As the country reels from another fatal shooting by immigration authorities over the weekend in Minnesota, a Bay Area legislator says he has a plan that will help keep Immigration and Customs Enforcement from expanding its efforts in California.
Assemblyman Matt Haney on Monday introduced a bill that would levy a 50% tax on the profits of private immigration detention centers in the state.
“ICE is engaged in a reign of terror across the country and they plan to grow their attacks on California,” Haney told Bay Area News Group. “We have to be ready, and this is a way we can undermine their ability to operate here.”
Haney’s bill, AB1633, is aimed at limiting the profits of the detention centers, which take in hundreds of millions of dollars annually throughout the state. Originally from Santa Cruz, Haney represents the 17th District in the State Assembly, which covers the eastern part of San Francisco. Haney said he wants the bill to dissuade companies from opening new detention centers and prevent current operators from making money off of incarcerating Californians.
“There are massive corporations that are profiting from family separation and human suffering right here in California by partnering with ICE on human detention,” Haney said. “It’s happening with no accountability. It’s giving these companies hundreds of millions in profits and Californians are paying the cost.”
While there are no ICE detention centers in the Bay Area, Bay Area residents have been detained by ICE agents and sent to the centers throughout the state, Haney said.
“There are definitely people that are being taken from the Bay Area to the detention facilities, so even if they are not located here, our residents are being detained there. And we know that ICE plans to grow its deportation force exponentially,” Haney said. “We want to also prevent that from happening unchecked without accountability anywhere in California. These companies shouldn’t be making huge profits from separating people from their families all throughout our state, whether in San Francisco or San Diego.”
Haney said stories of immigrants dying in ICE facilities, along with the recent fatal shootings by immigration agents in Minneapolis left him shaken and inspired the proposed legislation.
“These facilities have awful track records of human rights violations,” Haney said. “We’re seeing what is happening everyday in Minnesota and very similar things are happening here in California. ICE is able to do that here because they rely on the services of massive detention companies who profit on the backs of our residents.”
Shiu-Ming Cheer, deputy director of the California Immigrant Policy Center, which co-sponsored Haney’s bill, said it could be a step in the right direction toward protecting immigrants and their families from dangerous ICE activity.
“Private detention facilities in California have been tearing families apart and profiting off of Californians being detained. We’ve seen people who have died in these facilities,” Cheer said. “This bill is one step toward holding for-profit corporations accountable for profiting off of holding Californians in custody.”
Cheer said it has been “frightening” to watch the aftermath of the ICE shootings, and that it’s time for the private detention centers in the state to go.
“We believe all people should have the right to dignity and safety, regardless of where they were born,” Cheer said. “Ideally we would see a state, and a whole country, that doesn’t have facilities that are profiting off of incarcerating people.”
Alex Mensing, a spokesman for the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, said it is “heartening” to see Haney push forward this bill. ICE authorities and private detention centers have continued a practice of “torturing” residents, he said, and he wants to see more action by local lawmakers to keep immigration forces in check.
“It’s complicated for local governments to directly attack federal laws. This is a really good creative use of the tools at their disposal to discourage this profit,” Mensing said.
His organization is part of a collaborative effort to keep the Trump administration from partnering with a private group to reopen FCI Dublin as an ICE detention center. The former federal women’s prison was shut down after correctional officers were caught and charged for operating a “rape club” that systemically abused and attacked inmates.
Federal investigators found that inmates at the Dublin prison were regularly subjected to poor treatment, deteriorating facilities and repeated sexual abuse by guards and prison administrators.
Seeing a private prison corporation reopen the facility to again incarcerate California residents would be devastating and dangerous to the local community, he said.
“We don’t want to see that happen,” Mensing said. “We would rather see the people of Dublin deciding what could be done with that space to the benefit of their community, rather than to its detriment.”
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