Why the separation of families is the tip of the ICEberg by Barbara Hines

Do read this troubling piece by Dr. Barbara Hines, a retired clinical professor of law at the School of Law at the University of Texas at Austin.  She comments on how immigrant detention is not a recent phenomenon. "Only now has this hidden gulag sprung into public vision," Hines reports, mentioning its "utter lack of transparency and incompetence."  

https://tinyurl.com/ya95zp5bCathy Frierson, Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire &  Semyon Samuilovich Vilensky, Gulag survivor  (Co-authors), (2010).Children of the Gulag (Yale University Press).

Hines recommends the following as policy:

"Absent exceptional circumstances, immigrants should be released to their families or into the community. Community-based alternatives are much cheaper and more effective than the costs of overdetention."

                                                                                                       -Dr. Barbara Hines 

Also read these helpful, earlier posts by Sonia Nazario, first in the July 11, 2018 issue of the New York Times titled, "Do You Care About the Rule of Law? Then Act Like It," and secondly in the June 22, 2018 issue titled, ""There’s a Better, Cheaper Way to Handle Immigration." 

Physically detaining children and families should not even exist as a policy or practice option.  Policymakers should listen closely to alternative, humane options.

For those of us in education who might be pressed to consider the underlying ideologies and ways of knowing that allow for the existence of an "American Gulag"—that is, of course, mirrored in the "school-to-prison pipeline"—we would do well to re-discover and re-think our democracy in terms of what and how we teach. 

We need to re-discover not just community, but community-based ways of knowing where a commitment to democracy equals community empowerment and public virtue.  These are the "soft skills" that not only promote survival and well-being, but also ways of knowing that are simply inconsistent and incompatible with the dehumanizing, silencing, and objectification of "the other," as we are witnessing in full display today.

Angela Valenzuela

#FamiliesBelongTogether #FamiliesTornApart #FreeTheChildren 

Commentary: Why the separation of families is the tip of the iceberg

OPINION

By Barbara Hines - Special to the American-Statesman

---

The stark images of separated children and parents in cage-like settings — and the total chaos of the vast immigration detention system — has outraged the American public. Yet, the incarceration of immigrants, including families and asylum seekers, is nothing new.

Although the immigration system is a civil system, it does not operate as such. Immigrants seeking asylum or other legal status in this country are treated as criminals but provided with less due-process protections. Currently, over 40,000 immigrants are incarcerated daily in a sprawling array of mostly for-profit private facilities.

An utter lack of transparency and incompetence have been hallmarks of detention. The disorganized reunification process of separated children is clear evidence. The focus on abducted children has highlighted problems that immigration advocates — including myself — have complained about for years. Abhorrent conditions, sexual abuse, inadequate food, lack of medical care and deaths in detention have been repeatedly documented. Although nothing in the system changes, the administration has pushed for expanded and longer detention.

Immigrants arrested in South Texas have always been held in freezing and crowded cage-like cells. Only now has this hidden gulag sprung into public vision.

Opinion: Even before family separations, Trump was cultivating hate.

In most facilities, immigrants in the so-called civil system are clothed in prison jump suits. They are transferred at will across the country from one detention center to another, even when they have legal representation. For example, separated parents were moved from Laredo, Texas, to Tacoma, Washington. Indigenous-language speakers cannot convey their legal claims or find their children. There are insufficient interpreters for this population, and phone interpretation lines are frequently broken. Attorneys must communicate with clients by leaving messages that may never be delivered. Waiting times to see clients can be up to three hours, and attorneys must share the few available visitation rooms. At the Hutto Detention Center in Taylor, where many separated mothers were incarcerated, the visitation rooms consist of see-through plastic cubicles that are not soundproof.

Despite the similarities with the prison model, immigrants are not entitled to court-appointed lawyers. This makes navigating the immigration court system nearly impossible for most immigrants.

Trump’s calls for prolonged detention for everyone should not be the model. Detention for families has traumatic consequences, as I personally know, having worked in family detention centers since 2006, when the notorious T. Don Hutto facility was run by CoreCivic, one of the largest prison companies in the country. Children and their parents were housed in jail cells in a former medium- security prison, dressed in prison uniforms, and subjected to a strict prison regime. This set-up was perfectly acceptable to CoreCivic, as it maximized its profits.

