10/9 in Newark, NJ: March Opposing Expanding Immigrant Detention in Essex County, NJ « Detention Watch Network: Monitoring & Challenging Immigration Detention, Immigration Enforcement & Deportation

10/9 in Newark, NJ: March Opposing Expanding Immigrant Detention in Essex County, NJ « Detention Watch Network: Monitoring & Challenging Immigration Detention, Immigration Enforcement & Deportation

by Will Coley

***PRESS RELEASE***

CONTACTS:

• Kathy O’Leary, Pax Christi NJ, 973-610-1684, kolearypcnj@gmail.com
• Jackie Mahendra, Director of Organizing, Immigrant Rights, Change.org, 202-222-8699, jackie@change.org
• Cynthia Mellon, (Spanish & Portugese) Community & Environmental Justice Organizer, Ironbound Community Corp., 862-755-9577 cmellon@ironboundcc.org

NEW JERSEY RESIDENTS AND FAITH LEADERS HOLDING EVENT TO OPPOSE EXPANSION OF IMMIGRANT DETENTION AT JAIL ACCUSED OF INHUMANE CONDITIONS

Residents of New Jersey To March to the Essex County Jail to protest freeholders decision to Put Revenue Before Human Rights in approving a contract to house immigrant detainees at controversial Essex County Correctional Facility and Neighboring Delaney Hall .

ESSEX COUNTY, NJ – Concerned New Jersey residents including members of Pax Christi NJ and more than 20 immigrant rights and religious organizations from New York and New Jersey will march from Peter Francisco Park in Newark, NJ, to the Essex County Correctional Facility on Sunday in opposition to a new contract with Essex County that would expand immigration detention at the jail and the neighboring privately run Delaney Hall to house up to 1,250 immigrant detainees. The jail has been accused of inhumane conditions including proximity to active polluters and toxic waste sites; restrictions on visits from family, lawyers, and clergy; concerns about adequate food and general safety; and a denial to access of medical services.

• WHAT: March and Rally in Opposition to Inhumane Conditions at For-Profit Detention Center in Toxic Waste Corridor
• WHERE: Beginning at Peter Francisco Park (Adjacent to Newark Penn Station) in Newark, NJ, and marching to Essex County Correctional Facility & Delaney Hall, 356 Doremus Ave., Newark, NJ
• WHEN: 1:30 PM – 4:30 PM, Sunday, October 9, 2011
• Facebook Event Listing

“The Essex County Executive and the Freeholders want us to believe that they can spin the misery of the immigrants in their custody into gold for the rest of the residents of Essex County, but they are perpetuating an environment in which profit is the primary motivator while shirking their responsibility for oversight,” said faith leader Kathy O’Leary, who launched an online campaign on Change.org. She and Pax Christi NJ, the organization she represents, are a part of a statewide coalition of organizations which has been engaging the chosen freeholders in private and public meetings since January, consistently asking that the no new contract with ICE be approved prior to completing a thorough investigation of allegations of human rights abuses and violations of NJ law at the jail and instituting a community review board to ensure facilities comply with all applicable standards.

Participants and the coalition members are hoping to send the message that New Jersey residents are upset with the Freeholders’ decision. A large coalition of faith groups is asking that the Freeholders ensure visiting hours that include evenings and weekends; contact visits for family members; no restrictions on visits, phone calls, and other contact with lawyers and clergy; adequate mental and physical health care; healthy food that complies with dietary restrictions and religious observances; unrestricted access to communal religious services; and regular outdoor recreation free from exposure to hazardous environmental conditions. The online petition on Change.org has already garnered more than 2,000 signatures.

Sunday’s event is the third major protest outside the Essex County Correctional Facility and Delaney Hall since Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced its intention to partner with Essex County. The event is also the 13th annual protest against immigration detention by the immigrant rights group IRATE & First Friends, traditionally held outside the Elizabeth Detention Center. However, the protest is moving to Newark this year along with the detainees. The event is to take place just days after ICE completes transferring hundreds of immigrant detainees from the Elizabeth Detention Center to Delaney Hall and two years since ICE issued a report that was supposed to transform immigration detention from an unfairly penal system to one of humane civil detention.

ICE is saying the move to Essex is an attempt to improve conditions, but advocates disagree. “The policy of mandatory immigration detention is bad enough, but what ICE is holding up as the model of immigration detention for the entire country is a jail and a hastily partitioned penal facility next to active polluters and toxic waste in the middle of what is known as ‘chemical corridor.’ How is that an improvement? How can anyone call that more humane?” said Cynthia Mellon Environmental Justice & Community Organizer for the Ironbound Community Corporation.

