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Faith leaders and community activists from a range of backgrounds and affiliations gathered in Dublin last week to decry potential plans to reopen the federal women’s prison known as a “rape club” that was shuttered last year as details continued to emerge about inhumane conditions at the facility.
The “From Harm To Liberation” vigil at the gates of the currently closed FCI Dublin site near Arnold Road and 8th street April 16 was organized by the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity and the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, calling for the permanent closure of the prison and a rejection of potential plans for it to reopen as an ICE detention facility.
“As we move through the sacred seasons of Ramadan, Passover, and Easter, we are holding this vigil and action to resist ICE’s attempt to re-open the shuttered Federal Women’s prison in Dublin as an immigration detention center,” Reverend Deborah Lee, co-executive director for the Interfaith Movement, said in a press release Wednesday.
“The former prison has a record of systemic staff abuse, unsafe conditions, medical neglect, and mistreatment, particularly of immigrant women,” she continued. “A re-purposing of this into a detention center would endanger California communities and contradict the values of a majority of California populace who see immigrants as an integral part of our economies and communities, deserving of freedom from harm and discrimination.”
While details remain sparse, news broke in February that ICE and Bureau of Prisons officials had visited the Dublin prison as they seek to explore opportunities to expand immigration detention facilities in California following an agreement between the two agencies.
Although local opposition to repurposing the scandal-ridden prison has centered around opposing the high profile detentions and deportations of immigrants led by the new presidential administration, ICE had already been on the hunt for a site to house a new immigration detention facility in Northern California as early as December, according to reporting from CalMatters – the same month FCI Dublin’s permanent closure was announced after it was fully vacated earlier that year.
While the closure itself and the relocation of the prison’s inhabitants to other federal facilities throughout the country was met with heavy scrutiny and allegations of continued abuse and retaliation faced by women who had raised the alarm bells on rampant sexual assault and other illegal conditions during their time there, things had been heading in the right direction from the perspective of many supporters of the prison’s closure, including Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord).
In late February, a federal judge approved a consent decree for the entire federal prison system amid investigations into the system that were spurred by accounts from FCI Dublin. Under the order, Special Master Wendy Still, who released a report last year documenting numerous health and safety hazards in addition to rampant sexual assault at the prison, will continue to review conditions at other facilities throughout the system with an eye towards the medical status and healthcare being provided to the 350 women covered under the order. Additionally, each prison is now required to host a rape crisis center and document explanations for why incarcerated women are placed in special housing units.
Among the hazardous conditions documented by Still and others tasked with investigating conditions at FCI Dublin and overseeing its closure were widespread mold and asbestos, combined with inadequate medical staffing and care for the women housed there.
“We want to honor their dreams that this harm not be continued and perpetuated on other people and other communities, so this is why we’re here to prevent ICE from reopening Dublin as a detention facility,” Lee said at Wednesday’s vigil.
DeSaulnier has been front and center of investigations into FCI Dublin and calls for reform of the federal prison system in the wake of findings there – having found it within his jurisdiction following the 2022 redistricting process that shifted the site from Rep. Eric Swalwell’s district to his own. The facility’s potential future under ICE has seen other local officials join him in pushing back against its reopening.
“The Dublin City Council, as well as Rep. DeSaulnier and Rep. Zoe Lofgren would all like everyone to join them in opposing the opening of FCI Dublin as an ICE detention center,” said KC Mukai during a speech at Wednesday’s vigil. “And there are a lot of ways you can do this.”
One of those ways was a petition that was circulated Wednesday evening and online, which had 505 signatures as of Friday evening. Others urged supporters to put pressure on Silicon Valley Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont).
Lee also called for supporters to contact and pressure their local representatives, as well as to be prepared for a potentially long fight.
“Please come back, because we’re going to have to be here a lot coming up,” Lee said.
The recent vigil was the second major event so far in Dublin to draw a crowd of hundreds with signs and chants of “no ICE in Dublin” along with music, and religious words and ceremonies from a wide range of traditions. The opposition is not just being led by faith leaders though, with legal experts and advocates also playing a major role.