Alternatives to for-profit incarceration should not be a binary choice between the separation of parents or prolonged family detention. Under a civil system, detention should be the last alternative, not the first. An individualized assessment of flight risk and danger are the legal standards that must be applied before depriving any person of his or her liberty interest. Absent exceptional circumstances, immigrants should be released to their families or into the community. Community-based alternatives are much cheaper and more effective than the costs of overdetention.

Providing adequate funding to nonprofit organizations for universal legal representation is another cost-saving solution. Legal counsel is the primary controlling factor in appearance rates in immigration court. Ninety-seven percent of families with lawyers attend their court hearings. Immigrants who are represented by attorneys have a much higher chance of success in their cases than those forced to navigate the system on their own.

Having caught a glimpse of the inhumanity of the immigrant detention system, the American public should take a fresh look at overincarceration and urge the adoption of community-based alternatives and legal representation to allow adults and children to pursue their cases. We can do better — much better.

Hines is a retired clinical professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law.

Barbara's Fire by Tony Cantú

Austin and the world—particularly the immigrant rights community—are so indebted to the work and leadership of Barbara Hines who is now retiring from her position at UT as longtime clinical professor of law. Here is her reflection on the imprisonment of immigrants and children of immigrants, the majority of whom are unaccompanied minors from Central America fleeing drug violence and grinding poverty in Latin America:

The Hutto case for which Hines served as co-counsel was one of her greatest legal victories. But in the years since – just months before her imminent retirement – she's seen history repeat itself, in the Karnes County Residential Center. The facility – this one 100 miles to the south – was established last summer to help contain the exodus of mostly child immigrants, arriving largely from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. "Even though they don't have children in prison uniforms, this is an unlicensed facility just like Hutto. It's run by a private prison corporation just like Hutto. I've been there twice, and saw really stressed-out children and stressed-out mothers – just like Hutto."

 As at Hutto, conditions at the Karnes County facility are hardly welcoming to refugees. In op-eds, Hines has assailed such privately run detention centers established under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security to deal with the latest influx of immigrant children. She draws parallels to Hutto, and says the new centers are "stepping back in history to the agency's last failed policy of detaining children and their parents."

In short, Hines is a celebrated heroine of local, state, national and international renown.  

I wish you well on your retirement, Barbara.  Thank you for your outstanding leadership and the thousands of lives that you have touched, both directly and indirectly throughout your years of bold and courageous advocacy.

-Angela

http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2014-12-12/barbaras-fire/

Barbara's Fire

Attorney, teacher, and veteran fighter for freedom, Barbara Hines retires from a career mentoring students

By Tony Cantú, December 12, 2014, News

Barbara Hines has spent a lifetime fighting the good fight. Longtime clinical professor of law, and currently co-director of the Immigration Clinic at the UT-Austin School of Law, she got her start in the trenches of the abortion rights battles – at a time when the landmark Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision became a flashpoint and milestone – before eventually switching her focus to the similarly polarizing issue of immigrants' rights.
Today, as she eases into professional retirement by December's end, she is inevitably reflective. While clearly proud of her body of work, she is nonetheless discouraged by so much political regression about the very issues for which she has fought so long and so hard. "I went to law school to work on women's issues, to fight for access to abortion and birth control before going into the immigration field," she says. "We're going through the rise of the Tea Party, and there's been a pushback on women's rights. Having worked on these issues, we're still fighting those battles."
The Legislature has steadily and severely limited access to women's reproductive health clinics, creating draconian rules that have forced many operators to close their doors. On the immigrant rights front, the battle-hardened attorney expresses disbelief at the pitch of anti-immigrant sentiment that's swept the country over the last few years, a backlash powerfully emblematic in the form of the (now-shuttered) T. Don Hutto Residential Center in rural Texas – actually more prison than refuge, for "teeming masses yearning to be free." Thanks in part to the efforts of Hines and her students, the center was ultimately closed.
"To see children in prison ...," she says – suddenly silent, as her thoughts drift to the scenes she saw in the Hutto center, some 30 miles north of Austin. "I never thought I'd see that. A child should never be in a prison," she says of the facility where roughly half of the detainees were children.
Hines was among the first legal representatives for Hutto detainees, bringing (along with her legal expertise) crayons and markers to entertain the children, as the New Yorker reported in a lengthy March 2008 story in which she figured prominently. (The toys were eventually forbidden when a child's portrayal of the detainees turned up in a Canadian newspaper.) Hines helped bring a lawsuit against the Hutto center that ultimately led to its 2009 closure. "Overall, the Hutto case was a very important one, but took an emotional toll," she recalls. "I spoke out at a press conference and got choked up, which was not very lawyer­ly."

