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The Dublin City Council was greeted outside its most recent meeting with a vigil and protest that drew dozens from across the region calling for the city to formally stand against the idea of establishing an ICE facility within the city limits.
That message continued to resonate throughout the council chambers as the meeting was called to order Tuesday evening, in which members of the public spent approximately an hour and a half urging the council to adopt a citywide resolution opposing the use of the FCI Dublin site by ICE.
The former federal women’s prison shuttered last year amid widespread reports of neglect, abuse and retaliation against the inmates it housed.
No new details have emerged about the federal government’s consideration of the prison as a potential site for what would be the Bay Area’s only immigration detention facility. However, local residents and immigration rights advocates note that while the latest information from the Bureau of Prisons suggested that consideration was off the table, there has been no confirmation that the plan has been formally cancelled.
Organizers with the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, one of numerous activist groups that came together to form the ICE out of Dublin Coalition earlier this year, have returned to Alameda County after traveling to southern California to observe and protest against conditions at ICE facilities in McFarland, Bakersfield and California City.
The California City facility was opened in August, in a repurposing of the site of the former California City Corrections Facility, which was closed last year amid a drop in the state’s incarcerated population and a 2019 state law requiring an end to private prison contracts.
“Furthermore, given the way that California City Detention Facility opened up so rapidly and without necessary permits, combined with ongoing ICE enforcement in the region and the recent threat of escalation, community members know it is important to be proactive in ensuring additional detention capacity is not created in the area,” said Alex Mensing, communications director for the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice in an announcement Monday.
Residents and advocates at the City Council meeting pointed to widespread harms that could emerge from establishing a permanent ICE presence in the Bay Area – particularly in the Tri-Valley, and particularly in Dublin, with its high immigrant population.
“As a Dublin resident for 25 years, I am generally very proud of this city and how we take care of our community,” Gabrielle Marshall said at the Nov. 18 meeting.
“Tonight, I am here to urge the Dublin City Council to pass a resolution to oppose the possible reopening of FCI Dublin as an immigration Detention Center,” she continued. “As Dublin residents, we want a city where all residents can thrive, where everyone’s rights are respected, where children can go to school, and people can go to the hospital without fear of unlawful detainment or imprisonment.”
Marshall and others that evening pointed to research suggesting that ICE activity in areas surrounding schools and hospitals “escalates rapidly”.
“Immigrants and citizens alike are more than twice as likely to be apprehended, as opposed to a county that has less or no immigration detention capacity,” Marshall said. “We do not want masked men in unmarked cars, abducting our people based on racial language and occupational profiling.”
While the potential impacts on the surrounding Tri-Valley community were a central theme of the night’s discussion, there are other factors that have made the potential reopening of FCI Dublin for use by ICE distasteful to many. Those include the former prison’s widespread infrastructure problems and sexual abuse scandals – resulting in criminal charges for at least 10 of its former employees – and the Bay Area’s role in the incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, approximately 8,000 of whom were housed across the bay at Tanforan.
Among those incarcerated were the parents of Douglas Yoshida, a Dublin resident and emergency room physician at Stanford Health Care Tri-Valley – the closest hospital to the FCI Dublin site.
“My father at age 15 was forcibly taken from his home during World War II,” Yoshida said. “He and his family were first placed in horse stables that reek of manure and then shipped off to the desert in Utah. His mother had cancer. And soldiers took her away. The family did not know where they were, where she was for several weeks.”
“Does that sound familiar? That is what President Roosevelt did invoking the alien enemies Act, and then an executive order to incarcerate 125,000 Japanese Americans without due process,” he continued. “Trump has invoked the same act (to) round up, assault and detain tens of thousands of immigrants.”
Yoshida also pointed to his experiences treating women who were incarcerated at FCI Dublin.
“This Legacy of abuse cannot continue,” Yoshida said. “If it is converted, it’ll be run by a private corporation – corporations that have a long history of prisoner abuse and abysmal medical care.”
He added that abuse and a lack of proper healthcare at the facility should it reopen would put further pressure on his hospital’s existing emergency services, noting that “if you’ve had to use our ER recently, you know how crowded it is.”
Kendra Drysdale, a survivor of abuse at FCI Dublin with family throughout the region, said that the potential reopening of the site for use by ICE was “both personal and local.”
“I’m here tonight on behalf of all of the survivors to urge you to oppose the reopening of FCI Dublin – not by the Bureau of Prisons and not by ICE,” Drysdale said. “This facility represents one of the darkest human rights scandals in California’s history.”
Meanwhile, Yoshida wasn’t the only medical professional to call for council action at this week’s meeting and oppose the repurposing of FCI Dublin.
“As a nurse, my message is really simple – allowing ICE running around loose in our community will scare our patients (from) seeking the vital healthcare they need,” said Joeten Labos, an ICU nurse at San Ramon Regional Medical Center. “Also, I don’t want them coming into our hospitals and yanking them out of the hospital beds. Nurses already have a lot to deal with – short staffing, no meal breaks, and now you’re gonna add ICE to the list? Come on now.”
