Immigrant advocacy groups celebrate decision to end ICE detention at Etowah County jail

Adelante Alabama, the Shut Down Etowah campaign and Detention Watch Network celebrated Friday, calling the decision to stop sending U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees to the Etowah County Detention Center "a huge win for the national immigrant rights movement."

ICE on Friday announced that no more detainees would go to ECDC, and that it plans to limit use of three other Southern facilities — a move that took Etowah County Sheriff Jonathon Horton and Etowah County officials completely by surprise.

For Detention Watch Network, the announcement was another victory. In 2021, the organization identified facilities in its "First 10 to Communities Not Cages" list of immigration facilities it believed the Biden administration should shut down.

ECDC was the second facility on the list to be shut down, according to a press release from Alexa Gelbard, a spokesperson for the Detention Watch Network.

“This is a decisive victory for the immigrant rights movement spurred by years of grassroots community organizing,” Asher Stubsten, community organizer of the Shut Down Etowah Campaign, said. “Today’s announcement is a testament to how hard people in detention have fought for their freedom and why I, as an advocate, will always unite for the rights and dignity of immigrants and demand to abolish immigration detention.”

Activists from the organizations have brought demonstrations to the Etowah County Detention Center, targeting the jail in the campaign against immigrant detention.

"For more than two decades, people imprisoned in immigration detention at Etowah have been subject to its harsh conditions, including zero access to outdoor recreation, inadequate medical and mental health care, meager and barely edible food, and the longest average length of stay for people detained there system-wide," the groups said in a statement issued after the decision was announced.

"These punitive conditions, detailed in a 2021 brief sent to ICE and the Biden administration by Detention Watch Network and the Shut Down Etowah Campaign, are exacerbated by its remote location which impedes access to legal representation, family and other support networks.

The groups note that ICE tried to end its Etowah contract in 2010, but "politicians" intervened to block the move. According to the groups, the civil rights office of the Department of Homeland Security called on ICE to close the facility again, six years after the 2010 attempt.

“This win is a sign of hope,” Karim Golding, an immigration advocate formerly detained at ECDC, said. “This fight to shut down Etowah was before me.

"This is the place where I was placed in solitary confinement for two months all because I asked to be tested for COVID," he said. "This is the facility where I developed long COVID due to unsanitary conditions and lack of care for human life.”

In their statement, the activists say they are encouraged by ICE's decision announced Friday, but remain concerned about the people being transferred to other facilities or deported, and that the facility will remain operational for people in criminal custody.

They call for the Biden administration ot:

• Permanently close the Etowah County Jail

• Release everyone at the Etowah County Jail back to their loved ones and community without the use of transfers or deportations

• Permanently close and terminate contracts of the additional facilities named in Friday’s announcement: Glades County Detention Center in Florida, Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana and Alamance County Detention Facility in North Carolina

• Completely phase out the use of immigration detention by continuing to terminate contracts, shut down additional facilities and free people from detention

“People must be released back to their community and loved ones as they navigate their immigration case, not just transferred from one fraught detention center to another,” Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director, said.

“The Etowah County Detention Center exemplifies everything that is wrong with immigration detention and why the detention system must be abolished," she said. "The administration can and must do more to completely phase out the use of immigration detention by continuing to terminate contracts, shut down additional facilities and free people from detention.”

Contact Gadsden Times reporter Donna Thornton at 256-393-3284 or donna.thornton@gadsdentimes.com.

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: End to detainees at Etowah jail is a start, immigration advocates say