Arpaio has until January 4 to settle an agreement with the feds, or he will face a law suit, and a judge will decide the fate of his department.

A few hours after the report was leaked, it was announced that the Department of Homeland Security cut off Maricopa County’s access to the Secure Communities program and terminated the agreement which allowed deputies to detain people due to their immigration status. According to DHS:

“The Department of Homeland Security is troubled by the Department of Justice’s findings of discriminatory policing practices within the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office …Accordingly, and effective immediately, DHS is terminating MCSO’s 287(g) jail model agreement and is restricting the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office access to the Secure Communities program.”

It is prudent that the federal government is finally taking action, but I also look at the timing, and have a hard time believing that it is much beyond an election-year ploy. The Obama administration has deported more people than even Bush.

Obama himself has done nothing to move toward an agreement in which families are no longer separated. Instead, more than half of all federal inmates will be so-called Latinos this year, and the vast majority of these new inmates are facing prison for nonviolent immigration offenses. In effect, his policies are criminalizing our community for very mild offenses. The effects of this criminalization will be felt for generations to come.

Obama is nothing if not a master of the media. Keep in mind that even though these two programs, Secure Communities and 287(g), are being withdrawn from Maricopa County, all over the county, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, will continue to be subjected to the same programs that enabled Arpaio to act in this way. By withdrawing from this particular county, the Obama administration throws Latinos a bone, while he can continue to brag about the historic deportation numbers that his administration has processed.

The media picks up on his gesture and this provides him a little good faith among so-called Latino voters…or so he hopes. I don’t think that Obama will be able to drive an ample amount of Latino voters to the polls. Among issues most important to us, his performance has just been too shoddy.

Right here in Harris County, we have felt the effects of these programs. I remember marching in Washington DC over a decade ago in support of immigration reform. I could have never imagined a scenario, in which a Chicano sheriff in Harris County would be a proponent of these policies, but this is what we have in Adrian Garcia. It is true that Garcia did not decide on his own to implement these immigration policies, but he did recommend it to the County Commissioners Court.

It appears that a Houston man, Luis Alberto Delgado, was deported in 2010 due to one of these programs, or at least policies that encourage participation between local law enforcement and ICE.

The actions against Joe Arpaio are welcomed by Latinos in Maricopa County, Arizona, I am sure. This small gesture, however, does not make up for Obama’s general inaction on the issue of immigration. All of this speaks nothing of the bill that Obama intends to sign that will include “harmful provisions that some legislators have said could authorize the U.S. military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians, including American citizens, anywhere in the world,” according to a legal group.

I have often wondered how or why Obama ended up the way he has. Whatever the reasons, tokens won’t pay the bill owed to Latinos.

In 2009 I wrote a piece about how at some foreseeable future, the right of the people to rule could be dismantled by other forms of power, simply due to a shift in perception over what constitutes legitimate authority. We will recall that the Catholic Church exercised control over many countries. For centuries, the only thing that maintained the Church’s authority over these different countries was its moral authority.

Kings paid loyalty to the Church and obeyed the Church for little other reason than because it was seen as the moral authority. The Church’s place in society was eventually displaced by two important shifts.

First there was revolution in thinking that the civil government, and not the church, had the right to govern. Secondly, there was a shift in power in that sovereign governments eventually became militarily and economically powerful enough to no longer need the blessing of the Church.

I bring this up to give some frame of reference for the rest of my argument. If the Church controlled a large section of the world simply because it had the moral authority to do so, and if its power was displaced by a force that had simply become more powerful, it may be possible to displace democracy with the same formula, a formula which already exists in many ways.

When I wrote the piece originally in 2009 my point was that about ten years earlier corporations had already began disregarding certain laws enacted by the people. In 1998, Citigroup and Traveler’s, for example, announced that they were merging, contrary to existing laws. The companies made the announcement, expecting that they could change the laws quickly enough to accommodate their merger. They were right. The Glass-Steagall Act was repealed the following year, which, by the way, was the first step toward our current financial crisis.

