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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 by ICE followed months of ongoing pressure from our national advocacy campaign, 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
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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.
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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.
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National Visitation Network Member Spotlight!
Join us in celebrating the incredible work of Immigrant Action Alliance (IAA)! By building relationships with people in detention, providing resources, and
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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!
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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.
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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.
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In Solidarity,
Sofia Casini
Director of Visitation
and Advocacy Strategies
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Rebecca Merton
Director of Visitation
and Independent Monitoring
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