The campaign is catching on and it is attracting the attention of national groups. “Kathy O’Leary and Pax Christi NJ’s campaign to demand more humane conditions for immigrant detainees is impressive,” said Jackie Mahendra, Change.org’s Director of Organizing for Immigrant Rights. “Change.org is about empowering anyone, anywhere to demand action on the issues that matter to them, and it’s been really incredible to see this campaign take off.”

Live signature totals from the Kathy O’Leary and Pax Christi NJ’s campaign:
http://www.change.org/petitions/oppose-expansion-of-immigration-detention-at-a-jail-accused-of-inhumane-conditions

Featured Speakers:

• Carol Fouke-Mpoyo –Chairperson, Sojourners Immigration Detention Center Visitors Program
• Cynthia Mellon –Environmental Justice & Community Organizer, Ironbound Community Corp.
• Daniel Cummings – Monmouth County Coalition for Immigrant Rights
• Ed Martone –Executive Director NJ Association on Correction
• Maristela Freiberg & Moacir Weirich – St. Stephan’s Grace Lutheran Community Church
• Anabela Moura Silva – Wilson Avenue School parents group
• Sally Pillay – Coordinator Intern Program, IRATE & First Friends

Live music performed by the Catholic Worker Band and spoken word/hip-hop ballads performed by The Peace Poets

The event is co-sponsored by: Action 21; Action for Justice Community Church of NY Unitarian Universalist; American Friends Service Committee, Immigrant Rights Program-Newark; Bergen County Branch/People’s Organization for Progress; Casa Esperanza; Casa Freehold; CEUS; Community of Friends in Action, Inc.; Immigration Task Force, Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry of New Jersey; Felician Sisters of Lodi; Ironbound Community Corporation; Middlesex County Coalition for Immigrant Rights; Monmouth County Coalition for Immigrant Rights; NJ DREAM Act Coalition; Pax Christi NJ; Riverside Sojourners Immigration Detention Visitor Project; St. Stephan’s Grace Community – ELCA; Sisters of Mercy, Mid-Atlantic Justice Office; Social Responsibility Council of the Unitarian Society of Ridgewood; Unidad Latina en Accion- NJ; Wind of the Spirit

For more information on Pax Christi NJ, please visit: http://paxchristiusa.org/
Pax Christi NJ is part of Pax Christi USA, a national Catholic organization, reaching over a half-million Catholics directly every year. We have over 400 local groups throughout the United States, over 100 bishop members, 700 parish sponsors, 600 religious communities, and 50 college and high school chapters.

For more information on Change.org, please visit: http://www.change.org/about
Change.org is the world’s fastest-growing platform for social change — growing by more than 400,000 new members a month, and empowering millions of people to start, join, and win campaigns for social change in their community, city and country.

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Law Expected in New York City Would Hamper Inmate Deportations - NYTimes.com

Law Expected in New York City Would Hamper Inmate Deportations - NYTimes.com

In Change, Bloomberg Backs Obstacle to Deportation

By SAM DOLNICK

Published: September 30, 2011

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In a significant reversal, the Bloomberg administration said Friday that it would support a City Council bill that would hamper federal authorities’ ability to detain, and eventually deport, foreign-born inmates on Rikers Island who are about to be released.

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The decision is an important victory for the Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, the sponsor of the bill, which is now almost certain to become law, and for immigrant advocates, who have long assailed the city’s cooperation with immigration agents based at the prison.

Corrections Department officials routinely share lists of foreign-born inmates with immigration authorities, who then take custody of, detain and deport thousands of people who had been charged with misdemeanors and felonies. The arrangement is common across the country.

The bill would not end the practice, known as the criminal detainer program, in New York City. But it would prevent corrections officials from transferring inmates to federal custody, even immigrants in the United States illegally, if prosecutors declined to press charges against them, and if they had no convictions or outstanding warrants, had not previously been ordered deported and did not show up on the terrorist watch list.

As a result, the immigrants would be released if they were not defendants in criminal cases, regardless of whether federal officials wanted them deported.

“The criminal detainer program had become the immigrant dragnet program,” Ms. Quinn said. “We don’t support that.”

Ms. Quinn, a likely mayoral candidate in 2013, said the bill could keep hundreds of people, perhaps as many as 1,000, from being deported every year.

In the past, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his advisers have defended the city’s cooperation with immigration officials as a matter of public safety. But after extensive negotiations with Ms. Quinn’s office, the administration decided to support the bill.

“Our goal is always to protect public safety and maintain national security, while ensuring New York remains the most immigrant-friendly city in the nation,” said John Feinblatt, the mayor’s chief policy adviser. “This strikes the right balance.”

Luis Martinez, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to comment on the legislation.