Since then, however, there have been more troubling developments. The Supreme Court Decision in Citizens United v F.E.C. decided that corporations had the same right to political speech as any human being, and that they could use an unlimited amount of money to produce political propaganda.

The threat to the country’s power, even militarily, has become clearer since then, as reports and even popular Hollywood movies continue to expose the point that private military contractors have relatively similar or superior tactical combat capabilities as the US. Their private mercenaries are better paid than even US military personnel. Today, private space tourism is a reality as NASA is being defunded.

In the United States the same formula that led to the decline of the Church’s authority is already in place. This time, however, democracy’s, not the Church’s, unquestionable moral authority is in a vulnerable place. I do not believe that in our lifetime we will see a cabal of CEOs formally seize power and occupy the White House.

Instead, I believe that the formula is in place in which a democratic government might just become less relevant and may simply, albeit slowly, be surpassed in power and influence. It is foreseeable that one day, a corporation whose interest is threatened, need not appeal to Congress for an invasion of a foreign power, but may simply send its own private army. Democratic government will continue to exist, just as the Holy Church exists. It may become optional, something to do on Sundays, something to ask others if it’s something that they believe in. The people and Democracy may still even be influential in elections, just as the Church is.

I don’t believe that there is a conspiracy by corporate America to formally seize governmental power, even though corporate America has been very vocal about diminishing it. I do believe, though, that the conditions to diminish Democracy in favor of corporate rule are increasingly being developed. A shift in relevancy and power has already occurred. The only force that can reverse the trend is the will of the people.

Also damning is a recent report by the Pew Hispanic Center which reports that more Latino children live in poverty than do white children, despite the significant difference in the total population count. Over six million Latino children in the United States live in poverty today.

One recent statistical bright spot, however, is also cause for pause. Latino college enrollment rates spiked significantly from 2009 to 2010. College education has always been an important vehicle in this society for upward economic mobility. A college education will serve the graduates very well. More power to them.

However, the benefits largely are individual and do little to alleviate the greater problems that the community faces. We simply can’t study our way out of this community problem. The model that the white community has used for generations simply will not work for us as a community. For generations, the white community has sent their children to college, which leads to a career and a family. It works for them because they have a much greater base of wealth in their community.

If we emulate this pattern without implementing any collective efforts to uplift our community, we will only produce a class of Latinos which will effectively be isolated from the bulk of our people, with little interest in the community’s well being. Some of this has already taken root, as policy initiatives like the Dream Act favor granting residency to college graduates before “regular” working class people.

Our success as a group is directly related to our ability and will to work together. What we need is group empowerment. Our most important first strategy in seeking this empowerment is support for mechanisms that can and do support empowerment in the community. Advocacy groups, conscientious small businesses, alternative media, mutual aid societies, progressive houses of worship all have the ability to help empower our community as whole because, by nature, they are collective enterprises.

Too often people are turned off by my direct discussion of race. People prefer to see our problems as something different than a racial issue. Some see it as exclusively a class issue. Some simply don’t like defining ourselves via race or ethnicity. In reality, until the statistics suggest that we do not constitute more than half of all felons, and that we do not have more poor children than any other group, it is nothing less than a racial problem…like it or not. The disparity is too great to call it anything else.

Our goal as individuals should be to support the mechanisms of power that, apart from having the ability to help our community, actually do so. Join the community organizations, spend at those businesses that give something back, pray with those who empower, and most importantly, tell others to do so. These are our first steps.

In the world of conservative talk radio, most allegations of racism or racial bias are dismissed as exaggerations or as a way for a special interest group to gain some sort of political power by inventing something that did not really happen. So when an incident was labeled as hateful and was actually acknowledged it piqued my interest.

Beck was referring to an incident that had happened on the ten year anniversary of September 11, right here in Houston, Texas. According to his commentary, an employee at a sandwich shop drew pictures of the World Trade Center attack on a to-go box and handed it to a Muslim patron, saying, “Happy 9-11. Allahu Akbar,” a phrase meaning God is Greatest, and also a phrase co-opted by terrorists.

