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 Editorials | Issues | June 2007 
Vigil Calls for Justice
 Amanda DeBard - The Daily Texan
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| | Hamde Weber, 5, protests in front of the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility last week. Weber's mother, a Somalian refugee who has lived in Austin for 15 years, was placed in the detention center eight months ago. |
Barbed-wire fencing and a 16-passenger Department of Homeland Security van doesn't suggest the "American dream" quite like the white picket fence and family car does, but 500 detained immigrants and children at the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility wake up to this reality each morning.
Rustem, 10, Nebil, 9, and Hamde Weber, 5, are among hundreds of men, women and children who protested the facility in Taylor, Texas on Saturday, in honor of World Refugee Day. The boys' mother, Aziza Weber, has been detained at the Hutto center for eight months. T. Don Hutto has become controversial because protesters say it's inhumane to lock up families and illegal to imprison children.
"Our mommy is in there," Hamde said. "They came early in the morning and took her while we were asleep," Rustem said. Weber left Somalia 15 years ago to seek asylum in the United States. The boys now live with their father.
Saturday's event was sponsored by Amnesty International, an international human rights advocacy group. The event marked the 10th vigil at Hutto since September 2006 and the second this month.
Hutto, a former prison for "hardened criminals," now houses "other-than-Mexican" immigrants and their children as they await the outcome of immigration hearings, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. These immigrants were caught crossing the Texas-Mexico border or were arrested in factory and residential raids. Some are there because their attorneys didn't file their immigration paperwork on time.
Sarnata Reynolds, refugee program director for Amnesty International, said it's against national and international law to detain children, and other methods can be used to track immigrants.
"Ankle bracelets and supervised release have been tried by immigration enforcement nationwide, and it's working," she said. "Children shouldn't be detained period."
It's not just the children who didn't do anything wrong, the parents didn't either, says Attorney John Wheat Gibson, who represents clients who were released from Hutto in April. Gibson lives in Dallas, but traveled to Taylor by bus - along with two bus-loads of other supporters - to attend Saturday's vigil.
Each detainee's case is different, and the time it takes to get deportation charges dropped varies, he said.
"The whole process can take two weeks to two years after the papers are filed," Gibson said. "And the length of time a person is held can be between 180 days to one year."
He said there are other reasons for Hutto's existence besides detaining immigrants.
"The facility does what it's designed to do," Gibson said. "It provides jobs for people in Williamson County."
With the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement keeping the 512-bed prison full, the Corrections Corporation of America gets maximum funding from the federal government.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement pays Corrections Corporation of America, which operates the Hutto center, $2.8 million a month, about $5,471.96 per prisoner. CCA is the nation's largest owner and operator of privatized correctional and detention facilities, and is one of the largest prison operators in the U.S., according to the Texas Civil Rights Review. Williamson County receives $1 per prisoner per day from ICE.
Between shouts of "hey-hey, ho-ho, let the children go" and "hey-hey, ho-ho, Hutto's gotta go," Selhadin, a former detainee at the Pearsall center, shared his experience of living in a detention facility. He withheld his last name for personal safety,
"I was arrested in September when I crossed the Mexico border," Selhadin said. "After two months, I got out."
Selhadin was incarcerated three times in Africa because of his political opinion. He came to the U.S. at age 26 to seek asylum, but was beaten up and taken to the Pearsall facility one hour south of San Antonio, he said.
"There were 120 people in my dorm, and we slept on cots," he said. "Our schedule was not regular. Sometimes we got breakfast at 5 a.m. or 9 a.m., and lunch at 11 a.m., and dinner at 3 p.m. or 4 p.m."
Five to six times a day, the prisoners were counted and couldn't speak or move, Selhadin said. There was no physical activity.
The UT Immigration Law Clinic helped Selhadin get asylum, and now he is filing paperwork to get a work permit.
Jane Chamberlain, spokeswoman for Free the Children, said Saturday's turnout was the largest yet.
"There have been some changes as a result of our protesting," she said. "I think we've turned up the heat on the situation."
The children in Hutto now go to school seven hours a day, instead of four and a half, and nutritious meals are now age-specific to a child's needs.
The Taylor Police Department was dispatched to the Hutto facility to prevent protestors from entering private property, but they did not try to stop the vigil. Taylor Police Department's Animal Control unit was dispatched for crowd control.
Chamberlain said immigration enforcement is using the same tactics that worked in the past to remove people from their homes.
"We live in a scary age where suddenly it's OK to behave like a totalitarian state," she said. "They're sending out a message that we're not safe unless we're killing people." |
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