Free The Children of Texas' Hutto Prison

The Shameful Problem:
The children at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, 35 miles northeast of Austin, live in cells; they wear uniforms and receive inadequate medical and educational services, are often cold and hungry, separated from their parents as punishment, and until the recently filed ACLU case received only one hour of schooling per day and rarely played outside.
They are guilty of no crimes, and endanger no one. Their parents, who are incarcerated here because they are seeking asylum after fleeing such circumstances as war, torture, political persecution and rape, or are accused of violating civil immigration laws, have committed no crimes. Many of the children are US Citizens.
Teachers at the center are not required to be licensed in Texas, and the state’s family welfare agency exempted Hutto from child care licensing requirements. Along with one other, less prison-like facility in Pennsylvania, Hutto is operated without official regulations.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the arm of Homeland Security that runs the two centers, relies on custody rules designed for inmates
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a for profit company running the majority of privatized prisons in the US, is paid 2.8 million dollars a month (7k per child per month or 84k per child per year) to keep these children behind bars.
It would cost less to put them up at the Austin Hilton with room service.
In contrast, putting a monitoring bracelet/anklet on a parent costs $660 per month.
In past years CCA has made political contributions to key Texas politicians, 100k to Tom Delay and 100k to Governor Perry. Overall, for profit prison companies contributed roughly 519k to state level political campaigns in one year alone. Lt Governor Dewhurt's cut was 53k, while House Speaker Craddick received 34.9k.
Why free the children when keeping them locked up makes so much money?
Who We Are
Free The Children are loosely knit, but highly motivated grass roots volunteers who are working to bring attention to the incarceration of these children and ultimately close Hutto down.
How Can You Help?
Just by reading this myspace page and the blog posts, you are helping.
The more you know about this horrible situation, the better you'll be able to communicate your outrage to others.
And that is how you can truly help!
PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD
Help spread the word!
Please REPOST bulletins.
Please encourage your friends to check out the blog posts , subscribe to the blog and to add Free The Children of Texas's Hutto Prison to their friends lists.The secrecy and media black out surrounding this facility help keep it open for business.
Please consider writing your elected representatives in the House and Senate . For those in Texas, that includes state officials .
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services issued Corrections Corporation of America a waiver normally given to Sunday Schools to operate here in Texas. Tell your representatives and senators to stop ICE and CCA from stealing chilldhoods to create corporate profits!
Postscript:
We have some buttons that were made up for the protest and people's hearing in Austin this past Saturday, the 28th of April.
They come in two sizes. A three incher and two varieties of one incher.
If you'd like to have some shipped to you to help spread the word, support the cause and defray the cost of future print media ads, please click over to this blog post for instructions -- Groovey Buttons .