Another death at Detention center

I am totally disgusted and ashamed that people dying everyday in the Desert, in Detention Centers, in Jails, in ICE hands without reservation of their Human and Civil Righst just for the Dysfunctional Immigration system. Hopefully Human rights will take hands on this case.

The 17-year-old's lifeless body was frozen in a sitting position in solitary-confinement at the Galveston County Jail.

Arturo Chavez's back was flush against a 7-foot partition for the cell's shower. A blue blanket was twisted into a noose, with one end wrapped around his neck, the other tied to a shower head.

He apparently hanged himself about 48 hours after being arrested for what started as an illegal left turn.

It may never be known what swept over Chavez, who illegally emigrated from Guatemala four years ago and spent much of his time trying to improve his English and working to send money home.

"If he did it, it was because he was so beaten down he couldn't take the pain," his older brother Adolfo Chavez said of the suicide.

What is certain is that his life was similar to those of countless people who live in the shadows of society due to their immigration status, and that things hurtled out of control after police pulled him over the night of Aug. 1.

Officials are still investigating his death, ruled a suicide.

A federal lawsuit was filed by Chavez's parents against the League City Police Department, Galveston County and Sheriff Gean Leonard. The lawsuit contends not enough was done to keep Chavez from killing himself.

Those who knew Chavez said, like many undocumented immigrants, he feared any run-in with authorities as it would likely mean he would be deported.

He left Central America when he was 13 and wanted more out of life than he could get with tips loading baggage at a bus station.

Relatives say it took him nearly 15 days to get to Houston, including sneaking into Mexico and riding a passenger bus north.

He crossed the Rio Grande and hiked through South Texas.

Human smugglers demanded $3,500 to guide him, a hefty sum met with help from family and friends.

In Houston, he was known for his hustle and held out hope his improving English skills would get him promoted from busboy to waiter.

Chavez's death was a mystery as much as a shock, said Mario Garcia, who owns the restaurant where Chavez worked.

"I don't understand how you can go from making a mistake to losing your life, I'm dumbfounded by it," Garcia said. "There are two sides to every story, and the truth is probably somewhere right in the middle."

The kid known by his family as niño, Spanish for boy, had come a long way since leaving his indigenous village. He was sending home at least $100 a week to help his mother, father and sister.

He was not only working full time, but attending Clear Creek High School's program to help newly arrived international students.

He wore woven bracelets made of blue and white yarn — the colors of Guatemala's flag — as well as an anklet with the U.S.A.'s red, white and blue.

"He was very proud of his Mayan heritage," said Elizabeth Laurence, one of his teachers. "He was a feisty young fellow, popular and wanted to learn English very much. He wasn't timid; he tried to use it."

Things were going well with his girlfriend, Jhoseline Martell, whom he met at school.

As the police cruiser's lights flashed behind him near Louisiana Street and League City Parkway, Chavez dialed Martell on his cell phone and stuffed it in his pocket.

"He said the police have stopped me, just listen," recalled Martell, 15.

He normally rode a bicycle to avoid such trouble, but he had recently bought a used green Honda sedan.

He had no driver's license, no insurance and what turned out later to be a fake identification card.

He was arrested and taken to jail. His mugshot was taken while he wore the red shirt from his job as a busboy.

Excessive force alleged

All he had made for himself in the U.S. seemed to hang in the balance as Chavez was locked up at the police station and awaiting transfer to county jail.

At one point, when the holding-cell door was opened, Chavez bolted for freedom, according to a police report.

With officers running behind, the 5-foot-3-inch Chavez made it outside and scrambled up a chain-link fence, but was grabbed by the feet.

The wire atop the fence ripped into his hands.

In the scramble, he was shocked twice with a taser and hit multiple times with a baton, according to police.

Houston attorney Randall Kallinen said the officers used excessive force to apprehend Chavez.
"He had been severely beaten," said Kallinen, who added that a head injury could bring on suicidal thoughts — a mix worsened by solitary confinement. Results of an autopsy are pending.
Gary Ratliff, assistant chief of the League City Police Department, said officers used the minimum of force to catch the fleeing prisoner.

"None of us know what this kid was thinking; no one knows what pushed him to that regard," he said of suicide.

"I really seriously feel for that family. That is a void you just can't fill," he said.

Body sent to Guatemala

Adolfo Chavez, who wears a Rosary identical to the one his brother was buried with, spoke quietly as he described how Arturo came to America to chase a dream.

He also recalled their last phone conversation from jail.

The kid always fighting for a better life sounded broken.

He was now looking at escape charges, resisting arrest, and his body ached.

Adolfo said Arturo asked him to call his parents.

"He said, 'Tell them I love them, and I've always tried to be a good son. I can't take it anymore.' "

Arturo Chavez's body was back in Guatemala last week for a funeral at his parents' home. Family and friends had to raise $6,000 to send his remains back home.

Relatives in the U.S. couldn't afford to attend.

His father, Juan Chavez, said he could hardly believe the condition of his son's body. His face, skull and back were bruised.

His legs were swollen. One hand was torn up.

"He's at peace now," the father said.

Raids in Postville, Iowa. leading our nation to a moral, legal and humanitarian crisis.









