Texans Demand ‘No Child Left Behind Bars’ — Nearly 500 Support Immigrant Families At For-Profit Prison

TAYLOR, Texas Nearly 500 activists from across the state and the nation gathered on Saturday, June 23, to demand, “No child left behind bars!” outside a detention center for immigrant families.

Located in Taylor just north of Austin, the Hutto Residential Facility is one of two privately-run, for-profit prisons in the nation that detain immigrant children and their parents.

But to the multi-ethnic, multi-racial participants of the vigil, Hutto is a prison that should be shut down and its prisoners, especially the children, moved to more humane accommodations since it is in violation of international law.

A few months ago, a United Nations expert on children’s rights received initial permission from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to inspect the facility. However, he was turned away because the United States is one of two nations that have not ratified the U.N. Treaty on the Rights of the Child. The other nation is Somalia.

Sarnata Reynolds, the director of World Refugee Services for Amnesty International, said, “All Americans would agree that children should not be held in prison. If more people knew about what is happening in Hutto, they would be outraged.”

The vigil participants Muslims, Christians, Latinos, Caucasians, Blacks, immigrants and indigenous citizens stood united before the facility in support of basic human rights for the imprisoned immigrant families.

“We are all one global community, and should be treated as such,” said Elizabeth Kucinich who has worked with detained asylum seekers in her native England. She reiterated that Hutto does not live up to “the ideals of this nation, which is based on freedom, liberty and justice for all.”

Many of the Hutto inmates are refugees who have applied for political asylum. In fact, most of the adults that are being detained for minor visa infractions usually had lawyers that missed deadlines or misfiled their paperwork, thus causing arrest.

“The people who are incarcerated here are average people like most Americans, raising their children and trying to hold down their jobs,” said Hadi Jawad, who attended Hutto Vigil X along with 70 people from the Dallas/Fort Worth area. “They are hard-working, honest families, trying to realize the American Dream. Hutto is an absolute nightmare!”

Under ICE jurisdiction, Hutto was once a medium-security prison. It was then contracted to the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a publicly traded company (CXA), by the Williamson County Commissioners Court in May 2006.

When Jay Johnson-Castro, an immigrants’ rights activist from South Texas, began his vigils this last December, 450 people, nearly all children, were detained at Hutto. Now, there are roughly 280 inmates at the prison, but CCA still receives the same amount of money from the government per month to run the facility nearly $10,000 per person.

The ACLU and University of Texas have filed several lawsuits against Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and six officials from ICE on behalf of the detained children for violating national a