Organizations hold vigil and demonstration in protest of prison expansion

Pro-immigration organizers gathered at the U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) Detention Facility in Adelanto on Thursday July 9 to show support for detained immigrants and demonstrate opposition against further expansion of the prison.

The prayer vigil saw organizers from the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU), the Justice for Immigrants Coalition of Southern California (JFIC), Inland Empire-Immigrant Youth Coalition (IEIYC), and other affiliated organizations gather outside of the faciltiy to display solidarity with detainees through prayer and song.

On July 1, the GEO group–the multinational corporation that operates the prison–announced a 640 bed expansion and began further intake of immigrant detainees, some of which are now women and transgender women. Currently it detains 1,300 men.

“We are very pleased with the successful activation and the start of the intake process at our three company-owned facilities in Oklahoma, Michigan, and California,” said CEO George Zoley. “These important activations are indicative of the continued need for correctional and detention bed space across the United States as well as our company’s ability to provide tailored real estate, management, and programmatic solutions to our diversified customer base.”

Photo/Anthony Victoria
Patricia Suarez of Alhambra has a son who is being detained by ICE officials at the Adelanto Detention Center. “It has been an inferno for me,” Suarez said about her son’s detainment.

According to ACLU community engagement and policy advocate Luis Nolasco, the facility has a notorious history of dreadful conditions. There have been two deaths at the prison since its opening in 2011. In April, Salvadoran immigrant Raul Ernesto Morales-Ramos, 44, died after being transferred from Adelanto Detention Center to a hospital in Palmdale, according to a statement from ICE. He had been in custody since 2010.

“The facility has a history of horrible medical care and abusive practices,” explained Nolasco. “Quite frankly we are terrified as to what may happen when there are populations that are very vulnerable detained in there.”

Nolasco said his organization and partners are frustrated at what they perceive as a continual conflict against undocumented immigrants.

“We cannot take it anymore,” he said. “We’re tired of seeing our communities being criminalized and detained.”

Patricia Suarez of Alhambra, whose son has been detained inside Adelanto since February 6 for felony charges, said she will continue to fight for justice for her son and other immigrants looking to live the “American Dream.”

“It has been an inferno for me,” Suarez said about her son’s detainment. “Sitting through court, sitting through the pain. It’s a trauma for all of us who come to the U.S. to work hard. Us mothers, we no longer cry. We are fighting for the rights of our sons and human beings who came here to be big and dream big. I just never imagined living through something so awful.”

Via: http://iecn.com/organizations-hold-vigil-and-demonstration-in-protest-of-prison-expansion/

State signs deal to park prisoners in Adelanto

California has signed a contract with an international prison company to lease space for 1,400 inmates — 700 of whom will be housed in the company’s Adelanto lockup.

Florida-based The Geo Group announced Monday that it had signed deals with the state for housing prisoners in two lower-security prisons it owns in California, one in the High Desert city of Adelanto and one in the Kern County community of McFarland.

This is the second in-state contract with a private prison operator, said state Department of Corrections spokesman Jeffrey Callison. Separately, the state has contracts for 8,500 prisoners kept in privately owned prisons in other states.

Monday’s contracts come before Gov. Jerry Brown learns whether federal judges will grant his request for a three-year delay in the court’s orders to cap the state’s prison population. That decision is expected before Friday.

“We are thankful for the confidence placed in our company by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation,” said George C. Zoley, chairman and CEO of GEO, in a statement. “The reactivation of our Central Valley and Desert View Modified Community Correctional facilities will play an important role in helping meet the need for correctional bed space in the State of California.”

It was just last year when the state reportedly said it would end a contract with Geo to house parole violators in McFarland, but Brown later extended the contract through fiscal 2016.

The state had another contract in 2011 for space at the Adelanto facility, but it too was terminated, only to be brought back now.

Callison said that the CDC ended its contract in Adelanto with The Geo Group in 2011 because the contract expired and “at that time determined that we didn’t need the space. Now we have decided that we do. That is one of the advantages of leased facilities, you can expand or contract according to need.”

With the new deals, Geo said the contracts total $30.7 million annually for five years.

The Adelanto facility will begin to accept inmates by the end of the year.

And that’s a good thing for local law enforcement leaders in Southern California, who say they’ve been feeling the burden of the state’s realignment program.

Prison realignment, implemented on Oct. 1, 2011, aims to reduce the state’s prison population after a federal three-judge panel found the overcrowded conditions in prisons kept inmates from receiving adequate health care.

Under Assembly Bill 109, lower-level offenders, those convicted of non-serious, non-violent, non-sexual offenses, are monitored and housed by county institutions.

Police chiefs are upset that some inmates released in the name of overcrowding in the county are committing the same kinds of crimes for which they were first sentenced.

“Anything we can do to free up pressure on the county jail and allow them to stop this revolving door is to our advantage,” San Bernardino Police Chief Robert Handy said.

But not all agree that private prisons are a solution to the state’s inmate housing issues.

State Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, has been outspoken on the issue of realignment.

“I don’t believe simply expanding capacity will provide a durable solution to our prison overcrowding crisis,” Lieu said Monday. “I hope the federal court will extend the prison reduction cap by two or three years. If they do that, then I hope we don’t need to complete the private prison contract.”

Lieu said California has one of the highest recidivism rates in the nation — between 60 and 70 percent.

“For every 100 prisoners we release, 60 or 70 commit more crimes and end up back in prison. Simply expanding capacity doesn’t address that problem.”

For the city of Adelanto, which has been hard-hit by the recession, the 140 jobs that will be created at the Desert View Modified Community Correctional Facility, will be well-received, officials said.

“Any time we can put more people back to work, that’s a move forward,” said Mayor Cari Thomas.

But Victoria Mena, coordinator of a program that coordinates visits with immigrant detainees at Adelanto, said her first reaction to the news was concern.

“Adelanto has three of the largest detention centers in the country — a federal prison, the county jail and the Adelanto Immigration Center, but there are no (Adelanto) high schools, and the elementary schools are failing. It says a lot about the community and says a lot about where their priorities are,” she said. “There are no after-school clubs and no community centers. Instead it’s the hub of mass incarceration.”

Mena said she’s also concerned about the isolation of the city.

“What happens when people are released?” she asked.

The contract signing completes a prison complex owned by Geo in Adelanto. Two other nearby buildings are leased to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

San Bernardino County sheriff’s office spokeswoman Jodi Miller said the new prison contracts will have no effect on department operations.

The county is working on an application to receive $80 million in state assistance for expansion of the Glen Helen Rehabilitation Center in Devore.