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| 10/31/2007 11:57:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | Wilco keeps, but tweaks, contract
BRAD STUTZMAN
Editor
The T. Don Hutto immigrant detention center in Taylor is only one facility, but it conjures up at least three different images, among three different groups who have competing priorities.
For human rights protestors, it is about morality. Children - some from families seeking political asylum - are held at the converted prison and opponents say that is wrong.
For the 280 people who work there - Corrections Corporation of America employees who say they treat detainees with dignity and respect - it's about a steady paycheck that will go away if T. Don Hutto does.
And for Williamson County Commissioners it is also to some degree about money ($15,872 per month) as well as a middleman role commissioners are uncomfortable in because they believe it leaves them open to legal liability.
Since county commissioners were the only ones voting on this, their point of view prevailed Tuesday morning.
After taking public input - but offering no comments of their own - commissioners voted 5-0 to modify, but not end, the controversial contractual relationships Williamson County has been in since May 2006.
"The contract is going to end anyway [in January 2009]," Precinct 1 Commissioner Lisa Birkman of Brushy Creek said during a break after the vote.
Birkman, at this point, is the only member of the five-person court who will state she's leaning toward not renewing the county's contract with the private jail firm CCA. The others, at least in their public statements, are taking a wait-and-see approach.
Under contract terms, county government serves as the middleman at T. Don Hutto, between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and CCA.
The county's contract with ICE is in effect "indefinitely," county spokeswoman Connie Watson said - although the county can opt out of either contract with 120 days notice.
'Lipstick on a pig'
Protestors said Williamson County needs to end the contract as soon as possible, not in 2009.
Some of those who oppose T. Don Hutto also spoke earlier this month, at a similar standing-room-only commissioners court meeting.
And this time some walked in protest, from Taylor to Georgetown, arriving at commissioners court in time to voice their disapproval.
One Taylor man - who identified himself as being Jewish - compared T. Don Hutto to Nazi concentration camps.
Others did not take it that far, but were no less committed to their cause. Some had traveled great distances, to get their point across.
"You began your meeting with a prayer ... yet your actions belie what you pray for," Jay Johnson Castro of Del Rio told commissioners.
Former Georgetown Mayor MaryEllen Kersch said any CCA talk of nice programs - like Halloween decorating - for the children at T. Don Hutto - is just cosmetic and papers over underlying problems.
"A prison is a prison," Kersch said. "Our immigration system is broken. It is a complete mess. But T. Don Hutto is not the answer. I want Williamson County to tell T. Don Hutto we're not going to be a patsy for their failures."
Jose Orta - president for Taylor's chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens - was even more blunt.
"It's time to cut our losses," he said. "You can put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig."
CCA brings jobs
Just as those who want to see T. Don Hutto shut down were out in force, so too was CCA well represented at Tuesday's Commissioners Court meeting.
As earlier this month, about two dozen employees attended, many of them shaking their heads in disagreement when negative comments about the facility were made.
Facilities administrator Evelyn Hernandez, from CCA, implored commissioners to remember their own tour of T. Don Hutto several months ago.
"You've seen our education department, our recreation, the gym," Hernandez said. "The [prison] façade is what the façade is [but] those residents are our own families. The commitment I have to my 4-year-old is the commitment I have to these residents."
T. Don Hutto used to be a privately-run jail, operated by CCA and housing the overflow population of the county jail in Georgetown.
The county had a contract with CCA because "the [state] Jail Standards Act required it," Assistant Williamson County Attorney Hal Hawes explained recently.
But after adding beds and expanding its own jail, the county no longer had an overcrowding problem and the CCA facility was facing shutdown, for lack of prisoners.
Since the facility has about 280 employees, that would have been bad economic news for eastern Williamson County.
U.S. Rep. John Carter intervened, with the Round Rock Republican paving the way for the facility's present use.
T. Don Hutto has a 512-person capacity and generates the same net amount of $15,872 for Williamson County government every month.
ICE pays the county a fixed monthly amount of $2.8 million. The county keeps its administrative fee and sends the rest to CCA.
Questions have been raised about what will happen if Williamson County gives up its middleman role.
Earlier this month Jay Brown, from a Houston law firm that represents CCA, said this: "ICE prefers to do business with government entities."
But if Williamson County government abandons that role - and no one else steps in - where does that leave CCA and its employees?
"ICE can do business with any county, or any city, in any state," Brown said previously. "It's not like ICE is not going to find somewhere else to detain people."
County commissioners have said they want to give ICE and CCA time - until January 2009, when the county's contract expires - to work that out.
Contract changes
Tuesday's Commissioners Court vote accomplished three goals, County Judge Dan Gattis said.
First, it allows ICE and CCA to communicate directly with each other on matters both small and large, without always involving county government. Part of the county's eagerness to amend the contract stems from an alleged sexual assault in May at T. Don Hutto.
At the same time, though, Gattis said Sheriff James Wilson will appoint a county employee to be on-site at T. Don Hutto, serving as what Hawes has called the county's eyes and ears.
Corrections Corporation of America will pay that person's salary of $5,000 per month.
"We [also] approved a better indemnity clause, to give us more protection," Gattis said, noting CCA will extend a $250,000 letter of credit, which the county can draw upon if it gets sued.
Aside from those changes, business at T. Don Hutto will continue as usual.
"Obviously, at this point we don't have a big problem with the facility or we would take the 120-day option that we have," Precinct 3 Commissioner Valerie Covey of Georgetown said after the vote.
"I went there yesterday," she said. "I saw a much different picture than is being portrayed by the dissenters."
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