Williamson County Ends Contract With Immigration Detention Site

WILLIAMSON COUNTY, TX — Williamson County commissioners voted on Tuesday to terminate their lucrative contract with the T. Don Hutto detention center in the nearby town of Taylor — a site that houses immigrant women —by next year.

Immigrant rights advocates have long called for the county to end its contract with the facility's operators, a contract that pays the county some $8,000 a month to run the site. The money is allotted to pay for costs related to the county's work as a liaison among the jurisdiction's employees, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) and the detention site's operator. Formerly a medium-security state prison, the facility is located at 1001 Welch St. It was converted into a women's detention center in 2009.

“This is an important step forward in the fight for justice at Hutto and a victory for all who have raised their voices," Bethany Carson, immigration organizer and researcher at Austin-based Grassroots Leadership, said. The nonprofit has long led the charge in urging commissioners to end their cooperation with the detention site. "We thank all the members of the Shut Down Hutto coalition for their work to make this happen,” Carson added. “However, there is still much to do. We must first fight to ensure that every woman at Hutto, including all of the moms who have had their kids taken from them, are released from the facility immediately.”

Commissioners Cynthia Long, Terry Cook, Larry Madsen and County Judge Dan Gattis voted to end the contract, while Valerie Covey voted against the move.

Critics have long pointed to a lucrative agreement the facility's operators have with the county — which has reaped millions of dollars over the years in financial outlays for allowing the facility to operate within their jurisdiction — as a reason for its continuance.

The termination deal calls for an end to the county's cooperation in running the site to end by Jan. 31, 2019.

The Hutto facility houses primarily immigrants from Latin America, but also from Africa, Europe, the Middle East and other regions. The female detainees detained there await for their asylum cases to be determined.

The pact with Williamson County has been lucrative. In a November 2015 Austin American-Statesman report, it was reported that the monthly payment to county coffers had risen from $6,000 to $8,000 a month in addition to one dollar per day per detainee. The exact number of detainees at the site is unknown, with officials citing Department of Homeland Security security safeguards given that ICE falls under that agency's purview. However, the number of women held at the center has been estimated to be at least 400.

The move to end the contract comes days after Donald Trump signed an executive order reversing his own policy of allowing for the separation of immigrants from their children at other similar detention sites. Audio of crying children pleading to be reunited with their children aired by the investigative news site ProPublica sparked widespread outcry, the sounds of pleading children making the issue less abstract to a wide public in conveying children's torment at being separated.

Related stories:

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The move also comes a week after Grassroots Leadership, an immigrant rights advocacy group, reacted to news of Trump's reversal of his own family separation policy initiated as part of a "zero tolerance" immigration crackdown — a decision made via executive order after Trump declared he would be unable to reverse the policy through that method. Officials at the nonprofit were unsatisfied with the reversal, suggesting it merely transforms a mass family separation crisis into a mass family incarceration one.

"Together in a cage is not better than separate cages,” Claudia Muñoz, immigration programs director at Grassroots Leadership, said at the time. “This order is going to lead to more and potentially longer family detention. Locking families in detention camps with a proven history of abuse to be traumatized together instead of traumatized apart is a sick way to supposedly ‘keep families together.’”

Muñoz cited the 1997 Flores settlement that bars the prolonged detention of children in secure, unlicensed facilities. Trump's reversal on the family separation component — while keeping the tactics of incarceration intact — is tantamount to a promise to violate this standard, she said.

Private prison stocks soared at the news of the executive order, including those of the nation’s two largest family detention centers, located in Dilley and Karnes City, Texas, both operated by for-profit prison corporations CoreCivic and GEO Group, respectively.

The county's imminent end of its contract with CoreCivic also comes three months after an immigrant woman formerly detained there alleged sexual abuse at the hands of a female guard. Laura Monterrosa, an asylum seeker from El Salvador, has since been released from the facility.

Patch reached out to the office of Williamson County Sheriff Robert Chody in the wake of the woman's outrcry, asking if an investigation into the matter would be launched. Calls and messages left with the sheriff's office were never returned. The FBI reportedly has since taken the lead role in investigating Monterrosa's claims.

Several lawmakers teamed up to call for the woman's release, an effort led by congressmen Joaquin Castro and Lloyd Doggett, Democrats from San Antonio and Austin, respectively. The two secured the signatures of 44 other members of Congress calling for ICE to launch an investigation in how sexual assault cases are investigated at Texas detention facilities.

In the letter, advocates noted five detainees had allegedly been sexually assaulted at the T. Don Hutto facility between 2007 and 2011.

Ahead of the county's vote to end the contract with the facility's operators, faith leaders, immigrant advocates and other members of the community descended on the commissioner's court calling for the immediate end of the contract with the Taylor facility.

"The decision does not immediately close the facility, but rather gives Immigration and Customs Enforcement until January to renegotiate a possible agreement," Grassroots Leadership officials said in a press advisory. "At least 35 mothers who have had their kids taken from them at the border are being held the facility, and some are at imminent risk of deportation."

One detained mom sent a letter from inside the Hutto detention center over the weekend detailing her experiences in being detained, separated from her children. The full text of that letter is available here.

Grassroots Leadership has launched the Hutto Deportation Defense and Bond Fund to provide support for women detained at the facility. On July 8th, hundreds of Episcopalians from across the country will gather at the Hutto detention center for a prayer service, officials at the nonprofit noted.

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