Detention Monitoring Newsletter

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Visitation Updates

FFI supports and provides leadership to the National Visitation Network, a grassroots movement of volunteer-led Visitation Groups working to free people from immigration detention and build pressure to end Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention in local communities. Across the nation, concerned community members come together to visit people in detention, providing a vital form of support and human connection to detained people, their families, and their loved ones. Visitation is a critical tool that we, and communities, utilize along the way in working toward our long-term vision of building a world without detention.

Family and Community Visitation Reinstated!

This May, we achieved a decisive and long-overdue movement victory by successfully pressuring ICE to reinstate social visitation at detention facilities. The announcement ([link removed]) by ICE followed months of ongoing pressure from our national advocacy campaign ([link removed]) , which was powered by the collective strength of organizing among immigrants in detention, local visitation groups, and immigrant rights organizations across the detention abolition movement.

ICE initially revoked visitation at ICE detention facilities in March of 2020, exacerbating many of the traumatizing effects of immigration detention, including prolonged isolation, severe mental health harm, and family separation.

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“The realization that I will be able to hug my daughter brings me so much joy,” said Fidel Garcia, who is currently detained at Golden State Annex in McFarland, California. “By the time I was detained by ICE on July 12, 2021, prisons had already been allowing visits, further demonstrating that ICE always had the authority to allow visits, but chose not to until today. I’m happy for other people impacted by this as well."
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Denial of visitation also hindered local detention visitation groups’ in-person monitoring of human rights abuses in detention. Communities did their best to maintain a connection with people inside via costly (and monitored) calls and texts, local hotlines, and through FFI’s national hotline, the impact of ICE’s decision to block community

and family access has taken a devastating toll on the mental health of families and loved ones who were denied human connection for more than two years.

We will continue to push the Biden administration to ensure visitation access is restored in full and that all detention facilities comply with ICE’s directive. Community visitation remains a critical tool on the path to abolition as it allows us to document abuse, foster connection, and community with people inside detention, and ultimately build a world where all people can live in freedom and dignity.

National Visitation Network Member Spotlight!

Join us in celebrating the incredible work of Immigrant Action Alliance ([link removed]) (IAA)! By building relationships with people in detention, providing resources, and
conducting human rights monitoring, they have worked to powerfully amplify the internal resistance of people detained in Krome, Broward, Baker, and Glades Detention Centers in Florida, while leading the Shut Down Glades campaign to success! ([link removed])

Visit Immigrant Action Alliance's website ([link removed]) to show your support and learn more about the great work they are doing!

With Immigrant Action Alliance’s leadership, a powerful, cross-sectional coalition including local and national immigrant rights groups, environmental justice organizations, farm workers’ associations, and LGBTQ+ orgs formed in 2020 to shut down the Glades County Detention Center (“Glades”). Located in rural Florida, Glades has long been used as a retaliatory transfer site for immigrants detained in Krome (near Miami) who organize for their rights inside detention. More recently, people detained in the Northeast who mobilized for ICE contract terminations and the passing of progressive policies to limit ICE’s local capacities in New Jersey were intentionally transferred away from their families, attorneys, and communities to be caged at Glades.

Throughout the campaign, immigrants inside Glades peacefully resisted ([link removed]) unimaginable harms including death threats, acute medical neglect, physical assaults ([link removed]) , pervasive anti-Black racism ([link removed]) , sexual misconduct ([link removed]) , carbon monoxide poisoning, and exposure to a toxic chemical spray ([link removed])
linked to long-term reproductive health consequences ([link removed]) . Assisted by formerly detained leaders who organized alongside those still detained,

Immigrant Action Alliance and coalition partners amplified these leaders’ efforts through protests, media advocacy, public testimonies, and civil rights complaints calling for investigation, oversight, and, most importantly, detention abolition.

This spring, the #ShutDownGlades Coalition succeeded in pressuring the Biden administration to no longer cage immigrants in ICE custody at Glades, terminate ([link removed]) the “guaranteed minimum” provision of the contract (which required ICE to pay Glades County for 300 detention beds on a monthly basis), and announce a pause in usage of this abusive detention facility. Looking ahead, FFI will continue to fight alongside Immigrant Action Alliance and all the Visitation Groups in the National Visitation Network to ensure these detention facilities are shuttered and the entire detention system is abolished, once and for all!

In Solidarity,

Sofia Casini
Director of Visitation
and Advocacy Strategies

Rebecca Merton
Director of Visitation
and Independent Monitoring
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