Families Are Fighting Draconian No-Contact-Visit Policy at California ICE Jail

Por Victoria Valenzuela — Truthout

The California City Detention Facility has banned loved ones from hugging those who are facing possible deportation.

Did you know that Truthout is a nonprofit and independently funded by readers like you? If you value what we do, please support our work with a donation .

On February 21, Samantha Sanchez joined her husband, Allen Tayson, on his adjustment of status interview with the U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement in an office in San Jose, California. Within 10 minutes of her husband being called in, someone who worked there approached Sanchez and her children, ages 5 and 14, to let her know her husband was being detained.

At that moment, everything stopped.

“I heard ringing in my ear, my eyes were wide open,” Sanchez, 33, said. “I felt my heartbeat just getting louder, and I just felt my daughter pulling on my shirt, saying, ‘Mom, mom, are you okay? Mom, where’s Dad?’ My son was grabbing on my shoulder, telling me everything’s gonna be okay. I was just in shock.”

After the family was escorted out of the building, Sanchez sat in her car for 20 minutes in disbelief. She was so distraught that she couldn’t drive, so she called her brother to help. In that worst moment, she held on to the hope that once he was transferred to an immigration jail she would be able to visit and embrace him. Then he was sent to the California City Detention Facility.

“I thought … we could go up there and see him and hug him and just be with him, maybe have lunch or some type of thing with him in the visits, but he confirmed to me, like, ‘No, babe, this is not how they do things out here,’” said Sanchez, who is seven and a half months pregnant.

People go months without being able to hug their loved ones while they fight their cases and face possible deportation.

California City Detention Facility is the only immigration jail in the state not to allow contact visits, and detained people, their families, and immigrant justice advocates say this denial of visitation deteriorates mental health. People imprisoned there, most of whom have no criminal record, go months without being able to hug their loved ones while they fight their cases and face possible deportation. Their families, who often struggle to raise funds for legal fees, don’t get the essential assurance and support of an in-person visit. Now, detained individuals and their families have formed a coalition with justice advocates to fight for contact visits.

CoreCivic did not respond to a request for comment.

“Since my husband’s been in there, he hasn’t physically touched my growing belly, felt the baby kick, hasn’t been here for any doctor’s appointments, and I think [visits would] help mentally for us to be at ease, to see him in person, to see if … he’s maintaining his body weight,” Sanchez said.

Prior to his incarceration, Tayson and Sanchez would frequently take their children on road trips across California. When they weren’t on a trip, they’d spend the weekend doing fun activities to get the kids out of the house. On Sundays the family would always start their day with a trip to the grocery store, get lunch after, then do laundry and clean the house.

Now, Sanchez finds herself waking up early every morning so she can cry and let her emotions out before her kids wake up so they won’t see her sad.

“I just feel sorry that I’m pregnant, and my baby has to feel all this pain and sadness, and I try my best to just get up and wipe my tears and wash my face in the mirror and just act like everything’s gonna be okay,” Sanchez said.

Tayson holds on to the memories of those family road trips while he is separated from his family. He recalled taking their children to Lake Tahoe to play in the snow during the winters and Disneyland in the summer, which they would document on YouTube. He always tried to protect his children and give them everything he never had growing up.

“I’ve pretty much dedicated myself to spending my time with my family the very best I could,” Tayson said. “I try not to waste any opportunity I can to create memories and cherish the moments that I have with my family.”

Tayson — who faces deportation to the Philippines, where he hasn’t been since he was nine — made the difficult decision not to have his family visit him because he did not want to put them in the heartbreaking situation of only seeing him through glass without being able to touch him. He recalled when he was previously incarcerated more than a decade prior and was not allowed to have contact visits. His son, a toddler at the time, reached to hug him only to collide with the glass. He didn’t want to put them through that again.

With no visits, the family communicates through phone and video calls they often have to cut short because the prices, which range from 7 to 25 cents per minute, add up and Sanchez is not working due to her pregnancy. She said not having Tayson there as a provider has impacted the family, and she finds it hard to pay bills and buy groceries and supplies for her baby on top of the legal fees and calls.

Not being able to hug their father has also impacted Tayson’s kids. After Tayson was detained, his son took four weeks off of school to recover. Tayson’s five-year-old daughter asks about him every day and prays for a miracle to bring him home.

“My daughter always asks, ‘When can I see dad? When can I be able to hold dad? When can dad hold my hand?’ and I say, ‘I don’t know. You can’t hug papa right now. We just gotta wait,’” Sanchez said.

The impact of separation has motivated Tayson and hundreds of others detained in California City Detention to advocate for contact visits with their loved ones, working alongside organizations including the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance, Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, Rapid Response Network of Kern, and more in a campaign they call Hugs Beyond Bars.