"Just Like Hutto"

The Hutto case for which Hines served as co-counsel was one of her greatest legal victories. But in the years since – just months before her imminent retirement – she's seen history repeat itself, in the Karnes County Residential Center. The facility – this one 100 miles to the south – was established last summer to help contain the exodus of mostly child immigrants, arriving largely from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. "Even though they don't have children in prison uniforms, this is an unlicensed facility just like Hutto. It's run by a private prison corporation just like Hutto. I've been there twice, and saw really stressed-out children and stressed-out mothers – just like Hutto."
As at Hutto, conditions at the Karnes County facility are hardly welcoming to refugees. In op-eds, Hines has assailed such privately run detention centers established under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security to deal with the latest influx of immigrant children. She draws parallels to Hutto, and says the new centers are "stepping back in history to the agency's last failed policy of detaining children and their parents."
How to consider one's life work at the twilight of a career, as social progress seemingly retreats? Sitting at the Cherrywood Coffeehouse – one of her favorite haunts near her Wilshire Wood neighborhood – Hines was in a reflective mood, wondering about a final professional accounting: Is her cup half empty or is it half full? In Austin legal circles, Hines is something of a living legend (former students call her an "icon"), and her renown extends far beyond Texas. National journalists seek out her insights – most recently for National Public Radio, where she appeared Nov. 24, discussing President Obama's executive order on immigration. She also frequently lectures and publishes on topics related to immigration law and immigrants' rights, a legal field in which she's practiced since 1975.

Out of the Dark Ages

Having left high school early, Hines took a semester in Mexico City and first arrived in Austin in 1965, as a fresh-faced 17-year-old, feeling empowered by the early women's liberation movement (aka the "Second Wave"). In 1969, she earned a B.A. with honors in Latin American studies from UT-Austin. She began law school at UT in 1972, then transferred to Boston's North­east­ern University, where in 1975 she received her J.D. before returning to Texas. "When I started law school in the summer of 1972, there were 10 women and 100 men," she recalls. "When I tell my women students that, they say, 'You're from the Dark Ages.'"
In 1996 and 2004, she was a Fulbright scholar in Argentina – stints during which she developed an affinity to the South American country she now regularly visits, the travels made easier by her Spanish fluency. She focused her research there on Argentine immigration law.
Long before that, she had spent her formative years in Brownsville, Texas, where her parents had eventually settled after escaping the Holocaust. "They fell in love with the Mexico border," she says. Both mom and dad are gone now, her father's death preceding his wife's passing in 2007 by 26 years. Hines was also married for six years – "a long time ago," she says pithily – a brief union that produced son Justin Burchard, 33, now a data manager at D.C.- and Chicago-based Civis Analytics, where he does political campaign analysis.
Hines' other professional accomplishments include having served as the first co-director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law of Texas, the Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project at UT Law, and a current role on the board of directors of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild. She's been a litigant on many issues related to the constitutional and statutory rights of immigrants in federal and immigration courts, exemplified by her role in the ACLU lawsuit that eventually led to the closure of the Hutto facility. The lawsuit against the federal government that prefaced the facility's closing led first to an agreement mandating sweeping changes at the detention site; Hines found herself in the national spotlight for her work, as reflected in Margaret Talbot's March 3, 2008 New Yorker story, "The Lost Children."
"The agreement entails a number of changes at Hutto," Talbot wrote, "including eliminating the head-count system, providing pajamas for children, letting kids keep a limited number of toys in their room during the day, making a priority of hiring people with experience in child welfare, and installing curtains around toilets. ... Yet it seems unlikely that these changes would have been made without pressure from the A.C.L.U. lawsuit and from advocates like Barbara Hines and her students."
Last month, Hines was awarded the Massey Award for Teaching Excellence, "presented to a faculty member who embodies the school's priority of providing the highest quality of teaching to its students," according to the UT law school's website. The award is added to a crowded mantle of accolades, including: the 1992 Amer­ican Immi­gration Lawyers Association (AILA) Jack Was­ser­man Award for Excellence in Liti­ga­tion; the 1993 AILA Texas Chapter Litiga­tion Award; the 2002 Texas Law Fellow­ships Excellence in Public Interest Award; the 2007 AILA Elmer Fried Excel­lence in Teach­ing Award; the 2009 MALDEF Excellence in Legal Service Award; and the 2010 National Lawyers Guild Carol Weiss King Award. In 2000, she was named one of the 100 best lawyers in the state, by Texas Lawyer magazine.

