Conditions worsen for some ICE detainees at Richmond jail

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http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Conditions-worsen-for-some-ICE-detainees-at-12346066.php
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NDNU Alternative Spring Break 2017- Visiting the West County Detention Center

ICE and the Contra Costa County have a “$6 million-a-year contract” to run the Richmond federal detention center with some 800 male and female ICE detainees for the feds.

These inmates are being “treated poorly because of their immigration status,” according to a letter signed by 27 women immigrant inmates for Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement, or CIVIC, a San Francisco group that monitors jails where immigrants are detained.

This letter includes stories saying that these women do not have access to classroom learning materials, unlike nonimmigrant inmates. They are required to stay in their cell all day despite the doors being unlocked. They are also sometimes denied access to the restroom, unlike their non immigrant inmates, and are told to wait up to 23 hours to use the restroom, so they either have to "hold it or use a red bag.” When they are finally allowed to use the restroom, they must be escorted. Conditions only got worse after these women spoke up about them.  

According to the writer, “Detainees who signed permission forms to be interviewed and photographed by The Chronicle when I visited the jail Oct. 31 say they have been singled out by guards who have withheld soap and shampoo and have not allowed them to brush their teeth after meals…They’re the women who made the startling allegations of being denied access to the bathrooms and sufficient health care. Instead of being interviewed as part of an internal investigation, the women are being punished.”

While the Sheriff denied the stories in the letters, the article = says Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord ended up touring the detention center a couple weeks later. “And state Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, sent a letter to state Attorney General Xavier Becerra urging his office to immediately look into the conditions at West County.”

Opinion: This article further highlights the ongoing mistreatment of immigrants, when if fact we do not fully understand their situation, do not know their story, and do not understand how difficult it is to gain legal residency in the United States.  Being an immigrant does not equate to being a criminal. Nobody, not even illegal immigrants, deserves to be deprived basic human rights. 

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