Mr. Bloomberg’s decision comes as the Obama administration has placed a priority on deporting noncitizen criminals who pose a threat to the public, while focusing less on illegal immigrants who do not pose a threat.

Supporters of more restrictive immigration laws have criticized the Council bill as a get-out-of-jail-free card for illegal immigrants. Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington has said it amounts to “playing Russian roulette with public safety.”

Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito, a Democrat who represents East Harlem and a co-sponsor of the bill, dismissed that charge, saying the measure would affect only “people who do not pose a risk to safety and security.”

Ms. Mark-Viverito also said that curtailing the program would save the city a significant amount of money, possibly tens of millions of dollars.

Ms. Quinn and Ms. Mark-Viverito had planned a rally on Sunday at an Upper Manhattan church to draw support for the legislation. The rally now will most likely be more of a celebration, Ms. Quinn’s office said.

The City Council will hold a hearing on the issue on Monday, when Robert M. Morgenthau, the former longtime Manhattan district attorney, is expected to testify in support of the bill. The Council is expected to vote on it before the end of the year.

Advocates for immigrants hailed the mayor’s decision as an important step toward protecting the rights of foreign-born New Yorkers.

“There’s really an evolving consensus about the corrosive impact of an aggressive deportation strategy,” said Andrew Friedman of Make the Road New York. “This is a clear statement that it is bad for New York in so many ways to facilitate the deportation of New Yorkers.”

A version of this article appeared in print on October 1, 2011, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: In Change, Mayor Backs Obstacle to Deportation.

Who is Paul Bergrin?

Who is Paul Bergrin?

“ "Besides the evidence I uncovered on Operation Iron Triangle, Objective Murray and the Rules of Engagement, to kill every military aged male upon contact, I was about to change the course of history (in a press conference) that I had affirmative proof that President Bush, VP Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Assist. Secy. of (Defense) Wolfowitz, Carbone and White House Counsel, (Alberto) Gonzales (later US Attorney General) had lied, deliberately and intentionally when they denied knowledge of the torture techniques at Abu Ghraib. -- Paul Bergrin

Paul Bergrin is a prominent, well known and brilliant defense attorney who relentlessly pursued the United States government and military while defending soldiers in the Abu Ghraib and Operation Iron Triangle cases who were wrongfully set up to take the fall for abuses in Iraq. His position is that the higher ups not only knew about the abuses at Abu Ghraib, but that they had authorized them and that during the Operation Iron Triangle raid the soldiers were following the ROE (rules of engagement), which was to kill every Iraqi male of military age on sight. Bergrin sought to prove that many of these orders came from as high up as the White House. In fact he was one of the first people to uncover these connections and to go public with them. He publicly stated that Rumsfeld signed documents authorizing hooding, nudity, the use of dogs, etc and he requested to put both Bush and Rumsfeld on the stand. Whereas the first Abu Ghraib cases were being tried in Iraq, Bergrin was one of the first attorneys to demand that the case involving his client, Jamal Davis, be held in the United States. That way the American public could better learn the truth about what was really going on.

Today Paul Bergrin is sitting in a prison in Brooklyn, New York, facing attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder and many other charges. (Most of the US Prosecutor's case against Paul is based on statements by confidential informants -- his trial is scheduled to be held in Newark, NJ on October 11, 2011). Could his relentless pursuit of justice for the cases that he defended involving Iraq have anything to do with the charges he is currently facing?

FACTS TO CONSIDER

During the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal, Bergrin sought to put George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld on the stand for authorizing the abuses at the prison. And when George Bush wanted to destroy Abu Ghraib, he was the one who was able to prevent him from razing it to the ground, by having the judge rule it a crime scene and demanding that it not be destroyed for the duration of the Abu Ghraib trials (it should also be noted that Iraqi officials were also against tearing it down as well).

During the Operation Iron Triangle case, Bergrin won the right to have Colonel Michael Steele (the colonel upon whom the movie Black Hawk Down is based) take the witness stand. This was unprecedented as no one with a rank as high as Steele's had ever been commanded to take the stand in the history of the US military. However, this case never went to trial, as Paul Bergrin was accused of running a brothel and arrested on felony charges in 2007, days before the trial was to begin (In 2009 all of the felony charges would be dropped and Bergrin would plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge, which did not result in the loss of his license). When this arrest first happened, it even caused his then attorney, John Edwards Tiffany, to question whether or not the charges were some type of vendetta against Bergrin for his aggressive defense style and stepping on too many toes.