Changing Lives

It's those students referenced by The New Yorker – hundreds of them, past and present – who are Hines' greatest source of pride. Over coffee, she described with enthusiasm how she's indirectly responsible for immigration attorneys scattered all over the country – more than 400, she reckons – who have passed through her classes or participated in her legal clinics. Some of those students speak with reverence about their former mentor, relating anecdotes of experiences alongside Hines that transcend mere student-teacher interaction – that were, they say, literally "life-changing."
Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch was one of the student attorneys who accompanied Hines to Hutto, tasked with interviewing a family of Iraqi Chaldean Christians who had fled their country after the patriarch had been beaten while being held for ransom. The former student recalled indelible memories of the family, who had first flown to South America before traveling by bus to the San Ysidro border station, where they presented themselves as asylum seekers. "Their months-old baby wore a prison-issued onesie," Lincoln-Goldfinch recalls. "During our interview, the mother asked me if I would hold her baby because she said I smelled like the outside world; at the end of our interview, she asked if I could sneak her baby out with me. I remember crying with some friends that night, just baffled that our government would treat asylum-seekers this way. This is the life-changing moment that Barbara gave me." Lincoln-Goldfinch now works at a private practice, specializing in immigration.
"I knew that I had found my calling, and this was an area of the law that would interest and engage me for the rest of my career," she said. "[Barbara]'s got this inexhaustible well of interest and respect for her students," she added. "She cries with us when we win our cases. She is the perfect teacher."
Erica Schommer met Hines as a second-year law student in the fall 2000 legal clinic. Intent on focusing on international human rights policy work, she ended up completing two more semesters in the clinic, altering her career path. "I was hooked," Schom­mer says. "I have now been practicing immigration law for 11 years, and I can't imagine being in another practice area. She helped me get my first job and has helped countless others. There is nobody in the field I respect more."
Amelia Ruiz Fischer, an attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project, has worked with Hines on a number of matters, including at Hutto. There is also ongoing work related to the federal Secure Communities program, under which the Travis County Sheriff's Office detains undocumented immigrants at the behest of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, suspending standard due-process safeguards. The practice has led to the deportation of roughly 5,000 county immigrants since its local implementation in 2009 – ironically, the same year as the closure of the Hutto facility. "Barbara has this thing that's undeniable and not something easily explained," Ruiz Fischer says. "It's a fire. It's this fire she has that makes you want to be a part of it. It's contagious and infectious. She touches people's lives."
Ruiz Fischer credits Hines with having introduced her to Jordan Pollock, her immigration clinic partner she now calls her "professional soul mate." Hines was there to witness her students' first legal victory, the granting of asylum for a resident of the northeast African country of Eritrea. "Barbara was sitting nearby," Ruiz Fischer recalled with emotion. "The feeling of hearing the judge say that the application was granted ... Jordan and I started crying, and then I see Barbara and she's so happy, with tears in her eyes. I really can't say enough about the kind of person she is, and what kind of impact she's had on my professional and personal life."

