The conditions that people suffer in Immigrant Detention centers didn’t just pop up for immigrants. The methods of arrest for people threatened by ICE aren’t new either. These are conditions of apprehension and incarceration have been inflicted on citizens in the United States, mainly minorities, for years. How can we expect these conditions to be any better for those who aren’t ‘legally’ residing in the U.S.? I place legal in quotes because there is no such thing as an illegal person, the legality of a person’s residency is decided by the government and its usually those with less money and privilege whose legal status is more difficult to obtain.
Now that the problem of mass incarceration has been majorly ignored by the masses, both immigrants and citizens currently suffer from inhumane conditions that include family separation, lack of medical care, physical abuse, sexual assault and labor exploitation in our nations jails, prisons and detention facilities. During last year’s national prison strike hundreds of detained immigrants’ participation at the Northwest Detention Facility in Tacoma is what put Washington on the strike map. Abolitionists have been screaming, “Abolish the 13th” the amendment that validates slavery, for decades. The removal of the 13th amendment from the constitution would eradicate the exploitation of incarcerated people nationwide because prison conditions could no longer legally be used as a form of punishment. The collaboration between immigrants and others impacted by incarceration is critical in order to see growth in the abolitionist movement.
Family Separation
The way that immigrant children have been treated is what got a lot of people’s attention recently. So much so that many are calling to abolish ICE. ICE is just a small sector of the larger executive forces that have the power to apprehend individuals for what they define as crime which could range from possession of drugs to simply existing. The United States government has been separating families since its inception, for what its government labels as crimes that are often accepted by larger society as legitimate. During the slavery era, the crime of Blackness was enough to be forcibly separated from one’s family, the crime label evolved to loitering during the Jim Crow era that caused many Black men to be swept up and leased as convicts to the highest bidder. Now that label has evolved to include people that are considered ‘illegal’. In all of these cases we can agree that these actions are not ones that hurt society and any way but the term crime has been blanketed over a list of characteristics and behaviors that work to separate us from whoever is suffering.
The act of separating someone from their loved ones s a crime, it never heals or restores nut this has been a method of, not only punishment, but also to guarantee a source of labor to exploit. People who are separated from their families are more inclined to spend time working. They will also work for less competitive salary because they have little to no other options and no family they live with to support.
Inhumane Conditions
Some of the inhumane conditions that detained immigrant children are kept under include a lack of hygiene products to ensure sanitation, insufficient medical care and the ongoing threat of sexual abuse. These are are conditions that the vast majority of incarcerated people face in the United States. With medical staff being provided by a for-profit company, This is why many people go without treatment, many treatable conditions progress into terminal illnesses due to company interests being on increasing profits rather than protecting people.
The conditions of prisons have always been appalling. People in prisons as well as children in juvenile detention centers, even those who have yet to be convicted are forced to sleep on concrete surfaces. There is also an extreme lack of adequate programming nationwide. Educational programming is also desperately limited. Many people have no was to further eduction beyond receiving a GED. People in prisons, jails and detention centers are also being served inedible food, many packages are even labeled ‘not for human consumption’. Prisons are dirty, grimy, stained, unpleasant spaces. No one is begging for luxury, but the opposite of luxury is not misery or horror. Prisons do not have to look like this. In other developed countries, especially in Europe, prisons look more like college dormitory rooms than medieval dungeons.
Misdirected Activism
So many people have entered the abolitionist movement from a restricted angle. The conditions of immigration detention centers are such a small piece of an entire pie that needs to be remade. If we are successful reforming the conditions in which immigrants are detained, that will only evolve into another state of incarceration that preys upon minority groups. Our country is an expert at preying on minority groups for exploitation. In order to most effectively transform the system that profits off of caging people we need to transform it entirely. That transformation requires better treatment of children, women and men, citizen and immigrant.
While I’m appalled by the conditions that people are held under in Immigrant detention centers, I’m not surprised. Having been working as a prisoners’ human rights advocate, seeing the more recent complains of immigrant detention centers reflects what I’ve been seeing in prisons for years. There needs to be crossover between folks impacted by incarceration on both ends. Citizens who are impacted by mass incarceration hold the privilege of citizenship that can be used to protect undocumented people. This can and should be done as a collaborative movement because impacted communities include those from both walks of life. If we abolish ICE without making transformative changes to the entire criminal justice system then we will only see an evolution of ICE into another department that will perform just as abusive and oppressive actions against minority groups in the U.S. Detention will only evolve to target the behaviors another minority group, and then another, until there is no one left to fight.