Not soon after his arrest, came a trifecta of plea bargains from the soldiers, which resulted in the case never going to trial. Consequently, Colonel Michael Steele never had to take the stand; testimony from his second in command, Lt Colonel Nathaniel Johnson, calling him a toxic leader and one who like to use "kill boards" and who wanted a big body count, was never heard; and the higher ups were never implicated in their role for authorizing such unlawful Rules of Engagement.

In April, 2009 when the Obama administration released the publication of papers proving that the White House authorized abuses, Bergrin announced his plans to reopen the Abu Ghraib prison abuse case. But that was not to happen, because soon after Bergrin announced his intentions to reopen this case, he was arrested again in May, and this time was charged with murder. Bergrin writes:

"If I had the torture memos, I would have compelled the highest levels of the government to testify at these Court-Martials, gone with a not guilty plea and exposed the hypocrisy. Additionally, Col. Pohl denied me calling these witnesses because the (government) alleged there was no nexus nor evidence in existence on the torture memos and techniques; we now know (they) existed and all the above had knowledge of....I could have reversed the convictions at Abu Ghraib and placed blame on the real offenders . . .

Important questions to Ask When Discussing Paul Bergrin:

• Why is it that most people have never heard of Operation Iron Triangle?

• Why was Paul Bergrin arrested in 2007?

• Why is it that the US army can admit to giving the soldiers an illegal order, but still lock these soldiers up for following the order, put them in cages, threaten them with the death penalty, sentence them to 18 years, and hold them in solitary confinement where the lights are never turned off and where they must at times beg for food, water, etc.?

• Who are Corey Glaggett, William Hunsacker and the rest of the Leavonsworth 9?

• Why was William Hunsacker, one of the soldiers, who has done so much soul searching, denied clemency when he merely asked that the military consider taking 4 years off of his 18 year sentence for following the Rules of Engagement? He didn't ask to be released. He merely asked that 4 years be taken off of his 18 year sentence?

• And why is it that nothing happens to the higher ups in command who give them the illegal order and who sanction abuse???????

Following the case involving Paul Bergrin will help to answer most of these questions.

Justice Should Not Simply be for the Rich, and Nor Should it be Based on Race.

As someone who spent the early part of his career as a prosecutor, and as someone who was a captain in the military, Paul Bergrin saw that things were not fair and that the justice system was riddled with inequities based on skin color and economic background. Often he talked about how as a prosecutor he saw so many things -- such as the falsifying of evidence, the unfair sentencing based on race, and the over burdensome and unfair bail that was often placed on poor people. As a result he became disillusioned with the prosecutorial system and decided to become a defense attorney and to pour his heart and soul into every case.

As a defense attorney, Paul didn't just simply take the big cases that would get his name into the papers. Rather, he believed that everyone, regardless of race or socio-economic status, was entitled to a rigorous defense. He truly believed that innocent until proven guilty and the right to a fair trial for everyone were the cornerstones of a just American legal system. And he applied this work ethic to everyone he defended, including the residents of Newark, New Jersey, which is where he practiced.

Today, the mainstream media, which has become nothing more than a parrot for the government's position, seek to unjustly villify him and the community he represented, by constantly referring to him as the attorney of drug dealers and gang members. To them, innocent until proven guilty doesn't exist, and their arrogant, racist and condescending attitudes about the citizenry of Newark are often reflected in their extremely biased reporting styles and propaganda. One such example is the scandal mongering hit piece, written by Mark Jacob of New York Magazine, which is a text book example of sensationalist yellow journalism at its worst.

Companies Use Immigration Crackdown to Turn a Profit - NYTimes.com

Companies Use Immigration Crackdown to Turn a Profit - NYTimes.com

Companies Use Immigration Crackdown to Turn a Profit

By NINA BERNSTEIN

The men showed up in a small town in Australia’s outback early last year, offering top dollar for all available lodgings. Within days, their company, Serco, was flying in recruits from as far away as London, and busing them from trailers to work 12-hour shifts as guards in a remote camp where immigrants seeking asylum are indefinitely detained.

It was just a small part of a pattern on three continents where a handful of multinational security companies have been turning crackdowns on immigration into a growing global industry.

Especially in Britain, the United States and Australia, governments of different stripes have increasingly looked to such companies to expand detention and show voters they are enforcing tougher immigration laws.

Some of the companies are huge — one is among the largest private employers in the world — and they say they are meeting demand faster and less expensively than the public sector could.

But the ballooning of privatized detention has been accompanied by scathing inspection reports, lawsuits and the documentation of widespread abuse and neglect, sometimes lethal. Human rights groups say detention has neither worked as a deterrent nor speeded deportation, as governments contend, and some worry about the creation of a “detention-industrial complex” with a momentum of its own.

