Author: Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity

Implementing the End of Private Prisons and Detention Centers in California 

On October 11, 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 32 into law, banning the use of privately owned prisons and detention centers in the state. The decision was a victory for Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity and its allies, who have been educating the public and advocating an end to for-profit prisons and detention facilities for years. The new law will have a dramatic impact on immigration detention in California, and is a precedent for other states. 

As part of the AB 32 Coalition, we helped to legislate an end to private prisons and detention centers in the state of California that earn financial profit from the incarceration and detention of thousands of Californians.  These companies in collusion with the Department of Homeland Security are already seeking ways to circumvent this new law.

After passage of AB 32 in October 2019, we are working on accountability, ensuring that this law be implemented in a way will bring release of detainees, and put the needs of immigrants and their families first. 

In December 2019 we published an 8-page report, “Lessons from the ICE detention contract termination in Contra Costa County, CA,” gathering what we learned from the closure of the West County Detention Facility in Richmond, CA last year, and offering recommendations to inform efforts on a just implementation of AB 32 closures (and other closures around the country.)

On January 28, 2020, Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity presented a webinar training focused on our Faith-Based Organizing model and the AB32 campaign to ban private prisons in California. View the webinar video here, or read the slides online here.

There will be an additional webinar on May 15.

Moses, a gentle man, is a man of faith, and desires to live his life in peace

In July I attended an evening vigil at the Adelanto, CA ICE facility. Approaching {Faith Organizer} Hilda Cruz, I stated my interest in becoming an advocate for a person detained inside the Adelanto {immigrant detention}. Following a formal (Department of Homeland Security -DHS- Immigration and Customs Enforcement –ICE-) indoctrination and advocate’s training workshop, hosted by Hilda and several other women representing regional immigrant’s rights advocacy groups, I was given a detainee’s name and his ICE identification number.

Moses is a Human Being. {We will only refer to him as Moses to protect his identity until his asylum process is completed}.
As of August 6, 2019, Moses, who is seeking his US Constitutional Right to receive an asylum hearing, is incarcerated at the Adelanto GEO / ICE for profit prison {immigrant detention center}.

Moses is a political refugee who began his three-month odyssey to the US when he hastily departed the English speaking southwest region of Cameroon last October. Moses, a soft-spoken man, of medium height and build, spoke his story in English laced with a heavy Cameroonian accent.

Moses said: Cameroon has been embroiled in civil strife since the 1970s. Armed conflict erupted in (and has continued unabated since) 2016 during which brutal reprisals against the English speaking minority became commonplace as Anglophones engaged in separatist movements. Moses and the region’s English speaking population represent a sizable minority while the majority French speaking Cameroonians exercise control of all governing bodies and the nation’s military.

Moses, a 49 year-old farmer, was active in the Anglophone resistance to French rule. During one French counterstroke, his father, who refused to reveal Moses’s whereabouts, was murdered. (Although quite some time has lapsed between phone conversations, Moses believes his two brothers, two sisters, and an uncle, who remain in the Cameroon, are safe). For distributing explanatory leaflets and discussing independence with Anglophones, Moses was twice imprisoned, denied his Cameroonian constitutional rights, brutally tortured, and his family was forced to pay police and government officials money (bribes) for his release. Following his second “release” Moses was told by authorities to leave the country immediately or die.

English speaking Cameroonians seeking asylum, who at one time were welcomed by Nigerians at their frontier, are promptly turned over by the Nigerian immigration officials to the Cameroonian military. With no country to turn to, Moses “left my family, my farm, left my animals and escaped with [my] life.”

From Cameroon, Moses was permitted to enter Ecuador, as an Ecuadorian visa was not required for entry by Cameroonian nationals. Throughout Moses’s travels, food and water were scarce commodities and personal safety was always of paramount concern. Along with citizens of various African nations, he endured a treacherous journey through Central America (sleeping on the jungle floor where ranged venomous snakes and large predators, including humans…Moses was robbed of his passport, money, and possessions in Panama’s jungle) and Mexico before arriving in Tijuana. Asylum seeking Indian nationals paid for Moses’s food, water, and transportation (from Panama to Tijuana).

