Dean Gillian, ask UT alum Red McCombs to break lease with CCA and not contribute to detention and...

We, the undersigned, ask that UT School of Business distance itself from Red McCombs, and the new Texas family detention center being constructed at Dilley, Texas. UT’s motto states: “What starts here changes the world,” this motto holds all of us to a very high-standard, and Red McCombs actions contradict that, and all of the great humanitarian work of our students and alumni. We urge you to immediately distance yourself from the Dilley Detention Center. We urge you to ask Red McCombs to break the lease. We ask that this university drop the Red McCombs name from our school.

UT alum, Texas billionaire and namesake of the School of Business at University of Texas at Austin, Red McCombs, has recently negotiated a deal with immigrant detention and private-prison giant, Correction Corporations of America (CCA), to open up the largest family detention center in the world. Your alum, Red McCombs owns the site where the brand-new Dilley Detention Center, with a capacity to hold 2,400 immigrant families, will open before the end of the year.

Most alarming is the fact that Dilley will be managed by CCA and the City of Eloy, a combination that has proved deadly at the Eloy Detention Center, which is the detention center with the highest number of detain deaths in the US. (link - http://www.ice.gov/doclib/foia/reports/detaineedeaths2003-present.pdf). With this CCA transaction, McCombs reflects bad-judgment and a complete disregard for the human rights and sexual abuses that are committed every day against children and families at detention centers all over the US.

Earlier this summer, our very own Professor Barbara Hines, along with MALDEF and numerous other organizations, filed complaints outlining rampant sexual abuse taking place at a sister detention center, the Karnes family facility. “The government has no business detaining vulnerable mothers and children it cannot protect from this type of abuse.”

Dean Gilligan, we ask you to do the right thing and ask your alum, Red McCombs, to break the contract with CCA and stop this detention center from being opened and operated on his land. Otherwise, UT should break links with family detention and abuse and drop the McCombs name from the Business School.