are US citizens.
Foster care, group homes, placement with relatives in the United States.
However, CCA and the powers that be don't want to free these kids. They're each worth SEVEN thousand dollars a month to CCA which makes large political contributions to politicians at all levels of government.
Why free the children when there is so much money to be made keeping them locked down?
Learn more of the truth at www.myspace.com/FREE_THE_CHILDREN
Kudos to previous poster AKA Smith who took the time to learn about the standard of care as laid out in Flores:
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."
Again, you anonymous types ought to learn about the issue before posting disinformation.
-
LT Bohica
I did say that, after I did a search, but in the interests of being perfectly honest the words I typed into google were
Hutto
illegal immigrants
All kinds of stuff came up.
We can play certain games about how we define terms, but I suspect that we would find after searching some more that people who enter the U.S. without benefit of passport or visa are committing an illegal act. Are you saying that once they apply for asylum that their status then changes?
In the little research that I have done, it seems that children in these circumstances were, in the past, sometimes housed with foster families. Then there was a lawsuit about the fact that they were being separated from their families even though nothing proved that these were not good parents.
But where to put them? The LA Times said that the problem was that their parents, if not detained, often disappeared with the children into the great mainstream of undocumented workers and never appeared for court dates. This so-called catch and release program became unpopular with certain right wing elements of Mr. Bush's own party and he became acutely aware of it right before the mid-term elections last year. To appease that element several high visibility busts of undocumented workers occurred, which the anti-immigrant (sometimes racist) bunch applauded, but not sufficiently to overcome the rest of the voters distaste for the war and for people like Abramoff and Mark Foley.
We all know what happened in the mid-term election. The democrats regained control of the legislative branch.
Still, "they" had gathered all these people up and what were they to do with them? They could not let them go after they had decided not to use catch and release anymore. If they housed the children separately from their parents with no just cause, they were in violation.
So now Hutto is no longer labeled a prison. Of course, it is still a prison and the question becomes: Why do we have children -- some of whom are probably legal U.S. citizens in prison -- without any charge? These children did not violate the law, did they?
We can make this a debate about illegal immigration and undocumented workers, or we can acknowledge that, whatever side of the immigration debate you are on, (1) housing (imprisoning) children in this manner is appalling and a form of child abuse and (2) you can't really imprison U.S. citizens no matter what their age without a due process that bears some resembalance to the Rule of Law.
If I am wrong about any particular, please correct me. However, having this discussion become merely a debate over the term "illegal" does not help these children. Keeping this debate specifically about the children, helps the children.