In Tijuana, Moses received an entry number then waited near the border a month before his number was called. Upon entering the US, Moses completed a Department of Homeland Security Credible Fear Statement during an interview. He was then detained, incarcerated, and brought to the Adelanto facility.

After six months as a detainee, I am Moses’s third advocate. Prior to my first visit, late the afternoon visit of August 6, I was not allowed to carry any object into the meeting area. After I secured my belongings in a small locker, I passed through an airport style TSA Skyscanner (“X-ray machine) and was led to the visitation room. Moses was dressed in blue colored short sleeved shirt with loose fitting pants and he wore sneakers. During the visit, we sat across from one another at a circular table – within listening distance and under the constant supervision of an ICE officer. Neither Moses nor I were allowed pen and paper. On a post-it note, an ICE officer transcribed a phone number for a Cameroonian friend living in Maryland. When my visit was over I retrieved that post-it from the officer’s desk before exiting the visitation room. That evening, I transcribed this document from memory just as Moses described his ordeal from memory.

On the evening of August 6th, I phoned Moses’s Cameroonian friend who was ecstatic to hear Moses was well.

I have met with Moses on several occasions prior to his final asylum hearing (September 30, 2019). Along with other ICE detainees, Moses watches US news, soccer, basketball (Pascal Siakam, a Cameroonian, plays power forward for the Toronto Raptors), and wonders why so much violence is tolerated in (American) football. Along with other African detainees, he works in the kitchen and is able to play soccer once a week. During each visit, we discuss current events, his health, various aspects of American life, both of our families, his Cameroonian friends living in the U.S., food he’d enjoy sampling (ICE menu choices are quite limited), more sports, and hope.

Moses, a gentle man, is a man of faith, and desires to live his life in peace.

Moses is grateful that he is alive and, though currently residing as a refugee prisoner seeking asylum, is among the most positive of men I’ve ever met.

On each occasion of my departure following our visits, Moses thanked and blessed me, holding his hand over his heart. I have been touched and altered forever by this most gracious man.

I attended Moses’s court hearing at the ICE facility on September 30th. Following an intensely heart-rending oratory of his personal trauma, and without any Federal government objection, Moses was granted his conditional freedom…asylum. Following the issuance of Moses’s asylum, he stated for the record, I am thankful to be in America, where I believe people are treated fairly. I will become a productive member of the American society and not be a burden for America. I will be honest with all people, obey all laws, and respect Americans and learn [and adapt] my new country’s customs and ways. I want to become an American [Naturalized Citizen] and will take courses to [insure] my learning. I am a blessed man and God bless the United States of America.

That evening, following our In-n-Out hamburger dinner and a Krispy Kreme donut for dessert, Moses boarded Amtrak train #4, The Southwest Chief, at Victorville’s D Street rail platform. On Thursday evening, as Anne and I celebrated her birthday, I received a phone call from Moses. I am safe, free and with my Cameroonian [expats] in a community located near “our” nation’s capital [Washington D.C.].

Moses is a free human being.

This account was written by Lee Samuels, a retired high school teacher and now an advocate for detained immigrants seeking asylum. {The picture of both, Lee and Moses enjoying a doughnut after his release was made fuzzy on purpose.}

In 1999 (and again in 2005) I was housed in pre-trail with the Feds at the CCA of Arizona. Of course, with all the negative scrutiny, Corrections Corporation of America has since (2016) changed its name to CoreCivic…claiming to transform their business from largely corrections and detention to a wider range of government solutions. Quite frankly, through my own personal up-close and personal observation, this organization would fold up overnight, if not for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

At the time of my first housing experience, the structure of CCA was no different from any prison compound I had been in. The outer façade was sterile, with layers of barbed wire gates and electrically charged fencing. The inside of the reception and departure (RnD) area was ALL concrete, with exposed cages (similar to dog kennels) for those going to and from… directly prior to being unloaded or loaded on the busses for Court proceedings. Immediately the feeling of human warehousing was overwhelming.

