Got Privitization? "Children, even babies, wear prison garb and sleep in cells"

[Cobalt Violet]

News: March 9, 2007

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A453488


Detention Center Lawsuits Begin
By Patricia J. Ruland

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed 10 lawsuits on behalf of 10 immigrant children from Lithuania, Canada, Haiti, Honduras, Somalia, and Guyana, who were detained at the T Don Hutto Family Detention Center in Taylor. The lawsuits allege that the facility inhumanely jails children and violates standards in place for a decade. Representing the plaintiffs are the national and state ACLU, the UT School of Law Immigration Clinic, and the international law firm, LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae. Named as defendants are Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and six U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

The private jail, operated by the Corrections Corporation of America, once housed overflow inmates for county and state corrections facilities, as well as undocumented immigrants from Mexico. Now, according to a contract specifying sponsorship by Williamson County, TDH houses "Other Than Mexi-cans," or OTMs, for ICE. Detainees number about 400, including 200 children, which has prompted the international outrage over the practice of incarcerating children. Children, even babies, wear prison garb and sleep in cells; they may not have toys in their cells, nor may they have nondetainee visitors. The lawsuits also chastise TDH personnel for threatening children with separation from their parents – to keep the youngsters in line. "This terrorizes parents and children," said Barbara Hines, an attorney with the UT Immigration Clinic. Generally speaking, TDH "violates its duty to meet the minimum standards and conditions for the housing and release of all minors in federal immigration custody set forth in a 1997 settlement agreement in the case of Flores v. Meese," said Laurie Beacham of the ACLU's national division. More bluntly, "Nothing at T Don Hutto complies with the settlement," Hines said.

The controversy has reached monumental proportions, with TDH lambasted in media outlets the world over. TDH proponents, in turn, have launched a veritable Operation Damage Control. Speaking in defense of the facility, Chertoff assured FOX news host Bill O'Reilly on Feb. 13 that the facility is not a "gulag," as accused. But if released, detainees "might never be seen again," Chertoff cautioned. "So, we have to be tough. But we're tough in a way that's humane." Congressman John Carter, R-Round Rock, took a tour of TDH on Feb. 23, subsequently pronouncing on his Web site that TDH is a "humane" facility. In a disconcertingly cryptic clause, he justifies incarcerating families as a deterrent to human smuggling. Before TDH, Carter explains, illegal immigrants were "freed" and ordered to appear before judges. "This policy was often exploited by alien smugglers. … By bringing children, smugglers likely avoided detention if captured."



This is insane. :grr: :grr: Babies and children in prison?? :wtf: I don't know what to say about what we have become. The fact that they are in a private prison scares me even more.

"The controversy has reached monumental proportions, with TDH lambasted in media outlets the world over". I haven't seen any media reports about this. Do you who have cable see this in our media?

[Bitwit1234]

1. Nothing on CNN or MSNBC of course I programmed Fox out

This is horrible. It makes me want to cry. This is America. This is the country we love. It is our fault. By that I mean those who voted for this bunch of crooked corrupt and inhumane monsters in the whitehouse.

What are we going to do people. The world will never trust this country again, and can you blame them. Write your representative in congress and DO NOT....I REPEAT DO NOT LET THEM GET AWAY WITH THIS.

[Cobalt Violet]

2. The company running this place has been sued for hogtying a child.

<snip>

William P. quickly found out that Columbia Training Center could be a frightening and dangerous place. According to a federal lawsuit filed on his behalf in 1998 by Columbia, S.C., attorney Gaston Fairey, there was a "lack of control in the CTC facility," which resulted in the use of abusive techniques to deal with disciplinary problems. The lawsuit claims that CCA permitted the center's staff to routinely terrorize and abuse the boys in their care with "inappropriate use of chemical munitions; excessive force; the inappropriate use of isolation rooms by intentionally placing an excessive number of juveniles into the rooms. ... the use of older, larger juveniles as 'enforcers' or 'strawmen' to abuse younger or smaller juveniles as a means of discipline or control."

The lawsuit claims that in the less than six months that William P. was a resident at the Center, staffers subjected him to "inappropriate use of mace" and repeatedly threatened to lock him up with big, aggressive and violent juvenile offenders who would assault him. The lawsuit also alleges that he was "hog-tied" (a practice in which a juvenile's wrists and ankles are shackled together behind the back) as a disciplinary procedure; and that he was confined to a lock-up cell with a 6-foot-4, 225-pound inmate who, according to the suit, was "known by staff to abuse young, small juveniles such as William P. The other juvenile was placed in the cell by CCA staff with the knowledge and expectation that the other juvenile would assault William P."

