DRANT #211: OURSCHWITZ

"...Ringed by barbed wire, a futuristic tent city rises from the Rio Grande Valley in the remote southern tip of Texas, the largest camp in a federal detention system rapidly gearing up to keep pace with Washington's increasing demand for stronger enforcement of immigration laws.
About 2,000 illegal immigrants, part of a record 26,500 held across the United States by federal authorities, will call the 10 giant tents home for weeks, months and perhaps years before they are removed from the United States and sent back to their home countries..."
"...Detainees are subject to penal system practices, such as group punishment for disciplinary infractions. The tents are windowless and the walls are blank, and no partitions or doors separate the five toilets, five sinks, five shower heads and eating areas. Lacking utensils on some days, detainees eat with their hands.
Because lights are on around the clock, a visitor finds many occupants buried in their blankets throughout the day. The stillness and torpor of the pod's communal room, where 50 to 60 people dwell, are noticeable..."
"...Immigration violators in the United States are held on civil grounds and have no right to appointed lawyers..."
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GUANTANAMUS
I'm sure you've heard the loony conspiracy theories about "concentration camps" in the USA.
HaHa.
More spew from those scrungy hippie tree hugging liberals. The same boobies who tellya that 9-11 was an inside job.
HoHo.
Well, take a look at this, bunky.
It's OURschwitz, and it's only one of mannnnny.

About 2,000 illegal immigrants are being held in this detention facility in South Texas, awaiting deportation to their home countries. Some may wait months or years.
(By Kirsten Luce For The Washington Post)
washingtonpost.com

That's just one tiny place, Raymondville, Texas.
Check out this list of ALL the Detention Facilities- (those that are public knowledge, anyway) being CURRENTLY RUN by the I.C.E. (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement). There's sure to be a nice one near YOU.
THIRTY THOUSAND prisoners, with no access to family, friends, or LAWYERS.
Ladies and gennilmen, GUANTANAMO 'R US.
Aguadilla Service Processing Center Puerto Rico Aurora Contract Detention Facility Colorado Buffalo Federal Detention Center New York El Centro Service Processing Center California Elizabeth Contract Detention Facility New Jersey El Paso Service Processing Center Texas Eloy Contract Detention Facility Arizona Florence Service Processing Center Arizona Houston Contract Detention Facility Texas Krome Service Processing Center Florida Laredo Contract Detention Facility Texas Queens Contract Detention Facility New York Port Isabel Service Processing Center Texas San Diego Contract Detention Facility California San Pedro Service Processing Center California Tacoma Contract Detention Facility Washington
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"...After quadrupling over four years, the number of non-Mexicans apprehended fell 35 percent in 2006, to 108,026.
...The Border Patrol made 1.1 million apprehensions last year -- mostly Mexicans who were promptly returned across the border -- but estimates 500,000 people evaded capture or entered legally and then overstayed visas.
An additional 630,000 are at large, ignoring deportation orders, and 300,000 more who entered state and local prisons for committing crimes are to be deported but will probably slip through the cracks after completing their sentences..."
"The short answer is, it is not sustainable," Mead said. "There comes a point where we can't detain any more people. Hopefully, prior to getting there, the deterrence factor will kick in."
"...large numbers of immigrants have been transferred from Boston, New York, New Jersey and Florida, far from their families and lawyers. Because some immigration judges do not permit hearings by teleconference, detainees are essentially deprived of counsel..."

Washington Post
By Spencer S. Hsu and Sylvia Moreno
Friday, February 2, 2007
Excerpts. Please access complete story at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020102238.html