This admission on the part of Glenn Beck was eye-opening for me. I had tended to believe that these conservatives continuously denied the existence of racism because it was in their own interest. Instead, it appears that they really believe that racism only comes in the form of open name-calling.

This perspective is fully lacking in the understanding of institutionalized racism, and the racism that simply is kept under the covers. It appears that from Beck’s perspective, if someone does not directly use a racial slur, it really just does not count.

In an upcoming campaign, Houston United, a local coalition of different organizations, is working to shed light on the true nature of racial profiling. The group shares this example:

“Carlos has been a businessman, a church deacon and a responsible head of household for this family. He had been in the United States for over 10 years. Three weeks ago, Carlos changed lanes without putting on his blinker. He got stopped by a police officer in the Memorial area of Houston. Carlos was arrested for not having a valid Texas Drivers License since the State of Texas prohibits this type of license for undocumented immigrants. Carlos was then turned over to ICE authorities; he awaits deportation. In the meantime, his family has suffered an immense emotional and economic blow and his church is horrified that one of its most active members is now in a federal immigration detention facility.”
Incidents like these are now common-place, with Latinos continually feeling over-policed with respect to traffic and under-protected with respect to real crimes.
There is a real perception that law-enforcement openly targets Latinos for traffic violations, since they seem to have the attitude that they could also increase the deportation numbers. Undocumented, documented and native-born Latinos are all feeling the effects of Sheriff Garcia’s decision to support Secure Communities (and yes he volunteered for 287-g before Secure Communities was apparently mandatory).
These effects do not even consider the cause for the massive amounts of immigration to the United States. Anytime a country exploits another country by only exploiting cheap labor and refuses to invest anything which could spur development in that country, it is an act of organized racism called imperialism.
As far as we know, neither those maquiladora owners nor those law enforcement officers have openly used racial epithets (at least recently). Even so, these policies have a far more profound effect on our everyday lives than a guy in a sandwich shop calling us names.
We do not need conservatives to acknowledge these other forms of racism. They never have, but when people in and from our own community, like Sherriff Garcia, refuse to acknowledge the truth about racist policies, and when certain supposed civil rights groups and the Democratic Party continue to support him, regardless of these policies, then we know that our community is in real trouble if we do not look for alternatives.

(CNN) — A lawsuit against the United States brought by the parents of a 15-year-old boy who was fatally shot by a border patrol agent has been dismissed, a U.S. district judge ruled. He also gave the parents a chance to amend their complaint.

The ruling, which came down August 11, was first reported by the El Paso Times on Thursday.

Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, was fatally shot June 7, 2010.

Authorities said at the time that Hernandez was throwing rocks at the agent from the Mexican side of the border before the agent opened fire….
The incident in question was partly caught on video.

The video showed part of the buildup before the incident, with several individuals running underneath the Puente Negro, a railroad span that connects the two countries.

In the distance, a U.S. Border Patrol officer on a bicycle can be seen making his way toward the area. Seconds later, the officer can be seen getting off the bicycle and approaching two of the four suspected Mexican nationals who had just crossed through an opening in the fence. One of the people is detained by the officer but never handcuffed and is dragged a short distance. This happened on the U.S. side of the border.

Moments later, the officer points what appears to be his firearm in the direction of a second person, standing about 60 feet away on the Mexican side of the border. The video shows the person running away.

Seconds later, two gunshots can be heard on the video. A third gunshot is heard in a different sequence of the tape. After the shooting, another person is seen running in the upper left side of screen, away from the incident….

and the court found that it did not have jurisdiction to carry the case forward because the harm happened on the Mexican side of the border.

What would they say if the bullets had come in the opposite direction. Mark my words, this will happen, and this case must set precedent.

“The Case of Joe Campos Torres” is a documentary film about one of the most infamous cases of police misconduct in Houston history. Produced at KPRC-TV, Channel 2 in Houston in 1978 by Tony Bruni and written and edited by Carlos Calbillo, this documentary feature is reported by John Quiñones, now of ABC News in New York City.

