Hello Visitors, Advocates, and Friends,
It is a pleasure to announce the launch of a very exciting project! Today, we are releasing seven audio recordings and videos, featuring the voices of people in immigration detention across California. They are part of our multimedia project, “Detention Stories: Life Inside California’s New Angel Island,” which explores the social and cultural world inside California’s immigration detention centers through the stories men and women in immigration detention share. What we recorded is shocking…
In addition to these films, CIVIC launched a reporting platform for immigrants detained across the globe to share their stories. We hope you all will contribute to this platform. It’s simple and easy!
Our press release is below. Please share it widely.
Warm regards,
Christina M. Fialho
Co-Executive Director
Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC)
T: 385-21-CIVIC
www.endisolation.org
http://www.echoinggreen.org/fellows/christina-fialho
*Admitted to the California State Bar
Audio Recordings Document Abuse in Immigration Detention
LOS ANGELES – Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC) releases seven audio recordings and videos, featuring the voices of people in immigration detention across California. As video and audio recording generally is not allowed in immigration detention facilities, people in immigration detention requested that CIVIC record their voices to share with a larger audience online. Through these telephone conversations, CIVIC documented arbitrary use of solitary confinement, sexual assault, physical abuse by ICE officers, prolonged detention, retaliatory transfers, and other aspects of life inside immigration detention.
Sylvester Owino was close to obtaining a bond hearing under Rodriguez v. Robbins, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that immigrants who have been locked up six months or longer in California have a right to a bond hearing to determine whether or not they should continue to be detained. “Most of us that were fighting our cases were moved to Alabama where we cannot have those kinds of hearings,” says Sylvester Owino. Owino remains in detention today in Alabama, after spending eight years in immigration detention without a bond hearing.
The videos are part of CIVIC’s multimedia project, “Detention Stories: Life Inside California’s New Angel Island.” Through a grant from Cal Humanities and in partnership with the National Endowment for the Humanities, CIVIC explored the social and cultural world inside California’s immigration detention centers through the stories men and women in immigration detention share. While this project was not focused on advocacy, we learned how harmful the daily grinding life of detention is for human beings, and how these extraordinary (although quite common) circumstances of abuse occur too often in secrecy.
“The stories people in immigration detention share in these clips are shocking,” said Christina Fialho, co-executive director of CIVIC. “It is no wonder that our federal government does not generally allow audio or video recording devices in immigration detention. If the federal government refuses to be transparent about detention practices, it is our duty to provide people in detention with a platform to tell their stories.”
While the United States debates the large-scale legalization of undocumented immigrants, the issue of adult immigration detention is rarely discussed. More importantly, the voices of immigrants in detention have not been a part of the discussions. Equality demands that people in detention have a voice in policy discussions affecting their daily lives.
“People in detention can be their own advocates and take steps to make their voices heard,” said Will Coley, the Technical Director for the project and founder of Aquifer Media. “We’re only facilitating that with current technology.”
In addition to these films, CIVIC launched a reporting platform for immigrants detained across the globe to share their stories. To date, no comparable project has documented adult immigration detention stories in a systematic way. Over the next few years, CIVIC will be working with people in detention, their families, and NGOs across the globe to create a larger audio/visual map of the global immigration detention landscape through the stories people in immigration detention desire to share.
“Although their bodies may be locked up,” said Fialho, “their voices remain free.”
The videos, released today, are available at:
http://www.endisolation.org/detention-stories/
The reporting platform is available here:
https://detentionstories.crowdmap.com/
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CIVIC is a national nonprofit working to end the isolation and abuse of people in immigration detention through visitation, storytelling, detention monitoring, and other targeted campaigns. You can learn more at www.endisolation.org.
Detention Stories: Life Inside California’s New Angel Island was made possible with support from Cal Humanities, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Cal Humanities or NEH. Experience more at www.calhum.org.