ICE

A woman wearing an orange jumpsuit walks down a hallway toward a door with a first-aid symbol over it.

Illustration by Michael George Haddad

IN SEPTEMBER 2020, reports emerged from the Irwin County Detention Center, an immigration facility in Georgia, detailing forced hysterectomies performed on migrant women held in custody. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Ocilla, Ga., owned and managed by LaSalle Corrections, a private prison company, oversaw these surgeries in what have been described as appalling conditions and an “utter lack of care of detainees’ health” during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Tragically, as too many people fail to realize, forced sterilizations are not a recent development. Rather, as a form of state violence they date back more than 100 years, when states across the country (beginning in 1907 with Indiana and followed in 1909 by Washington, California, and Connecticut, as well as many others over time) approved “eugenic sterilization.” These early laws passed by state legislatures allowed state officials to sterilize males and females—some as young as 12 or 13 years old—believed to have inheritable and incurable diseases or afflictions, including insanity, mania, or dementia.

Detained immigrants play soccer behind a barbed wire fence at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Ga. Picture taken February 20, 2018. REUTERS/Reade Levinson

Forced sterilization of women is a form of abuse and an act of violence against the very image of God in these women in immigration detention. While these accounts are shocking and horrifying, they are unfortunately part of the larger pattern of abuse and neglect present in detention centers that immigrant people and immigration advocates have been denouncing for years.

ICE detention facility in Karnes County. Public domain.

Earlier this month, a California judge ordered the release of more than 100 migrant children from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, but after ICE failed to meet specific prerequisites to release the children, the judge declared her order was “unenforceable,” leaving children in detention.

Anabel Mendoza 7-13-2020

Image via REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

Against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s recent moves to restrict foreign work visas and suspend migration along the Mexican and Canadian borders, many are calling ICE’s order “xenophobic” and another example of the administration’s attempt to exclude non-U.S. citizens.

the Web Editors 7-07-2020

Image via Reuters/Brian Snyder

The guidance does not affect international students taking in-person classes. It also does not affect F-1 students taking a partial online course-load as long as some of their classes are conducted in-person. M-1 vocational program students and F-1 English language training program students will not be allowed to take any classes online.

Kelly Rissman 7-26-2019

Activists protest the treatment of children in immigration detention outside U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Border Patrol station facilities in Texas. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez Gonzalez

Subcommittee Chairwoman Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.) said that there is a “dangerous subculture at the agency that cannot be tolerated and must be addressed.” She was referring to offensive comments in a CBP private Facebook group, allegations of detained children being kicked to wake them up by CBP agents, and reports of abuse and sexual assault of detained migrants by CBP officers.

Kelly Rissman 7-11-2019

Yazmin Juarez, mother of 19-month-old Mariee, who died after detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), testifies before a House Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Human Services hearing. REUTERS/Erin Scott

Yazmin Juárez, a Guatemalan asylum seeker, told a House Oversight and Reform subcommittee that her 19-month-old daughter died because of medical negligence at a federal detention center in Texas.

Image via Ebony Curry and Kelly Rissman 

“ICE is coming into our communities and tearing apart families and tearing apart our community on a regular basis, and they did so just again last week,” Sanctuary DMV organizer Ben Beachy said. “We need our D.C. elected officials to make D.C. a real sanctuary city, which means severing all ties with ICE.”

From left: Meagan O'Toole-Pitts, Ashley Cortez, Oliver Cortez, and his father, Mark Cortez, attempt to drop off diapers and toys for detained children at the immigration detention center in Clint.  Photo courtesy of Armando Martinez Photography via The Texas Tribune

A Border Patrol official told a state lawmaker that the agency doesn't accept donations for facilities where children are reportedly being held in substandard conditions.

John Fife 6-05-2019

Scott Warren, a human rights volunteer facing criminal charges. Courtesy No More Deaths/Handout via REUTERS

Dr. Scott Warren is defending himself against three felony charges including conspiracy to transport and harbor migrants — charges that could add up to 20 years in prison.

Jenna Barnett 5-17-2019

“In a representative democracy, if our legislators are not legislating in accordance with the moral law that we’re given by God, then it’s really on us to select representatives who will legislate in accordance with that law,” she said.

