"[United Nations human rights official Jorge] Bustamante was barred from a May 7 visit to the T. Don Hutto Family Detention Center in Taylor, Tex., where illegal immigrant families, including children, are held. Officials of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency in charge of that center, said they canceled the visit because of a pending lawsuit over conditions there by the American Civil Liberties Union."

Ok this fucking shit has to stop. Who are we?

From just this weeks experience in the UK expect to learn it is a lot worse and for it to be ignored.
http://tenpercent.wordpress.com/2007/05/20/100-women-hunger-on-strike-in-migrant-detention-centre/
then
http://tenpercent.wordpress.com/2007/05/21/misdirection-disinterest/

I don't think this is an aberration but rather a symptom. Money is free to move around the world but people aren't. And I'm guessing the Stanford prison experiment is not a big lesson to Texan uniforms, even if they wanted it to be (which I doubt). They are concentration camps pure and simple -please note I did not say death camps, I'm not being alarmnist, such camps have historically been utilised to detain unfavoured social groups en masse without judicial process. Britain (yeay us) usually get the credit for the first ones in the Boer war. I hope this stage of camps used on migrants passes soon as it is obvious it is wrong and leads to horrific abuse. And good people everywhere can hopefully speed the exposure and closing of these spiteful symptoms of racism and exploitation.

Deal me out. Morpheus, tell me what you need.

From what I understand sexual abuse of women prisoners by guards is routine ... I've heard real horror stories about some of those womens' prisons in SoCal.

well, maybe so. yet, i can't see this as routine, or feel that way. and this is a new crop of prisons. we should be outraged anew, even if we have unfortunately become habituated to human rights violations in most of our established world.

Who said habituated? What about *aware and working on it*?

the tone of the first comment implied a habituated feeling as i interpreted it. a reaction of "yes, this is commonplace" if you get me. nothing personal, cero!

If anyone is interested in attending a Vigil on the 23rd of June, 2007, please contact nena lopez admin@galleons.org

This really pisses me off.

How much you want to bet the threat was 'do this or I'll have your kid taken away'?

thanks, LaVerdad, i will add that to the post.

--

Pat...ugh. i shudder to think of the ways in which people might be exploited in such a terrible situation that has been set up there.

I'm not even that optimistic, Pat. "Do this or I'll do it to your kids" was what popped to mind, for me. When I saw the headline at Sylvia's I was just crossing my fingers for the abused person to be an adult.

How insulting for the survivor involved that the act is referred to as "relations" and not RAPE. With the sheer degree of power imbalance between the detainee and the offender, there's no way this was consensual. Coincidentally, I attended an event just last night here in Seattle on linking intimate violence with justice movements and undoing oppression. It was organized by a group in Cali called Generation 5. www.generationfive.org They have a tight analysis and are working to end child sexual abuse in five generations. I'm glad this story made headlines but worry about the unknown abuses that kept tight-lipped by the powers that be.

yeah, you got that too, K. "relations." what is this? 1940?

and i hear you on the things we don't know. really, it's too much already. i'll have to check that site, thanks.

If I remember correctly, somebody made a comment about this stuff NEVER Happened... I wonder what they have to say about that now!

But! But! Undocumented immigrants who get arrested get sent back out on the streets within hours! Michelle and Lou told me so!

this also happened to youths recently as well.Immigrant youth shelter won't reopen
and there is testimony that lactating women have been forced to express milk in front of male gaurds to prove they are really lactating.

groups like Incite! have been organizing against the prison industrial complex for a long time, and critical moment as well. the thing that bothers me is when people call these places dentention facilities. they're fucking prisons. and it bothers me a bit when they're called concentration camps--i think it helps us to become normalized to the idea that prisons aren't that bad--that they aren't the place where women and men are raped and violated and sexually humiliated on a regular basis.

sorry, rather than "critical moment"--i *meant* critical resistance.

critical moment is our local newspaper. sorry.

man. that's really sick.

yeah...i hear you, i'm against the entire prison philosophy. but these involve this "round 'em up" aspect that makes me think of a concentration camp. i don't really care what i call them. just trying to drive the point home. i think people know "prisons are that bad"...i just think most people think that if you have that "guilty" sign on your neck, you deserve whatever happens to you there.

"yeah, you got that too, K. "relations." what is this? 1940?"

gods. yes, exactly.