Written by Sarah Lee (Advocate for the Vision Act) and Valeria Coronado, UCLA Undergraduate Student, Labor Studies and Chicanx/Central American Studies 

When immigrants and refugees are eligible for release in California , they are treated differently from everybody else. ICE can arbitrarily decide to detain immigrants–even if they have finished their sentences, have been found suitable for parole, or have had their sentences commuted. Currently, state prisons and local jails voluntarily transfer immigrants and refugees to ICE at the point they are eligible to be released from state or local custody. If not because of where they were born, these community members would be allowed to return home to their families and communities. This process, known as an “ICE transfer” or the “prison-to-deportation pipeline” is deeply traumatic and often leads to indefinite detention and permanent family separation. Communities impacted by ICE transfers refer to this process as experiencing “double punishment” and a two-tiered system of justice that discriminates against immigrants and refugees.

U.S. immigration policies disproportionately impact immigrants and refugees from different racial/ethnic backgrounds. According to a 2020 report titled “Landscape of Immigration Detention in the United States,” the American Immigration Council analyzed government and other data on all individuals who were detained by Immigration Customs Enforcement during the fiscal year 2015. The data demonstrated that the detained population was primarily male and from Mexico or Central America, and that close to 17%of people in detention were under the age of 18. The harm inflicted by systemic racist immigration policies crosses racial and ethnic boundaries.

Carlos is one of the thousands of people impacted by crimmigration. At fifteen years old, Carlos was tried as an adult and sentenced to 15-years-to-Life for a gang-related murder he committed. During the 22 years he served in prison, Carlos turned his life around. He became a certified alcohol and drug studies specialist, youth mentor and organizer. Thanks to his leadership and rehabilitation, the California parole board granted his release. However, instead of returning home, Carlos was sent to immigrant detention at the Yuba County Jail. “I’ve done time in 12 California prisons. Yuba County Jail immigrant detention was worse than all of them,” recalls Carlos in this op-ed he wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle. 

If the pipeline between incarceration and detention didn’t exist, Carlos would have been able to fight and win his case from within the U.S. The physical and mental burden of a double punishment and the horrible conditions of immigrant detention forced Carlos to take deportation. He now faces an uphill battle to return home. Help us #BringCarlosHome and support efforts to end ICE transfers so that no more families have to go through this traumatic form of separation.