“CCIJ represents and organizes alongside detained and incarcerated immigrants to fight for an end to immigration detention,” said Susan Beatty, senior attorney for the California Coalition for Immigrant Justice, at Wednesday’s vigil. “CCIJ is also a proud member of the Dublin Prison Solidarity Coalition, which is an alliance of currently and formerly incarcerated and their supporters who shut this prison down a year ago yesterday and continues to fight for liberation and justice for survivors.”
Although abuses and health hazards at FCI Dublin were found to be rampant for a majority of women incarcerated there, Beatty said that immigrants had faced additional rights violations and harms during the prison’s 50-year history.
“When it shut down last year it was pretty representative of women’s prisons in this country, which is to say that 70% of people incarcerated there were Black, indigenous, and people of color, 20% were non-citizens facing deportation, nearly all were parents and caregivers, and nearly all were survivors of violence before they were incarcerated, and a majority were serving sentences for drug crimes,” Beatty said. “FCI Dublin has a long history of horrific violence and repression and neglect by jailers and extraordinary resilience and resistance by incarcerated people.”
The prison was known in the 1990s for housing civil rights and Puerto Rican independence advocates “for their political activities,” Beatty said.
“In 1995, three women incarcerated in that prison brought a landmark civil rights lawsuit after guards let incarcerated men into their cells and sold access to them,” Beatty said.
A precursor to the Prison Rape Elimination Act known as Lucas Rules, which provided protections against sexual abuse of inmates, was named after one of those women, Robin Lucas, according to Beatty.
“Fast forward 20 years – in 2017, an immigrant woman I had the honor of representing bravely reported to federal prosecutors and the FBI that she had been repeatedly raped by the chaplain of the prison,” Beatty said.
That chaplain, James Highhouse, was sentenced to seven years in prison himself after pleading guilty to five felony counts for the abuse of Beatty’s client and attempts to cover up the crimes. But his victim and others were also ultimately punished, Beatty said.
“She was deported and she is permanently separated from her family, and she was not alone,” Beatty said. “FCI Dublin staff specifically targeted immigrant women who were vulnerable, and we now know of at least 30 other immigrant women who were deported after surviving sexual abuse in that prison.”
Highhouse is among seven former staff members at FCI Dublin who were found guilty of sex crimes, including Pleasanton resident Andrew Jones and former warden Ray Garcia. Another worker, Nicholas Ramos, died by suicide in 2022 after he was put on leave amid investigations into allegations that he had also sexually abused women on the job.
Meanwhile earlier last week, a mistrial was declared following a trial for the eighth and final man facing criminal charges for abuse at the prison – Darrell Wayne Smith, referred to in court documents by the nickname “Dirty Dick” – after a jury deadlocked in deliberations. Smith had been facing the most charges of any of the eight men tried on sexual misconduct charges and a potential life sentence.
“BOP tried desperately to avoid accountability and shove Dublin’s history under a rug, but survivors would not let them,” Beatty said, pointing to the consent decree ordered earlier this year as one example of justice for the prison’s victims.
“But last month we got devastating news – ICE wants to turn this empty, toxic prison, this symbol of staff sexual abuse, into a massive immigration detention center in our backyard,” she continued. “Since FCI Dublin closed last year, nearly 100 employees have been paid to show up everyday to work in those buildings and do nothing. They’ve been told to remove their belongings by the end of the month. ICE and their contractors have been on site to inspect the property. And though our litigation showed that these buildings are crumbling, they are filled with mold and asbestos – the former director of BOP said they would need 10s of millions of dollars in repair. “Workers are inside painting over mold, disturbing asbestos, as the saying goes, trying to put lipstick on a pig.”
Beatty and others emphasized that even if it weren’t for the rampant sexual abuse and history of mistreating immigrant women, the FCI Dublin site is “not safe for humans” and should not be reopened for any purposes.
“That prison was closed because it was inhumane, it was unsafe, and it must stay closed forever,” Beatty said.
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