Immigrant advocates march to Fetterman’s Philly office, keep the pressure on closing detention centers

They said the U.S. Senator has denied their calls to meet as local ICE detentions and deportations are on the rise.

BY NIGEL THOMPSON ON AUGUST 26, 2024

The march goes east on Chestnut Street towards U.S. Senator John Fetterman’s Philadelphia office. (Nigel Thompson for ¡Presente! Media)

In the span of one week, the Philadelphia field office for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has seen two protests from immigrant rights activists amid the detention of a local community member and a seeming ignorance from leaders on the national stage as the country is only two and a half months from electing a new president.

The action on the afternoon of Wednesday, Aug. 21 began at the Philadelphia field office and ended after a march to 2nd and Chestnut, the location of U.S. Senator John Fetterman’s Philadelphia office. Advocates say Fetterman has rejected meeting with them over ongoing demands to close Pennsylvania’s remaining immigrant detention centers.

That call was also renewed on Wednesday, and it’s been the focus of advocates since the closure of Berks County Detention Center in January of 2023. With the Berks facility out of the picture, they’ve turned their attention to the remaining facilities used for immigrant detention in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. 

Those facilities are: Moshannon Valley Correctional Center, Pike County Correctional Facility, and Clinton County Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania, and Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, New Jersey. 

Centers of violence

Julio Rodriguez, political director of PICC, speaks to the crowd outside Philadelphia’s ICE field office on Wednesday, Aug. 21. (Nigel Thompson for ¡Presente! Media)

Julio Rodriguez, political director of the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition (PICC), said the facilities continue a traumatic cycle.

“These detention centers not only expand the carceral system, but every single day, they cause violence and trauma to the people that are being detained there,” he told the crowd gathered outside the ICE field office.

That violence takes many forms, and can turn fatal like it did for Cameroonian immigrant Frankline Okpu — whose story Rodriguez recounted.

“While he may only be a number to ICE, he was a family member, a father, and a community member,” he said.

Okpu died while detained at Moshannon Valley Correctional Center on Dec. 6, 2023. He was found unresponsive by staff in his cell. 

The official report put out by ICE about his death called it accidental, stating it came from a fatal mixture of ecstasy that was found in his system and Okpu’s pre-existing cardiac conditions that included a mildly enlarged heart and coronary artery disease.

Elroy Paul, who spoke at the rally, was also detained at Moshannon last year. He recounted seeing neglect and inadequate facilities for the number of people detained.

Elroy Paul speaks to the crowd in front of Philadelphia’s ICE field office about his experience in Moshannon Correctional Facility. (Nigel Thompson for ¡Presente! Media)

“The place where they hold people had two microwaves that served 60 people,” he said.

Paul said things only changed when the ACLU came to review the facility, proving the power of outside advocacy.

“Outside action taken can guarantee action to take care of you,” he said.

Eventually, the outside advocacy from the New Sanctuary Movement bonded Paul out of detention and reunited him with his wife and child, but new problems arose.

As the main breadwinner for his family, Paul said it was a struggle for his family to survive while he was inside, draining their savings. 

“I had to start from scratch,” he said. “Detention, it does not work because when you’re released, when you come back to society, it is a struggle.”

It’s why he also pushed in his speech to those gathered at the ICE field office for re-integration programs for detained migrants.

“Why put someone in detention and release them back again to start life right over again, for them to struggle?” said Paul. “You have to prepare them for the next life.”

When detention and deportation hit home

Nancy Nguyen, co-director of VietLead, spoke of the current detention of Sereyrath “One” Van at Moshannon. Van was detained during a check-in at the Philadelphia ICE office alongside his lawyer and advocates back on Aug. 15. 

He’s a longtime member of Philadelphia’s Southeast Asian community who’s lived in the U.S. for 40 years. His parents fled Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge and lived as refugees in Thailand, where Van was born, before settling in the U.S. when he was four.

Advocates say ICE is attempting to deport Van to Cambodia, a country he has no connection to, rather than Thailand. Nguyen said the agency “commits fraud everyday.”

“We need to tell the community this. The community doesn’t understand that ICE lies, that ICE is making money off of misery in our communities,” she said.

Protestors listen to speakers outside Philadelphia’s ICE field office on Wednesday, Aug. 21. (Nigel Thompson for ¡Presente! Media)

“Attrition through enforcement”

The point was echoed by Van’s lawyer, David Bennion, executive director of the Free Migration Project. He said that created misery is part of a government strategy known as “attrition through enforcement.”

“Or making the United States so unbearable for immigrants under the threat of deportation that they leave on their own or they take other action to sort of cooperate in their own deportations,” said Bennion.

He went on to say that the Biden administration’s flip on immigration during its tenure has further contributed to the hostility facing immigrant communities. 

“It creates a climate of fear and just deep anxiety,” said Bennion.

The latest move at the beginning of June saw Biden enact a ban on seeking asylum for people illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border — the strictest measure taken by the government since Donald Trump was in office. Advocates also called out the administration for granting additional funding for detention beds in a $1.2 trillion government funding package passed in March, and for continuing to build the border wall in Texas. 

President Joe Biden said back in October 2023 that the continued border wall construction is happening. Congress appropriated money for it in 2019, before he was president.

“I tried to get to them to reappropriate it, to redirect that money,” he said. “They didn’t. They wouldn’t. And in the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated. I can’t stop that.”

When asked if he saw any difference on immigration between Biden and new Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, Bennion said he wasn’t “seeing any daylight between the two of them.”

A failure of both parties

Jasmine Rivera, executive director of PICC, said immigration has been a failure of both parties.

“Neither of what’s being pushed by both political parties is recognizing the humanity in the immigrant community,” she said.

Harris, who was at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago accepting her party’s nomination for president during the march and rally in Philly, has also released at least two border-focused ads, including one that touts her record as a “border state prosecutor.”

“It is using parents as pawns, it is criminalizing children, and it needs to stop,” said Rivera.

Instead, she said the U.S. needs more welcoming and humane immigration policies that will bring more immigrants into the country, citing a recent PICC study that shows their positive economic impact in states like Pennsylvania.

Despite the current climate, Rivera also remains confident in the efforts to close the remaining detention centers.

“I have a lot of hope, and I have a lot of confidence,” she said. “We are a group of people that have done it. We have shut down detention centers, and you better believe we’re gonna shut down more.”