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Less than a year after the federal women’s prison referred to internally as a “rape club” was shuttered amid investigations and lawsuits over conditions at the site and the treatment of the women it housed, officials are reportedly now eying it as an immigration detention center.
According to reporting from KTVU, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities conducted a tour of the Federal Correctional Institution Dublin site at 5701 8th St. on Feb. 13, months after its closure in 2024 amid high-profile findings of systemic sexual abuse and exploitation and other hazardous conditions.
The news garnered a response from lawmakers this week, with Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) co-authoring a letter alongside South Bay Rep. Zoe Lofgren on Feb. 25 addressing the heads of the Department of Homeland Security, the Bureau of Prisons and ICE expressing concerns and asking for more information about reported plans for the future of the FCI Dublin site.
In addition to “an intractable culture of sexual abuse and retaliation” that has been the center of media and government investigations into FCI Dublin and its ultimate closure, DeSaulnier and Lofgren pointed to concerns over “critical infrastructure, safety and environmental deficiencies” that remain at the site even after its closure.
“There is no question that the physical facilities at FCI Dublin have degraded to the point where they are not fit for use,” DeSaulnier and Lofgren wrote.
They pointed to testimony from the BOP’s acting director William Lothrop in a court hearing last year that repairs and updates to the facility to make it habitable would cost tens of millions of dollars.
“By BOP’s own admittance, FCI Dublin simply is not safe for habitation, and as such it should be closed to any and all inhabitants or government purposes,” DeSaulnier and Lofgren wrote.
In addition, they noted that “FCI Dublin is also not equipped to serve as an immigration detention center.”
“The prison has historically housed post-conviction individuals serving criminal sentences. Immigration detainees, on the other hand, are involved in ongoing legal proceedings and they have a constitutional right to communicate with legal counsel, a requirement that FCI Dublin has neither the space nor the infrastructure to meet,” DeSaulnier and Lofgren wrote. “As Bureau officials confirmed in federal litigation regarding insufficient legal access at the facility, FCI Dublin does not have private attorney meeting spaces or sufficient legal phone or video call capacity.”
While serving as an ICE facility would be a new and unprecedented development for FCI Dublin, DeSaulnier and Lofgren pointed to a history of abuse and exploitation of immigrants at the site that was documented as part of investigations into its “rape club” reputation.
“The cruelty of housing detainees at a facility that before its closure had been dubbed a ‘Rape Club’ due to years of horrendous sexual abuse of incarcerated people—dozens of whom were immigrant women—by prison staff cannot be ignored,” DeSaulnier and Lofgren wrote.
“It is well documented that some prison staff intentionally preyed on immigrant women and threatened to retaliate against individuals who reported their abusers by working to get them deported,” they continued.
They added that cases of abuse of inmates by prison staff are “endemic” to both BOP and ICE facilities, “and just as we cannot risk the harm the facilities would have on detainees, the federal government should be doing everything in its power to also reduce the risks of abuse.”
Lofgren and DeSaulnier requested that federal authorities provide them with further information by March 5 about any plans to use the facility for ICE purposes or reopen it for any reason, copies of security and infrastructure assessments referred to by Lothrop in court – which they said they understood “had been shared with ICE for a purpose that has not yet been made public” – and how former FCI Dublin staff who had not perpetuated abuse in the facility were being assisted by the BOP following their displacement with the prison’s closure.
Meanwhile, organizers from a number of groups including the Dublin Prison Solidarity Coalition, the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, and the Dignity not Detention Coalition are gearing up for a protest at the site on Saturday (March 1) from noon to 1 p.m.
“There are currently no ICE detention centers in California north of McFarland/Bakersfield due to a decade of organizing to close detention centers,” organizers with Bay Resistance said in the event description. “Let’s not let them open one up here or anywhere!”
Spokespeople for the BOP and the local chapter of American Federation of Government Employees Council of Prison had not responded to requests for comment as of Tuesday evening.
