![]() "I missed my children," said a formerly detained mother. She spent thiry months in this GEO-operated Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington separated from her chlldren. "What is our crime? We only want a change to stay in this country - to be safe. Many of us have fled places where our lives were in danger." She joined other women in a 2014 hunger strike to protest conditions inside the Detention Center as well as the policies that keep men and women detained and separated from their families. Although she is now outside and reunited with her children, she has promised the women still detained to stand with them and to fight for their release. She adopted two little girls whose mother is still in detention. "Don't ignore us," she pleaded. "We need your help and support." The Vigil was organized by the Interfaith Movement for Immigrant Justice (Oregon) and several Washington groups: Washington New Sanctuary Movement, Puentes: Advocacy, Counseling and Education and the Church Council of Greater Seattle. The Vigil called for an end to the separation of immigrants and their families. I learned that the Detention Bed Mandate passed by U.S. Congress in 2009 requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to fill 34,000 detention beds for immigrants at any given time. The GEO group which runs this detention center is one of two coporations (the other is Corrections Corporation of America=CCA) that operate these facilities. It is a money-making operation. It is estimated that each person costs the U.S> taxpayer $164 per day for a daily cost of $5.5 million and an annual cost of $2 billion a year for the detention of immigrants. Why are we doing this? Who benefits? Not the immigrants or us, the taxpayers, but the corporations benefit greatly. There are lower cost alternatives to incarceration - telephone reporting, release on bond and community-based support programs. ICE estimates these alternatives would have an average cost of $5.16 per day per detainee. These alternatives are more humane, would not separate families and are more cost effective. Congressman Adam Smith (D) of Washington will shortly introduce legislation that would provide funding for community-based programs at a lower cost and would repeal mandatory detention laws and defund appropriations quotas. ACTIONS: We signed letters to the detainees and signed a letter of support to Congressman Smith. I invite you to write your Member of Congress asking him to co-sponsor the Adam Smith bill. We also held stones up high in the direction of the Detention Center and remembered those inside. We placed the stones on our heart as the names of all those who have died in detention this past year. Finally, we took flowers and placed them in the wire fence surrounding the detention center. Were our songs and voices heard by the detainees? Who knows? The women and men who were visiting detainees could tell them that there are people who are committed to changing this inhumane and unjust system. We were outside but working to free those inside. JOIN US! PHOTOS OF THE VIGIL
4 Comments
Nancy Johns
5/12/2015 07:28:47 am
Power and patience to all within the Detention Centers. We will keep working to help you move out and on - and hopefully join your families as soon as possible. These Centers need to be closed! Blessings to you, Nancy
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Bob Brown
5/12/2015 07:49:08 am
Thanks Pat for writing about the inhumanity of the detention center system. One think that I will add is that much of the repressive legislation regarding immigrant detention is pushed by those same two corporations: GEO and CCA. In fact, it was CCA that wrote the infamous Arizona SB1070 - the "show me your papers" legislation. To have a corporation whose motives are profits involved with detention of human beings is bad. No, what is a word worse than bad. The more people who are detained, the more profits these corporations make. There is everything wrong with this set-up.
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5/13/2015 02:35:56 am
This is a powerful piece that matches the gravity of the time we spent together. Together we bore witness to the ancient sin-story: humans building fences around imaginary lines and imaginary excuses to punish, control, and exclude. Today money and resources are allowed to move freely through these boarders, but human beings are now allowed to follow in pursuit. When is our day of reckoning? Thanks for your testimony, Pat.
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deborah sposito
5/13/2015 05:50:08 am
Thank you for documenting this Vigil and for the contribution of the commentators. I think the existence of places like the detention center reinforce the violent and deadly reality of those who have access to power and privilege and those who do not. These are spaces that are not in full view of our civic life nor are they easily accessed by the public. Many faith leaders, human rights leaders and writers have written about the hidden and unnoticed exhaustion, everyday suffering and death of people and communities that do not hold power in our current imagined countries. And that while they suffer, while the predominately brown and black men and women in the Tacoma Detention Center are labelled disposable, those who are privileged and usually white gain through the abandonment of these other groups. The detention center makes me think back to the state response to Hurricane Katrina where it was obvious that Black Lives DID NOT Matter as temporary jails were constructed before aid stations, relief and safe housing had been adequately or fully delivered. Referenced: Achille Mbembe's "Necropolitics" or the Politics of Death, Henry Giroux on Katrina, Elizabeth Povinelli's "Economies of Abandonment," Ursula LeGuin's story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" and Benedict Anderson.
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