Three Ring Trafficking County Officials To Decide Fate Of For-Profit Prison — Freedom Walk To Tent City Ends Tuesday
Freedom Walk To Tent City Ends Tuesday
TAYLOR, Texas It’s a radical notion.
“Keep children of alleged illegal immigrants behind bars like criminals.”
Then, there’s another notion.
“No one is illegal.”
The two, along with others possibly in between, are coming to ahead this week in Taylor, Texas.
On Tuesday, Williamson County commissioners are scheduled to decide the fate of its contract with the private company that owns and operates the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility, an immigrant detention center.
Potential liability concerns were cited as the reason to end its agreement to administer the facility with Corrections Corporation of American (CCA). The current contract ends Jan. 31, 2009.
County Judge Dan Gattis, Sr. has told the press that his vote would “probably change” if CCA’s ensures the county won’t be liable for future incidents such as accidents or abuse not under county surveillance.
CAA has already proposed free legal protection and $250,000 in credit should the county lose or settle a lawsuit.
However, the treatments of detainees, about half of whom are children were a secondary concern at best to the county officials.
The federal government determined after Sept. 11, 2001, that holding children with their families in prison-like conditions was sound policy. Previous policy dictated that undocumented immigrant families would be split up.
Hutto itself is a former prison for adult criminals where families of undocumented immigrants wait for the outcomes of their cases, whether they be for deportation or otherwise.
Civil liberties groups note that most of the people at Hutto seek the safety of asylum in the United States. Not one of them is from Mexico, sat the detainees’ attorneys.
As a point of note, the Department of Homeland Security funds the Hutto facility through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) whose contract with the county runs out Oct. 2, 2008.
Yet, ICE has no contract with CCA for operations at Hutto.
Should the county kill its contract, CCA would undoubtedly be forced to secure another contract with a different government agency.
And ICE has already started looking, to be on the safe side, though there is no word as to whether ICE would contract with CCA and find a more suitable location than a prison.
And it’s not like ICE is unfamiliar with such facilities. The agency currently detains undocumented immigrant families at a former nursing home, the Berks County Shelter Care Facility in Leesport, Pa.
Berks has the support of the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children. Hutto, on the other hand, should be closed, according to the commission as well as Amnesty International.
But in the meantime, what of the largest immigrant prison camp in the world?
About 2,000 detainees are being held before deportation at the $65 million tent internment complex in Raymondville, one of the poorest counties in the country.
The facility was quickly built last summer to house the flood of detainees running th