Shot on location throughout Houston, this film chronicles the event and subsequent community protest meetings and community/police department negotiations and the legal actions taken by the Torres family against the Houston Police Department.

The writer/editor, Carlos Calbillo will be present for Q&A after the film. Members of the Torres family and representatives of the Houston Police Department have been invited to the screening and may also take part in the Q&A.

To be screened on Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 7PM at the Houston Community College Northline Campus, 8001 Fulton St. Houston, TX 77021

FREE and open to the public.

This weekend, I was invited by some friends of mine to visit Cleveland, Texas.  The trip was not a leisurely one.  We were invited to meet with a community which had been affected by a horrific incident-the gang rape of an 11-year old by a group of men.   This young girl was lured to an isolated location, where men from the age of fourteen to twenty seven years of age took turns having sex with her on different occasions.  I was also informed that in later incidents, members of the same group threatened to kill this young girl if she did not return to the same location to be raped again.  If this isn’t enough of a tragedy, this child, her parents and the community quickly became victims of an ensuing media circus. 

Racial Perspective

One of the most attractive parts of the story for mainstream media types is that the victim of this rape was a so-called Latina.  All of the accused are black.  Traditionally, there is little else that attracts mainstream media more than racial problems, especially when the two sides are people of color. 

Quanell X, a local activist, staged a town hall meeting in Cleveland to discuss some points of concern with the situation.  Many people involved in social justice and human rights have learned to be guarded with the criminal justice system.  Having protested cases like Pedro Oregon’s murder at the hands of HPD in the nineties to most recently the detention of babies in immigrant jails like Hutto, I understand the apprehension of other activists when it comes to issues of criminal justice. In general, Mr. X is correct in questioning law enforcement’s process with people of color. 

In his speech, he clearly said that any adult who had sex with a child should “have his butt whooped” and go to jail.  He also said that he told one of the accused who had admitted to his crime that he had to pay for his crime, even if the accused did not know her age, and he scolded black elders for losing control of their neighborhood.  He said that those who admitted their involvement did the right thing, and that those who were involved needed to pay for their crime. 

However, he made some other statements, which many people, including myself, interpreted as blaming the victim and her parents.  “This rape did not happen one night. It did not happen in two days, this was going on over a protracted period of time so I have to ask the question if this young girl did not live in that neighborhood…(if she was) so much experiencing sex with so many African -American men (sic)…where was her mother.” 

I spoke to Quanell X about his comments for this piece.  He was adamant that he did not intend to blame the child.  “She is a baby,” he said.  “If these brothers are guilty of what they stand accused of, they are worthy of death.”  He repeated that phrase for emphasis.  However, he stood by the assertion that the parents bear some responsibility. 

I am relieved that he does not blame the victim, but I do not see the parents as being negligent in this case.  The NY Times reports that she was an honor student, and local witnesses claim that her siblings were as well.  Even if they were negligent, I don’t know that it would be accurate or correct for them to bear any responsibility for having been manipulated, even if that manipulation spanned a few months.

 Women’s perspective

As I heard Quanell X’s comments with a female listener, she quickly responded, “How can he say she was having sex?  She was being raped.” That sums up the sentiment of many women who have been following this case.

In Cleveland, Yolanda Navarro Black, made it clear that “CHILDREN CAN’T CONSENT TO SEX.”  She explained that it was not as much a racial incident, as it was a women’s issue.  Nothing else matters, except for the fact that a minor child had been raped by adult men.  It doesn’t matter whether the child thought she wanted to.  It does not matter how the child dressed.  It does not matter whether her parents were respectable or not.  “A child can’t say yes.”

A group of women organized a press conference to reiterate the same message.  They made it clear that this was not so much a racial incident, as it was a women’s issue.  

