Letters to the Editor
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The Wisdom of AKA Smith
Sorry if you misinterpreted my responses to all of the anonymous trolls who seemed fixated on "illegal."
In their comments, they seem to want to slap the "illegal" label on the immigrants in Hutto because the term has been demonized by various organizations/mouthpieces.
The argument being -- they deserve to be locked up and abused, because they are "illegal" or the children of "illegals."
That is the sort of logic that ignorant folk use to justify prison rape.
I could care less if these children are illegal, legal, purple or pink.
A jail cell is not the appropriate place for any child to grow up and their being held at Hutto is not lawful.
Ultimately, I think Hutto is a scam for funneling tax dollars to a corporation which in turn makes large donations to the election funds of politicians.
How much lower will our leaders go?
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Thank you for clarifying that LT Bohica
Our feelings are quite similar.
It is unfortunate that our "leaders" are so clueless in their planning. The Bush gang seems to have some sort of problem anticipating outcomes.
Someone asked should the children be released with their parents. Tricky question.
I would say that since the government is not harboring hardened and dangerous criminals that they should indeed release these children with their parents if they cannot find a near immediate and viable solution that gives these children the decent legal consideration they deserve.
That solution would not please everyone. There is no solution that will please everyone. However, while we await funding and more bright ideas from the Homeland Security Administration, we should err on the side of the children.
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Fragile Asylum Seekers--Do they deserve prison?
Many thanks to Bohica and AKA Smith for their most informative posts.
Apparently it boils down to the administration having all these asylum seekers on their hands and then having to do something with them. Lock them up and pay mega bucks to private prisons was the response. This is not surprising. The closer you look the worse it gets.
AKA Smith’s question regarding asylum seekers as having “illegal” status no matter what, caused me to research this topic. I found extremely interesting information at Amnesty International—did ICE intentionally fudge the numbers? Alternatives are clearly spelled out and have been road tested. Why weren’t any of these low cost options pursued before we went directly to the plan of last resort and the most expensive course of action? Visit http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?id=296 for an eye opening read.
Is our government run by mean spirited incompetents or are they exploiting the most fragile among us for corporate gain, or both? Whichever way, it has to stop.
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Today's Concentration Camps
Thank you for talking about this. It's a tragedy that this isn't receiving more MSM attention. Then again, it is about Mexican children.
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Something smells fishy.
I looked into this site:
http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/factsheets/huttodetentionfac.htm
The claim is: The ICE T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility: maintaining family unity, enforcing immigration laws—and I don’t believe it. Citizens must question our government’s action with its many inconsistencies and contradictions.
The propaganda portraying Don Hutto Family Residential Facility only serves to reinforce my observations of the current government as it tears our country apart. While we should embrace our neighbors, our government is using divide and conquer tactics. While we should be working together to make substantial improvements to our infrastructure, education, food industry, and health systems, our government is squandering material, economic, and human resources, all the while destroying ethnic cultures and our environment. How is it that our government has justified taking this course of action against our neighbors, herding them up and shipping them out?
Check out this article by Elizabeth de la Vega, t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor (While this excerpt and direct response to the Alberto Gonzales hearings does not explain the justification for harassing immigrants, it provides an example how decisions are made without the responsible due process of lawmaking in the current Bush Administration)
Sunday 22 April 2007
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042207A.shtml
Elizabeth de la Vega:
“Utah's Sen. Orrin Hatch had apparently been clued in on the talking points. From time to time, he would lob questions to the
attorney general along the lines of "Do the US attorneys actually
handle the public corruption cases themselves?" The well-coached and
grateful Gonzales would then explain that, no, the work in the US
attorneys' offices is done by the career prosecutors, who will keep
doing their cases no matter who the US attorney is. Indeed, Gonzales
offered plaintively, the Office of the Attorney General didn't really
even know "that much" about what was going on in the US attorneys'
offices.
As one who worked as an assistant US attorney from 1983 through
2004 - in two districts, under four presidents and roughly ten
different US attorneys - I can say that virtually every clause, and
certainly the overall implication, of Gonzales's claim is false.
It is not true, for starters, that the AG's Office does not know
"that much" about what is going on in individual districts. US
attorneys' offices have traditionally had to submit to Washington a
frustratingly large number of reports, but the Bush administration has
tripled those requirements, mandating weekly, monthly, yearly and
sometimes even daily reports about every conceivable category of
prosecution. Assistant US attorneys must now obtain prior approval
from DOJ for indictments, plea agreements and sentencing
recommendations in an unprecedented variety of cases. In some instances - the cases that arose out of the pre-Christmas 2006 mass
arrests of illegal aliens, for example - the Bush administration
Justice Department simply mandates exactly what the charges, plea
agreement and sentence must be.”
(Elizabeth de la Vega, a former federal prosecutor with over 20 years' experience, was a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and Chief of the San Jose Branch of the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California)
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Prisons For Profit
Americans are good and trusting people. Unfortunatley, we are trusting the current administration too much. Americans would not approve of facilities such as the T. Don Hutto "concentration camp" in Tyler, Texas if they knew.
The Hutto Prison is only one of many such facilities which we will be seeing on American soil run by the Halliburton subsidiary, CCA. The other Halliburton subsidiary, KBR, has the government $385 million dollar contract to build or renovate facilities to "protect" Americans or to detain Americans. Their primary use is to detain undocumented aliens rather than send them to their home countries. The CCA subsidiary of Halliburton will be charging on a per person basis. Everyone will have a price on their heads.
Homeland Security, FEMA and Halliburton are working hand in hand to the enrichment of Halliburton.