Postville, Iowa, has been turned into a ghost town. Nearly a third of its residents, mostly undocumented workers from Guatemala and Mexico, sit in jail convicted of identity crimes or awaiting deportation. Hundreds more hide in fear. Their children, too scared to go to school, have left the town's classrooms nearly empty. For this, Postville should thank their local police, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), and a failed immigration policy.

Aided by local law enforcement, ICE arrested 389 workers during the largest single-site immigration raid in U.S. history at the Postville meatpacking plant, the area's major employer. In an unprecedented move, ICE criminally charged 302 of these workers with aggravated ID theft and/or using false social security numbers. Within days, ICE resolved their fate: 297 men and women pled guilty and were sentenced to prison and subsequent deportation. Only a few await criminal trials or immigration hearings.

Postville is one of the latest in a series of immigration raids that have intensified in the past three years. These raids are leading our nation to a moral, legal and humanitarian crisis.


Lawmakers on Thursday questioned the legality and effectiveness of the government’s tactics in a May raid that led to the arrest of nearly 400 immigrants.

The crackdown on a kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa _ called Agriprocessors _ represented the largest single immigration raid in the nation’s history. Most of the workers, who faced charges of aggravated identity theft for using immigration or Social Security numbers that did not belong to them, accepted plea agreements on a lesser charge of Social Security fraud. Most now face five months of jail followed by deportation.

The raid has come under fire from immigration reform groups and now lawmakers who objected to group prosecutions that they say violated due process and who criticized the decision to disproportionately go after workers instead of employers.

"This looks and feels like a cattle auction, not a criminal prosecution in the United States," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., a former immigration lawyer and chair of the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, which held a five-hour hearing Thursday on the Postville raid.

The workers were given seven days to decide whether to accept the plea agreement, and they appeared in groups of 10 at the plea hearings.

"Defendants did not know what a Social Security number was," said Erik Camayd-Freixas, one of the interpreters brought in to translate at the court proceedings.

Deborah Rhodes, senior associate deputy attorney general at the Department of Justice, defended the "fast-tracking" process, which she said averted flooding the courts and resulted in reduced sentences.

Lawmakers also expressed concern about the government’s priorities, arguing that the mass raid complicated an existing investigation into labor, food safety and environmental violations at the Agriprocessors plant.

Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, whose district borders Postville, said he was concerned that rounding up, jailing and deporting the plant’s workers would impede the Department of Labor’s investigation.

"Unless we enforce our laws equally against both employees and employers who break the law, we will continue to have a serious problem with illegal immigration in this country," Braley said.

Detention facility for immigrant kids sued for violating and abuse their civil and constitutional rights.





Eight immigrant teenagers held at a facility for unaccompanied minors filed a federal lawsuit Thursday claiming they were abused and denied access to attorneys.
The teens from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Cuba were being held at the San Antonio facility run by Houston-based Cornell Companies Inc. under a contract with the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Undocumented minors caught by authorities in the United States fall under the care of ORR while their immigration cases are decided.
But Susan Watson, an attorney for Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, said the teens were beaten and subjected to other excessive force in violation of their constitutional rights.

At least one teen was knocked unconscious, but complaints to facility administrators were ignored, according to the lawsuit.
Officials at Cornell also denied the teens access to attorneys by unnecessarily transferring them to other facilities before scheduled lawyer meetings, the lawsuit alleges.
The suit names Cornell and 15 employees along with three employees of ORR. It does not name ORR itself because the teens have not filed or exhausted their administrative claims against the agency, a requirement that must be fulfilled before the federal government can be sued.
"We vociferously dispute the charges in the lawsuit, and we'll make our case in court," said Cornell spokesman Charles Siegel.
The facility has 122 beds, but Cornell has a contract to house no more than 25 unaccompanied minors there, Seigel said.
Calls to officials at ORR were not immediately returned .
The allegations raised by the immigrant teens were not the first against Cornell.
Arkansas fired Cornell from the operation of a juvenile facility in November 2006 after finding employees inappropriately injected youth with anti-psychotic medication to control behavior.
And in September, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials removed 600 detainees from an Albuquerque, N.M., facility run by Cornell, citing failure to maintain safety, health and well-being standards there.

U.S. deports over 21,000 Guatemalans in ‘07 including 1,097 childrens.


The United States deported 21,062 Guatemalans during 2007, or 6,172 more than last year, the General Migration Agency said. Of the total number of Guatemalans deported, 19,113 were men, 852 women and 1,097 children.

The last 126 deportees for this year arrived Friday on two planes chartered by the U.S. government and were met by Guatemalan Foreign Ministry and International Organization for Migration, or IOM, personnel.

On average, according to the IOM, more than 200 Guatemalans leave home each day for the United States in search of better opportunities, but only 40 make it into that country. Some 1.3 million Guatemalans are living in the United States , the majority of them illegally.

Despite the increase in deportations, remittances from Guatemalans living in the United States rose this year. The Bank of Guatemala said remittances during the first 11 months of this year totaled $3.79 billion, or 17.51 percent more than during the same period last year.

In 2006, according to the central bank, Guatemala received a record $3.61 billion in remittances, well above the $2.99 billion registered in 2005 and the $2.55 billion that flowed into the Central American country in 2004.

The Bank of Guatemala estimates that more than $4.2 billion in remittances will have been received by the end of 2007.