Focusing on Victory

With her retirement imminent, Hines has taken up tango lessons, and amplified her Hatha yoga regimen that she says has long kept her grounded. "My parents practiced Judaism, but I'm agnostic. Yoga is the closest to spiritualism for me." She concedes that the legal profession – in particular a specialty like her own, centered on a vulnerable population – can take an emotional toll. But as she ponders her retirement, she'll adopt the same advice she's always given her students: "You have to focus on the victories."
She mentions how energized she was in watching the June 2013 filibuster of state Sen. Wendy Davis – alongside hundreds of other inspired women – as Davis held sway for 11 hours in her attempt to block Senate Bill 5, the omnibus bill to greatly restrict access to abortion care. "It was very uplifting for me," she says. "Even though we lost the battle, it gives me hope for the next generation of women." (Davis initially blocked the bill, but it was subsequently passed in a special-called session.)
She's also buoyed by the heightened current interest in immigrants' plight, a far cry from when she tried largely in vain to draw media attention to Hutto. "There is now a whole lot of interest in the pro bono community and in the media. I couldn't get anyone interested in what was going on in Hutto, nobody. I was begging people to write about Hutto."
Belying her 67 years, Hines had bounded into the coffee shop with a youthful energy, bedecked in a colorful handmade dress woven with flowers, a gift a friend brought back for her from Pátzcuaro in Michoacán. After a couple of hours of coffee and conversation, a friend arrived to coax her to a larger table across the room, where several other friends had gathered at the end of the workday. "I feel really lucky when I look back at my career," she said before joining her friends. "I accomplished much more than I expected, when I was an insecure lawyer unable to speak in public. I feel really fortunate that I found a career this meaningful."
Watching her settle into the mix – after requisite abrazos from those gathered – it seemed clear that, even in retirement and away from the teaching role that has long enlivened and energized her, Hines is going to do just fine.
Copyright © 2014 Austin Chronicle Corporation. All rights reserved.

18 Fellows Awarded over $1 Million to Reform Indigent Defense, Reduce Juvenile Incarceration, Improve Prison Conditions

Congratulations to Austin's own Luissana Santibañez! Check out the U.S. Justice Fund Site for a more detailed description. -Patricia

Advocates Take on Failures of U.S. Criminal Justice System
March 3, 2008

NEW YORK—The Open Society Institute today named 18 outstanding scholars, lawyers, advocates, and journalists to be 2008's Soros Justice Fellows. In total they will receive more than $1,125,000 to support their creative and groundbreaking work to reform the American justice system.

The new fellows include a community organizer who fights to protect the rights of noncitizen detainees after seeing her own family torn apart by federal immigration policies; a lawyer who compares his own treatment in the criminal justice system with that of his clients on death row to spark debate about capital punishment; and a man and woman on the opposite sides of a wrongful rape conviction who now work together to raise awareness about the problems with eyewitness testimony.

"America's criminal justice system is broken, and too often perpetuates inequality rather than ensuring justice," said Ann Beeson, director of the Open Society Institute's U.S. Programs. "The Soros Justice Fellows are developing innovative solutions to expose the deep flaws in the current system and to restore justice for all."

The fellows, who are based in Arizona, California, Illinois, Louisiana, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Washington, DC, and Northern Ireland, will receive a 12 to 18 month stipend ranging from $45,000 to $79,500. With this support, they will work on the local, state, and national level to address critical issues such as death penalty reform, racism in the criminal justice system, prison growth and privatization, and the reintegration of formerly incarcerated individuals into society.

Since 1997, the Open Society Institute has offered over $13 million in grants to more than 250 Soros Justice Fellows as part of a wider campaign to strengthen justice in the United States and around the world. OSI and the Soros foundations network have given away over $6 billion to build open democratic societies, including more than $796 million in the U.S. For more information on the Soros Justice Fellows, please visit www.soros.org.
2008 Soros Justice Fellows

Juvenile Justice

Sujatha Baliga; lawyer and advocate; Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth; Oakland, CA
California has one of the country's highest rates of juvenile incarceration and recidivism. Baliga will work to reduce Oakland's over-reliance on mass incarceration by advocating community-based alternatives for youth, which address the underlying causes of youth crime and recidivism.

Patricia Soung; lawyer and advocate; Children and Family Justice Center; Chicago, IL
The U.S. is one of a handful of countries that allow youth under 18 to receive sentences of life without parole—a sentence handed out to over 2,000 juvenile offenders. Soung will use legal advocacy, community organizing, and research to work to abolish life without parole sentences for juveniles.