“I also like to think that Dublin is the heart of the Tri-Valley,” he continued. “So allowing ICE to come in here is like injecting a big, nasty cholesterol into that heart.”
Other speakers pointed to existing harms to the local community amid the nationwide immigration crackdown and surge in ICE activity in the first year of the Trump administration’s second term and its impact on immigrant communities locally.
Supreet Pabla, a 40-year Dublin resident, said that she had been giving her ninth grade son and his friend a ride recently and saw the friend duck when they passed a police car.
“I asked him why he did that, and he said he’s sorry – he thought that it was an ICE vehicle,” Pabla said. “He then informed me that his family’s immigration hearing did not go well, and that he fears he may be deported. That poor 14-year-old boy already has to wake up every morning, fearing that he may be separated from his family and or deported. Opening an ICE detention center in Dublin would only further that fear.”
While the vast majority of public speakers during the non-agendized public comment portion of the public meeting had gathered to call on the council to pass a resolution denouncing ICE’s use of the FCI Dublin site, there were some exceptions.
“Tonight I’ve come here to support the opening of the new ICE facility in Dublin, even though the city has nothing to do with federal property,” said Mike Grant, owner of Guns Unlimited, which was formerly based in Dublin. “It’s vital that we gather up all these illegals and deport them under our law.”
Meanwhile, former San Ramon mayoral candidate Chirag Kathrani applauded the level of civic engagement at that evening’s meeting, and announced that his volunteer-run AI endeavor OpGov was now processing and summarizing agendas and meetings into automated “articles” on the Dublin City Council.
By and large though, the atmosphere was one of overwhelming consensus and support, despite the council being unable to comment on non-agendized items.
“We truly appreciate your engagement and the time you have taken to voice your thoughts,” Mayor Sherry Hu said. “As you can see from our council – we have a very diverse council here. Myself, I’m a first generation immigrant. I came to this country when I was almost 30, so I understand what you’re talking about and I feel how you feel.”
With the Brown Act prohibiting further comment, Hu asked City Manager Colleen Tribby for an update on steps the council has taken so far to prevent the establishment of an ICE facility in the city.
“We have written two letters of opposition to ICE coming to Dublin,” Tribby said. “One was in April, and one was, I think it was this week we sent it, and it was voicing our concerns about the facility being unsafe and unfit, raising our concerns about the structure being inadequate, voicing our concerns about the facility being located near a residential area and the impacts on our city infrastructure.”
In that letter, Tribby said that the city had also asked for information from the federal government– as it had been doing for months – “to no avail”.
“We’ve been working closely with members of Congress, and have received no response from the Department of Homeland Security, no response from the Bureau of Prisons,” Tribby said.
Tribby noted that with the FCI Dublin site being federally owned, it would not be subject to the city’s zoning ordinances or permitting processes.
“Federal law supersedes local law, and that would be true in this case,” Tribby said, adding that the city was nonetheless working closely with local activist groups such as Indivisible Tri-Valley.
While many speakers that evening acknowledged that there were limits in what the city could do to prevent federal action on the federally owned site, they nonetheless called for a formal resolution by city leaders to be brought to the next City Council agenda on Dec. 2.
“If we hope to return and retain a democracy, every one of us – every business, large and small, every institution of learning, and every state and local governing body must take a stand,” said 50-year Dublin resident Richard Stein. “If each of us doesn’t just stand up to protect our democracy, we could lose it. So please, City Council, be courageous, and pass a resolution opposing having an ICE facility.”
At the end of the night, Councilmember Jean Josey brought the issue back to the table at the conclusion of her report to her peers, asking staff to prepare a resolution to bring to the council.
“I appreciate the City Council, the action that we’ve taken as a city so far from our staff – writing letter to Bureau of Prisons, writing letters to Homeland Security – I know that we have been in contact with our legislative staff, at least three congressmen’s offices, we’ve been in touch with our senators’ offices, we have made our position known as a city,” Josey said. “We have intentionally not gone a lot beyond that because we did not want to invite ICE in, knowing this regime has had a habit of targeting and revenge. But I think we are at the point now where it is time to go further.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify the next steps for the council after Josey brought up the matter again at the end of the Nov. 18 meeting.
Economic Consideration:
Employment impact-A reopened facility would likely employ correctional officers, administration staff, health care workers, and contractors.
Federal Prisons of similar size often employ several hundred staff with annual payrolls in the tens of millions of dollars.
Local spending-Staff salaries circulate into the local economy through housing, retail, and services. Vendors supporting food, maintenance, and security services could benefit.
Federal spending-The federal government has already spent $300 million maintaining shuttered prisons statewide (including Dublin) even while closed. If reopened operational budgets would increase further, potentially channeling millions annually into contracts and wages.