Suffer the Little Children
October 19th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Is there a war on children in this country? When we’re not denying them health insurance or leaving them to wallow in feces, we’re telling them that they have to suffer the sins of their parents - in prison.
Eye on Williamson County turned us onto a video of Williamson County Commissioner Cynthia Long explaining last week why she’s not overly concerned about the morality of the for-profit T. Don Hutto family detention center in Taylor. Long thinks the immigrant families, babies and pregnant women included, at Hutto got it good.
“The conditions at the facility are light years better than what many of these people have come from,” Long said to an audience packed mostly with employees of prison operator Corrections Corporation of America. One guy unironically held a sign that read “T. Don Hutto is the American Way.”In fact, the conditions have improved recently. But that’s only because the ACLU and the UT Immigration Law Clinic successfully sued the government and people raised hell. Before, conditions stunk.
But do go on, Ms. Long: “The thing we forget is the adults that are being detained have broken the law, and unfortunately as children sometimes we have to suffer with the sins of our parents,” Long continued, digging her hole deeper. “Those children are probably not there by choice. But their parents have made a choice for their family, and they have to deal, they have to be — or suffer, if you can call it that, because of their parents’ choices. But I think the worst choice would be to take that child away from their parents and put them to a situation that would be even worse.”
Is this what Republicans mean when they talk about family values? Is this what Williamson County means when it talks about “gittin’ tuff on crime”? Where are we going and why are we in this handbasket?
Long says the kids “probably” didn’t choose to be at Hutto. They might have, though. One day they woke up and said, “Mommy, let’s go to America so we can be in jail at the T. Don Hutto detention center. Please, mommy, please.”
Aside from being asinine and fairly calloused, Long doesn’t really have her facts straight. The immigrant detainees at Hutto haven’t in fact broken any criminal law. At worst, they have violated civil immigration code. And many of them are asylum-seekers, including Chaldeans fleeing persecution and war in Iraq. If these families are sinners, as Long would have it, then blessed be the sinners. We should be grateful such brave people come to America.
October 19th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Thank you so much for speaking out on behalf of these children and this issue. As a Williamson County resident I am appalled that my elected officials are engaged in this shameful facility, and enraged that they attempt to justify it in terms of family values.
October 19th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Great article…
You nailed it!!!
The problem here is indeed callous. Add to that the total lack of consciene. Add to that $$$ (and a little payola).
The problem here is that Williamson County Commissioners represent the America that we are being sucked into. The corporatized America that can get elected officials all the way to the White House to funnel our money into their corporate accounts. Iraq, Halliburton, Katrina, Fema, Blackwater.
When a child is imprisoned in Hutto at the tune of $7000 per month (now $10,000 per month) to be in a cold 8×12 cell with mama…that amounts to $14,000/mo. that the private company sucks from other needs…like health, education, infrastructure, ect. The Ibrahim mom, with her 4 kids were in three cells for 23 hours a day in Hutto…at the tune of $35,000 a month.
All the while, aside from Somolia, the US is the only country that has not ratified the International Rights of the Child (1989), and act that Congress passed in 1990, but George H.W. refused to sign. So now George W.cashes in on with his cronies, like John Carter who received $5000 from CCA. Perry got $10,000. Tom DeLay got $100,000. (Sorry. His wife got it).
Currently, there are about 280 children and moms. CCA still gets $2,800,000 per month. That’s $10,000 per child and mom. So the immigrants are ripping of our society are they? How about the 280 employees that pay their rent and car payments off of the backs of those 280 “huddled masses yearning to breath free”.
One slight correction Texas Observer. While the ACLU and UT both had a major impact on the current conditions…it is more than fair to include the many protests and vigils from the hundreds of grassroots…who forced the change of conditions before the ACLU and UT even filed their lawsuits. ACLU is done…and all the kids, less their clients, are still imprisoned.
We the grassroots will press on until all children in America are free and our country is also free of such a sinister concept as imprisoning children, and the architects of such demented schemes are in the facilities that they condemned the children to so that they and their cronie could profit.
At this juncture, we the grassroots will give the County Commission one more chance before we force the closing of Hutto…completely.
We will be conducting Hutto Walk III from the Hutto childrens prison to the Williamson County Commissioners Court in Georgetown. Hutto Walk III launches at noon on 10-28.
To hell with what is legal. We will take this moral fight to the Commissioners on 10-30…9:30am. If you are opposed to the insanity of imprisoning innocent children on American soil, right here in Texas, just 35 miles from the State Capitol…come join us.
Jay
October 20th, 2007 at 2:37 am
May God shut down all these Immigration detention centers and put an end to this evil inhumane selfish moneymaking monster that is destroying our national values and integrity. I do not understand how we could be proud as Americans by putting innocent children and women in abusive conditions and making money out of their pain and misery. I wish more people understand the depth of this issue. “ICE” is a tip of the iceberg, that majority of public has no idea of its depth. If these centers are not shut down we will soon become a nation of shame on the global picture. These immigration detention centers will destroy our foreign relations and our respect in the eyes of the world as we are proudly making global enemies through detaining innocent children and women from all over the world and abusing human rights in our own state of Texas and in our own homeland America.
October 20th, 2007 at 2:48 am
Can we all combine our efforts to correct this shameful Administrative mistake of our beautiful country?
October 21st, 2007 at 11:23 pm
“Conditions are better than what many of ‘you people’ come from,” says Cynthia Long.
Yes, it’s the “white man’s burden,” thrust upon these reluctant profiteers in Taylor, Texas.
I have spoken at length to those imprisoned in CCA “detention” prisons in Texas. They tell of gratuitous beatings, slop for food, arbitrary solitary confinement, threats to “lose the paperwork” of resisting detainees, lack of medical care.
Check this website @ T.Don Hutto http://www.privateci.org/texas.htm
December 2nd, 2007 at 11:27 pm
This is why the T. Don Hutto contract will never be broken, and in fact, more and more detention centers like that will be springing up. The article here takes an incredibly snobby tone as if it’s incredible that Commissioner Long would have the audacity to make genuine adult observations about conditions of a facility that she has been to compared to contries that she has been to. Good way to alienate the discerning public by narrating it as if you’re a spoiled child.
Then out of the 5 responses that are listed underneath, 4 of them are people that spoke at the meeting and got shut down, weren’t responded to, and surely didn’t get what they wanted. So now they’re trying to continue restating thier case to people that can’t do anything when the people that are in a position to do something don’t care because they know more about the situation than Jay Castro and Asma Salam, and MaryEllen Kersch. And the other comment is from a guy named Frank that’s pimping a website.
Seriously, your tactics are laughable and embarrassing. Until you get people on board with your way of thinking that a) are in a position to make decisions and/or b) aren’t already puffed up with disbelief that such a thing would happen in this country such as actually enforcing immigration laws… you won’t be doing a single thing but talking to each other in your little group telling each other how right you are. See what that accomplishes.
December 7th, 2007 at 1:23 am
I think it should be pointed out for any readers who haven’t yet learned; Jerome admits to being a “legal assistant” employed by the culprits perpetrating this shame. He earns his living from its continuation. So he might be a bit biased.
He could be correct that Hutto will be with us forever and joined by other such facilities; the reason is, of course, that there is a lot of money to be made in this scheme. And we are grossly xenophobic at this point in our history (and we are being stirred up along this line pretty consistently, certainly not a coincidence), making it seem almost unpatriotic to oppose this travesty.
And yet, I keep sensing that Jerome is bothered by it, nonetheless. That may be our real hope; that some of those who depend on it for the food on their tables will, ultimately, speak out against it.