Please take a moment to read the message from the Southern Arizona Sanctuary coalition. And please, please, take another few minutes to contact the Bishop of Tucson, the Pima County Board of Supervisors (contacts below) and Casa Alitas at alitas@ccs-soaz.org or 520-591-6390 to ask them NOT to further traumatize migrants and asylum seekers by using a detention facility as a shelter location.
Bill
Hi everyone,
This is AmyBeth Willis, the organizer of the Southern Arizona Sanctuary Coalition. I don't usually write these e-mails in first person, but the nuance in what our community is facing warrants a detailed letter on this issue. Many of you may have heard that Casa Alitas, a program of Catholic Community Services, has made an agreement with Pima County to lease 3 units of the county's active Juvenile Detention Center as a shelter for asylum-seeking families. Our guiding principles for the Sanctuary Coalition include respecting the leadership of directly-affected communities,. What directly-affected immigrant communities and people formerly incarcerated are telling us is how damaging this decision is for vulnerable asylum-seeking families and for impacted people who want to volunteer. Therefore, I feel it is urgent that we ask Casa Alitas to reconsider their decision and work to find another location to welcome these families. Despite Casa Alitas' good intentions, this decision will cause harm. Here are my main concerns: the lack of transparency and community collaboration that led to this decision, the potential for further traumatizing families who've just been released from Border Patrol custody, and the way in which this supports a facility of incarceration.
For the past 7 months, Casa Alitas has been searching for an alternative to the blessing that has been the Benedictine Monastery. If the conversations that led to this decision had included key stakeholders in this community from the very beginning, the detention center would never have been on the table as a replacement for the Benedictine Monastery. This kind of decision needs the input of communities most affected, such as asylum-seekers who live in our community and previously-incarcerated individuals. For example, security has been named as a critical aspect of the detention center that other sites did not provide. But, we must interrogate who benefits from systems of security and who they harm. In this country, facilities of incarceration and their security apparatuses are actively violent and dangerous for people of color. Why would we choose to welcome mostly indigenous asylum-seekers to such a place?
Second, I believe that no amount of new paint, unlocked doors, new furniture, and smiling volunteers will transform this facility into an appropriate hosting site for vulnerable people. By using the detention center, we continue to expose these families to the violence of facilities of incarceration, after they have experienced the U.S. government’s cruelty including weeks and months of waiting to enter the U.S. and degrading conditions inside Border Patrol detention centers such as extremely cold temperatures and a lack of food, clean water, and access to showers. To imagine that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol will then be transporting families from their cruel jail cells to a detention complex in Pima County is deeply troublesome. Casa Alitas will have their own entrance to the facility, but the complex is still surrounded by fencing and barbed wire. Since, more often than not, ICE and BP do not inform families where they are going, it will be that much harder to gain the families’ trust operating a welcoming facility inside a locked-down detention complex. How are they to trust our good intentions when what they see is another institutional setting?
Finally, the Pima County Juvenile Detention Center is an active jail complex that currently detains between 30-50 minors at any given time. Over the past decade, our county has implemented positive juvenile justice reforms that have significantly reduced the incarceration of minors in our community. This is a good thing! So, why is a faith-based organization investing in a detention facility that needs to be completely shut down? Chuck Huckleberry, County Administrator,has concluded that it will cost $530,000 to make the necessary renovations for this space to be viable as a shelter and to run for 5 months. This is an extraordinary amount of money to try to make a jail a welcoming place. This would be a different conversation if the entire facility were vacant and unused. But, as it stands, this decision makes us complicit in the incarceration of minors at the facility.
I understand that not everyone will agree with my assessment, and I have talked with many folks who disagree with me. Fundamentally, we are all committed to the work of welcoming asylum-seekers into our community with deep care, compassion, and love. But, this issue is not as simple as our commitment to care but the way in which we care. As the Sanctuary Coalition, we are committed to rooting our work in an anti-racist framework, because dismantling white supremacy is the only way we achieve liberation for both oppressed people and oppressors. One way white supremacy manifests itself is when we (white people) are not listening to impacted people of color. We must listen and respond accordingly.
On Monday, July 22, at 9 am, the Pima County Board of Supervisors will vote on whether to lease the three units to Catholic Community Services. If you are led,please join us to show support for locating other viable options! Our community can come together and find a better alternative. For example, on Palm Sunday, the Inn (run by the Desert Southwest United Methodist Conference) was contacted by the Greyhound Station regarding 200 people who were dropped off there. Within hours, they had found shelter for every family that night. We can come together now and find a different solution.
In addition, you are also welcome to send an e-mail to the Catholic Bishop the Most Reverend Edward Weisenburger: eweisenburger@diocesetucson.org. A template is below.
Sincerely,
AmyBeth Willis
Organizer, Southern Arizona Sanctuary Coalition
To the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson,
My name is ______ and I’m a member / attend _____ church or participate in _____ organization. [Please mention if you have helped to welcome asylum-seeking families, whether through Casa Alitas, The Inn, or any of the satellite churches].
I’m writing to ask you to reconsider your decision to lease the Pima County Juvenile Detention Center to house our asylum-seeking siblings after they are released from Border Patrol and/or ICE custody. Using one wing of a working prison to house families continues their experience of captivity. Since God sends us to proclaim release to the captives (Isaiah 61:1), we should be proclaiming hospitality and welcome to captives who have been released. In the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 4, Jesus affirmed his mission with this verse from Isaiah, saying the ‘Spirit of the Lord is upon me to...proclaim release to the captives.” Even though the units will not be under lock and key, the families will see fencing, barbed wire, and police officers in the complex. No amount of paint and new furniture in the units in question will change this. This decision will further traumatize families who’ve just been released from the cruel conditions of Border Patrol facilities. We should consider what kind of welcoming space we would expect for ourselves and our children.
By leasing a part of the Juvenile Detention Center, the church becomes complicit in the current incarceration of minors at that facility. In our country, children of color are disproportionately harmed by systems of incarceration. In addition, by hosting families at a jail complex, this prevents many people in our community from participating, including undocumented people, formerly incarcerated people, their family members, and people of color who might be harmed by entering a detention facility. We are asking you to reconsider your decision and take the opportunity to talk with with all the faith communities already engaged in this work as well as impacted people in our community (asylum-seekers and formerly incarcerated people). Let’s come together and find a different solution!
Sincerely,
Name
Affiliation
Contact information:
Casa Alitas alitas@ccs-soaz.org or 520-591-6390
Catholic Bishop the Most Reverend Edward Weisenburger: eweisenburger@diocesetucson.org or (520) 838-2500
Pima County Board of Supervisors, Clerk of the Board Julie Castañeda: Phone: (520) 724-8449
Fax: (520) 222-0448