I hate hospitals. I watched my grandma die in a hospital and saw cancer take my best friend’s father from her in a hospital. Today, I am in a place like a hospital, but it is not at all comforting. The walls and hallways are as silent and sterile as a hospital, but the orderlies are not here to care for people. No. This is an immigrant prison run by a publicly-traded corporation whose legal duty is to turn a profit for its shareholders.
“Men coming in,” announces Officer V as he opens the heavy metal door into the women’s module of this immigrant prison. V is a middle-aged Hispanic officer with US Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency responsible for imprisoning over 40,000 asylum seekers, victims of human trafficking and other immigrants across the country per day in places like this.
V and I have a history, so much so that he has banned me from visiting at this prison on more than one occasion. He has even called the local police to escort me off the “private property” or arrest me. The local police all but laughed at him. Last week, V tried to tell me I had used up all my visits at the prison for the year. I’m a lawyer, so I quickly pulled out some arguments and escalated the matter to his supervisor. He was not happy about this.
V allows the prison door to slam shut, and I feel the first movement of air in hours. The hairs on my arm briefly flutter. And then the building is still again.
My mouth tastes like cotton.
It is almost one in the afternoon, I can tell from the way the sun beam bounces off the window. There is no clock in sight. We have been on this inspection tour now for two hours.
I stand at the front of the room with the 11 other community members I have brought with me to the Adelanto Detention Facility, the largest immigrant prison in the country. I have walked through the locked hallways of this prison about a dozen times, and I have been visiting the people inside regularly since 2013.