GEORGIA ACTIVISTS AND FAITH-BASED ORGANIZATIONS JOIN THE LAUNCH OF A NATIONAL CAMPAIGN TO PUT AN END TO EXPANSION OF THE IMMIGRATION DETENTION SYSTEM
23 February 2010
– Over 50 people are expected to participate in a public ceremony in front of the North Georgia Detention Center to raise awareness and mobilize action against the inhumane treatment of people held in immigration detention centers in Georgia and to stand in solidarity with activists across the country in launch the national campaign “Dignity, Not Detention: Preserving Human Rights And Restoring Justice” which calls for an end to detention expansion nationally.
“Most immigrants in detention have fled poverty or violence in their home countries. The U.S. demand for labor has brought them here where their participation has made positive contributions to our economy, churches, and communities,” said PJ Edwards of Georgia Detention Watch. “ICE acknowledges that the vast majority of those detained are not a threat to the public, yet we continue to use overly costly, restrictive, and often inhumane detention instead of effective alternatives. As the growing reliance on for-profit prison corporations shows, profit has clearly been put before people,” said Edwards. The action follows two previous vigils, several humanitarian visitations, and the release of a Georgia Detention Watch report that documented violations of immigration detention standards at the Stewart Detention Center, a facility in Lumpkin, Georgia operated by the Corrections Corporation of America, the country’s largest private prison corporation. Corrections Corporations of America also operates the recently-opened North Georgia Detention Center that has a capacity of 500.
The event, organized by St. Michael Catholic Church and Georgia Detention Watch, will include participation by clergy, local community members, and other Georgians advocating for the restoration of justice within the U.S. immigration systems and respect for basic human dignity. Activists are calling on President Obama to take immediate action to prevent human rights abuses in U.S. detention facilities and to put an end to the arbitrary detention of more than 300,000 immigrants each year. Likewise, the groups call on the Georgia municipalities to stop contributing to the growth of a broken immigration detention system and end the current contracts with the Corrections Corporation of America for operation of the detention centers.
“Most immigrants in detention have fled poverty or violence in their home countries. The U.S. demand for labor has brought them here where their participation has made positive contributions to our economy, churches, and communities,” said PJ Edwards of Georgia Detention Watch. “ICE acknowledges that the vast majority of those detained are not a threat to the public, yet we continue to use overly costly, restrictive, and often inhumane detention instead of effective alternatives. As the growing reliance on for-profit prison corporations shows, profit has clearly been put before people,” said Edwards. The action follows two previous vigils, several humanitarian visitations, and the release of a Georgia Detention Watch report that documented violations of immigration detention standards at the Stewart Detention Center, a facility in Lumpkin, Georgia operated by the Corrections Corporation of America, the country’s largest private prison corporation. Corrections Corporations of America also operates the recently-opened North Georgia Detention Center that has a capacity of 500.
“In light of CCA’s deadly track record and the corporation’s failure to abide by ICE’s own standards in the treatment it affords to immigrants in detention, we are calling upon Georgia municipalities to end the contracts with CCA for operation of the Stewart Detention Center and the North Georgia Detention Center,” said Azadeh Shahshahani, National Security/Immigrants’ Rights Project Director for the ACLU of Georgia. “Instead, community-based and humane alternatives to detention should be utilized which are much less costly to American taxpayers,” said Shahshahani.
Last year, ICE affirmed that the “majority of the [detained immigrant] population is characterized as low custody, or having a low propensity for violence” and that the current immigration detention standards “impose more restrictions and carry more costs than are necessary to effectively manage the majority of the detained population.” Accordingly, ICE announced plans to reform the immigration detention system. Yet, to date, there is little evidence of change.
Currently, immigrants in the U.S. are detained in a secretive web of over 350 private, federal, state, and local jails and prisons, at an annual cost of $1.7 billion to taxpayers. Over eighty percent of detained immigrants go through the immigration system with no lawyer. Many are denied their fair day in court owing to mandatory and arbitrary detention laws and policies that severely limit judicial discretion. While detained, immigrants face horrific conditions of confinement, including mistreatment by guards, solitary confinement, the denial of medical attention, and limited or no access to their families, lawyers, and the outside world. In many cases, these conditions have proven fatal: since 2003, a reported 107 people have died in immigration custody. On March 11, 2009, Roberto Martinez Medina, a 39-year-old immigrant from Mexico detained at Georgia’s Stewart Detention Center, died of a heart infection. To date, many questions about the circumstances surrounding his death remain unanswered.
Coordinated actions in support of the “Dignity, Not Detention” campaign will take place on February 25th across the country in cities including Atlanta, Phoenix, San Antonio, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
For more information visit www.dignitynotdetention.org (coming soon).
St. Michael’s Catholic Church stands upon Scripture and Catholic Social Teaching to encourage prayer, promote facts about immigration, dispel myths, and advocate for comprehensive federal immigration reform that protects all workers, reunites families, supports national security, and creates an earned path to citizenship.
For more information visit www.justiceforimmigrants.org.
Georgia Detention Watch is a coalition of organizations and individuals that advocates alongside immigrants. For more information visit www.georgiadetentionwatch.com.
Detention Watch Network is a national coalition of organizations and individuals working to educate the public and policy makers about the U.S. immigration detention and deportation system.For more information www.detentionwatchnetwork.org.
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Reference the ICE report “Immigration Detention Overview and Recommendations,” October 6, 2009.