“They’re very good at the glossy brochure,” said Kaye Bernard, general secretary of the union of detention workers on the Australian territory of Christmas Island, where riots erupted this year between asylum seekers and guards. “On the ground, it’s almost laughable, the chaos and the inability to function.”

Private prisons in the United States have long stirred controversy. But while there have been conflicting studies about their costs and benefits, no systematic comparisons exist for immigration detention, say scholars like Matthew J. Gibney, a political scientist at the University of Oxford who tracks immigration systems.

Still, Mr. Gibney and others say the pitfalls of outsourcing immigration enforcement have become evident in the past 15 years. “When something goes wrong — a death, an escape — the government can blame it on a kind of market failure instead of an accountability failure,” he said.

In the United States — with almost 400,000 annual detentions in 2010, up from 280,000 in 2005 — private companies now control nearly half of all detention beds, compared with only 8 percent in state and federal prisons, according to government figures. In Britain, 7 of 11 detention centers and most short-term holding places for immigrants are run by for-profit contractors.

No country has more completely outsourced immigration enforcement, with more troubled results, than Australia. Under unusually severe mandatory detention laws, the system has been run by a succession of three publicly traded companies since 1998. All three are now major players in the international business of locking up and transporting unwanted foreigners.

The first, the Florida-based prison company GEO Group, lost its Australia contract in 2003 amid a commission’s findings that detained children were subjected to cruel treatment. An Australian government audit reported that the contract had not delivered “value-for-money.” In the United States, GEO controls 7,000 of 32,000 detention beds.

The second company, G4S, an Anglo-Danish security conglomerate with more than 600,000 employees in 125 countries, was faulted for lethal neglect and abusive use of solitary confinement in Australia. By the middle of the past decade, after refugee children had sewed their lips together during hunger strikes in camps like Woomera and Curtin, and government commissions discovered that Australian citizens and legal residents were being wrongly detained and deported, protests pushed the Liberal Party government to dismantle some aspects of the system.

But after promising to return the work to the public sector, a Labor government awarded a five-year, $370 million contract to Serco in 2009. The value of the contract has since soared beyond $756 million as detention sites quadrupled, to 24, and the number of detainees ballooned to 6,700 from 1,000.

Dangerous Problems

Over the past year, riots, fires and suicidal protests left millions of dollars in damage at Serco-run centers from Christmas Island to Villawood, outside Sydney, and self-harm by detainees rose twelvefold, government documents show. In August, a government inspection report cited dangerous overcrowding, inadequate and ill-trained staff, no crisis planning and no requirement that Serco add employees when population exceeded capacity.

At the detention center Serco runs in Villawood, immigrants spoke of long, open-ended detentions making them crazy. Alwy Fadhel, 33, an Indonesian Christian who said he needed asylum from Islamic persecution, had long black hair coming out in clumps after being held for more than three years, in and out of solitary confinement.

“We talk to ourselves,” Mr. Fadhel said. “We talk to the mirror; we talk to the wall.”

Naomi Leong, a shy 9-year-old, was born in the detention camp. For more than three years, at a cost of about $380,000, she and her mother were held behind its barbed wire. Psychiatrists said Naomi was growing up mute, banging her head against the walls while her mother, Virginia Leong, a Malaysian citizen accused of trying to use a false passport, sank into depression.

Naomi and her mother became a cause célèbre in protests against the mandatory detention system, leading to their release in 2005 on rare humanitarian visas. They are now citizens.

“I come here to give little bit of hope to the people,” Ms. Leong said during a recent visit to Villawood, where posters display the governing principles of Serco, beginning with “We foster an entrepreneurial culture.”

Free-Market Solutions

Companies often say that losing a contract is the ultimate accountability.

“We are acutely aware of our responsibilities and are committed to the humane, fair and decent treatment of all those in our care,” a Serco spokesman said in an e-mail. “We will continue to work with our customers around the world and seek to improve the services we provide for them.”

But lost detention contracts are rare and easily replaced in this fast-growing business. Serco’s $10 billion portfolio includes many other businesses, from air traffic control and visa processing in the United States, to nuclear weapons maintenance, video surveillance and welfare-to-work programs in Britain, where it also operates several prisons and two “immigration removal centers.”

“If one area or territory slows down, we can move where the growth is,” Christopher Hyman, Serco’s chief executive, told investors last year, after reporting a 35 percent increase in profits. This spring, Serco reported a 13 percent profit rise.

Its rival G4S delivers cash to banks on most continents, runs airport security in 80 countries and has 1,500 employees in immigration enforcement in Britain, the Netherlands and the United States, where its services include escorting illegal border-crossers back to Mexico for the Department of Homeland Security.

