On December 30, 2021, after more than two years of active advocacy while in immigration detention, Estelito Adiova, an immigrant from the Philippines, has successfully fought against his deportation and was released from the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Southern California.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Estelito after he earned parole following a 32-month prison sentence related to his addiction. While Estelito has been reunited with his family and community in the Bay Area, he has continued to use his voice and experience to help others. This month, Estelito was one of nine detained immigrants that filed a federal complaint to expose the life-endangering medical and environmental neglect inside the Imperial Detention Facility. These include toxic and unfiltered and hazardous air, contaminated drinking and washing water, and exposure to mold at the prison.
IM4HI and others in the Dignity Not Detention Coalition are seeking to close the privately-owned Imperial County detention facility which detains over 500 people and reallocate funds to investments in community health and well-being.
Washington, DC – Today, nine hundred spiritual leaders and multiple faith-based and immigrant rights groups delivered a letter to the White House urging the Biden administration to immediately halt all efforts to expand immigrant detention. With the one-year anniversary of President Biden’s inauguration approaching, the signatories – including Church World Service, Detention Watch Network, Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, UCC National Collaborative on Immigration, and members of the Interfaith Immigration Coalition – expressed deep disappointment in the president for failing to keep his early promises to phase out private detention contracts.
In the letter, advocates highlight two immigrant detention facilities in Pennsylvania: the reopening of Moshannon Valley Correctional Center as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center and the expansion of the Berks County ICE detention center into an adult facility for women. These expansions take place as COVID-19 continues to surge across the country, underscoring the urgent need to free people from the harms of detention immediately. The letter signatories urged the Biden administration to reverse course and invest in community-based alternatives to detention and restore access to asylum.
Elissa Diaz, Advocacy Manager at Church World Service and Co-Chair of the Interfaith Immigration Coalition, said: “The values of President Biden’s faith tradition are common across faith traditions represented in the Interfaith Immigration Coalition: to welcome the immigrant in our midst, to love our neighbors, and to proclaim freedom for the oppressed. President Biden’s decision to expand immigrant detention not only goes against these values of our faith, but also the promises he made to immigrants just one year ago. We urge the President to reverse course, return to the core callings of his faith, and put an end to his efforts to expand immigrant detention.”
Rev. Deborah Lee, Executive Director, Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, said: “One common theme in our diverse religious traditions is the value of human freedom: the right to live freely, to not face deprivation of movement and confinement. Immigration detention is not morally acceptable or necessary in any form. We know effective community based alternatives to detention exist. People can navigate their immigration proceedings while living at home, maintaining their employment, and receiving support from their family and wider community. We ask the administration to stand with the faith community to find ways to reduce all forms of captivity in favor of non-carceral solutions.”
Marcela Hernandez, Organizing Director of Detention Watch Network, said: “Biden’s continued actions to expand the immigration detention system despite the administration’s ongoing promises to end the use of for-profit detention and roll back ICE’s fundamentally flawed system is shameful. Detention centers represent abuse, trauma, and sometimes death. People are losing their lives to a detention system that simply does not need to exist. The Biden Administration must shut down immigration detention facilities, end detention contracts, and release people from detention immediately.”
I bring you New Year’s greetings from the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity (IM4HI). After several months of labor in love, IM4HI has produced a Faith & Reparations Toolkit for our faith and community partners, faith leaders, congregations, and the general public. The Faith & Reparations Toolkit is a timely and valuable document that can be readily utilized. We invite you to employ the toolkit during February, which earmarks the month-long celebration of African American history.
This February, we celebrate with the people whose descendants built this country with blood, sweat, tears, and free labor. An authentic celebration with our Black brothers and sisters requires that all of us, in particular white people, engage in introspection and Truth-telling. In short, we must come to grips with our nation’s ugly past and the silence and capitulation to the perpetual harms inflicted upon the African American community.
An authentic celebration also means that we must act. We must take concrete and substantive actions to repair the harm and atone these past and present injustices. The Faith & Reparation Toolkit recommends ways for congregations, faith leaders, and individuals to start now and move toward mending the past, healing the present, and transforming the future.
As the nation celebrates the national holiday in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we should pause and consider that the promissory note bequeathed to African Americans in the Declaration of Independence is still in default. The US government has made no substantive monetary compensation or investments on the debt owed to African Americans.
To be sure, our black brothers and sisters need a check. However, African Americans cannot wait for a blank check. Nor should they be pacified with empty promises. Now is the time for African Americans’ just due.
The Reparations Toolkit offers practical guidance and resources for religious and faith communities to engage in spiritual reflection for reparative justice that goes beyond writing a check. There is a broader path to repairing the profound harm done to African Americans. This path is grounded in the spirituality and souls of Black folk. After all, reparation is and must be a Spiritual Practice.
Please accept and engage this toolkit as a gift from IM4HI, and one that, hopefully, will lead to building a “beloved community.”
Rev. Dr. Larry Foy IM4HI Los Angeles Regional Director
