Faith leaders, activists converge on California ICE facilities to protest expanding detention
As Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests surge across the country, the agency is expanding its network of detention centers to keep up, from the new California City Detention Facility in the Mojave Desert to Alligator Alcatraz in the Florida Everglades.
Nearly 60,000 migrants are currently held in ICE detention centers, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, up 60% from this time last year.
WATCH HEREHere in the Bay Area, where ICE doesn’t operate any detention facilities, immigrants are being sent hundreds of miles from home, to places such as Bakersfield, the small Kern County farming town of McFarland, and now, California City, the largest detention center in the state.
For the Rev. Deborah Lee, however, out of sight doesn’t mean out of mind.
“This is such an urgent moment, and a moment of crisis for civil rights, for immigrant rights, for racial justice, for our democracy,” said Lee, the executive director of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity.
NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit recently followed a caravan of immigrant rights advocates and families on a multi-city protest of these detention centers.
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On a cloudy late-September morning in Oakland, Lee gathers with local faith leaders and immigrant rights advocates, about to set off on a pilgrimage of sorts.
“We want people to know about these detention facilities,” Lee said. “We want people to know the harm they’re causing, the systemic violation of human rights.”
In the parking lot of a local church, the group loads luggage, food, and supplies onto a bus, preparing to converge on three for-profit, privately-run ICE detention facilities in Kern County.
They plan to strategize with local organizers on the ground and accompany families whose loved ones are being held in detention.
“We’re calling for every neighbor to take action,” Lee said. “To not let these detention centers continue to grow and to multiply without our voice being there in dissent.”
The first stop: McFarland, California – population 14,000 – a small farming community where most of the town’s residents speak Spanish.
The Golden State Annex detention facility, just blocks from the local high school, is a tenuous fit, and many residents want it shut down.
The travelers from Oakland, joined by local community members and activists, gather outside, hearing from speakers and singing songs.
“I’m undocumented and unafraid!” Leonel Flores, a local immigrant rights advocate from nearby Fresno, told the cheering crowd.
“[Immigrants] are detained in these unjust detention centers that should have been shut down already,” he said in Spanish.
A mother who said her son is being held inside also came to the microphone.
“He cannot return to Mexico because all of our family members have been killed there,” she said.
ICE did not respond to NBC Bay Area’s request to discuss the group’s concerns over immigrant detention and the conditions inside their facilities.
In a recent press release, however, the Department of Homeland Security touted the administration’s growing deportation capacity, thanks to new detention facilities with alliterative names such as Alligator Alcatraz, Speedway Slammer, Cornhusker Clink, and Louisiana Lockup.
“Ramped-up immigration enforcement targeting the worst of the worst is removing more and more criminal illegal aliens off our streets every day and is sending a clear message to anyone else in this country illegally: Self-deport or we will arrest and deport you,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
While the administration says it’s targeting “the worst of the worst,” more than 70% of ICE detainees have no criminal record, according to recent data published by TRAC.
“We don’t need to have mass detention to make sure people attend court or file their asylum applications,” said immigration attorney Jehan Laner as she watched the rally.
Laner, a staff attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, said immigration issues in most cases are considered a civil matter, not criminal, and questioned why thousands of immigrants fighting their deportation should be held in detention.
“This is really a distortion of what the constitution says civil proceedings are supposed to be,” Laner said.
From McFarland, the activists made stops in California City and Bakersfield, where ICE operates its Mesa Verde detention facility, marching, praying, and singing along the way.
At Mesa Verde, multiple families there to visit loved ones detained inside said they were turned away when the facility shut down in response to the protest.
One woman told the gathered crowd outside that her mother was detained after being arrested at San Francisco International Airport.
“Her grandkids miss her, we, her kids, miss her,” the woman said, wiping away tears. “A prayer would be nice. I’m really happy to see everybody here.”
Another man told the group he was there to visit his wife, but he and his three kids had been turned away as well.
“[My mom] was having an interview to get her green card,” said Steven Rodriguez, one of the couple’s three children. “Instead of receiving her green card, she was taken away in handcuffs.”
Rodriguez said his mom had been in the country for decades and had no criminal record. ICE did not respond to questions from NBC Bay Area about her case.
“She’s a mother, she’s a church attendee, she does community service,” Rodriguez said. “She’s like a model citizen and she’s being treated like a criminal.”
But the crowd’s somber tone shifts when someone holds up a cell phone in the air. It’s a video call from a woman inside the detention facility.
“[The woman inside] called to say hello and they’re so excited,” Lee shouts to the crowd.
Rev. Lee puts the phone on speaker, and the detainee thanks the crowd for their display of solidarity before passing the phone around to other women inside, who take turns introducing themselves.
Rev. Lee announces each of their names in turn.
For the families who say they were turned away at the gate, it’s a few minutes to speak with the loved ones they couldn’t see in person. And advocates from the Bay Area say they feel it’s proof they’ve already left a mark.
“We were able to see her, just for a couple of minutes,” Rodriguez said. “Especially with all these people around, I think we all feel a little better. We feel like we have more support on our side, and this cause is bigger than just our family.”