Shantel Vachani; lawyer and advocate; Learning Rights Law Center; Los Angeles, CA
An estimated 70 percent of the nearly 4,500 youths in Los Angeles County juvenile detention struggle with a learning disability. Vachani will create an innovative advocacy model to counteract the trends that "push" special-needs youth out of the public education system and into the juvenile corrections system.

Racial Disparities and Sentencing Reform

Caroline Cincotta; lawyer; American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants' Rights Project; San Francisco, CA
Federal prisons bar noncitizens from participating in rehabilitative programs, subjecting them to longer sentences and harsher conditions. Cincotta will research, analyze, and develop legal challenges to these discriminatory policies.

Paul Hofer; scholar; Washington, DC
Over the last three decades the federal prison population has quintupled. Hofer will research and write a series of articles and reports that assess the dramatic widening of racial disparities in sentencing and the reduction of judicial discretion under federal sentencing guidelines.

Harry Levine; scholar and advocate; New York, NY
In cities across the nation, African-Americans are arrested for marijuana possession at a rate three to ten times higher than whites, despite the fact that there is no similar gap in marijuana use. Levine will research the alarming trend toward race, gender, and age bias in marijuana possession arrests.

Death Penalty and Wrongful Conviction

William Sothern; author, journalist, and lawyer; New Orleans, LA
Sothern will complete two books, Put Away Childish Things and Until You Are Dead, that seek to inform the public debate surrounding capital punishment and juxtapose Sothern's own experience in the criminal justice system with those of his death row clients.

Jennifer Thompson-Cannino; advocate and author; Winston-Salem, NC
Ronald Cotton; advocate and author; Mebane, NC
Erin Torneo; author; Los Angeles, CA
More than 200 people in the U.S. have had their convictions overturned by DNA evidence, and three-quarters of these cases involved mistaken eyewitness testimony. Cotton and Thompson-Cannino (with Torneo) are the authors of Picking Cotton: A True Story, which illuminates this problem through their story: Cotton spent 11 years in prison after Thompson-Cannino mistakenly identified him as the man who had raped her.

Immigrant Detention and Deportation

Luissana Santibañez; community organizer; Grassroots Leadership; Austin, TX
The massive expansion of federal detention centers for noncitizens has wrought havoc on family and community relationships. Santibañez, whose own family has been torn apart by recent crackdowns, will build a Texas-based network of former detainees to elevate community awareness and build support for policies that protect the rights of detainees.

Indigent Defense

Janet Moore; lawyer; Ohio Justice & Policy Center; Cincinnati, OH
Ohio's ineffective and inefficient public defender system contributes to a class disparity in incarceration rates. Moore will work to reform Ohio's current system for providing counsel to low-income residents.

Joshua Perry; lawyer; Orleans Public Defenders; New Orleans, LA
In New Orleans, indigent defendants often face months of pretrial detention and endure harsh over-sentencing. Perry will coordinate special litigation efforts at the Orleans Public Defenders to alleviate these problems.

Federal Drug and Gang Policy

Susan Phillips; scholar; Los Angeles, CA
Phillips will complete Operation Fly Trap: Gangs, Drugs and the Law, a book examining how federal policies directed at combating drugs and gangs actually generate and sustain the conditions that perpetuate poverty, crime, and violence in communities of color.

Solitary Confinement

Alexandra Smith; community organizer; Urban Justice Center–Mental Health Project; New York, NY
New York State allows prisoners with serious psychiatric disabilities to be placed in solitary confinement, despite evidence that it often causes severe psychiatric deterioration. Smith will monitor New York State prisons' compliance with new legislation diverting these prisoners from solitary confinement.

Brackette Williams; scholar and advocate; American Friends Service Committee; Tucson, AZ
For three decades, states across the country have expanded their use of solitary confinement and supermax security units. Williams will study individuals in Arizona who spent one or more years in these conditions and identify how such confinement affects their re-entry into society, family, and community.

Mass Incarceration

Craig Gilmore; community organizer and author; Los Angeles, CA
The movement to reform U.S. prisons is growing rapidly, but the intricacies of the prison system remain little-understood. Gilmore will create multimedia primers on the U.S. prison system to assist activists and organizations working to challenge mass incarceration.

