The human cost of Citizens Bank funding ICE prisons
Welcome to our news segment: TL;DR of Immigration News, for when the news is Too Long and you Didn’t Read it.
This is a weekly collection of immigration-related news stories. These bite-size summaries will keep you up to date without overwhelming your inbox.
To view and share this email as a webpage,
_
Developing News: At the time of our editing and publishing process of this newsletter, the Supreme Court issued a decision that cleared the way for the Trump admin to remove TPS (Temporary Protective Status) from both Haitians and Syrians. The court ruled 6-3 along ideological lines. More about this developing story and the impact of this decision next week.
_
‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detainees relocated, ICE announces
This past Tuesday, ICE confirmed that it had moved all prisoners out of its notorious Florida concentration camp, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz" by both mainstream media and the Trump admin’s right wing supporters.
Opened in July of last year in a remote part of the Everglades, the concentration camp has been costing FL taxpayers $1.2 million a day to run, and it didn’t take long for reports to come out about prisoners being abused by guards. Stories of water being given to prisoners filled with mosquito larvae and violence from guards when those in detention tried to advocate for each other have been continuous.
Also continuous: resistance groups in Florida have been staging protests and filing lawsuits. Of course, FL Governor DeSantis blamed the pending hurricane season for the closure, confirming that the camp has closed and the prisoners transferred elsewhere.
_
Out of ICE custody, Salah Sarsour says he is 'back to serve the community'
Last week, a federal judge in Indiana released Salah Sarsour from prison, ruling that his detention raises serious first amendment concerns, particularly regarding free speech about Palestine. A car full of his family and friends immediately departed for Brazil, Indiana, where Salah had been held for two and a half months, picking him up and returning to Milwaukee, where a crowd of hundreds congregated in the parking lot of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee to greet him.
A visibly smaller Salah, who lost over 30 pounds and was refused medical attention for his type 2 diabetes while in prison, spoke that night about the struggle going forward. No one, he avers, should be detained in ICE prisons in the unspeakable conditions he experienced. Calling for unity, he links the struggles to free Palestine and to stop ICE terror.
The judge’s decision came three days after a vigil led by Jews for Salah, a midwest coalition of dozens of organizations including Never Again Action, converged on Brazil. The gathering included Wisconsin Congresswoman Gwen Moore, who managed to visit Salah in jail while the assembled crowd of over 150 chanted and sang outside.
Continued freedom for the green card holder will involve fighting a pending deportation case. Since his release, Salah has described the appalling conditions he experienced in the Clay County jail, a 287g facility that holds 250 ICE detainees nightly. He described his closeness with the other prisoners and explained that the national pressure and visibility around his case mattered inside the jail: guards would caution one another that “this one is different.”
Lessons learned: protest matters; lifting up the names of those disappeared into ICE gulags matters; none of us are free until all of us are free.
To continue supporting Salah Sarsour: https://www.launchgood.com/v4/campaign/salah_sarsour_justice_fund
_
Delaney Hall strikers have ended their action for now, but the struggle to free them all continues
In New Jersey, Detainees at Delaney Hall have ended their hunger strike in the face of extreme retaliation from ICE and GEO Group, but the struggle continues. During a Father’s Day vigil outside the ICE jail, an alleged employee of the facility hit a woman with his car. Employee or not, this is an outrage. Sally Pillay, an advocate with Eyes on ICE, said: “Because of the intimidation tactics, the disciplinary consequences for folks to be placed in segregation, (detainees) have now resorted to going back to job assignments and eating.”
In California, ICE has deported at least one person from the Adelanto ICE jail as an apparent result of the ongoing hunger strike. Kyron Shakeel Swaso told LA Taco that he began organizing the hunger strike there; the strike initially consisted of about 20 people, then grew to at least 100. LA Taco summarizes the retaliation Swaso described, including GEO staff leaving burritos on strikers’ beds, filing charges against Swaso, and turning up to work in military-style fatigues. LA Taco reports: “The following night, Swaso was transferred to ERO Camp East Montana in Texas after refusing to sign for deportation, then to Louisiana, before being deported to Belize. Swaso shared… some serious allegations, including the firing of two GEO staff members after they offered him assistance, and provided information about Adelanto’s plan to deport him before it occurred.”
_
The Human Cost of Citizens Bank’s Ties to ICE Prisons
Citizens Bank has long been the key financier behind private prison companies CoreCivic and GEO Group’s meteoric growth. In addition, the bank has publicly minimized reports of mistreatment and abuse at privately-run ICE jails, describing them as “exaggerated.”
A devastating report released last week by the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO) directly refutes that. The 20-page report shows “a pattern of systemic failure” at CoreCivic and GEO Group facilities with life-threatening consequences for many of those imprisoned. Although other major Wall Street banks ended their relationships with private prison companies in 2019, Citizens Bank has strengthened its ties, thus enabling and profiting from a brutal mass incarceration campaign.
The ‘Not with Our Money, Citizens’ campaign, a joint effort of GBIO and the De-ICE Citizens Bank Coalition is collecting pledges from member organizations and individuals to move their money out of Citizens Bank if they do not end their practice of financing detention centers.
GBIO has already pulled $3 million of its deposits and vowed to pull more if changes aren’t made. Jersey City, New Jersey’s second largest city, has voted to move $265 million out of the bank.
_
DOJ charges 15 people it says impeded agents during Minnesota immigration crackdown
This administration simply does not learn. The disastrous Operation Metro Surge produced an unprecedented city-wide resistance even in the face of two very public murders by ICE agents. The head of Metro was sent home to pasture, and then to retire. But the DOJ just can’t let it go. In an attempt to compound its defeat it has brought serious charges against 15 protesters, including a union carpenter and a professor of Buddhism at Macalester College.
The DOJ has had to drop half its charges already, and has a long history of having anti-protestor prosecutions fall apart. In this case, the DOJ makes broad sweeping references to protest acts but can’t seem to tie those acts to any of the defendants. DOJ has also been unable or unwilling to say whether anyone in ICE was in any way injured or impeded by the protest, despite the charges implying that is what happened. The profusion of videos taken during the protests seems to undercut the government’s case even before the defendants get to compel discovery.
This has all the hallmarks of a desperate attempt by a regime that is losing the PR war, is losing ever more public support, and is therefore grasping at straws. It doesn’t make them less dangerous, just (even) more contemptible.
_
Action items:
Help Miss Rachel shut down Dilley Detention Center
Linktree to support detainees at Delaney Hall
Toolkit to support the Adelanto hunger strikers
_
Support Never Again Action’s organizing by making a donation today. You can make a tax deductible donation via our fiscal sponsor at this link, or you can donate directly to our 501(c)(4) organization at this link.
_
If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for next week’s roundup, drop us a line at neveragainaction@gmail.com.