California Passes AB 32, Shutting Down Private Prisons
Pangea clients and grassroots community advocates are the visionaries behind it
On Friday, October 11th, our communities won an important fight: the fight to end private prisons from profiting off of people of color, the poor, and those who have been failed by this system. AB 32, a new law in California, will prohibit the operation of private, for-profit prisons, including facilities that operate as immigration detention centers.
Pangea was proud to advocate for AB 32 along with our community and an intersectional coalition of immigrant rights and criminal justice advocates. Pangea clients like Floricel Liborio Ramos educated the public and lawmakers on the need to abolish prisons by sharing first hand experiences. Floricel’s for-profit detention at Mesa Verde Detention Center in California caused her to work for a dollar a day cleaning toilets, just so she could afford the exorbitant fees for phone calls to her three minor U.S. citizen children. For over a year, this was Floricel’s reality. For over a year, the private corporation, GEO Group, profited off of Floricel’s body and labor. For over a year, tens of thousands of tax dollars were spent to imprison her.
For years, Pangea has seen our immigrant clients unnecessarily imprisoned in for-profit facilities that tear people away from their loved ones and crush people into abandoning their cases, even when they qualify for immigration relief. We have seen the hardship and trauma that incarceration causes to individuals, families, and communities. The pain is irreparable. With AB 32, California will no longer allow this private profiting off of other people’s pain.
AB 32 stands in a continuum of community victories that made its passage possible. In 2017, California passed two bills that limited the expansion of public and private immigration prisons, SB 29 and AB 103. As a result, the inhumane nature of detention facilities were increasingly monitored and exposed, pushing several California counties to terminate their contracts with ICE. In essence, SB 29 and AB 103 created a pathway for AB 32.
While AB 32 and its predecessor bills are an important step toward fewer prisons and detention facilities, we must remain clear about the task ahead. Across the country, both Democrats and Republicans continue to increase budgets for jails, prisons, and immigration facilities. “We have to shut down all prisons, not just private, not just for immigrants, and not just in California – but for all black, brown, and other individuals who have been criminalized, incarcerated, and exploited through our current system,” said Jehan Laner Romero, Floricel’s attorney at Pangea Legal Services and legal advocate for AB 32. “With fewer detention centers in California, ICE and for-profit corporations detain and profit off of fewer people like my clients,” said Ms. Laner Romero.
After the legislature passed AB 32, Pangea client Floricel, community partners, and advocates gather at the Capitol in Sacramento to celebrate, 10/10/2019.