By the end of the year, William P. allegedly had been physically brutalized by the larger boy and hog-tied as many as 30 times. In January 1997, he was committed to the South Carolina Department of Mental Health, covered with bruises and threatening to injure himself. He was hospitalized in an acute care psychiatric unit at a state-run mental-health facility until December 1997 -- almost one full year -- after only six months of detention at the CCA-run center.
<snip>


http://www.notwithourmoney.org/03_prisons/metroland.html



So I'm stunned that now they have babies and young children to to do this stuff to. I don't know what to do, but this is so wrong.

[Quantess]

3. Of course, though,

if babies and children are locked up in prison, they won't be able to annoy the rest of us. Maybe kids won't be as bratty if they are behind bars.

(Just kidding, of course.)

[Cobalt Violet]

4. CCA has guaranteed a 95% occupancy rate and $21,880 per prisoner.

I wonder how many diapers each baby is alloted per day. And with no toys in their cells I'm sure they aren't too happy.

[fooj]

5. Lou Dobbs had someone from the ACLU on his show Friday.

I heard him say "The children are wearing prison uniforms?" My phone rang and I missed the rest of it.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

6. k&r

stop the sadist. stop chertoff. hogtie HIS sorry ass.

:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

[PDJane]

7. There are things that are up to the government

to do on a not-for-profit basis. Prisons, mental institutions, hospitals, medical care of the necessary kind, the provision of water, the oversight of food and drugs and, to a significant extent, the military should never, ever, be provided or outsourced to private industry.

The lives of citizens depend on these things.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

11. this is madness.

I don't even recognize this country now.

It's been sold down the river.

Things seemed marginally hopeful after Watergate and Vietnam were over. Strides were being made in environmental issues, and there was a small alternative energy movement afoot. Then Reagan started his deregulization of everything that kept greed somewhat in check, and the oil companies came down hard on alternative energy progress. And it's been going to hell ever since.

Don't even get me started about hospitals in private hands!

:rant:

[Cobalt Violet]

14. These companies lobbied for "Truth In Sentencing" and "Three Strikes" laws.

It's all about making republicans rich. That's all it was ever about. An having the INS under Homeland Security is the same thing. They DHS couldn't wait to ship the people off to private prisons in Texas after the raid in my state this week, even if it meant babies being hospitalized for dehydration because they we unable to nurse.

This is so so bad. Everything terrible that they are doing is leading to privatization scheme. Iraq, Walter Reed, any private prison, Immigrant Detentions Center...everything they do and have done. I'm so irate I'm not even sure if I'm making sense or complete sentences. Sorry if I'm not.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

15. Making enough sense . . .

. . . as far as I'm concerned.

It doesn't get any more upsetting than this. Babies caught up in the wheels of their insane machine. Nightmares.

[Nikki Stone1]

16. Sold down the river is correct

We've been hijacked, looted, sucked dry and soon will be left for dead

[Cobalt Violet]

19. It's only costing us 3 million a month to operate this place.

:sarcasm:

[northofdenali]

21. There are no more "citizens" -

there are only the serfs and the lords left. And it will get worse before it gets better. That's why we're going off grid ASAP, even if it means outhouse living at 55 below.

[melody]

8. These people are giving a bad name to sociopaths n/t

[thethinker]

9. Infant prison garb?

only in America. What have we become?

Bush and his cronies have done more damage to this country than I could have imagined. I knew in 2000 that it would be bad, but they have surprised me. I could never have imagined all the evil things they have come up with. It will take years to undo the damage of all this privatization.

[Cobalt Violet]

18. You didn't think this was just a halloween costume did you?

:sarcasm:



I hope these kids win their lawsuits. It sucks.

[smoogatz]

10. Well, if those babies hadn't broken the law, they wouldn't be there.

You don't think President Bush would put innocent children in prison, do you? You liberals and your wild conspiracy theories. Moonbats!

[Cobalt Violet]

20. No, not our Bush.

He's doing the best he can. The Democrats ruled congress for 40 years. And Clinton :sarcasm:

[Rex]

12. Nothing says family in America like Family Detention Center!

:mad:

[Cobalt Violet]

13. It finally comes out what they meant by family values.

Lock them up. Throw away their toys. Deny them adequate food, medicine,safety,and due process.And most importantly, make your buddies rich.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

17. keep kicking this up, please.

:kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick:
:kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. On Democracy Now, Amy Goodman interviewed an Iranian family

that was being detained there. They had been on their way to Canada, and were detained when their plane was forced to land in the US for an emergency.

In other words, they weren't even trying to enter the U.S., and they were still detained.

The son, who was nine years old, was being forced to sleep in a cell separate from his parents.

[Cobalt Violet]

23. That's messed up.

They aren't allowed to live as families. The parents aren't allowed to disciple their own kids either.

I read in another article that they are denied medical care as well.

[quiet.american]

24. Just when I think I couldn't be any more ashamed of what this country has become.... n/t

[Cobalt Violet]

25. Children as young as 6 are separated from their parents.

Truly sick. Republicans will stop at nothing to get rich.