“My daughter always asks, ‘When can I see dad? When can I be able to hold dad? When can dad hold my hand?’ and I say, ‘I don’t know. You can’t hug papa right now. We just gotta wait.’”

Valeria Suarez, community and legal organizer at California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice and lead for the campaign with Hugs Beyond Bars, said that in working with individuals detained in California City Detention, she would repeatedly hear them say their biggest issue was not being able to hug their families. In many cases, like Sanchez and Tayson’s, visits behind plexiglass as the only option prevents families from visiting at all.

Suarez said the denial of contact visits is especially concerning considering the California City Detention Facility already has an established visiting room because it was previously a prison under the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

A report from the California Department of Justice found that the unavailability of contact visits was due to lack of staffing. The California Department of Justice (DOJ) stated that CoreCivic, which runs the California City Detention Facility, violated its own policy by denying contact visits because it had previously presented the DOJ with a visitation policy that said it should permit physical contact.

To Edwin Carmona-Cruz, co-executive director of the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, CoreCivic’s decision not to fund staff for visitation “underscores the private prison business model of … having the resources to do what you were told to do, but [choosing] not to because you know the less money that they spend running the facility, the more money that they can report to their shareholders in profits.”

Carmona-Cruz also said that he believes the no-contact visitation policy is meant to push detained individuals into signing deportation papers. He said he sees it as part of a larger plan to make conditions so inhumane that people choose not to fight their cases.

Tayson has seen this phenomenon firsthand among the dozens of people in his dorm. He has heard of people who don’t get a final hug with their loved ones before deportation, who aren’t allowed to say goodbye to family members who have a terminal illness or to hold their newborn babies because of the policy — he himself might face the latter fate in the upcoming month, as his wife’s due date approaches and his hearing isn’t until December.

“A common thing that we see around here is the look of hopelessness, discouragement, and emotional distress,” Tayson said. “That’s why people are more inclined to sign away their rights to fight their legal battles, because they just don’t want to go through these situations … Not being able to have contact visits just amplifies that whole situation.”

Suarez said that at least seven dorms in the California City Detention Facility have been writing letters to the warden asking for him to instate contact visits. Suarez sees this campaign as part of widespread and longstanding resistance led by people inside. Meanwhile, the Hugs Beyond Bars campaign has a petition with more than 1,200 signatures calling for contact visits.

The campaign is also calling on California Senator Alex Padilla to spearhead a congressional sign-on, so other representatives can put pressure on ICE and CoreCivic and meet with detained leaders to hear their testimonies.

Sanchez feels it is important for families and detained individuals to get involved in the fight. She said while immigrant families might be afraid to speak up or not believe they can make change, it will make a difference if they work together.

“As long as we stick together, as long as we have some type of fight in us, we’ll know we’re not alone.”

“We might seem little compared to what’s going on against others, but as long as we stick together, as long as we have some type of fight in us, we’ll know we’re not alone,” Sanchez said. “There’s people out here for others that will speak up for them and let them know that they’ll fight for them and for their family, that they’re not alone in this.”

Carmona-Cruz said that the advocacy for contact visits is just a step in the overarching goal to have people in immigrant jails come home and fight their cases in the community.

“The ultimate goal is to demonstrate that there’s nothing good that comes out of these facilities, and people can and should fight their immigration cases out in the community like they were doing before,” Carmona-Cruz said. “I think it’s important for us to realize this is just one piece of this larger call to see these places shut down.”

This September, Truthout is celebrating 25 years of publication. For over two decades, we have been a trusted source for fiercely independent journalism thanks to readers like you.

As we look to the next 25 years, we have launched a special fundraising campaign. Looking to a sustainable future for our publication, we have a fundraising goal of $100,000 in the next 10 days.

We are asking for your support at this juncture because we face greater threats than ever before in our organizational history. Trump and his MAGA allies are determined to control the information ecosystem, and movement-based organizations are subject to dangerous censorship and scrutiny.

If you can support Truthout with a one-time or monthly donation, you will make a significant impact on our work and our legacy. Anything you can do makes a difference!

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the following terms:

Victoria Valenzuela is an independent journalist in California covering criminal justice, feminism and activism. She recently graduated from the University of Southern California with a master’s degree in specialized journalism with a focus on social justice and investigations. Her work has been published in The Guardian, BuzzFeed News, LAist, Bolts, ScheerPost and more. In the past, she has worked with The Marshall Project and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She has also held fellowships with ProPublica, the Law and Justice Journalism Project, and most recently was an Uprising Fellow with Justice Media.

Get the news you want, delivered to your inbox every day.

Please make a donation to Truthout during our special 25th anniversary fundraiser. We have 10 days to raise $100,000!

Fonte: Truthout