Category: Updates

An international delegation of 75 faith leaders involved with issues of social justice and immigration traveled to Honduras from March 18th to 25th, 2019, led by the SHARE Foundation, Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and Sisters of Mercy of the Americas’ Justice Team. We went to listen, learn, and witness. Our objectives were to bring back to the U.S. a better understanding of what is at the root of the flow of migrants, especially youth and families, from Central America (and particularly Honduras), and to act in solidarity with people striving for freedom, safety, and justice under law. Now, we are working to turn what we learned into concrete action…

Visit our Honduras Pilgrimage blog:

Read our 2019 Root Causes report:

Since 2016, we have co-led six faith delegations to Honduras who have deepened our understanding of the root causes of migration from the region: regional inequality, militarism, discrimination, climate change, national and global economic and political policies which displace and impoverish. 

Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity is part of the Reform LA Jails coalition which is bringing a proposition, the Reform Jails and Community Reinvestment Initiative, to the March 2020 election in Los Angeles county.  As people of faith we seek real alternatives and public investment to reform and promote humane and effective alternatives to the current system. The root causes of the carceral system and the root causes and conditions that lead people to make poor decisions must be addressed.  Our faith traditions call us to be agents of healing, justice, reconciliation, renewal, and restoration. We are all worthy and capable of rehabilitation and redemption.

In response to community demands,  in January 12, 2016, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to implement a Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission with the mission to improve public transparency and accountability for the Sheriff’s Department– but it did not have the power to subpoena individuals and records.

Two years later, Los Angeles is  still plagued with misconduct in the Sheriff’s Department including deputies trafficking drugs, deputies raping female inmates under the color of authority, deputies assigned to narcotics skimming money, the continuous widespread reports of inmates being mistreated in our jails, and the countless “suicides” of inmates who were allegedly under the watchful eye of deputies.

To identify, expose and end corruption and misconduct in the Sheriff’s Department, the Civilian Oversight Commission must have the power to subpoena records and to compel the testimony of deputies and their superiors accused of wrongdoing.

The Reform Jails and Community Reinvestment Initiative will ensure that the Civilian Oversight Commission has the tools necessary to do its job.  If passed, the Initiative will also task the Civilian Oversight Commission with developing a Comprehensive Public Safety Reinvestment Plan and Feasibility Study to reduce jail populations and to redirect the cost savings to alternatives to incarceration.

Come to our monthly First Thursdays Justice Not Jails gathering to get involved.  

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.