Blood on the tracks
On Christmas Day, an ex-Haven for Hope resident recently banned from the shelter stepped onto the tracks that edge the homeless services campus and into a moving train. While the first successful suicide here in recent years, it was the third such suicide-by-train attempt since Haven for Hope opened in spring 2010, said Haven CEO George Block. “It’s been a concern for us, it’s certainly a concern for Union Pacific, but it sort of is what it is,” he told QueQue. “That’s why the land was here for us, it was an abandoned rail yard.”
Block described surveillance camera footage showing José Perez, 35, walking toward the tracks at West Martin Street before walking in front of the train just before it buzzed past the Haven campus. Perez, Block said, had been in and out of jail, the state hospital, or crisis treatment centers for the past 15 years battling mental illness or substance abuse, and was sometimes incarcerated for violent offenses. Perez briefly entered Haven’s transformation program but left within days, Block said. He stayed at Prospects Courtyard, an outdoor shelter at the campus run by the Center for Health Care Services but was banned three months ago after assaulting residents and a security guard, Block said. On Christmas, he tried to enter Prospects again but was ordered away.
At least two other homeless individuals have tried to take their own lives by stepping out in front of trains since Haven opened, Block said, neither of which were successful. One would-be suicide last year was eventually talked off the tracks by a Haven staff member. The other was grabbed and hauled off the tracks by a Haven staffer before the train passed.
On top of suicide attempts, Block said the tracks present another problem. When first opening, Haven worked with Union Pacific to upgrade all nearby intersections to quiet zones, installing crossing arms and loud alarms at each intersection. But Block says trains pass through and stall for long periods of time near the campus, blocking the main Haven entrance and the entrance to the Courtyard about a block south. Some residents climb underneath stalled trains rather than wait or try to beat trains as they pass, Block said.
And there’s a long stretch of rail running between the main campus entrance and the entrance to Prospects — individuals constantly wander those tracks on the edge of the campus. Block says Haven wants to build sidewalks running between the two entrances, keeping people away from the rail line. “Union Pacific says they don’t want people in that area, but people aren’t going to walk around and go four blocks just to walk one block.” Haven’s still waiting on permission from Union Pacific, he said.
District 3 shuffle
Eight candidates have lined up to fill the shoes of outgoing District 3 Councilwoman Jennifer Ramos, who’s leaving less than halfway through her second Council term to run for a spot on Bexar County Commissioners Court. We’ll see this week not only who’s tapped to lead D3 for the next year and four months, but also how Council test-drives its new system for picking interim council members, designed to quell complaints of cronyism or back-room dealing in replacing Council members who bow out early.
As per an ordinance pushed by Mayor Julián Castro halfway through his first term, candidates seeking interim appointments now file applications with the City Clerk’s office. Under the rule, members openly review and interview all applicants before voting in an interim member to fill out the term.
Council is set to interview Ramos’ potential replacements at Council’s “B” session today, the final vote coming during Thursday’s “A” session.
Before the new policy, outgoing Council members essentially handpicked their replacements, leaving the rest of Council to either approve or deny the request. Council passed the new policy on the heels of a controversial 2010 appointment, when then D4-Councilman Philip Cortez chose his then-fiancé Leticia Cantu to fill in while he left for a thee-month stint in Air Force Reserve training. Cantu tried her best to capitalize on the appointment, using her brief time on Council as a jumping-off point for her failed 2011 campaign for the D4 seat.
Proving the power of appointment, Ramos rose under the old system. Serving as an aid to then-Councilman Roland Gutierrez, she was appointed to the D3 seat in 2008 when Gutierrez left to run for the Lege. She ran unopposed in 2009, and won her second full term in 2011.
Her potential replacements sport varying ties to local politicos, some well-known faces around town or at City Hall, others more relatively unknown. Track Newsmonger later this week to see who gains Council’s favor.
Prisons and profits
In late December, Florida-based private prison contractor GEO Group announced the renewal of its contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to run the 1,904-bed South Texas Detention Center in Pearsall, southwest of San Antonio. GEO, heralding the contract extension, effective through end of 2016, says its continued management of Pearsall should rake in $45 million each year for the next five years. In a statement, GEO chairman and CEO George Zoley praised ICE’s continued “confidence” in the private prison corporation, saying the Pearsall facility “plays a key role in helping meet the need for federal detention bed space.”
But private prison watchers continue to bristle that companies such as GEO, with a spotty track record at many of its private-run immigrant detention centers, including Pearsall, continue to make bank on lucrative federal contracts despite long-standing allegations of abuse. Reacting to the Pearsall extension, Bob Libal with Grassroots Leadership, which opposes for-profit prisons, said, “For me, this shows ICE is determined to rely on private prison corporations, even when those corporations have a very, very troubled record like the GEO Group does.”
Detention watch groups, immigrant rights advocates, and private prison watchers generally decry ICE’s heavy reliance on for-profit contractors for immigrant detention given the steady stream of complaints over abuse, lax oversight, and shoddy medical care at many privately run ICE detention centers. With the flow of immigrant detainees steadily rising along with increased enforcement efforts, private prisons have become integral to the immigrant detention system, and between 2005 and 2010 immigrants detained by ICE swelled from 240,00 to the record highs of nearly 400,000, according to advocacy group Detention Watch Network. Nearly half of all those detained now land in the hands of private prison corporations — GEO controls over 7,000 immigrant detention beds across the country.
The renewal of GEO’s Pearsall contract comes as the company readies to open another major ICE detention facility nearby: Karnes County’s so-called civil detention center for immigrant detainees. The 600-bed facility, set to open in the coming months, should generate $15 million in revenue for GEO each year once up and running, company officials have said. (The San Antonio Business Journal reported in November that Workforce Solutions Alamo hosted a Floresville job fair, helping GEO fill some 400 slots.)
Renewal of the Pearsall contract comes as some in Congress press to investigate claims of sexual abuse at ICE detention centers. This week Democratic congressmen Jared Polis of Colorado and Mike Quigley of Illinois penned a letter to the General Accountability Office calling for an investigation.
“The continued reports of sexual abuse against immigrants in ICE detention facilities are appalling,” Polis wrote in a statement. “Here we have people who are at their most vulnerable — many without access to any legal assistance — who are being preyed upon and assaulted.” Polis also worried that LGBT immigrants appear to be “special targets for abuse.”
GEO’s Pearsall facility has its own history of scandal. In 2007, two immigrant detainees at the facility sued after claiming staff repeatedly threw them into isolation instead of giving them medical treatment. One, a crippled woman with mental disabilities, claimed she was denied medication, forced into isolation, stripped naked, and ridiculed by GEO staff. A 2010 Human Rights Watch report on immigration detention referenced numerous allegations of sexual abuse of detainees by guards at Pearsall.
Last week, citing “abusive over-incarceration of our sisters and brothers,” the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society divested from the two largest private, for-profit prison entities: GEO and the Corrections Corporation of America. •
