Since January 2022, Berks has incarcerated as many as 65 girls at a time. In 2014 a workers member was convicted of raping a 19-year-old mom. Advocates and neighborhood members are involved the abuse will proceed now that the power solely homes girls. In a 2018 report, there have been 1,224 cases of reported sexual assault in ICE detention. In response to Torres-García, the ladies at Berks report that they get much less time to go outdoor and are repeatedly subjected to impromptu mattress checks all through the night time. They’ve additionally reported receiving little or no meals, and have stated what they’re served makes them sick.
Berks is taxpayer funded, and Berks residents have argued that their tax {dollars} ought to as a substitute be invested within the well being and well-being of their neighborhood, together with better-funded colleges, violence prevention providers, habit therapy providers, and better entry to well being care—not prisons.
“All they’re doing is ready for his or her immigration circumstances to go ahead; they will try this from outdoors of a jail,” Torres-Garcia stated. “So long as it’s open, even when it’s like one of the best situations on the earth, it’s nonetheless going to be a jail the place persons are incarcerated unfairly, they usually don’t have to be there.”
Torres-Garcia stated that releasing incarcerated individuals again to the neighborhood is all the time an possibility. When Berks was emptied, a number of the individuals have been launched again to their neighborhood or to individuals who agreed to sponsor them, whereas others have been deported. In different conditions the place facilities have been closed, individuals have merely been transferred to different amenities—a call advocates say is ICE’s strategy to proceed perpetuating hurt. Now, Berks has been repopulated.
However contracts with ICE have been severed earlier than. In March 2022, the Division of Homeland Safety declined to increase its ICE detention contract with Glades County, Alabama. After sustained stress over the previous yr and a half in its battle to shut Glades County Detention Middle, the Shut Down Glades Coalition has been capable of obtain zero individuals in ICE custody at Glades, with ICE saying that they’ve “paused” the usage of the power, and acknowledged severely insufficient and harmful medical care as a consider its choice to finish the usage of the power.
“I believe it’s vital to close down the detention facilities across the nation as a result of they’ve confirmed again and again, there’s no humane strategy to detain individuals,” stated Sofia Casini, the director of visitation advocacy methods at Freedom for Immigrants. “Each detention middle is rife with examples of abuse, human rights violations, and simply denial of individuals’s proper to freedom and liberty. ICE thrives in secrecy, and that is the best way it has run its detention machine throughout the nation. So what we’ve seen again and again—that is via our nationwide hotline, the place we obtain abuse reviews throughout the nation, after which from a community of neighborhood teams across the nation—is that there is no such thing as a strategy to humanely detain individuals in immigrant detention.”
Whereas the contract with ICE has been severed, the Glades County detention facility remains to be getting used to detain individuals within the custody of the U.S. Marshals regardless of its intensive document of human rights abuses, together with racist violence, sexual abuse, the usage of poisonous chemical sprays, and deadly medical neglect, amongst different harms. ICE declined to totally terminate its Intergovernmental Service Settlement (IGSA) with Glades County, enabling future abuse.
“Whereas we have a good time the truth that ICE has heard our calls for and paused its operations at Glades, our work isn’t over,” Casini stated. “No matter whether or not ICE or one other company holds the keys, the Glades jail will perpetuate this nation’s shameful, racist, and dehumanizing methods of mass incarceration for so long as it stays standing. All of us need to stay in freedom and dignity, which is why we’ll proceed to battle to shut down all detention facilities and search freedom for everybody caged.”
Eric Martinez, who was previously incarcerated at Glades and is now organizing with Immigrant Motion Alliance, stated there is no such thing as a distinction between the therapy of people who find themselves incarcerated within the county jail portion from the individuals in immigration detention.
“It was an incredible feeling to lift up the voices of these in detention and to point out the injustices and discrimination that go on in detention facilities,” stated Martinez. “Glades workers and ICE workers have achieved a lot overlaying up, however what is finished in the dead of night ought to come out to mild. It was an excellent pleasure to be a part of that mild.”
Martinez stated he confronted repeated pepper spraying, horrible meals, costly cellphone calls, and doorways slammed behind his again.
“For those who have by no means been incarcerated or are simply trying to be in a secure nation, that’s very traumatizing for them,” Martinez stated. “So I believe these detention facilities must be demolished, and I’m glad that Glades was shut down.”
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