Once you get through the initial introduction phase(s) you are shuttled from holding tank (a little room with a single toilet in the corner) to holding tank, where they pack you in, till standing room only. You progress from tank to tank till you are finally assigned a housing location. At that point, you are stripped of what’s left of your personal belonging, and dressed in their hospital like scrubs.

Once you get to your assigned housing location, you then are placed in a Pod (an area with several rooms (for up to 150 inmates). The noise level was 15 on a 10pt scale, the air musty, the environment totally traumatizing. The CO’s in the bubble (an enclosed all glass area that allows Officers to view all movement in Housing area(s)) positioned in the front of the housing Unit are there for monitoring purposes ONLY. The whole atmosphere creates a base human sub-culture that breeds men, at many different levels, preying on other men. Survival of the fittest.

Although I was only in CCA (both times) for approximately 9 months, I couldn’t wait to get back to a Yard (Prison) where at least guys were bidding (doing their time) with some sort of regimented attitude…versus the helter-skelter, truly inhumane mentality, of day to day existence in the Private Facility. Recreation for an hour every other day (maybe) in an all dirt, and slab of concrete outside area. Maybe a basketball court. Community showers that are opened-faced to the housing Unit Common area, so NO PRIVACY at all. Room assignments are random, a minimum of 4 men, and as many as 16. And yes, there were times, due to temporary bed unavailability, that folks had to sleep on the floor.

Concerning the food, it was very bland, and other than chicken or burgers, basically undesirable. Of course they allow you, unlike State or Federal Prison Facilities, to spend well over $300 per month in the commissary. You can (at least back then) also buy phone cards and spend as much as you like with their phone system. A very intense cash machine.

Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, all of these have a commodity, cars. They are in business because they have this product. The Prison system is no different. You build a prison in the middle of nowhere, creating an economy. There is now of necessity a need for housing, for schools, for shopping, for entertainment, for every detail of what it takes for people to live (where there was NOTHING before) and thrive in a society. Building prisons, has been a fail-safe formula for jobs, and creating an economy where NOTHING was, prior to the prison. The 1980’s ushered in Prison Privatization. Private Companies like CCA capitalized on the Mass Incarceration that found firm footing in the Reagan Administration.

The call to action that is most needed is to completely rid all justice venues of mandatory sentencing guidelines. Every case is different and is deserving of a judge and/or jury’s scrutiny and hearing. Tough-on-crime laws do not work as the deterrent they were proposed to be. Despite the relief brought on my recent propositions (The Crack Law, federally, and The Calif State Prop 64), the swelling of prison populations is still astronomical, lending credit to the need for  alternative housing.

Education instead of incarceration is the key. If you know better, you generally do better. Mentoring at a distance programs could be set up, and those who have successfully transitioned after lengthy prison careers could be certified easily, creating a Big Brother network that would cripple the recidivism statistics if seriously adopted. Resources being used to build more prisons, and to pay for Private Prisoner contracts could be used to change wrecked lives into whole, productive assets in our communities. Education, passionately presented, is attractive and will heal and build broken lives.

I will wrap this up by clearly stating that the sharing I’ve done is but the tip of the conversation. We need action, and we need to act now. At the end of 2016 there were approximately 2.2 million people behind bars in the US…including 1.5 million under federal and state prisons, and roughly 741,000 in the custody of the locally run jails. That amounts to a nationwide incarceration rate of 860 prison or jail inmates for every 100,000 adults 18 or older. These numbers were even higher between 2006-2008. Even with the notable decline, the whole “business” of incarceration over-rules the need to deal with the cruel and unusual warehousing of human beings for profit.

I have much more to share.

— Curtis Yarbrough