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SPLC: Reflections on my experience fighting the deportation machine at Stewart Detention Center
Non-citizens who are not detained are much more likely to win their immigration cases than those who are confined inside immigration prisons. So we were intervening at a single but crucial point in the deportation system.
Each morning during our week in Lumpkin, we drove to the detention center, which really operates like a prison, to meet with the detainees in the non-contact visitation rooms. There were only three rooms for almost 2,000 detained immigrants.
The whole procedure of entering Stewart is full of countless barriers – both physical and temporal. Tall fences loom above, lined with spirals of barbed wire. Two remote-controlled gates slowly slide open, one at a time, to admit legal and family visitors. A long, cement pathway leads to the front entrance.
The waiting room is a bare, austere space that smells faintly of a dental clinic. At one end of the room sit 12 plastic chairs, and at the other, the CCA employees stand behind the front desk. A full-body scanner and a conveyer belt separate both sides. Besides a machine that sells phone call minutes and some framed photos of CCA executives hanging on the wall, the room is empty.
Each morning during our week in Lumpkin, we drove to the detention center, which really operates like a prison, to meet with the detainees in the non-contact visitation rooms. There were only three rooms for almost 2,000 detained immigrants.
The whole procedure of entering Stewart is full of countless barriers – both physical and temporal. Tall fences loom above, lined with spirals of barbed wire. Two remote-controlled gates slowly slide open, one at a time, to admit legal and family visitors. A long, cement pathway leads to the front entrance.
The waiting room is a bare, austere space that smells faintly of a dental clinic. At one end of the room sit 12 plastic chairs, and at the other, the CCA employees stand behind the front desk. A full-body scanner and a conveyer belt separate both sides. Besides a machine that sells phone call minutes and some framed photos of CCA executives hanging on the wall, the room is empty.
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