U.N. barred from Texas detention center

[helderheid]

ublished: May 21, 2007 at 12:08 PM
U.N. barred from Texas detention center
WASHINGTON, May 21 (UPI) -- U.S. immigration officials blocked a U.N. observer from visiting a detention facility for illegal aliens in Texas, the ACLU reported.

U.N. Special Rapporteur Jorge Bustamante is conducting a fact-finding mission to examine the status of migrants' rights in the United States, but U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement prohibited him from making a scheduled stop at a family detention center in Taylor, Texas, the ACLU reported on Friday.

Immigrant families caught illegally crossing the southern border are housed at the Hutto Family Residential Facility while they await immigration proceedings. The detention center, which was formerly a medium-security prison according to the ACLU, is operated by the Corrections Corporation of America through a contract with the Department of Homeland Security.

Bustamante, who serves as special rapporteur for the human rights of migrants, has scheduled meetings with human rights and immigrants groups during his three-week trip to assess the treatment of illegal migrants in the United States. The tour of Hutto "was considered a major part of the Special Rapporteur's U.S. visit," the ACLU stated.

The ACLU currently represents 12 children from the Hutto facility in lawsuits against Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and several immigration officials. The lawsuits condemn the conditions of the facilities, faulting DHS officials in particular for providing only limited access to medical facilities and inadequate educational opportunities.

MORE >>>>

http://www.upi.com/Security_Terrorism/Briefing/2007/05/21/un_barred_from_texas_detention_center/6664/

[Horse with no Name]

1. It isn't just Mexicans

http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/2007/spring/article12.htm
>>snip
Palestinian children as young as five years old have been jailed in the United States since early November 2006. They are currently being treated more harshly in the United States than even in Israel. The manner of the arrest and detention of the Palestinian children in Texas contravenes international law. Article 37 of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child(1) states that detaining children should be a measure of last resort, and that the detention must be for the shortest possible period of time. Under international law, children are to be detained only in facilities dedicated exclusively for them, and never with adults. Israel signed the pact in 1990, but only applies it to Israeli children. The Palestinian Ministry for Prisoners’ Affairs confirm the presence of about 450 Palestinian children from the West Bank in Israeli prisons, including three girls aged 15, 16 and 17. However, even Israel is not known to have ever detained a 5 year old girl like Faten Ibrahim who was jailed in a criminal jail facility in Texas with adult prisoners for almost three months.



Beginning in the early morning hours of November 2, 2006, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) arrested three Palestinian families in Dallas, TX and jailed them, including their minor children. They are the families of Adel Suleiman, Salaheddin Ibrahim and Radi Hazahza. All three families had been under final removal orders from the United States for several years because their applications for political asylum were denied more than two years ago and all avenues of appeal had been exhausted. Under prior policy, ICE had not actively sought removal of these families from the US, and Palestinians denied asylum had regularly been allowed to remain in the United States without legal immigration status although formally under orders of removal. In the early hours of November 2, 2006, that policy changed and numerous Palestinian asylum applicants with denied asylum claims in the Dallas, TX area were arrested under a new ICE initiative, “Operation Return to Sender.”



Because the United States does not recognize the right of 1948 and 1967 Palestinian refugees to refugee status as a matter of law, under Article 1(D) of the 1951 Refugee Convention, Palestinians are regularly denied asylum and recognition of their refugee rights in the United States. The denials are frequently on the basis of the applicant having been a victim of generalized conditions of violence rather than having been individually targeted, and only applicants with Palestinian National Authority (PNA) passports are identified as Palestinian in the immigration system in the United States. The US Department of Justice reports that of 30 Palestinian asylum applications filed in the United States from 2001-2005, 2 have been granted and 28 have been denied. But none of the families discussed here were probably included in that number because all three families carried Jordanian passports at entry to the United States.(2) Palestinians carrying travel documents from other countries or who were born outside of Palestine are regularly categorized by the US immigration system as nationals of their country of birth or country whose travel documents they carry. For example, a Palestinian child born to a guest worker in Saudi Arabia would be considered Saudi Arabian by American immigration despite having no right to legal residence or citizenship in Saudi Arabia.



The adult males from the Ibrahim and Hazahza families and the two oldest daughters of the Hazahza family were jailed in Haskell, Texas. The mothers and minor children (with the exception of Ahmad Hazahza, 17 who was held in Haskell as an adult) were jailed at the T. Don Hutto Detention Center in Taylor, Texas, south of Austin, TX, and many hundreds of miles from their family members. While called a detention center, the T. Don Hutto Center is a prison, and is a diabolical new creation of the Department of Homeland Security. It is a prison designed specifically for the purpose of jailing non-Mexican families who the US government is deporting from the United States, including children no matter how young they may be. The government claims that despite the children never having committed any criminal offense, the jailing of these immigrant children is humane and reasonable because they are to be deported from the United States. In the author’s view, there is no possible justification for jailing children. What could 5, 8, 11 and 14 year olds possibly have done to warrant jailing in a prison? That their imprisonment was allowed to continue for three months is a crime against humanity.


>>snip
All three Palestinian families entered the United States legally with visas and applied for political asylum.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. George isn't letting in UN Inspectors, eh?

Hmm.

[RL3AO]

3. I guess George figures

that since we pay so much of the UN's funding (isn't it 40%?), that we do own them.

[Horse with no Name]

5. You don't say? I think the EU contributes more than we do

:eyes:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0609-05.htm

>>>snip
ASHINGTON - In a move virtually certain to add to strains between the U.S. Congress and the United Nations, the International Relations Committee (HIRC) of the House of Representatives Wednesday approved a sweeping bill that, if passed into law, will require Washington to withhold up to half of assessed U.S. contributions to the world body unless it implements specific reforms.

Among other ”reforms,” The United Nations Reform Act of 2005, which is expected to be approved on the House floor next week, would also require the U.N. to fund most of its programs through voluntary contributions, rather than mandatory dues from its 191 member-states, and enable Washington to pick and choose those programs it wished to fund.

It would also require the U.N. to set up a number of new oversight boards to investigate the U.N. bureaucracy and specific agencies, as well as adopt new rules that would bar alleged human rights violators from serving the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

And then there is this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Population_Fund
>>>snip
In 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005, the White House denied funding to UNFPA that had already been allocated by the U.S. Congress on the grounds that the UNFPA supported Chinese government programs which include forced abortions and sterilizations. In a letter from the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns to Congress, the administration said it had determined that UNFPA’s support for China’s population programme “facilitates (its) government’s coercive abortion programme”, thus violating a 20-year-old law that bans the use of United States aid to finance or support abortions overseas.<3>

The UNFPA says that it "does not provide support for abortion services".<4> Its charter includes a strong statement condemning coercion.".<5>

Nonprofit organizations have sprung up in an attempt to compensate by raising private donations:


But this answers your question and look--you were just a tad wrong
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2005/12/un_funding.html
>>snip
EU 35%
US 22%
Japan 19.5%
Canada 2.8%
Australia 1.6%
NZ 0.2%

[RL3AO]

6. I was off. Anyway, the U.S. is still number 1 in amount financed.

[treestar]

4. One of the marks of tyranny

This used to be only other countries doing this. It is hard to believe the US is doing it.

All they want to do is inspect the place, too. Just to see what it is like in there.

[deminks]

7. Vat? Ve have no model kamp for the visitors to see?

Vere is our Theresienstadt, mein Fuhrer? A model kamp for zie UN und zie Red Cross to visit and check their little check boxes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_camp_Theresienstadt

/hateful sarcasm off.