The UH chapter of Students for a Democratic Society will protest in Taylor outside of the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility on Saturday.
The group will meet at 7:30 a.m. in front of the Campus Recreation and Wellness Center to coordinate carpools to Taylor in order to shut down the detention center and to raise awareness about inhumane conditions inside the family jail.
The T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility was established in 2006 as a former prison facility to incarcerate immigrant families from the Texas population.
The facility is named after T. Don Hutto, co-founder of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a Nashville-based company, which is the largest privatized detention company in the US.
CCA has 64 facilities throughout the country and 12 in Texas.
The detention center receives revenue from tax dollars through government contracts such as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
CCA announced in January an 8.8 percent revenue increase from $380.8 million to $414.4 million in 2007.
‘The CCA is profiting from running inhumane family prisons,’ said Stephanie Caballero, student organizer for Students for a Democratic Society. ‘We want to raise awareness about the situation inside Hutto and advocate to shut down this facility.’
History junior Robinson Block of SDS said the society focuses on this particular detention center for good reason.
‘We are all against privately-owned detention centers, but we are trying to close down family detention centers first because children should not have to be subject to that environment and treatment,’ Block said.
In March 2007, American Civil Liberties Union challenged the CCA operation standards of ‘excellence in corrections,’ and filed lawsuit on behalf of 26 children jailed in the Hutto facilities as a way to pressure the shut down of the facilities.
ACLU legal director Lisa Greybill said conditions for children inside the facilities were as severe as conditions for the criminals who formerly occupied the facility.
‘Children had only 15 minutes to eat each meal three times a day. Women and children, who were in the facility, were losing significant weight,’ Greybill said. ‘The mother had a hard time trying to feed their children within 15 minutes, and the children were not getting the nutrition that they need.’
While the lawsuit failed to close the facility, it made steps to improve the conditions.
Children are able to receive seven hours of education each day instead of the one hour received prior to the suit. Also, children are no longer required to wear prison uniforms, they have more time to eat and are allowed food and drink in their cell throughout the day.
ACLU has a periodic monitor program in place to ensure the specific conditions agreed to are implemented, which ends in August.
‘There is simply no justification for imprisoning innocent children who pose no threat to anyone,’ said Vanita Gupta, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program.’ ‘This is an affront to our core values as a nation. We need practical, realistic immigration policy, not draconian methods that are harming vulnerable kids.’
The Hutto facility is still not licensed as a childcare provider in Texas.
Caballero said jailing is not the only option.
‘There are other alternatives such as electronic monitoring or ankle bracelets, appearance bond and intensive monitoring, all of which cost the tax payers less money than jailing women and children.’
For information on joining Saturday’s protest, students can contact Stephanie Caballero at (713) 397-1074 or by e-mail at [email protected].