Nick Buckles, the chief executive of G4S, would not discuss the company. But last year he told analysts how its “justice” business in the Netherlands blossomed in one week after the 2002 assassination of a politician with an anti-immigrant and law-and-order agenda.

“There’s nothing like a political crisis to stimulate a bit of change,” Mr. Buckles said.

In Britain last fall, the company came under criminal investigation in the asphyxiation of an Angolan man who died as three G4S escorts held him down on a British Airways flight. Soon afterward, British immigration authorities announced that the company had lost its bid to renew a $48 million deportation escort contract because it was underbid by a competitor.

Even so, G4S has more than $1.1 billion in government contracts in Britain, a spokesman said, only about $126 million from the immigration authority. It quickly replaced the lost revenue with contracts to build, lease and run more police jails and prisons.

In 2007, Western Australia’s Human Rights Commission found that G4S drivers had ignored the cries of detainees locked in a scorching van, leaving them so dehydrated that one drank his own urine. The company was ordered to pay $500,000 for inhumane treatment, but three of the five victims already had been deported. Immigration officials, relying on company misinformation, had dismissed their complaints without investigation, the commission found.

There was a public outcry when an Aboriginal man died in another G4S van in similar circumstances the next year. A coroner ruled in 2009 that G4S, the drivers and the government shared the blame. The company was later awarded a $70 million, five-year prisoner transport contract in another state, Victoria, without competition.

G4S pleaded guilty to negligence in the van death this year, and was fined $285,000. Mr. Buckles, its chief executive, alluded to the case at a meeting with analysts in March, reassuring them.

“There is only two or three major players, typically sometimes only two people bidding,” Mr. Buckles said. “In time, we will become a winner in that market because there’s a lot of outsourcing opportunities and not many competitors.”

In August, when GEO, the Florida prison company, posted a 40 percent rise in second-quarter profits, its executives in Boca Raton spoke of new immigration business on both sides of the Atlantic.

John M. Hurley, a GEO executive for North American operations, cited “the continued growth in the criminal alien population,” larger facilities, and longer federal contracts, some up to 20 years.

At the company’s Reeves County Detention Center in Texas, immigrant inmates rioted in 2009 and 2010 after several detainees died in solitary confinement. GEO executives declined to comment. But speaking to shareholders, they credited much of the quarter’s $10 million increase in international revenue to the expansion of a detention center in Britain, where immigration was a hot issue in the 2010 election.

A Policy Backfires

“Britain is no longer a soft touch,” Damian Green, the immigration minister, said in August 2010 when he visited the center, near Heathrow Airport, reopening wings that had burned in 2006 during detainee riots under a different private operator.

The riots started the day the chief inspector of prisons released a blistering report about abuses there, including excessive waits for deportation. Months after Mr. Green’s appearance, an independent monitoring board complained that at the expanded center — now Europe’s largest, with 610 detainees — at least 35 men had been waiting more than a year to be deported, including one locked up for three years and seven months at a cost of at least $237,000.

The camp that Serco took over in the Australian outback, the Curtin Immigration Detention Center, had also been shut down amid riots and hunger strikes in 2002. But it was reopened last year to handle a surge of asylum seekers arriving by boat even as the government imposed a moratorium on processing their claims. Refurbished for 300 men, the camp sits on an old air force base and held more than 1,500 detainees in huts and tents behind an electrified fence. Serco guards likened the compound to a free-range chicken farm.

On March 28, a 19-year-old Afghan from a group persecuted by the Taliban hanged himself after 10 months’ detention — the system’s fifth suicide in seven months. A dozen guards, short of sleep and training, found themselves battling hundreds of grieving, angry detainees for the teenager’s body.

“We have lost control,” said Richard Harding, who served for a decade as Western Australia’s chief prison inspector. He is no enemy of privatization, and his praise for a Serco-run prison is posted on the company’s Web site. But he said Curtin today was emblematic of “a flawed arrangement that’s going to go wrong no matter who’s running it.”

“These big global companies, in relation to specific activities, are more powerful than the governments they’re dealing with,” he added.

Matt Siegel contributed reporting from Sydney, Australia.

Gabriel Lerner: I Was There, Obama Responded To Latinos

Gabriel Lerner: I Was There, Obama Responded To Latinos

A few hours ago, HuffPost LatinoVoices and AOL Latino interviewed President Obama during the first roundtable of its kind made available to digital media. More than any declaration, the mere organization of a roundtable meeting with President Obama for Hispanic media was a confirmation of a shift for this Administration.

The event, which took place during Hispanic Heritage Month, was evidence that the Obama Administration intends to recuperate the support of the Latino community. Whether we agree or disagree with Obama in this never ending political campaign, the President showed a deep understanding of the intricacies of the issues that are dear to Hispanics, and of the priorities needed to improve the standing of the Latino community.

