NW Detention Center capacity upped again

Oct 03 2006 | Madeleine Lee | Seattle Times

With detainee population pressures created by Operation Reservation Guaranteed, a Homeland Security operation that aims at "detaining and expelling virtually every illegal and criminal fugitive immigrant that enforcement officials apprehend," the number of prisoners held at the Northwest Detention Center is climbing higher, the Seattle Times reported Saturday.[1] -- The NW Detention Center has grown ominously bigger and bigger since it first began to be discussed, going from 500 to 700 to 800 to 890 beds. -- Now reporter Lornet Turnbull said that the prison's capacity is expected to grow to 1,000 by January 2007.

For insight into how these policies yield profits for companies like Halliburton: United for Peace of Pierce County

Tacoma Contract Detention Facility

Oct 03 2006 | Bill of Rights Defense Committee | The GEO Group Inc

Texas Prison Camp Future American Gulag?

Jan 08, 2007 0:15 AM PST | Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones | Prison Planet

A detention camp in Tyler Texas that currently holds hundreds of rebuffed asylum seekers who legally entered the country, half of which are children swept up in midnight raids, is a potential prime location for the enforced transfer of American citizens during a time of national emergency.

The privatized Hutto jail, which is also administered by Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), currently interns political asylum seekers who came to the U.S. on legal visas. Most of them are families including pregnant women and children who have never been accused of any wrongdoing but are forced to endure squalid conditions inside literal concentration camps.

In 2004 the facility was on the verge of being shutdown due to lack of occupancy but new immigration policies, allied to the burgeoning growth of the prison industry and future plans to detain American citizens on masse, have revived the potential scope of the camp, and a new contract to intern 600 individuals was finalized with immigration authorities in December 2005.

The facility is euphemistically called a "Residential Center," yet charges of overcrowding and poor conditions are rife, with an estimated 645 people filling a facility that has only 512 beds.

"Innocent children should not be jailed and forced to live under traumatizing and dehumanizing conditions," said a statement from Texans United for Families, an organization that recently held a vigil protest at the facility. "It is bad policy and an impractical and inhumane response to a growing refugee crisis. The U.S. should seek alternatives to detention while making sure that it legislates policies that support families and keep them together and out of jail."

The Infowars team recently visited the facility and were promptly told to leave the premises before having their names taken, but not before they were able to get footage of the camp "playground" where some of the children were playing behind giant mesh barbed wire. The children were kept indoors throughout the taping and were only allowed out when the film crew left to eat lunch.

One local said that other residents of the town were completely oblivious to the fact that the camp even existed, never mind its function and purpose.

Suspicions will undoubtedly be cast as to whether the facility in Tyler is part of a wider agenda to set up a network of internment camps that will be used to forcibly detain American citizens under emergency provisions. The pretext for this was set in the summer of 2004, when thousands of protesters in New York for the Republican National Convention were forcibly detained, some for over 24 hours, without charge in an asbestos infested disused bus facility known as Pier 57, or "Guantanamo on the Hudson" as other labeled it.

During the Iran Contra hearings in the 80's, previously classified information came to light about Continuity of Government (CoG) procedures in times of national crisis. The masterminds behind these programs were Oliver North, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and the Rex-84 'readiness exercise' discussed the plan to round up immigrants and detain them in internment camps in the context of uncontrolled population movements across the Mexican border.

The real agenda was to use the cover of rounding up immigrants and illegal aliens as a smokescreen for targeting political dissidents and American citizens . From 1967 to 1971 the FBI kept a list of persons to be rounded up as subversive, dubbed the "ADEX" list.

Since 9/11 shadow government and CoG programs that were outlined in Rex-84 have been activated, including mass warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. The internment camp program is being readied for execution following the announcement on January 24th that Halliburton subsidiary KBR (formerly Brown and Root) had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build detention camps.

A much discussed and circulated report, the Pentagon's Civilian Inmate Labor Program, has recently been updated and the revision details a "template for developing agreements" between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations."

The pretext given for which the camps would be used as reported by the New York Times was stated as, "an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space."

Following the news first given wide attention by this website, that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root had been awarded a $385 million dollar contract by Homeland Security to construct detention and processing facilities in the event of a national emergency, the Alternet website put together an alarming report that collated all the latest information on plans to initiate internment of political subversives and Muslims after the next major terror attack in the U.S.

The article highlighted the disturbing comments of Sen. Lindsey Graham, who encouraged torture supporting Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to target, "Fifth Columnists" Americans who show disloyalty and sympathize with "the enemy," whoever that enemy may be.

