Vigil at Stewart Detention Center to Call for Humane Treatment of Detainees

by Lauren Markham · 2010-11-17 09:58:00 UTC
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This Friday, November 19th, Georgia Detention Watch will hold its fourth annual vigil outside of Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, GA, to highlight the abuses of Stewart's detainees and the corrupt model for immigration detention in the United States.

Stewart Detention Center is run by a private corporation called Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), in "partnership" with the U.S. government. What this means is that CCA makes money off of detention — and therefore has a stake in keeping our painfully slow and detention-based immigration system just the way it is.

And as I wrote a few months ago, the U.S.'s immigration detention system is designed to break the will of its detainees. Detainees — like Pedro Guzman — are often transferred multiple times with no regard to where their family lives. Contact visits with loved ones who travel from far away are prohibited, and detainees are often left in the dark about their slow-moving cases — with little to no information about the status of any motions they have filed or about their scheduled deportation date. Detainees are also denied basic medical care, as evidenced by the tragic death of Roberto Martinez Medina in March 2009 of a treatable infection that, while detained at Stewart, simply went untreated.

Why are immigration detention centers designed this way? It's simple: by making conditions so miserable for the detainees, the hope is that they will eventually just give up and agree to voluntary deportation. And in the meantime? Taxpayers pump barrels of cash toward private corporations like CCA.

Luckily, Stewart detainee Pedro Guzman has kept up his fight, owing in great part to his dedicated wife, Emily, and his four-year-old son. This year's vigil will call attention to the traumatic effects of immigration detention not just on detainees like Pedro, but on their immediate families. In addition to supporting the vigil, you can also show support for Pedro's family by signing this petition for his release.

There are humane (and cheaper) alternatives to detention, and that is, in part, what Friday's vigil is calling for. For more information on this vigil and to show your support, contact Azadeh Shahshahani, ACLU of Georgia, ashahshahani@acluga.org and Anton Flores-Maisonet, Georgia Detention Watch, anton@alternacommunity.com.

Photo Credit: U.S. Airforce

Lauren Markham lives in her native Bay Area where she is a writer, educator and immigrant rights advocate, working for Refugee Transitions and the Oakland Unified School district.
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