“We’re talking about race, why?” said Councilwoman Jolanda Jones in an interview about the press conference.  “I was a victim of rape at eight years old, and I didn’t report it until I was twenty one.  Part of the reason was because the rapists threatened to kill me and my family members.”  Reportedly, this is how the Cleveland rapists convinced the child to return to be victimized again.

Sylvia Gonzales, LULAC’s National Vice President for the Southwest, is preparing to take up a collection and to fundraise for the victim’s family.  “They are very much in need due to this incident,” she says.  She can be reached at 832-283-5752.

I applaud these women for putting ethics first and for questioning a strong personality in defense of women and family, before any man did the same.

Organizing/Bigger Perspective

In the end, I believe that race is pertinent.  Quanell X says that he believes that three of the accused are innocent.  From my experience, it is plausible that three out of the nineteen black men could be charged with insufficient evidence to support these charges. It is also plausible that race could play a part in their charges.  While I strongly object to his take on the victim’s family, I believe in due process, and that the guilty should spend a lifetime paying for their crimes.

For my part, I told the good people in Cleveland, that it was extremely important to have a standing organization which is prepared to deal with all injustices as they come.  Injustice exists most often when the people fail to organize in its own self-defense.  I encouraged them to begin meeting with the aim of preparing themselves for the likely event that justice might not be served in this or in many other cases to come.  Previous preparation is the key to fighting injustice.

JOINT PRESS STATEMENT

Latinos, Immigrant Advocates Nationwide Send Unambiguous Message in Light of Brisenia’s Murder: Stop the Hate, We are Watching

Tucson, Arizona – As Latinos and immigrant rights advocates from all over the United States applaud the guilty verdict in the trial of Shawna Forde – a leader of the hate-group Minuteman American Defense (MAD) convicted of murdering 9 year-old Brisenia Flores and her father Raul Flores – a strong message resonates throughout the nation: We Are Watching. We are watching those who provide a platform to promote hate-crimes and call on the media to be socially responsible by reporting the linkages between Forde’s proven extremism and that of extremist groups she represents.

On May 2009, Forde and two accomplices – MAD Operations Director Jason Bush and local MAD member Albert Gaxiola – broke into the Flores’ home in the border town of Arivaca, Arizona. Without compunction, they shot Raul Flores, his wife Gina Gonzalez and their daughter Brisenia who screamed, “Please don’t shoot me!” before being shot twice in the head; Gonzalez survived the incident.

Brisenia’s murder has galvanized the entire Latino community. This gruesome act reflects in the starkest terms the anti-immigrant, anti-Latino hatred promoted by extremist groups. Latinos – the fastest-growing and largest ethnic minority group in the U.S. – understand and experience the hatred gripping the United States. In response, Latinos and immigrant advocates are closely watching media outlets that provide a platform for hatred promoted by extremist groups like MAD and the Federation for American Immigration Reform – a group Forde represented on a PBS show, for instance.

The details revealed in the murder trial have touched us all in a deep and unique way; indeed, no one will forget Brisenia. These important details-the organized hatred, the dehumanization of Latinos, the utter disregard of a child’s innocence- reflect the deepening and mainstreaming of the most noxious and dangerous strands of hatred in the United States. The growth and expansion of this hatred moves us to continue efforts to make sure there are no more hate-crimes and to take action condemning those media outlets that help disseminate hatred.

We call on the all media to be socially responsible by, for example, reporting the intimate link between Forde’s proven extremism and that of extremist groups she represents, so that the intellectual authors of the anti-Latino, anti-immigrant industry that has been growing in the nation -and the violence they perpetrate- may be known, discussed and confronted with greater urgency.

