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The article below from the Brownsville, TX Herald, outlines the plans for the march and vigil:
RAYMONDVILLE — A year ago, Jay Johnson-Castro marched across the U.S.-Mexico border to protest the fence the federal government plans to build along the Rio Grande to stop illegal immigration.
Next Friday, he plans to lead a group of immigrant rights advocates in a march from Harlingen to Raymondville to protest the largest detention center in the country.
“It’s to expose the master plot … to make profit off people who are desperate,” Johnson-Castro said of the $111 million, 2,000-bed detention center that’s expanding to add 1,000 beds.
“They’re looking for ways to build prisons, fill them up and funnel our taxpayer money into private business bank accounts,” he said.
Johnson-Castro plans to lead a group of about 25 immigrant rights advocates on a 25-mile march along Expressway 77 from Harlingen to the detention center in Raymondville, he said.
“This is an exercise in our freedoms,” he said.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement works with law enforcement to plan its detention centers, Nina Pruneda, the agency’s spokesman in San Antonio, said in a written statement.
“ICE is constantly evaluating its needs for additional detention capacities nationwide,” the statement said. “It does so through a comprehensive evaluation and projection process that fully involves ICE (headquarters), the field offices and our law enforcement partners.”
At Management Training Corp., the Utah-based company that runs the detention center, spokesman Carl Stuart said the company operates to meet government demands for prison space.
“It’s important to understand that we are … trying to respond to the needs of the federal government and local governments,” Stuart said. “We have nothing to do with policy.”
Turnout may fall short for the march, Johnson-Castro said.
“Maybe a couple of dozen people” will come from as far as Dallas and Houston to march, he said.
“We’re not going to have perhaps the turnout in the Valley that we hoped for,” he said, adding that some people who want to march may have job responsibilities.
The group plans to hold a press conference at the Texas Travel Center in Harlingen at 9 a.m. Friday before marching 16 miles to FM 498 near Lyford, where the group will stop to rest, he said.
“We’ll take a break, get cleaned up,” he said. “I have plenty of invites to stay with folks. Some people will rent motels.”
The group will continue its march at 10 a.m. Saturday before gathering outside the detention center at noon to hold a vigil, he said.
After the vigil, members of the group will leave to join a three-day protest of a detention center that holds immigrant children in Taylor, he said.
