A Walk On The Facist Side — Marchers Find American Values “On Ice”

TAYLOR, Texas If you believe fascism is dead, take a walk with Jay Johnson-Castro through South Texas.

He has experience pointing out corporations’ lock-step with government.

Last year, Johnson-Castro marched to prevent a fence along the U.S./Mexico border from being federally-subsidized.

Last week, the Del Rio-based immigrant rights advocate finished another march to show how the forces in and around the Valley are treating their population of “undesirables.”

“These guys design laws that legalize corruption, and they won’t get rid of the laws that allow for corruption,” said Johnson-Castro.

To his dismay but not surprise, the Williamson County Commissioners’ Court stopped short of terminating its contract with the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) to administer the infamous T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility.

This is the same facility that was converted from a prison in order to detain children of illegal immigrants in the United States.

Instead, the Court made a deal to alleviate its financial and legal liability should something go wrong at the center, which human rights groups have wanted closely since it opened.

In case of a lawsuit, CCA agreed to front $250,000 for a legal defense fund and pay the county $5,000 a month to hire a monitor for the facility.

The reason for the concern is that in the last year, a female inmate was raped by a guard who was later fired by the company, which happens to be the nation’s largest provider of corrections management services to government agencies.

The incident was not caught on tape, although the county was contractually bound to be in charge of the building’s administration.

One would think from watching Lou Dobbs on CNN that these centers house only illegals from Mexico.

Wrong.

There are people of any number of nationalities in U.S. detention centers. In the Hutto facility, about 41 different countries are represented.

In fact, a nine-year-old Canadian-born Iranian boy, Kevin Yourdkhani, spent weeks in Hutto after his airplane made an unexpected stop in the United States.

Yourdkhani and his family, who were originally deported back to Iran, were later released only because of an appeal to the Canadian prime minister.

“The mindset is that we’re not humans, but we’re all Americans,” said Jose Orta, a resident of Taylor, Texas, who has kept abreast of the activities at Hutto. “We’ve got to think how we’d want our children cared for.”

The same week Johnson-Castro led his most recent march through South Texas, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested two Israelis in Brownsville, Texas.

The man and the woman allegedly entered into separate sham marriages with Americans to bypass immigration laws.

And where were they taken?

Raymondville, Willacy County, Texas.

This town of 9,000-plus is the site of the world’s largest immigrant prison camp.

The front page of the Oct. 24, 2007, Raymondville Chronicle quoted County Ju