Respected author Peter Dale Scott speculated that the "detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law."

Daniel Ellsberg, former Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense, called the plan, "preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They've already done this on a smaller scale, with the 'special registration' detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo."

One of the last acts of Congress before Christmas was to send President Bush a bill that establishes a $38 million program of National Park Service grants to preserve Japanese POW internment camps in Hawaii, California, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and Idaho. Is this really in the name of historical interest or does it dovetail with programs on the books to intern hundreds of thousands of dissidents in a time of crisis?

Circus of Detention

Feb 12, 2007 0:15 AM PST | Subtopia

“Ringed by barbed wire, a futuristic tent city rises from the Rio Grande Valley in the remote southern tip of Texas.” The $65 million camp is a sprawling squat of inflatable domes plopped down on top of massive concrete slabs. It is the largest camp in the U.S. federal system’s archipelago of immigration detention, quietly deployed last summer between a federal prison and a county jail where, as we are told by the Washington Post, “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.”

Subtopia has actually covered the “detention market” before, but recent news has a way of joggling loose much needed reminders. So, for anyone who doubts that the real spatial translation of all this border militarization and enforcement is a hyper expansion of prison space and absolute boom for the real-estate moguls of incarceration, then I have a few articles you should check out.

Subtopia has actually covered the “detention market” before, but recent news has a way of joggling loose much needed reminders. So, for anyone who doubts that the real spatial translation of all this border militarization and enforcement is a hyper expansion of prison space and absolute boom for the real-estate moguls of incarceration, then I have a few articles you should check out.

260 miles south of Austin in Willacy County, one of the country's poorest, we are told, the ICE has set up 10 huge circus-like tents, surrounded by 14-foot-high chain-link fences looped with barbed wire. The sprung structures hold about 200 men or women in each and are divided into four pods. It’s no surprise that “similar temporary buildings were used for troop recreational facilities in Iraq,” the article points out.

“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.”

From a prison investment standpoint, the blow-up jails are not only cheap but are obviously faster to construct, move and dismantle. There is a spooky air of stealth about them now that in itself is rather frightening. Think about a flexible urbanism of immediate captivities. Mobile prisons. Nomadic detention centers. Nocturnal parachutes that hail from the sky and imprison you. Football field-sized flying nets with self-mounting structures designed to end global migration as we know it.

While perfect for field deployment they’re a nightmare for captives, go figure. The article in the Post says “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.” And if that isn’t bad enough, the lights are left on 24-7 and a visitor “finds many occupants buried in their blankets throughout the day.”

It’s the lobotomization of illegal immigration. Migrant families reduced to communities of sleeping bag larvae. Sounds like torture to me. If we go back to Nancy Duff’s vision of the entire North American continent forming a singular massive body, say, if Canada were its eyes and mind, the USA its beating heart, and Mexico its pumping legs - then these border crossers have been ingested and now fester somewhere in the sun-stretched bowels tucked behind Texas’s prison belt – literally consumed by giant pneumatic architectural stomachs keeping fat prison operators fed. Jodi Goodwin, an immigration lawyer from nearby Harlingen calls it 'Ritmo' - the Gitmo in Raymondville, Texas.

With an increase in stricter immigration laws and Washington's push for tighter enforcement, comes the early signs of a new alien jowled pop-up landscape in rural America – the instaburbs of inflatable detention sprawl.

“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.” Craziness.

Also, in Texas just outside of Austin, sits the T. Don Hutto Family Detention Center, operated for the government by none other than the Corrections Corporation of America, according to the New York Times, “under a $2.8-million-a-month contract with Williamson County. It is named for a founder of the company, which runs 64 centers in 19 states. It now holds about 400 illegal immigrants, including 170 children, in family groups from nearly 30 countries. […] There is only one other family detention center in the country, the Berks Family Shelter Care Facility in Leesport, Pa.”

The facility was recently opened up to the media for the first time last week since it has come under intense scrutiny for having a reputation as a prison that locks up children. You can watch a video here (thanks Nick!). From recent reports, it seems the facility had been quickly doctored and dolled up with cheap plants and fresh paint jobs to make it “presentable.” The operators claim it is the most humane response to dividing families, while most agree, children under no circumstances should be locked up.

Mother Jones produced a great piece on the TDH Center despite the fact that not much is really even known about the place, telling us that “it is the only detention center housed in a former prison, and agency officials say it has been extensively renovated into "a modern, state-of-the-art facility." The government has taken the position that family detention centers are generally the most effective ways of managing hordes of migrant families,” and according to MoJo, in March, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he plans to open more of them.