RAYMONDVILLE, Tex. -- Ringed by barbed wire, a futuristic tent city rises from the Rio Grande Valley in the remote southern tip of Texas, the largest camp in a federal detention system rapidly gearing up to keep pace with Washington's increasing demand for stronger enforcement of immigration laws.
About 2,000 illegal immigrants, part of a record 26,500 held across the United States by federal authorities, will call the 10 giant tents home for weeks, months and perhaps years before they are removed from the United States and sent back to their home countries.
The $65 million tent city, built hastily last summer between a federal prison and a county jail, marks both the success and the limits of the government's new policy of holding captured non-Mexicans until they are sent home. Previously, most such detainees were released into the United States before hearings, and a majority simply disappeared.
The new policy has led to a dramatic decline in border crossings by non-Mexicans, according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
But civil liberties and immigration law groups allege that out of sight, the system is bursting at the seams. In the Texas facility, they say, illegal immigrants are confined 23 hours a day in windowless tents made of a Kevlar-like material, often with insufficient food, clothing, medical care and access to telephones. Many are transferred from the East Coast, 1,500 miles from relatives and lawyers, virtually cutting off access to counsel.
"I call it 'Ritmo' -- like Gitmo, but it's in Raymondville," said Jodi Goodwin, an immigration lawyer from nearby Harlingen.
An inspector general's report last month on a sampling of five U.S. immigration detention facilities found inhumane and unsafe conditions, including inadequate health care, the presence of vermin, limited access to clean underwear and undercooked poultry. Although ICE standards require that immigrants have access to phones and pro bono law offices, investigators found phones missing, not working or connected to non-working numbers.
With roughly 1.6 million illegal immigrants in some stage of immigration proceedings, ICE holds more inmates a night than Clarion hotels have guests, operates nearly as many vehicles as Greyhound has buses and flies more people each day than do many small U.S. airlines.
...the United States has embarked on a huge prison building and contracting campaign, increasing the number of illegal immigrants detained from 19,718 a day in 2005 to about 26,500 now, and a projected 32,000 this summer. About 80 percent of ICE's beds are rented at 300 local and state jails nationwide, concentrated in the South and Southwest, or at eight sites run by contractors such as the Corrections Corporation of America and Geo Group Inc., in places such as Houston, San Diego and Aurora, Colo.
ICE recently added a 1,524-bed facility in Stewart County, Ga., and a 512-bed center in Taylor, Tex., for immigrant families, both run by Corrections Corp.
With the new beds, the administration has imprisoned and deported virtually 100 percent of non-Mexicans caught since August, under faster proceedings that deny hearings to all but asylum seekers.
The administration says this has deterred many others. After quadrupling over four years, the number of non-Mexicans apprehended fell 35 percent in 2006, to 108,026.
But immigration experts and U.S. authorities say the impact of the prison boom will be hard to sustain and still is absorbing only a drop in the bucket of illegal immigration. The Border Patrol made 1.1 million apprehensions last year -- mostly Mexicans who were promptly returned across the border -- but estimates 500,000 people evaded capture or entered legally and then overstayed visas.
An additional 630,000 are at large, ignoring deportation orders, and 300,000 more who entered state and local prisons for committing crimes are to be deported but will probably slip through the cracks after completing their sentences.
"The short answer is, it is not sustainable," Mead said. "There comes a point where we can't detain any more people. Hopefully, prior to getting there, the deterrence factor will kick in."
...Legal advocates contend that some of the older facilities where immigrants are housed are in deplorable condition and that growing pains afflict even new facilities.
Under fire in Taylor, for example, ICE has expanded hours of daily schooling for children from one to seven hours to meet Texas guidelines.
In Willacy County, one of the country's poorest, ICE has set up 10 huge tents on concrete pads, surrounded by 14-foot-high chain-link fences looped with barbed wire. Each "sprung structure" holds about 200 men or women, divided into four "pods." Similar temporary buildings were used for troop recreational facilities in Iraq.
...Detainees are subject to penal system practices, such as group punishment for disciplinary infractions. The tents are windowless and the walls are blank, and no partitions or doors separate the five toilets, five sinks, five shower heads and eating areas. Lacking utensils on some days, detainees eat with their hands.
Because lights are on around the clock, a visitor finds many occupants buried in their blankets throughout the day. The stillness and torpor of the pod's communal room, where 50 to 60 people dwell, are noticeable.
Goodwin described a group of women who huddled in a recreation yard on a recent 40-degree day with a 25-mph wind. "They had no blanket, no sweat shirt, no jacket," she said. "Officers were wearing earmuffs, and detainees were outside for an hour with short-sleeved polyester uniforms and shower shoes and not necessarily socks."
Perhaps more troubling, lawyers said, large numbers of immigrants have been transferred from Boston, New York, New Jersey and Florida, far from their families and lawyers. Because some immigration judges do not permit hearings by teleconference, detainees are essentially deprived of counsel.
Immigration violators in the United States are held on civil grounds and have no right to appointed lawyers. But federal guidelines call for providing them law libraries, telephones and phone numbers for legal aid.
Joining a lawsuit last week, the American Civil Liberties Union alleged that severe overcrowding at a Corrections Corp. facility in San Diego poses an unconstitutional risk to detainees' health and safety, arguing that as administrative detainees, illegal immigrants should be treated better than convicted criminals.
The National Lawyers Guild and five other groups petitioned the Department of Homeland Security last month to set binding regulations for detention sites, saying U.S. standards set in 2000 are not enforceable.
And the New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee has announced a campaign to stop ICE's use of county jails.
"The standards are there," said David A. Martin, a former general counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, ICE's predecessor agency, who advocates concentrating detention centers in perhaps 10 cities to ensure access to lawyers and oversight. "But there are some real indicators federal standards are not well monitored or policed. We ought to do better."
© 2007 The Washington Post Company
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More than a Million arrests, resulting in Millions of defendants and "detainees", and tens of thousands of prisoners, all with fundamentally NO rights, no representation, no medical care. Remember- these are not only men and women. These are often entire families, with little kids. Have you read about
Operation Return to Sender ?" over 2,000 people arrested. Some brought here years ago as infants.
This is not an Immigration Problem.
This is OURSCHWITZ, and it is target practice and a template for the future.
The ICE, an enormous operation with a 7.8 BILLION dollar annual budget, operates under the Patriot Act, and the Dept of Homeland Security (sic), and is arguably the best armed, best equipped, and most under-scrutinized law enforcement operation in the world. The ICE does basically whatever it wants, well under the public radar, and functions under a near-total absence of legal restrictions, or Constitutional restraint.
It is our own very real, very powerful SS.

