By STEVE GIBSON and HEATHER NOGAMI
Nikkei Progressives Immigration Committee
The drive from Little Tokyo to Adelanto takes just under two hours, past the chaparral of the Cajon Pass and into the Joshua trees and spiny silver cholla of the high desert. The distance is the point: it is what makes the facility easy to ignore.
Even so, every month over the past year, members of Nikkei Progressives have made this journey to visit the people detained in Adelanto ICE Processing Center. Our members, many whose parents and grandparents were incarcerated during World War II under the guise of national security, have taken it upon themselves to learn what is actually happening inside and assist where possible.
Here is what we learn in those visitation rooms: the walls at Adelanto are built to keep people in, but they’re also built to keep our attention out. Every visit breaks that wall a little. Every time we repeat what they told us, we carry their voices past the gate.
I (Steve Gibson) recall one visitation particularly well:
When we sat down across the table, we had a short time with a man who had been locked up for two and a half years, far from his family in Texas.
He told us about the healthcare he wasn’t getting. About conditions that weren’t clean. He wasn’t dramatic about it. He didn’t have to be. That man was one of the people who decided, this past May, that the only voice left to them was to stop eating.
Shortly after that on June 1, Reps. Judy Chu, Pete Aguilar, and Jimmy Gomez visited the hunger strikers at Adelanto. The detained men handed them a petition — 150 signatures — describing mold, dirty drinking water, inadequate food, and medical neglect for people with chronic conditions.
The very next day, according to accounts shared with attorneys, strikers were zip-tied, threatened with tear gas, threatened with transfer. Some were put in solitary confinement. One of them was the man I had visited, “S.”
And then ICE did exactly what it had threatened. S was transferred, without notice, in apparent violation of the federal court’s general orders, from Adelanto to a camp in El Paso, and then to the Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana. An Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef) press release reported that S had been deported.
Meanwhile, DHS continued to insist, publicly, that there was no hunger strike at Adelanto at all.
Even as we ourselves learn the truth from the individuals inside, the GEO Group, which runs Adelanto, calls the hunger strikers’ allegations “baseless.” And even as U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes on July 16 ordered the federal government to provide for the basic needs of those detained through a preliminary injunction in L.T. v. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — brought by Public Counsel, ImmDef, CHIRLA, Willkie Farr & Gallagher — we know that an order is just a piece of paper.
As one of 20+ organizations in the Shut Down Adelanto Coalition, Nikkei Progressives has been working since 2020 to end the criminalization of immigrants, advocate for decent conditions and ultimately to close down this facility. Alongside this advocacy work, our Immigration Committee continues to build relationships with those inside.
That relationship costs money, and it is money that buys very ordinary things. Through our Adelanto visitation program, Nikkei Progressives supports people with commissary funds — for clean drinking water, toiletries, and additional food — and with phone funds. Without money for calls, people who are detained cannot reach their loved ones on the outside, or their attorneys.
We write letters of support. And when someone is released, we send them out with cash for basic necessities: clothes, food, and transportation. Nobody should walk out of that facility with nothing.
One way to support our visitation program and our advocacy for immigrant rights is to join us at NP’s third annual Little Tokyo Estate Sale on Saturday, Nov. 7, from 1 to 4 p.m. at Union Church in Little Tokyo, 401 E. Third St., Los Angeles. You will find Japanese artifacts, antiques, ceramics, platters, textiles, scrolls, tea sets, crafts, and other treasures that have been hidden away for years — and every purchase replenishes the funds that support immigrants at Adelanto.
You can also donate directly at https://nikkeiprogressives.square.site/ or reach our Immigration Committee at nikkeiprogressives@gmail.com.
Opinions expressed in Vox Populi are not necessarily those of The Rafu Shimpo.