Westside Story Newspaper – Online The News of The Empire – Sharing the Quest for Excellence
By Naomi Riggins
The Community Initiatives for Visiting Inmates in Confinement (C.I.V.I.C), the Inland Empire-Immigrant Youth Collective and the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice presented the #SchoolsNotPrisons tour to Adelanto. The “#SchoolsNotPrison Art and Music Festival” show was held on Friday, October 20 at the Adelanto Stadium. These shows are free, community events.
At Friday’s show, there was an estimated 1,000+ concert-goers in attendance that came out to support Immigration reform. The MC for the evening was Comedian Cristela Alonzo and performances consisted of Los Rakas, Ceci Bastida and Buyepongo and fan favorite 8-year-old DJ Liva on the turntables, along with her dance crew. Grammy-Award-Winning R&B Artist Miguel blessed us with hits such as, “All I Think of is You” and “Adore,” as well as “Shockandawe,” and “Skywalker,” which are songs from his latest album War and Leisure.
Prior to the event, a press conference was set up directly across from the Adelanto Detention Center, which is the largest outsourced private detention center in California ran by GEO Group. Event organizers and community activist, along with Miguel, passionately spoke on the unethical mistreatment of immigrant detainees.
Miguel stated, “I’m hoping to shed whatever light I can on the families dealing with the cruel and unjust treatment in Adelanto.”
There are over 200 immigration detention facilities in the United States, most are located far from major cities and can house several thousand detainees at one time while awaiting approval requests from the immigration courts to continue living in United States. Currently, Adelanto has approximately 1,600 detainees awaiting judgment.
There have been reports of serious mistreatments of the detainees, such as lack of medical care, withholding medication, physical violence, sexual abuse, discrimination, sanitary conditions, lack of a bed, water, or food and forced to sign documents. The immigration courts have no due process, which means detainees have no idea how long they are going to be there; it could be days, months or even years.
The Community Initiatives for Visiting Inmates in Confinement (C.I.V.I.C) and #SchoolsNotPrions are calling for the closures of immigration detention centers and private-run facilities such as the Adelanto Detention Center. To take a stand today against Immigrant prisons sign this petition www.change.org/immigrantprisons.