Camille Erickson 4-15-2019

Migrants queue as they listen to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials after crossing illegally into the United States to request asylum, in El Paso, Texas, U.S., in this picture taken from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, April 5, 2019. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez

In June 2018, the Trump administration issued a “zero tolerance” policy in an effort to deter migrants, a majority from Central America, from entering the U.S. The policy resulted in the separation of nearly 2,800 immigrant children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border in a little over a month.

Donald Trump speaks to reporters as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen (L) looks on in the Rose Garden. Jan. 4, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who oversaw President Donald Trump's bitterly contested immigration policies during her tumultuous 16-month tenure, resigned on Sunday amid a surge in the number of migrants at the border with Mexico.

Anna Sutterer 3-14-2019

Jeanette Vizguerra, a mother and prominent activist under threat of deportation, on Thursday called to thank faith leaders and supporters who petitioned at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters in Washington, D.C., for a stay of removal and visa approval for Vizguerra.

AT 146 CCA ROAD in Lumpkin, Ga., sits the Stewart Detention Center, one of the nation’s largest immigrant holding facilities. It’s also a multimillion-dollar revenue-generating business. The nearly 2,000-bed facility, originally built as a medium-security prison, is owned and operated by CoreCivic (formerly known as the Corrections Corporation of America), the second largest private prison firm in the United States.

Private detention centers, such as Stewart, are major sources of revenue for the private prison industry. CoreCivic is currently trading on the New York Stock Exchange with market capitalization of more than $2.36 billion. The private corrections industry, according to a 2017 Mother Jones article, has received endorsements from then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and President Donald Trump. The industry’s stocks soared after the president’s executive order to expand the purview of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. With billions in revenue being generated and a government not relenting from its war against undocumented immigrants, private detention centers such as Stewart seem to be here for the long haul.

Stewart is plagued with “chronic shortages,” especially in its medical facility. There are reports of drug smuggling, suicides, and mixing asylum seekers with convicted criminals. Between 2007 and 2012, only 6 percent of detainees at Stewart received legal counsel during their immigration process; only 4 percent were granted asylum. Most undocumented immigrants at Stewart will spend their only time in the U.S. locked up with hardened criminals, subjected to inhumane treatment.

Image via Reuters/Josue Decavele

O God of great compassion, you love each little one;
So shake us loose from our believing nothing can be done.
When any child is suffering, Lord, we pray that love will win;
God, may we now obey your word and welcome children in.

Pilar Timpane 12-03-2018

A group of Samuel Oliver-Bruno's supporters. Photo by Pilar Timpane. 

The space of Samuel Oliver-Bruno’s “home” while in sanctuary is filled with signs he thought he’d return from a biometrics appointment at U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) in Morrisville, N.C., scheduled at the immigration control office’s request. His work on construction projects around the basement at the CityWell church in Durham, N.C., seems stalled in time. Painting supplies, clothes, other personal items stilled exactly as he left them, where he was working diligently just days before his life was altered irrevocably. A prayer room he helped to build is silent.

Photo courtesy Adam Phillips

Knowing that so many more suffer from inhumane incarceration, I joined with more than 20 interfaith clergy from around Oregon and got arrested “for failure to comply” by sitting in a prayer circle in front of the main gates of our local ICE field office. We were gathered with hundreds of others, lifting up stories of those still detained and separated from families, singing songs of lament and joy, and praying that justice would prevail.

Ken Wolter / Shutterstock.com

Ken Wolter / Shutterstock.com

“Abolish ICE” is no mere campaign slogan. It is a goal focused on dismantling a single young agency. I believe that, in its historical context, “Abolish ICE” is part of a larger vision to build a new a social order committed to the liberation of all.

the Web Editors 8-08-2018

Children and family members take part in a sit-in following a march to mark “the court-ordered deadline for the Trump Administration to reunify thousands of families separated at the border, in Washington, U.S., July 26, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

According to a report by The Intercept, the agents took Salazar behind an abandoned Walmart where they shackled him and emptied his pockets before transporting him to the South Texas Detention Complex in Pearsall. Once there, Salazar says he was taken to a room where the FBI probed him for information and told him his immigration status had been revoked because he was a “bad person.” When he refused to talk to them, he was transferred to the Webb County Detention Center in Laredo, Texas.