Rethinking Crime and Punishment

Shadd Maruna; scholar; Belfast, Northern Ireland
The American public has increasingly rejected redemptive criminal justice policies in recent years. Maruna will complete Redemption RIP?, a book exploring the future of self-improvement and rehabilitation as ideals in the U.S. criminal justice system and American society.


The Open Society Institute, a private operating and grantmaking foundation, works to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens. To achieve its mission, OSI seeks to shape public policies that assure greater fairness in political, legal, and economic systems and safeguard fundamental rights. OSI works in over 60 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, as well as the United States.

You can access this page at the following URL:
http://www.soros.org/initiatives/justice/news/advocates_20080303

©2008 Open Society Institute. All rights reserved. 400 West 59th Street | New York, NY 10019, U.S.A. | Tel 212 548-0600

ACLU Challenges Prison-Like Conditions at Hutto Detention Center

Wow! This is a great victory by the ACLU. It will serve as a good precedent for future ICE-related incarcerations. -Angela

ACLU Challenges Prison-Like Conditions at Hutto Detention Center

Belkys Blanco (right) and her daughter Susana Rodriguez, prepare to depart from the Austin airport to stay with family or friends while they pursue their asylum claims. Belkys and Susana were detained at Hutto since early February 2007.

On August 27, the ACLU announced a landmark settlement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that greatly improves conditions for immigrant children and their families in the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas.

The settlement was the result of lawsuits brought earlier this year on behalf of 26 immigrant children detained with their parents at Hutto. The lawsuits contended that the conditions inside the detention center violate numerous provisions of Flores v. Meese, a 1997 court settlement that established minimum standards and conditions for the housing and release of all minors in federal immigration custody.

Since the original lawsuits were filed, all 26 children represented by the ACLU have been released. The last six children were released days before the settlement was finalized and are now living with family members who are U.S. citizens and/or legal permanent residents while pursuing their asylum claims.

Conditions at Hutto have gradually and significantly improved as a result of the groundbreaking litigation. Children are no longer required to wear prison uniforms and are allowed much more time outdoors. Educational programming has expanded and guards have been instructed not to discipline children by threatening to separate them from their parents.

In addition to making those improvements permanent, the settlement also requires ICE to provide, among other things:

allow children over the age of 12 to move freely about the facility
provide a full-time, on-site pediatrician
eliminate the count system which forces families to stay in their cells 12 hours a day
install privacy curtains around toilets
offer field trip opportunities to children
supply more toys and age- and language-appropriate books
improve the nutritional value of food

ICE must also allow regular legal orientation presentations by local immigrants’ rights organizations; allow family and friends to visit Hutto detainees seven days a week; and allow children to keep paper and pens in their rooms. ICE’s compliance with each of these reforms, as well as other conditions reforms, will be subject to external oversight to ensure their permanence.

Despite the tremendous improvements at Hutto, the facility retains its essential character: it was a medium security prison managed by the Corrections Corporation of America, a for-profit adult corrections company. The ACLU remains adamant that detaining immigrant children at Hutto is inappropriate and calls on Congress to compel DHS to find humane alternatives for managing families whose immigration status is in limbo.

http://www.aclu.org/immigrants/detention/hutto.html

Federal trial questions detention of immigrant children

By ANABELLE GARAY Associated Press Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press

DALLAS — A trial set to open Monday questions whether the federal government broke court-sanctioned rules by detaining immigrant children in a former central Texas prison while their families await decisions on immigration cases.

Testimony and evidence presented in Austin will scrutinize the T. Don Hutto family residential facility, a former prison in Taylor that houses families seeking asylum or awaiting deportation or other outcomes to their immigration cases.

Advocates contend conditions at Hutto don't comply with Flores v. Meese, a federal settlement agreement that calls for immigration authorities to house children in nonsecure, licensed programs such as shelters or foster homes.

Hutto houses some 400 illegal immigrants and asylum seekers — half of them children.

None of those at the facility have criminal records or violent histories. Yet current and former Hutto detainees allege they live under prison-like conditions.