On down the road, the ICE recently added another 512-bed center in Taylor for immigrant families, run of course by Corrections Corp. All part of a chain of facilities in South Texas reported to have 6,700 new immigration detention beds available now. Every day since July, “six officers have manually tracked and transferred detained immigrants among 24 regional offices, matching bodies to vacant beds and airplane seats in a Detention Operations Coordination Center.”

In Georgia, the ICE recently added a 1,524-bed facility in Stewart County. Then, just check out Florence, Arizona. This article on CorpWatch breaks down the numbers behind illegal immigration in terms of the kinds of dollars and stock values that are at stake in the privatized prison industry. Beyond the numbers and dollars, though, the article talks about how these new immigration detention zones are reviving old communities leftover from the mining industry that now thrive around the replacement industry of operating prisons; truly a carceral urbanism. Florence hosts Arizona’s state prison, two privately run prison complexes, and one Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration jail. Read on and we find out that it was, who else, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) who built the two prisons in Florence. Recently, with immigrants in prison garb coursing through America’s rural veins, the INS began renting bed space, “and then built its own prison out of a town's old World War II prisoner-of-war camp,” Deepa Fernades writes. It was the revitalization of prisons and internment camps that have brought back Florence to life.

There, as a new mantlepiece, the DHS-run Special Processing Center “is a massive one-stop-shop, where immigrants can be jailed, tried in an immigration court, appealed before an immigration judge, and ordered deported—all without leaving the self-contained complex.” Remind anyone of the new project being built outside Gitmo? Self-contained state-of-exception rapid trial sentencing centers? Even though the DHS denies that their facilities are jails, Hernandes doesn’t let us escape the fact that the Special Processing Center in Florence “is ringed by concertina wire, surrounded by chain-link fences, with inmates locked into cells, […] facing zealous prosecution and in many cases are left to languish for weeks and months without trial or sentencing.”

Get ready America, if you see a crowd of tents popping up on the outskirts of your town, don’t mistake them for a new circus – it’s just a few hundred migrants performing some little detention act to an invisible audience. Nothing to be concerned about, just move along.

"You" and "We": The fear that isn't felt

Feb 21, 2007 | Richard Marsden | The Business of Emotions

The Green Zone at the heart of Baghdad is a metaphor for the relationship between the United States and the rest of us.

A heavily fortified walled enclave, the Green Zone is a little America in Iraq and life outside it might as well be another country. In that country, Iraq, electricity and water supplies stutter and start, but within this colossal gated community your every need is catered to.

The United States itself is becoming a gigantic gated community (although "gate" misleads). In the name of the "war on terror", it is militarizing its borders, fortifying them; and in doing so it is using techniques it has perfected by imprisoning Iraqis.

Let us turn from Iraq and to the remote southern tip of Texas where, ringed by barbed wire, we find a futuristic tent city rising from the Rio Grande Valley.

It is the largest camp in the U.S. federal system’s archipelago of immigration detention, quietly deployed last summer between a federal prison and a county jail where, as we are told by the Washington Post, "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."

Subtopia talks of "flexible urbanism of immediate captivities". It and the other detention centres throughout the United States constitute the new military urbanism; and each inmate will experience the nebulous detention which is typified by Guantánamo Bay Detention Centre.

Speaking of which the U.S. Department of Defense is building a new migrant detention centre at Guantánamo to house the expected waves of Cubans who will, we are told, attempt to migrate to Florida when Fidel Castro dies. Or, as a U.S. official put it, it is being built "to shelter interdicted migrants."

Such centres are the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security. Illegal immigrants are only one of its concerns. The "war on terror" is another. That the two have been fused is one reason borders have been militarized.

"Unlawful enemy combatants", such as those in Guantánamo, will also experience the hospitality of these regimes—and the definition of such "combatants" is wide enough to include dissenting Americans (and Canadians, as Maher Arar will testify).

No one ever expects that such a thing could happen to them. This is the fear that isn't felt.

When Time Magazine declared the Person of 2006 to be You, they really meant "Us", Americans, those on the safe side of these fortified zones. These are potential wearers of the Hug Shirt, which, let us recall from the previous post, Time nominated as one of the Inventions of 2006. The Person and the Invention are a perfect match.

Perhaps Time will acknowledge this next December and declare the Person of 2007 to be "Us".

What has been obvious for those on the outside for several years is only now creeping into the collective conscience of these "Yous": "We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us".