| Books | I.C.E Detention Centers
This specific Homeland Security Detention Center is located in the tide flats of Tacoma near the Thea Foss, hidden from the view of the public. The facility has a contract with I.C.E. (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement)and is currently the main detention facility in the North West. They can imprison up to 1,000 undocumented workers.
In the recent past up to 300 people became very ill in this facility due to food poisoning. Since 2004 sixty-four people have died in these detention facilities around the country.
Victoria Arellano's life ended in these facilities on the 20th of July in southern California. She came to the U.S. as a child. As a young adult, she worked at a supermarket in West Hollywood while volunteering at a drug and alcohol treatment facility. She was a trans gender women with AIDS who was denied medical treatment in an I.C.E Detention facility. She went through weeks of pain, throwing up blood and having to have others imprisoned help her to the bathroom. They took care of her trying to bring the fever down with cold towels. When she was finally taken to the hospital she was shackled to her bed with two I.C.E agents guarding the door. Her mother pleaded with them to release her sick daughter from shackles. They refused and Victoria died two days later.
For more info on Victoria's story:
http://www.reclaimthemedia.org/bolivarianmediaexchange/trans_woman_dies_in_immigratio
The Geo Group & KBR
The Geo Group is a company that takes pride in calling themselves “...a world leader in the privatized development and/or management of correctional facilities.” They “...design, build, finance and manage prisons worldwide,” including prisons in North America, South Africa, Australia, the U.K and specifically the privately run North West Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington. The bank, Wells Fargo, is one of the top five share holders of this murderous company, essentially controlling a good portion of the company. This is one of the two biggest prison companies in the world, as well as one of the major beneficiaries in this plan to rob people of their families and tear people's lives apart.
The other major company making money out of racism and murder is Kellogg Brown and Root, which happens to be a subsidiary of vice presidents Cheney's company Halliburton, who in the past couple years won a $385 million contract to build these concentration centers. In 2004, KBR business skyrocketed after the passing of “Operation Endgame” with their profits jumping about twenty percent. With Operation Endgame, the plan is to ensure the “departure from the United States all removable aliens...” Companies like Geo Group and Kellogg Brown and Root will continue to make money off of the despair and suffering of those taken in the middle of the night by people with guns. Taken from their families screaming, to private Lagers*, called detention centers, hidden far away from the public eye.
*Lager was the German word for prison camps, which held both German criminals and those who had committed no specific crimes, but were considered undesirable and a threat to the state by Nazi authorities ( i.e. Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and radicals).
On Migration
Contrary to what the right wing pundits spew about immigration in this county, the causes of mass migration are very simple and clear. No one willingly leaves their family and friends to work long days, often times for less than minimum wage, in conditions that would make most U.S citizens quit. If one were inclined to leave their land and family they would not be called migrants, but simply travelers or tourists.
Migration is forced displacement, a wandering search for better living conditions. Mass displacement is caused by wars, famine, or simply the functioning of industrial production (the destruction of countryside and forests, mass layoffs, and so on). The economic policies put forth by the capitalists that make up the U.S government, both Democrats and Republicans, rob people and families in other countries of their local autonomy. With trade agreements such as NAFTA, CAFTA and the more recent SPP, indigenous and rural communities are forced into giving up their land and resources for the development of the global economy, the profit of capitalist business abroad, free trade, and the neo-liberal agenda -for a world where people have no autonomy over their own resources and absolutely no say in what happens in their communities. This simultaneously forces workers in those countries who's resources are being exported to countries far away deeper into poverty.
All of this is a good enough reason to leave your land and family hoping to make enough money to send home and feed your children. When your home is under attack from foreign business people with only the dollar on their mind, you find yourself in a position where you stay and fight a seemingly unbeatable enemy, or you go to the country that is pushing these genocidal policies and work, picking their food and cleaning their homes.
The problem here is not people coming to steal American jobs; the problem is the destruction of communities abroad and the policies that starve families far away as well as families within this country. When you or a loved one goes to work to find out that they are cutting costs, (that cost being you) and implementing layoffs; when you find out that someone thousands of miles away is now doing the same job you were doing for much less and your company finds it more profitable to “let you go”(as if you really wanted to be there more than spending time with your family and kids); these issues are all interconnected into our lives and the lives of those uprooted from their homes.
Operation Endgame
Operation Endgame is an Office of Detention and Removal Strategic Plan that was passed in 2004. Within this plan, the ODR (Office of Detention and Removal) states that it's mission is, in fact “removing all removable aliens”. It is their plan to have this mass removal of people done by the year 2012.
It is “Operation Endgame” that has jump started these mass roundups, secret raids and homes with family members disappeared. They claim that “...the alien will be detained in safe, secure and humane environments; he will be transported safely; his movement will be fully coordinated with his family, legal representative, and country of origin, whenever appropriate.” This has not been the case in any way what so ever. Not only have there been numerous cases of sexual, physical, and mental abuse -even death, within these facilities, many family members don't find out for weeks what happened to their loved ones. Their interest is not the well being of these people they imprison. It is not the well being of those of us on the outside, still seemingly imprisoned but in a different way.
This is how they deal with people running away from what seems like a hopeless situation; they come in the night, knocking on doors, saying they are the police. If you look or speak a certain way you are taken away, even if your kids are watching (sometimes they take your kids too). You are put in a bus filled with the terrified, confused, saddened faces of those stolen from their families, and once again uprooted from their homes. Then you are driven to an unfamiliar place and placed in cells. Sometimes you hear the crying of older women, missing their adult children. Sometimes you hear children sniffling, missing their friends back home. You wonder what has become of your dignity as you are moved from place to place in this prison. Armed guards look at you as if you are worth nothing to them, nothing to this country. Finally you are taken away, and sent to a country that has seen war, economic tragedy, and imperialism. It is there that you start again as a wanderer with no place to call your home.
Like the aftermath of hurricane Katrina -massive numbers of families and individuals are being displaced. With very little left -if they were lucky- they were ripped from their homes and taken to what was once the astrodome; but now seemed like some kind of refugee camp in another country. Armed Military every where. They heard rumors of rape and murder growing through the crowds as they looked around they saw starvation and faces full of strife. And after all of this they were freed. But they could not go to what was once their home for the state had declared it unsafe. They now make their way from place to place. Looking for a new life. Looking for a life that is worth living. Uprooted from their land they are now refugees of a tragic situation. One where they are no longer valuable to those in power, to an economic system fueled by a lust for greed. They too, now wander.
It might be that one day you, too, may be pushed from your home and left wandering the land, looking for a place to start a new life. With feelings of abandonment from the government you once may have trusted in, you go from place to place, trying to make enough money to feed yourself and family. You may be scared at the foreign eyes glaring at you. Because you would know then that you are an alien in their eyes. Something to be wary of, something to be fearful of. Life will never be the same.
(If y'all have any essays, articles, links about detention centers internationally or nationally and feel they may be relevant in any way please send them via email or myspace) |