Uniformed, handcuff-toting correctional officers called "counselors" threatened children with separating them from their families, who live in tiny cells with bunkbeds and a toilet, advocates say. Families living within Hutto's walls eat, shower and turn in on schedule and undergo a head count four times a day. After lights out, a system alerts staff in the control room if anyone leaves their cell. Advocates say children received inadequate classroom instruction, lost weight and had limited access to health care.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, who oversee Hutto, deny the allegations and say they've made improvements such as removing concertina wire and expanding the time for residents to consult with their immigration attorneys. They point to Hutto's computer lab, playground and educational programs as offerings that soften the facility. Immigration officials have described Hutto as a residential, nonsecure environment that keeps families together.

"ICE is committed to the humane treatment of minors in our care and will continue to work with Williamson County, Texas. to ensure improvements are made as warranted," ICE has said previously.

U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks in Austin was critical of the Hutto facility, previously writing that federal officials should have spent more time researching how to properly care for children in detention. Hutto also hasn't been subjected to Texas standards for housing children, Sparks wrote.

Attorneys have spent weeks in mediation trying to come up with a settlement and avoid trial. The American Civil Liberties Union, who represents the children along with Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, declined to speak about the negotiations. ICE spokesman Richard Rocha said Sunday he had no information to release.

A trial also would examine the ICE policy of expedited removal, in which immigrants are detained at Hutto or other facilities while they are processed for deportation. After opening in May 2006, Hutto began housing families who are candidates for expedited removal — an immigration policy that came after the terrorist attacks of 2001.

Officials say the facility is meant to end the "catch and release" practice that in the past permitted families in the United States illegally to remain free while awaiting a court hearing. Many never showed up in court; some borrowed other people's children and posed as families to avoid detention, ICE officials say.

Don't punish children for acting their age

Glad to see that the Miami-Herald is making a statement. Check earlier post--horrible things are happening in New Bedford, MA with parents getting separated from children as a result of aggressive immigrant hunts and raids. -Angela
Posted on Wed, Mar. 07, 2007
Don't punish children for acting their age

Families in immigration custody shouldn't be treated like criminals. Yet this is how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement now treats families routinely picked up at the border or elsewhere. The families are held in prison-like settings, and children are separated from parents as a form of punishment, according to a recent report by the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
Cake confiscated

Families, especially children, shouldn't be detained when no one has committed a crime. Less expensive, more humane alternatives exist. Congress already has told ICE to stop separating families and to find alternatives to penal detention. Lawmakers should send a stronger message to end the mistreatment.

The new report, Locking Up Family Values, describes the conditions of families at two ICE facilities -- and particularly at the euphemistically named T. Don Hutto Residential Center. Located in Texas, Hutto is a former prison now operated for ICE by Corrections Corporation of America, which specializes in prisons. Hutto still has razor wire, prison cells and punitive treatment, even for children.

One former detainee, a 28-year-old Honduran, spent three months in Hutto with her daughters, ages 4 and 9. The pregnant detainee was released after a doctor determined that her baby wasn't developing, according to a report in The Houston Chronicle. The woman was constantly hungry, and her girls didn't go outside to play for weeks. When a guard brought a birthday cake for the 4-year-old, the cake was confiscated and the guard suspended. Why such cruelty?

Locking Up Family Values cites other examples of rigid, punitive treatment: children punished for behaving their age, parents stripped of their authority. Entire families traumatized. This is inhumane. ''The penal model of family detention leads to babies in uniforms with name tags, cribs inside prison cells, parents losing the ability to discipline their children and families unable to live as a normal family unit,'' the report said.

Less-costly alternatives

For these results, taxpayers currently pay about $200 a day per detainee in one of ICE's family-detention centers. The report recommends better, less-costly alternatives: ICE must stop locking up families in penal settings and close Hutto altogether. Asylum seekers should be released, as ICE policy directs. Families facing immigration proceedings should not be separated. Most should be released, adults under supervision and with ankle monitors, if needed. Worst case, families should be held in ''nonpenal, homelike'' settings.

Congress must ensure that ICE treats such families humanely.


© 2007 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
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http://www.miamiherald.com/454/story/33657.html

ACLU Challenges Prison-Like Conditions at Hutto Detention Center

Check out this ACLU website. The children's drawings in the Hutto Detention Center are gripping.

-Angela