Endorsed by:

America Para Todos, Houston, TX
America’s Voice Educational Fund, Washington, DC
Brazilian Total Assistance, Inc., Massachusetts
CARECEN, Los Angeles, CA
CASA de Maryland, Maryland
Center for Media Justice, Nationwide
Central American Resource Center ( CRECEN), Houston, TX
Chicano Consortium de Sacramento, Sacramento, CA
Coalición de Derechos Humanos, Tucson AZ
Cuentame, Nationwide
El Centro del Inmigrante, New York
FIEL Houston, Inc, Houston, TX
Florida Immigration Coalition, Miami, FL
Fresno Unit of the Brown Beret National Organization (FresnoBBNO), Fresno, CA
Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, Atlanta, GA
Latino Leadership, Inc, Orlando, FL
LatinoPolitico.net, Nationwide
New Immigrant Community Empowerment, New York
New Mexico Media Literacy Project, Albuquerque, NM
New York Immigrant Coalition, New York
OurNewAnahuac.net, Houston, TX
Ohio Action Circle, Ohio
Presente.org, Nationwide
Rockland County Immigration Coalition, New York
Salvadoran American National Network SANN, Nationwide
The Hispanic Community Dialogue of Virginia, Virginia
Virginia Coalition of Latino Organizations, Virginia
Vivir Latino, Nationwide
Voces de la Frontera, Milwuakee, WI
Westchester Hispanic Coalition, New York
William C. Velasquez Institute, Nationwide

For more information, please visit Presente.org

These raids come on the heels of the Obama administration’s decision to pursue its right to assassinate its own citizens. Earlier this year, the administration approved of the assassination of a radical, US-born Muslim cleric named Anwar Al Awlaki. The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups denounced the administration’s position. “The idea that courts should have no role whatsoever in determining the criteria by which the executive branch can kill its own citizens is unacceptable in a democracy.”

This country has had a long history of suppressing the words and political activities of people of color. In July of last year, on my blog, OurNewAnahuac.net, I posted a story about the military sending undercover spies into non-violent anti-war organizations in the Northwest. In the post, I made some connections to COINTELPRO, which was a government program used to suppress activist groups in the sixties. After the sixties, some of the program’s shocking activities were revealed.

One Chicano leader who had helped organize a group called the Brown Berets was actually a Treasury Department operative under the COINTELPRO program. Anyone even slightly familiar with today’s Brown Berets knows that the government has left a scar on the organization which exists even today. In many other instances, activists who had engaged in violence or encouraged it were actually government operatives.

In that July post, I wrote, “The problem is, I don’t believe that such surveillance has ever ended. It has just changed forms, using more decentralized forms of management. It is becoming clear that there might be much more centralized control of such surveillance resurfacing.” A little over a year later, it seems clear that I was correct.

The structure of this society and government is most in trouble with these new trends. Traditionally, minorities of all colors have had to deal with official oppression in differing forms. This is nothing new. In fact, to my own disappointment, I have had to come to terms with the fact that injustice is so much a tradition in or community, that it is often no longer a cause for outrage. The minority communities who are victims of this repression will survive, as we always have, damaged, scarred and with more mal-adaptive behaviors.

The true issue is that, this society, this government or whatever term you wish to use, is setting itself up for an explosion. The only spirit which holds this fragmented country together is the constitution, and all the myths that the constitution sells to minorities. Most countries are bound by some combination of culture, religion, language, and history.

In the US, there is no official culture; there is no official language; we expect to have a freedom of religion, and the history of this country is so exploitative, that history would be a more effective way to divide the country than to unite it. Instead, the only promise that this country can sell to the people who would normally go in their own directions, is that here, unlike anywhere in the world, you are supposed to have the freedom of speech, the right to petition the government, the right to religion, the right to hate the country, and most importantly the right to life while enjoying these freedoms. Rights, and the ability to convince minorities of all kinds that we can enjoy these rights, are the only thing holding this country together. It did not matter that in practice we could not enjoy these rights. As long as we were convinced that we were afforded these rights by the constitution, we would get in line and wait for these rights to be handed out. Sure, we might make a raucous, but over all we would not leave the line, no matter how long it was.

As long as the repression was done secretly, as was the case with COINTELPRO, the government could always put up a show, telling the people of color that, in fact, the people behind these secret programs were out of line, and were acting against the constitution. We just needed to end this program or punish that person and the constitution would take care of the rest.

