Author: Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity

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Detention Stories: Life Inside California’s New Angel Island

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.

“I caught one of the officers kissing one of the detainees in the R&D (receiving and departure) room, cause there’s no cameras, there’s no audio. It’s like a black spot in the prison. She (the detention officer) was like scared because they said that if I would open my mouth, she will make sure they would deport me,” explains Victoria Villalba and Yordy Cancino, who were detained at the Otay Detention Center in California.
“ICE officers used their hands to push the hands on my mouth. Told me to shut up. I cannot breathe even. I almost died,” explains Yu Wang, who has been deported to China.

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.

“Every time that you have something else or something different that you could do to distract your mind, the officers always come and take your options to be free,” says Marcela Castro, who was detained at the James Musick Facility for over six months while seeking asylum. “They don’t let you to be a human being or to think.  They don’t let you to be yourself.”

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/

###

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.

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-Updates-

Thank You to Everyone Who Joined Our Migrant Children Vigil

Listen to the Children Pray: Lifting Prayer for the Migrant Children at the Border

Migrant Children Vigil Pics

Thank you to everyone who joined us last Thursday as we demonstrated that the Faith Community stands firmly with immigrant families, refugees and children at the border.

It was a wonderful afternoon filled with prayer ribbons, ritual and singing “Our Children Are Sacred, Our Children Are Beautiful”. We had close to 100 people representing 30 different faith communities and some beautiful children in our midst. The GLIDE Memorial Church children’s choir blessed the vigil singing, “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands,” and Rev. Karen Oliveto, Sr. Pastor of GLIDE taught all of us and the children to say, “Come in! How Can I Help You?”

We were also joined by a recently arrived family member from El Salvador who had just gone through a terrible tragedy and had recently fled to join family members in the Bay Area for safety. See the news coverage below to hear more about their story. Please continue to keep this family in your prayers and consider adopting this Covenant:
Interfaith Covenant with Migrant Children at the Border:

We share with you this prayer given by Rev. Jose Ramos:

Dear Father, Creator, Giver of life and love.
Listen to the plea of your people.
Children on both sides of the border
are looking for justice and protection, O Lord.
Forgive us because we have not received
these little once who are prophesizing in your name.
Change the hearts of the politicians
so that they can listen to the message of these little ones.
In the name of the Lord of Justice and Mercy we pray. Amen

Check out the News Reports & Photos from the event!

[There was also coverage on Telemundo 48, Radio Bilingue, and SF Examiner.]

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Categories
-Updates-

LIFELINES: Weaving Our Stories Together for Immigration Justice

Hello everyone! Our BayUP team would love to thank everyone for gathering with us last Saturday to earnestly pray for our detainees, migrant children, families distraught by the system, and the whole immigration bureaucracy.

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For anyone who was not able to attend, our BayUP (Bay Area Urban Project) team had the honor of leading this month’s prayer vigil. We are college students from different Intervarsity Christian Fellowship university chapters across Northern California and Nevada who convened in Oakland to learn about varying social justice issues through a faith-based perspective. Our team was assigned to work with Debbie for the summer. While we are learning about immigration issues, we are also growing compassionate hearts for those who have experienced the brokenness of the system.

Over the planning process for the vigil, we realized the importance of including people’s stories. Rules and regulations are passed left and right in legislation, and we often fail to hear or appreciate personal narratives that humanize the larger issues.

Our team thought it would be fitting to employ a theme that centers around stories and the way these stories weave in and out with others’ stories. We are all connected by threads that we sometimes do not realize, so we hoped to make those more visible to convict us to become united and interdependent. We were created to be a close-knit community. We were created to be each others’ LIFELINES.

The prayer vigil became a space for realizations, convictions, and the building of new relationships all in the name of immigration justice. We hope that it was “successful” in that it will lead us to become more pro-active in pursuing justice for our brothers and sisters who 1) are trapped within the walls of detention centers, and 2) are suffering from family separation, and 3) are in our communities and cities living with fear of being caught by immigration.

We ask that we all continue to earnestly pray for shalom, the restoration of how relationships were created to be. As the nation awakens to see immigration as an imperative issue, we pray that we all link arms to announce God’s message to the world: to love everyone with no boundaries. Power to you!