Cramming for Justice
March 6th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
At least a dozen TV cameras and their operators, several print reporters, a couple still photographers, two soft boxes, a conference table, half a dozen microphones, at least three lawyers, some ACLU staffers, and five or six of the unfortunate asylum-seekers who had to suffer through de facto imprisonment at the T. Don Hutto Family Detention Center all packed into a room no larger than the average executive’s office this morning. The press conference in this little room announced lawsuits with big ambitions.
Filed in federal district court in Austin on behalf of 10 children at the Hutto center in Central Texas, the suits name as defendants Michael Chertoff, Dept. of Homeland Security chief, and five other DHS officials. The goal, said Vanita Gupta, a staff attorney with ACLU’s Racial Justice Program and one of the lead lawyers in the Tulia case, is nothing less than Congressional hearings and the closure of the Hutto center, and of course better treatment for immigrant children who came here hoping for a better life.
Throughout the press conference there was an emphasis that the suits do not aim to curb Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s power to uphold the law, but that there are more humane, cost-effective measures than putting families into a converted prison and treating them like convicted felons. “There are other reasonable alternatives” to detention, said Barbara Hines, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the UT School of Law. One of those, a pilot program known as Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, is described on ICE’s website.
Given that the courts have ordered ICE to place children in its custody in the least restrictive setting available, it’s a disturbing side note that the ACLU hasn’t been able to get a straight answer on why the Hutto facility — which is run by Corrections Corp. of America (actual slogan: “Prison Privatization At It’s Best” [sic]), a for-profit company that bills ICE $3 million a month to run the joint — was ever created in the first place.