Now who do you think built all these prisons ?
Hint: There's a Cheney in it somewhere.
Well, if you guessed Halliburton, you guessed right.
Through its KBR subsidiary, Halliburton gained a non-competitive no bid $385 million contract to do to Americans what they have done so well to Iraqis.
Lest you think that this is either something new, or restricted to those pesky Illegal Aliens, please check out the FEMA Concentration Camps, which are a whole Nuther thing. My friend, Uncle Sam wants YOU.
MORE Halliburton pleasure domes.
Check these out:
I hear Wyoming is charming this time of year:


The Military Commissions Act , which was passed last year. basically 1) prohibits any court from acting on behalf of detainees 2) allows hearsay evidence 3) allows evidence obtained without a search warrant 4) allows the military judge to close the proceedings to the public 5) prohibits revealing evidence in favor of the defense if it is a matter of "national security" 6) in essence gets rid of a jury trial 7) prohibits detainees from invoking the Geneva Conventions 8) gives the president carte blanche in personal interpretation of the Geneva Conventions 9) strips u.s. courts of jurisdiction to intervene on behalf of alien detainees held in the U.S or abroad 10) and gets rid of habeas corpus (the gist of which is that one must be told what the charges against him/her are or be released, and must be told the evidence against them in a grand jury indictment).
It specifically pertains to US Citizens. All ya need is for someone to decide you're an "Enemy Combatant."
Bingo, welcome to sunny Wyoming.

Dachau was built in 1933. The people of Germany, of Munich and the charming little medieval town of Dachau nearby, all knew Goddam well what was going on. 1933. Not 1942. Ya get it ?
First tens then hundreds of thousands -- disappeared, arrested, held without charges, outside the law and with the conspiracy of the public media- as far as possible from public scrutiny or governmental oversight.
It was the ordinary people of Germany who ultimately did most of the killing.
Men who could not qualify for the SS or even the Wehrmacht killed many more than the extermination camps.
And the people stood by.

Well, here we are. We are NOW in Germany and its late 193FOUR.
We KNOW.
We know that hundreds of thousands of humans are being systematically arrested, and "detained" indefinitely without the most fundamental rights.
We know that there are at minimum, some thirty thousand incarcerated right now.
We know that there are enormous prisons being built to imprison tens if not hundreds of thousands more.
We can never say we didn't KNOW.

And so, now that we know-
What exactly are we going to do ?

Another demonstration ? With celebrities, speakers, posters, flags, funny signs, pithy t shirts ?
Another March FROM nowhere To nowhere ?

The time has come for massive civil disobedience, nothing less.
The time has come for every single one of us to ACT, and to STOP what is happening, in any way we can.

Quote of The Day:
"revolutionaries
ave all gone to the art centers to watch
the sufferin of the people
bein dramatized by the oppresors
in their revolutionary words..."
MUTABARUKA