Interment Camps-They're Back

[MiaCulpa]

Responding to complaints about conditions at the nation’s main family detention center for illegal immigrants, officials threw open the gates on Friday for a first news media tour.

They portrayed the privately run converted prison, open since May, as a model facility “primarily focused on the safety of the children.”

Once all the barbed wire comes down, Gary Mead, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, said, “it’s going to look more like a community college with a very high chain-link fence.”

Among other things, critics have complained about the prisonlike conditions, the food and the limited amount of schooling and recreation provided for children.

Inside the fluorescent-lighted corridors, plastic plants had been hurriedly installed and some areas repainted, lawyers for some detainees said, and officials acknowledged that pizza was on the lunch menu for the first time. The detainees could not be interviewed.

The facility, the T. Don Hutto Family Detention Center, is operated for the government by the Corrections Corporation of America, under a $2.8-million-a-month contract with Williamson County. It is named for a founder of the company, which runs 64 facilities in 19 states.

It now holds about 400 illegal immigrants, including 170 children, in family groups from nearly 30 countries, Mr. Mead said. He called it a humane alternative to splitting up families while insuring their presence at legal proceedings.

There is only one other family detention center in the country, the smaller Berks Family Shelter Care Facility, a former nursing home, in Leesport, Pa.

Critics said the picture presented on Friday conflicted with what they had observed.

“At Hutto, we found prisonlike conditions imposed on families with no criminal background, including asylum seekers,” said Michelle Brané, a lawyer for the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service who co-authored a report on family detention to be released on Feb. 22.

...

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials who traveled from Washington to lead the tour with company staff members showed off one of the 11 dormitory areas, or pods, lined by bare pastel-tinted detainee rooms, each with a metal bunk bed, a sink and a toilet.

The rooms are not locked at night, but a laser beam alerts guards if anyone leaves a room after bedtime — 9 p.m. for children and 10 for adults. The detainees wear outfits of green and blue, which Danny Coronado, a spokesman for the corrections company, likened to scrubs but critics described as prison garb.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/10/us/10detain.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[Indigent A-hole]

1. Where has America gone wrong?

Other than voting in these idiots, of course.

I mean, they are jailing children now!! What more will it take for the American public to rise up, if nothing else virtually, and show our elected government who's boss?

Impeachment. That's the only solution. And get them both, since Cheney really is behind all this ugliness in the end.

[SpiralHawk]

2. Ahh, they did not get "voted in"

Check the facts. They stole the elections in 2000 and 2004.

That's a fact, jack.

Republicons are always stealing from America.

That's what they do.

[CountAllVotes]

5. true enough

they didn't win and no one seems to give a damn. Well not damn enough to do something about it! :grr:

IMPEACH NOW!

:kick:

[Indigent A-hole]

7. Restating a fact does not make it true

Just saying they stole the elections is not enough proof, friend. Even if you call me Jack.

I am as die-hard as the next progressive, but if we start blandly accepting positions based on belief then we are no better than the Repugnicans.

Hit me back with some incontrivertible proof, or give up the fight to prove stolen elections and get on the Impeachment Bandwagon. Their impeachable crimes are provable, with real facts and figures.

No sense beating a dead horse!

[SpiralHawk]

9. The republicons stole the elections, Indigent A-hole

You can go google your own facts, opinion, whatever.

This is still the United States of America, despite the republicons.

I am entitled to bloviate. You are welcome to kiss me off.

Ain't America great?

That's a fact, Jack.

[CountAllVotes]

3. Welcome to the DU Indigent A-hole

:hi:

and oh yeah, I agree! IMPEACH NOW!

:kick:

[meldroc]

4. Reminds me of a WWII miniseries...

A large subplot took place in the Warsaw Ghetto. The Red Cross had announced they were going to check the conditions of the ghetto, so the Nazis hastily fixed up all the crumbling buildings, brought in doctors, good food, etc. and for a while everything looked great (though God help you if you didn't tell the Red Cross everything was peachy and do it with a smile.) Once they left, the ghetto rapidly degraded back to a hellhole.

[Turbineguy]

6. It takes a special sort to work in such places

When my son had a run-in with the law (showed up for court on a reckless driving charge without a lawyer) he got put in the lock-up. When I went to post his bail, one of the ladies there obviously enjoyed locking people up. (He was doing "donuts" in the snow in an empty parking lot. The whole thing cost about $5000 to resolve.)

Of interest though, there was a policeman there who was working to get this young girl out of trouble. He seemed like a very nice man, but she was a hopeless case.

[peacetalksforall]

8. The leaders of this country are sick, sick, sick. DOLLARS

sticking out of their pockets. They took a look at all the people who have made millions in this country and decided to join them. They took a look at history and all the ways to torment and control people and said they wanted to give it a try. They get it both ways - make points with their sick voters while they make money.

Look at the corporate and foundation barons who put the maniac Cheney in place to steer the maniac Bush and all their maniac friends.