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News > World

Under Pressure, California City Agrees to Kick Out ICE — in 2020

  • Activist of Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement protests in Santa Ana, CA.

    Activist of Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement protests in Santa Ana, CA. | Photo: Familia: TQLM

Published 25 May 2016
Opinion

Activists in Southern California want the Santa Ana City Council to kick out U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement now, not in four years.

The city council in Santa Ana, California, unanimously voted this week against renewing a contract with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and the city will no longer rent space at its jail to hold undocumented immigrants, a victory for activists opposed to deportations and mass incarceration.

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But that victory is not complete: Santa Ana's contract with ICE doesn't end until 2020, and activists want it gone now.

Jorge Gutierrez, an activist with Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement, told teleSUR that it will take further action to press the city council to get rid of the contract.

“We only need four of the seven members of the council to eliminate that contract," Gutierrez said. "The seven members of that council are Latinos, so it is a slap in the face that they support ICE, which goes against the rights of their own people.”

Gutierrez is particularly concerned with the plight of undocumented transgender detainees held in a special section of the Santa Ana City Jail, who recently conducted a hunger strike to demand the city stop profiting from the detainment of “queer and trans immigrants.”

Human rights organizations have documented the poor conditions of that special section, in which immigrants have to wait up to 3 years just to have a deportation trial

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Advocates say Santa Ana city jail receives as much as US$105 per detainee per day, and is making US$7million each year from the detention of immigrants. Currently the prison holds 182 undocumented immigrants, 26 of whom are queer and 31 of whom are transgender.

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"We demand Santa Ana authorities release those people who are living in horrible conditions and are victims of harassment and all kind of discrimination,” Gutierrez told teleSUR.

Earlier this month ICE announced it is building a new immigration detention center in a small town in Texas with a special unit meant to house transgender detainees. The facility is expected to be opened in September 2016.

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