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100 stage protest Saturday By TESSA MOLL Nearly 100 people protested outside the T. Don Hutto Residential Center Saturday to appeal for the release of more than 200 children detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This was the ninth vigil in seven months to draw attention to the center, which houses immigrant families awaiting deportation or asylum hearings. A coalition of grassroots groups based in San Antonio organized the protest, which gathered for more than five hours in the sweltering mid-day heat. Representatives from the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the Brown Berets, the Texas Indigenous Council and Code Pink were among the groups represented, but many protesters were local residents who said they found the presence of the center abhorrent. “This gives Taylor a bad name,” Jose Orta, a local resident and LULAC member, said. Orta said he passed out flyers in Taylor neighborhoods to advertise the protest in hopes to draw local interest. Orta also spoke to the crowd on a stage set up on Welch Street across from the facility. He made everyone present to promise to come to the next vigil sponsored by Amnesty International on June 23, the International Day of the Refugee. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Nina Pruneda said she had not known people were intending to protest the facility on Saturday. The ICE funds the center and contracts out its management to Corrections Corporation of America, the private company that owns T. Don Hutto. The protest, which included musical performances, drew the attention of passers-by, who often honked and shouted in approval as they drove past the crowd. It also drew the attention of the Taylor Police Department. Officers visited the protest three times to ask everyone to not block the road and the entrance into the facility. Jane Van Praag sat under an umbrella for much of the afternoon, holding her sign that read, “Prison is never in the best interest of a child.” Van Praag, who attended the eighth vigil on May 7, is the Democratic precinct chair for District 425 in Bartlett and said she learned of T. Don Hutto through Orta, a friend of hers. “I think it is just to continue to reiterate our feelings that it is wrong to imprison children,” she said when asked about the repeated protests at the center. Van Praag said she thinks there are more cost effective and humane alternatives to housing immigrants seeking amnesty. “It makes me ashamed,” she said. Antonio Diaz, one of the organizers from San Antonio, said he had wished for more people but was overall pleased with the turnout. He also said they had a more muted, quiet reaction from employees at the facility, who last time had jeered the protesters. “We're not against [Corrections Corporations of America] workers,” he said. “They are trying to earn a living. We're against the CCA executives, the stockholders ... We cannot stand silently by and not denounce these prisons for profit.”
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