What makes today different are a few things: the raids of a few days ago were conducted on many white people. Additionally, the government is no longer making efforts to hide the fact that if you hate its policies, and speak openly about its destruction (even if you take no violent actions) they will not hesitate to order your assassination.

With the government telling us and showing us to our face that we cannot speak our mind in an organized manner and that if we do, they can kill us; and with them showing us that they will not even stop with minorities, what other ideas do they have to sell us?

As a teen, I first heard of corporate prisons in 1996 in an unlikely place, the Geto Boys’ Resurrection album. Larry Hoover, himself a prisoner, told everyone who heard the album that “big companies” had interests in prisons. He rattled through the names of a few, “Master Card, Smith Barney.” I did not process the significance of his claim for a few years, and I did not come face to face with the beast that is the corporate prison complex until last year. In April of 2009 I joined a long-established coalition of activists who were fighting to close Hutto, an immigration jail which “housed” immigrant children and their parents. The New York Times’ photograph of a crib behind bars at Hutto still haunts me today.

Even though the political pressure resulted in some success on the child detention issue, profit-driven prisons are still a great problem. Correction Corporation of America (CCA) still has the contract to operate the Hutto facility in Taylor, Texas, even though children are no longer being detained there. Recent reports and arrests of Hutto guards prove that a lack of oversight at corporate detention facilities has led to abuses which amount to torture.

The Austin American Statesman reported on August 20th that a resident supervisor, William Dunn, was arrested and charged with three counts of official oppression and two counts of unlawful restraint. In essence, he fondled several women while in the process of transporting them. A few days later, on August 26th, Human Rights Watch released a report detailing incidents of sexual torture at a for-profit prison in Texas. The report describes an incident in Willacy County at a facility operated by Management and Training Corporation. In this incident a guard locked a female detainee in a room with a male detainee to whom he “owed a favor” so that the female could be raped.

According to TexasPrisonBidness.org, the private prison model faced declining profits earlier this century, but after September 11, 2001, their fortunes changed. There became a new political demand for prisons to hold immigrants prior to deportation, and herein lies part of the problem. Prior to September 11, 2001 immigrants who were not considered a flight risk were often not detained prior to their hearing. However, because there were some immigrants who opted to abscond instead of appearing at their hearing, there was a great political will to detain a great deal of immigrants facing hearings, even at great cost to the taxpayers.
At the same time, there are great profit motives to hold detainees that need not be detained according to mandatory detention statutes. It’s not that hard to figure out: The longer these detainees are held in these facilities, the more money that these companies make. These company executives are savvy enough to figure out that if they can buy the right politicians, they create the right policies which allow them to hold people who otherwise would pose no threat. The connections between politicians and private prisons are well documented.

One of the most notorious cases was revealed last month, when it became clear that two of Arizona Governor Brewer’s top advisors had a financial interest in corporate prisons. With the passage of Arizona’s anti-Mexican law, the advisors had a potentially lucrative profit motive in passing the law. The more immigrants that the state would cause to be detained, the more money these two advisors stood to gain.
This is only one of many connections, however. Many conflicts of interest involve county jails, rather than immigration facilities. In late July, The San Antonio Express News reported a potentially illegal scheme involving over $100,000 between the Bexar County Sheriff and his ilk and a private prison, which involved the local county jails.

Early in the twentieth century, the State of Texas became conscious that the mix of profit and human detentions did not make for a good mix, and they abolished relationships with such contractors. The profit motive often led to abuses of power and to the preference of profits over justice. One El Pueblo reader called me last week and equated profits in the private prison industry to slavery. In the wake of a miserable economy, in which the ruling class has had a notably difficult time in raising profits, the private prison industry has been remarkably resilient. In a recent article, The Final Call Newspaper cites a report which states that since 2005, and estimated $1.2 billion has been funneled to Texas alone in order to house undocumented immigrants. One report cited that it was more expensive to detain a child at Hutto than it was to educate that child at Harvard University. Any society which allows a segment of its populace to enrich itself at the unnecessary imprisonment of another segment can no longer consider itself a society of and by the people.