Jose Ruben Hernandez Gomez, 34, took to the mic on Wednesday while leaning carefully on a steel barrier outside the San Francisco field office of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
“I’ve survived the hostile and degrading treatment at both Golden State Annex and Mesa Verde ICE detention centers,” Hernandez Gomez told the crowd. “These for-profit detention centers have damaged me physically and mentally, whether through sexual abuses and harassment, or the long periods of being placed in solitary confinement…to being denied medical treatment that left me cane-bound.”
Hernandez Gomez was one of about 35 people who gathered outside the ICE field office in San Francisco on Wednesday, motivating the crowd and chanting words of protest as curious security guards stared through the glass at 630 Sansome St. While the Golden State Annex and Mesa Verde centers are located in the Central Valley, they fall under the jurisdiction of the San Francisco office, which is overseen by field director Moises Becerra.
The protesters, led by a number of organizations including the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice and Pangea Legal Services, are calling on ICE to address long-standing accusations of rampant misconduct at the facilities, which are privately owned and operated by Florida-based prison profiteer GEO Group. The company operates six immigration detention centers in California, which have been the subject of regular scandals, including accusations that it forces laborers to work for extremely low wages, and fails to maintain safe or sanitary facilities for detainees.
The protestors’ demands are clear: End the estimated $1.6 billion federal contracts with both detention centers by December, stop solitary confinement, uphold ICE’s own standards on medical care and misconduct, resume free phone calls to family and legal assistance, and review cases for release in a fair and transparent manner.
In support of the cause, current detainees in both detention centers are engaging in an ongoing labor strike, in protest of a $1-a-day wage inmates receive for work at the facility. Several detainees also went on hunger strike for several days earlier this month, according to Eunice Hernandez Chenier, a formerly undocumented immigrant who is now a co-director of Pangea Legal Services.
GEO owns and operates more than 100 prisons and detention centers across the U.S., Australia, and South Africa, comprising some 82,000 beds. In the last decade, the company has been criticized and sued over a variety of systemic problems in its immigration detention centers, including unsanitary conditions, labor exploitation, and violence and abuse by officers. In California, the state Assembly is considering a bill, already passed by the Senate, which would give state health inspectors jurisdiction over the federal facilities, based on widespread complaints of disease and insufficient medical care within the facilities.
GEO has wriggled past several efforts to ban private prisons. A 2019 bill signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom banned private prisons and immigrant detention centers in California, but a lawsuit by GEO led to the policy being narrowed to exclude ICE facilities.
The company remains a crucial part of America’s migrant-to-prison pipeline, and has seen a massive rise in profits amid a chronic asylum crisis and increases in undocumented immigration. GEO reported $2.4 billion in revenue in 2023, and a recent investor report noted that profit margins are expected to stay high, as long as the country can maintain “stable populations across ICE processing centers.” In addition to lawsuits over mistreatment of detainees, GEO has been subject to investigations about improper use of federal tax dollars.
Hernandez Gomez, who spoke at Wednesday’s protest, was released from Mesa Verde in April 2023. It marked the end of 16 months spent in purgatory, bouncing between three detention centers in 2021 after he served a state sentence for an assault conviction. Although he was born in Mexico, he has been a permanent resident of California since he was a toddler.
“Being in these centers, it can be indefinite,” he told Gazetteer SF. “People are unable to fight their case, and are at risk of suffering harm in their country of origin. We don’t get an appointed attorney.”
Fighting back by organizing and eventually taking part in a hunger strike in February 2023 led to his transfer to a Texas processing facility, where Hernandez Gomez said he was threatened with violence. He said he feared for his life, and was only given one choice to avoid being force-fed through a tube: Eat two large meals to prove he’s done striking.
Hernandez Gomez said he then suffered from “refeeding syndrome,” a dangerous complication when a malnourished person suddenly consumes food. He blames it for damaging his nerves and wrecking his balance, which is why he uses a cane today.
Near the end of Wednesday’s action, a chant of “Come down, Becerra, come down!” began flooding the air, as delegates for the protest, including Hernandez Gomez, waited at the ICE office’s entrance to deliver a demand letter. Then, a security officer appeared with bad news: Nobody was coming downstairs, and organizers would have to physically mail their demands to the office.
“This is how they operate. By hiding,” Hernandez Gomez said, shaking his head.
Just feet away from the protest, a line of people with appointments in ICE court watched intensely, once in a while glancing at their own folders of documents.