First, Obama said, is education. With it, we'll achieve not only social and economic progress, but also further participation and integration with the rest of the country. He also justly asked those that can to become citizens, to register, so they can vote and participate in the political process.

Mr. Obama answered a total of 15 questions, asked by myself and by representatives from MSN Latino and Yahoo! En Español. All questions were sent by readers from our sites, in Spanish and English, from Facebook and Twitter. Thousands of questions, observations, critiques, statements, comments, requests and even blessings and curses were submitted. HuffPost LatinoVoices and AOL Latino selected questions that were relevant and authentic, representing some of the most crucial interests of Hispanics in the United States.

Joining me at the roundtable, were Karine Medina, Executive Producer at MSN Latino, who came from Seattle, Washington, and Jose Siade, Head of Editorial and Network Programming at Yahoo! Latin America, from Miami, Florida.

The President was explicit and thorough when asked about immigration reform, the DREAM Act, the federal investigation of Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and even how immigration reform and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) interact.

He was asked why payments for elders receiving Social Security had not increased, the conditions for improved bilateral relations with Cuba, his recent bill proposal for the creation of jobs, bullying against minorities in schools, relations with Mexico, influx of weapons from the U.S. to Mexico after operation Fast and Furious, Health Reform and, lastly, his certainty that there will be a Latino President in his lifetime.

These topics added to the impression that even if the immigration topic is of particular interest for the Hispanic community, there are no "Latino issues" per se, because we Latinos are an integral part of this society, and inherently participate in all of its shared experiences and contradictions. Or, like millions of protesters in the streets of our major cities said five years ago as they demanded the attention of President Bush "Aquì estamos, y no nos vamos."

We are here, and we're not leaving.

Follow Gabriel Lerner on Twitter: www.twitter.com/hispanicla

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Indefinite Immigration Detention for-Profit Amid Toxic Waste in Essex County

Protest, Rally & March
October 9th
1:30 pm
Beginning at
Peter Francisco Park
Newark, NJ

Marching to and from:
Essex County Correctional Facility & Delaney Hall
356 Doremus Ave,
Newark, NJ


After 14 years the IRATE & First Friends annual protest is moving to Newark along with the detainees from the Elizabeth Detention Center. ICE listened to us year after year complain about conditions at the converted warehouse with no outdoor recreation where people were kept, sometimes for years on end. They responded by working with Essex County and the private for-profit company Community Education Centers (CEC).

Up to 1250 detainees will now be held in either the Essex County Jail or in the neighboring privately run. Delaney Hall. These sites allow for outdoor recreation but are located in the middle of numerous TOXIC WASTE sites. The jail and Delaney Hall are both located on Doremus Avenue, a highly polluted area with active polluters where air quality is a constant issue.

Concerns also persist that the Essex County Jail is restricting visits from family, lawyers, and clergy in addition to concerns about adequate food, and general safety.

The Essex County Freeholders just voted to approve a five year contact with ICE that expands an inhumane system that breaks apart families and is wasteful of tax dollars.

We oppose this expansion of immigration detention in Essex County. Many of those ensnared in the indiscriminate immigration enforcement dragnet which automatically leads to detention are long-term residents, green card holders, U.S. citizens, business owners, college graduates and veterans. We have grave concerns about the conditions under which they are being held.

Can't join us in Newark on Oct 9th? Sign the Petition http://www.change.org/petitions/oppose-expansion-of-immigration-detention-at-a-jail-accused-of-inhumane-conditions

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STATEMENT: Rights Working Group Reflects on a Changed America Since 9/11; Calls for Restoration of Civil and Human Rights | Rights Working Group

STATEMENT: Rights Working Group Reflects on a Changed America Since 9/11; Calls for Restoration of Civil and Human Rights | Rights Working Group

"We join people throughout this country and the world who are reflecting on the lives lost, the pain suffered by their loved ones and the many ways in which our nation has changed."

Rights Working Group Reflects on a Changed America Since 9/11; Makes Call for Restoration of Civil and Human Rights

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Keith Rushing, Communications Manager

(p) 202.591.3305 (c) 202.557.4291

Today, we pause to reflect on the horrible attacks that happened 10 years ago this Sunday, when nearly 3,000 people were torn from their families and loved ones in one horrible moment. We join people throughout this country and the world who are reflecting on the lives lost, the pain suffered by their loved ones and the many ways in which our nation has changed.

Despite the horrors of that day, we remain moved by the way people throughout the United States put aside their differences in the aftermath of the attacks and came together in empathy, courage and support. We remember the many firefighters, police officers and ordinary citizens who searched for survivors and so generously gave of themselves to help the families of the deceased.

