Thread: CENTRAL TEXAS Feds to transform Taylor immigrant lockup

The gutless cowards STILL refuse to call them Illegal Aliens! It makes me sick! Sooooo, are we now rounding up immigrants and putting them in detention? I am an immigrant from Germany so should I be concerned that I will be hauled away and locked up?

CENTRAL TEXAS
Feds to transform Taylor immigrant lockup
Move is part of a larger effort by the Obama administration to reform the nation's immigration detention system.

By Miguel Liscano and Claire Osborn
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, August 07, 2009

An Obama administration official said Thursday that it's unclear exactly how long it will take for the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor to change from an immigrant family detention center to one for women only.

As part of a broader overhaul of the nation's immigration detention system, families that would have been sent to the 512-bed, former medium-security prison will go to the Berks Family Shelter Care Facility, an 84-bed former nursing home in Leesport, Pa., that has housed migrant families since 2001, said John Morton, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement assistant secretary. He said some families at the Taylor center will be moved to Berks.

As the Pennsylvania center reaches capacity, government officials will look for alternatives to detention, such as supervised release and the use of ankle bracelets, as possible options for some detained families, Morton said during a conference call Thursday.

"I don't expect the transition to last very long," he said. "You will very quickly see no more families going into the facility and a thoughtful but fairly quick transition to a plan being put together for those families that remain."

The T. Don Hutto center has been housing adults and children since 2006. It is owned and run for profit by the Corrections Corporation of America through a contract with Williamson County — which receives about $15,800 a month under the contract.

The detainees hail from all over the world and are seeking asylum or are being held on noncriminal violations of immigration law. Throughout that time, the facility has been criticized for what some have said are substandard living conditions.

The announcement Thursday was cheered by immigration advocates who have fought to close the facility.

"It feels like we've won an important battle," said Lisa Graybill, legal director for the ACLU of Texas. "But the work continues."

Bob Libal, Texas coordinator of Grassroots Leadership, a group that opposes for-profit private prisons, said he would prefer the detainees not be sent to Berks, either. But he said it's a better facility for them than Hutto.

"There are still concerns," Libal said. "At the same time, basically, this means that they're actually doing what the advocates have asked and actually implementing alternatives to detention programs."

In 2007 the University of Texas School of Law's Immigration Clinic and the ACLU of Texas won a settlement in a federal suit that accused the government of violating the rights of minors held at the center.

A federal judge ordered the center to establish new practices, such as allowing families to be able to spend an unlimited time together in their rooms with the door open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., eliminating scheduled head counts and giving children five hours of schooling per day. The agreement is set to expire Aug. 29.

"Hutto should have never been opened in the first place as a family detention center," Barbara Hines, the UT clinic director, said in an e-mail. "While Berks is a former nursing home, rather than a former medium security prison, asylum seeking families are detained at Berks for long periods of time. I hope that the government will develop alternatives to family detention as soon as possible."

Morton said the impending expiration of the settlement did not have a direct effect on the decision to change Hutto's mission, but "obviously, the concerns that were raised there did play a part in our overall assessment of whether or not the use of this facility to detain families made the ultimate sense."

"At the end of the day, it was my judgment that we could use that facility to a much higher and more productive use."

In addition to changing the Taylor facility's focus, the federal immigration agency is creating the Office of Detention Policy and Planning, which will aim to improve the government's civil detention system, Morton said.

"With these reforms, ICE will move away from our present centralized, jail-oriented approach to a system that is wholly designed for and based on our civil detention needs and the needs of the people we detain," Morton said.

A representative for Corrections Corporation of America did not return a call seeking comment Thursday.

Lawrence Vaughn, whose mother was moving into the neighborhood next to the detention center, said families never should have been held at the detention center.

"They are not here to sell drugs or rob people; they are here to start a new life," he said.

Williamson County Judge Dan Gattis, who has visited the detention center, said he thought it was well run.

"I think there's been a lot of good effort to try to make families as comfortable as they could," he said. "They are not locked up in 4-by-4 cells. They actually had the doors taken off cells, and curtains hung up for privacy."

Marcos Marquez, a Salvadoran who took trains and hitchhiked his way through Central America, spent eight months in the T. Don Hutto center. Marquez said it was hard to hear children at the detention center asking to go to the store, although the conditions were the best he'd ever lived in.

"The mom would say, 'No, we're not allowed to leave' and the kids would say, 'We're in jail, aren't we, Mom?'" Marquez told The Associated Press. "That was really heartbreaking, to hear the kids, because the kids would then cry, then the moms would cry.

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/n ... hutto.html

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Thanks for the heads up Rat

Originally Posted by Ratbstard

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Originally Posted by TexasBorn

Thanks for the heads up Rat

Originally Posted by Ratbstard

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"The mom would say, 'No, we're not allowed to leave' and the kids would say, 'We're in jail, aren't we, Mom?'" Marquez told The Associated Press. "That was really heartbreaking, to hear the kids, because the kids would then cry, then the moms would cry.

BOO HOO Perhaps you should have thought about that when you broke the law. Stop wasting money housing these people! Send them back ASAP!