http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/01/0...t-1/#more-6412

Some Dare Call Them “Concentration Camps” (Pt. 1)

Last week, Pachacutec raised a few eyebrows by referring to the privately operated "detention centers" where Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been incarcerating thousands of illegal immigrants, including their citizen children, as "concentration camps." Some of his commenters particularly objected, like my elderly inquisitor, to using a term that they, at least, associated primarily with Nazis and the Holocaust.

But as Pach noted in follow-up (with an assist from Lambert at Correntewire), "concentration camp" is a perfectly applicable term here, for largely the same reasons I gave at the talk. Considering the information that is starting to come to light from at least the largest of these centers, there are reasons to believe that conditions at these privately run "detention centers" are even worse than those at the Japanese American camps.

And Digby's keen eye, as always, observes that there's a disturbing trend emerging here — namely, that thousands of people, including citizens, are being spirited away to these centers, and so far life within them has a real totalitarian quality to it. (Meanwhile, Latina Lista has been leading the way in reporting on this.)

The chief reports involve the largest of the family detention centers: the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas, which is operated by Corrections Corporation of America. A piece in the Austin Statesman reported on concerns raised by local activists:
On Thursday, members of Texans United for Families, a coalition of community, civil rights and immigrant rights groups, sought to highlight that difference. Starting with a press conference at the state Capitol, then embarking on a 35-mile walk to the Taylor jail, they charged that detaining families and children under what they described as poor conditions is immoral and violates human rights.

"Housing families in for-profit prisons not only calls to question our moral values and our respect for human rights, but it is also a waste of taxpayer money," said Luissana Santibanez, a 25-year-old University of Texas student and an organizer with Grassroots Leadership, which works to stop the expansion of the private prison industry.

The Taylor jail began holding immigrant families this summer under a contract with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. It is owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America. Williamson County receives $1 per day for each inmate held there. A spokesman for the company referred questions to Immigration and Customs Enforcement's San Antonio office.

… Organizers of Thursday's press conference and walk said the Taylor jail houses about 400 people, including about 200 children who are held with their parents. They said children receive one hour of education — English instruction — and one hour of recreation per day, usually indoors.
It should be noted that, at the Japanese American relocation centers, the War Relocation Authority provided full schooling facilities for children in the camps. Recreation was also readily available, usually in the form of baseball, which in the summertime was played almost endlessly.
Frances Valdez, an attorney with the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law who has visited clients at the facility, said detainees have reported receiving substandard medical care and becoming ill from food served at the jail.

"A lot of children are losing weight. People suffer from severe headaches," Valdez said. "I think there's a lot of psychological issues going on. Most of these people are asylum seekers, so they've already suffered severe trauma in their country." She said immigrants are not given psychological treatment.

Valdez said children wear jail uniforms when they are big enough to fit in them, and all wear name tags. "Even a baby client had a name tag," she said. For instruction, children are divided into groups, 12 and under and 13 and above.
In the DailyKos diary by edgery on this matter, a commenter provided the text of an e-mail from flamenco guitarist Teye, who has become involved in raising the appropriate concern over these facilities, which he describes thus:
I have been to the Hutto Residential Center in Taylor Texas and can testify that it does not look like their publicity picture. The publicity picture looks almost nice: the lobby of an East European hotel maybe? The reality looks like an updated version of a concentration camp, replete with razor wire, double fence with gravel covered death zone between them. It looks like a place where you would stick grave criminals, not children.
Teye also passed along a letter from Dallas attorney John Wheat Gibson, who is representing a number of clients inside the walls at the Hutto "residential center", writing to the Austin reporter who covered the Hutto story:
Dear Mr. Castillo:

Whoever told you the people imprisoned in Taylor, Texas entered the country illegally lied to you. I have seven clients now imprisoned since November 3 at the T. Don Hutto prison, and every one of them entered the U.S. legally with a visa issued by the United States government.

Furthermore, there is no reason for the imprisonment of these children except as victims of a Michael Chertoff publicity stunt. In midnight raids on November 3 the Department of Homeland Stupidity took these children, who were enrolled in school, from their homes, with their parents and imprisoned them.

The sole purpose of the raids, political propaganda, was apparent from a DHS press release which characterized the victims as "fugitives" and "criminals." In fact, none of the families I know of were either fugitives or criminals. The two families I represent had conscientiously kept the DHS informed of their current residential addresses.

The purpose of the publicity stunt was to make the ignorant Fox-News brainwashed masses believe that 1) the Muslims among us are our enemies but 2) the DHS is protecting us, and therefore 3) we should not mind shredding the Constitution.

In fact, there was no legitimate reason for the raids at all. The two families I represent had been ordered deported, but had never received the customary notice to report for deportation. If they had, they would have worked out through their attorneys arrangements with the government for the children to finish the school year and then to depart at their own expense.
Now, this is a letter from a defense attorney and its accuracy may be a matter of interpretation. But it seems evident, not merely from this case but a number of similar anecdotes — including the arrests of a number of legal immigrants — that many of the current wave of immigration detentions are occurring under circumstances that are questionable at best. These include several instances of clear-cut racial profiling.

On top of the horrendous conditions and the inappropriate arrests, it's becoming clear that not only is the system failing to work as it should, there is a real lack of accountability, in no small part due to the fact that the government is handing off this work to private corporations, who are simply not accountable to the public. A Statesman editorial observes:
The facilities also are living testimony to a broken system for adjudicating immigration cases. There are 215 federal immigration judges serving in 53 immigration courts across the country. Last year, they handled more than 350,000 specific matters, including 270,000 individual cases.

The backlog is so strained that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, the grandson of Mexican immigrants, noted: "The department and the federal courts are straining under the weight of an immigration litigation system that is broken. Under the current system, criminal aliens generally receive more opportunities for judicial review of their removal orders than noncriminal aliens."

In short, illegal immigrants who commit crimes get speedier legal attention than these children, who have done nothing wrong other than follow their parents.

… Hard information on the program and the private prison is difficult to come by. The company running the prison refers questions to the immigration office, and the immigration office has had little to say about the situation.

END PART 1