This nation was changed following the attacks, not only by the attacks themselves but by the government’s response, which included two wars and the expansion of the federal government’s powers of surveillance, detention, and access to private information and property, along with the curtailment of civil liberties and human rights. Since 9/11, many have contended with greater levels of discrimination, restrictions of their free speech rights and freedom of movement, while undergoing intrusive searches, racial profiling, and deportations without due process--all in the name of the “War on Terror.” These laws, practices and policies are not only morally wrong but they have diminished America’s global standing and made us all less safe.

On Wednesday, September 14, the Rights Working Group, founded in the aftermath of 9/11 to address the curtailment of these rights, will call on Congress and the Obama Administration to end these discriminatory laws and policies and to restore our civil liberties and human rights and support passage of the End Racial Profiling Act.

In the months before Sept. 11, the End the Racial Profiling Act (ERPA) had bipartisan support and passage of the bill was virtually guaranteed. For African Americans, who had long experienced the humiliation of unwarranted stops and searches based on the color of their skin, passage of ERPA would break new ground. But after Sept. 11,congressional interest in ERPA dimmed as the focus turned to national security and passage of the PATRIOT Act. The federal government began targeting people of Arab, Middle Eastern, South Asian and Muslim background for extra scrutiny.

Under the Bush administration, more than 1,200 men of Arab, Middle Eastern, South Asian and Muslim backgrounds were detained. In addition, the federal government launched the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSSERS) that required more than 80,000 men, who were Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian to register and undergo interrogations, detentions and deportations. The program did not yield a single terrorism conviction.

The federal government through the Department of Homeland Security conflated immigration law with national security policies and devoted additional resources to detentions and deportations of immigrants, worksite raids, home raids and collaborations with local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration law. Through the 287 (g) program, the Criminal Alien Program and the Secure Communities program, the federal government has enlisted local and state law enforcement agencies to enforce civil immigration law. These programs have incentivized racial profiling and broken the trust between police and local law enforcement.

Under the PATRIOT Act, the federal government has expanded its power to search and seize private documents and records and engage in surveillance, indefinite detentions and deportations without due process. The FBI’s Domestic Investigative Operational Guidelines expanded opportunities for profiling because race, ethnicity and religion can now be used as factors to launch an investigation.

Federal policies that encourage or enable racial profiling are not consistent with this nation’s values as recognized in the U.S. Constitution. In the interest of restoring civil liberties and civil and human rights protections for all those living in the United States, RWG makes a number of recommendations. Among them are the following:

President Obama should:

• Support and strenuously advocate passage of the End Racial Profiling Act which would ban racial profiling based on race, religion, ethnicity or national origin, on the federal, state and local level and mandate the collection of data on racial profiling.
• Issue an executive order prohibiting racial profiling by federal officers and banning law enforcement practices that disproportionately target people for investigation and enforcement based on race, ethnicity, religion or national origin. The executive order should also require the collection of data by federal enforcement agencies about law enforcement actions broken down by the apparent or perceived race, ethnicity, national origin and religion of individuals targeted by enforcement agents. This data should include charges lodged against those targeted and the ultimate disposition of the cases.
• Terminate the 287 (g) program that empowers state and local police to enforce immigration law and state unequivocally that the federal government alone has jurisdiction and authority to enforce immigration law.

TheDepartment Of Justice Should:

• Revise the 2003 Guidance on the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies. The revised guidance should include the following changes: eliminate the loopholes that allow profiling in the context of national security and border security; include religion and national origin as protected classes; include a prohibition against racial profiling for law enforcement surveillance activities; apply the guidance to state and local law enforcement agencies that cooperate with or receive funding from the federal government; and make the guidance enforceable.
• Revise the 2008 Attorney General’s Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations and the 2011 FBI’s Domestic Investigative Operational Guidelines to ensure that they fully comport with constitutional and international human rights protections.

Congress should:

• Enact the End Racial Profiling Act.
• Provide oversight to ensure that the various agencies of the executive branch are undertaking the reforms identified in the recommendations above. If agencies are not adopting these reforms, Congress should adopt legislation mandating relevant and meaningful changes in policy.
• Repeal section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
• Eliminate funding for the Secure Communities Initiative, the Criminal Alien Program and other programs that utilize state and local law enforcement agencies to conduct immigration enforcement, until and unless meaningful and effective oversight mechanisms can be implemented to ensure that these programs do not allow for racial profiling or other civil and human rights violations.

This post is part of the Reflecting on Our Loss and Reclaiming Our Rights National Week of Action. To learn more, click here. To take action, sign the petition to President Obama.

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