Deportee delighted by end of ICE deal
‘For me and many others, this is a victory’
Dianny Patricia Menendez had a fever and body pains Wednesday morning, so she went to the doctor.
She made the appointment in her native Honduras, the country she begged to be deported to in October.
At least she was able to make an appointment to see a doctor, something she and other women detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said they had difficulty doing while incarcerated at the West County Detention Facility in Richmond.
It was Menendez who told me last fall that she and other female inmates at the facility were sometimes locked up for 23 hours in their cells, which had no toilets. She described detainees having to urinate and defecate in their cells — in their clothes or in plastic bags, which some inmates placed into trash cans they squatted over.
The allegations outraged immigration activists. Local and state political leaders demanded answers from the Contra Costa County Sheriff ’s Office, which operates the jail that contracts with ICE to hold about 200 undocumented immigrants per day. Frequent protests of the county’s alliance with ICE were held outside the jail, and state Attorney General Xavier Becerra launched an investigation into the conditions. Contra Costa County Sheriff David Livingston brushed off the controversy. At one point, he didn’t respond to Richmond Mayor Tom Butt’s request to tour the jail, and he stopped weekly visits by a group that monitors jails where immigrants are detained.
This intensified community pressure, which became too much for Livingston to ignore. On Tuesday, he announced the county was severing its jail contract with ICE.
The announcement made Menendez, who heard the news from a friend she met while at the jail, feel better.
“I’m feeling very happy because I know that people in ICE custody won’t be exposed to that treatment that was so inhumane,” Menendez told The Chronicle on Wednesday. “I celebrate this news with tears of joy running from my eyes because for me and many others, this is a victory.”
Menendez wasn’t the only person who spoke to me about mistreatment while they were detained at the jail. When I toured the jail in October — on the day Menendez was being deported — several women talked about inadequate access to health services.
Twenty-seven women being held as ICE detainees signed a letter complaining about conditions in September.
The Sheriff ’s Office said it had conducted an investigation and that “nearly all of the complaints” were unfounded. I feel the investigation was incomplete, because investigators weren’t able to contact Menendez after she’d been deported, something I haven’t had trouble doing since she left the country.
Livingston acknowledged on Tuesday that recent protests at the jail had an effect on his decision to end the relationship with ICE. On June 30, more than 1,000 people gathered outside the jail as part of nationwide demonstrations against the president’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the southern border.
“There is a lot of attention, whether it’s the protests or the detainees themselves, that takes away from the larger operation of the custody services bureau,” Livingston told me. “In addition, when we have large numbers as we did two weeks ago out at West County, we have to draw resources from inside the facility, which makes it less secure, plus outside to take people off the streets.”
Like Menendez, John Gioia, a county supervisor who has been consistently critical of the ICE contract, referred to the contract termination as a victory.
“This is a victory for the thousands of residents who advocated to end the contract,” he said. “I think the community’s loud voices raised the visibility and made a difference in this case, and the sheriff listened to them.”
Still, activists and immigration attorneys I’ve spoken to are holding their applause for the deal. According to Livingston, ICE has 120 days to resolve open immigration cases — or move detainees to another detention center.
Another reason Livingston agreed to end the ICE contract is that the county will supplement the roughly $2.4 million to $3 million a year the sheriff ’s office will lose in revenue from the deal.
I was curious about where the money is coming from, because the county already agreed to pay to enlarge the West County jail. In June 2017, county supervisors voted to accept a $70 million state grant to expand the jail after Livingston said he needed space for mental health programming and re-entry services. The county is on the hook for $25 million for construction — and then $5 million a year more than what it currently pays to operate the jails.
It’s too late to stop the expansion even though West County will have more space with the empty ICE beds.
For the upcoming fiscal year, the $2.4 million the sheriff needs will be taken out of state and county reserve funds, according to Gioia.
Gioia said the county will tap into reserve funds from AB109, a 2011 bill that realigned the state’s criminal justice system by transferring the incarceration of lower-level offenders from state prisons to county jails. The bill allocated funds to ease inmate reintegration and reduce recidivism.
Gioia said it’s a one-time backfilling of the sheriff ’s budget so Livingston doesn’t take deputies off the street in unincorporated parts of the county like North Richmond, El Sobrante and Discovery Bay. For future funding, the board of supervisors will draw from the county’s budget.
Ali Saidi of the Contra Costa Immigrant Rights Alliance, an advocacy group, told me using AB109 money to pay for the sheriff ’s deputies to patrol those communities was offensive.
“That money is intended to help end our broken and racist system of mass incarceration and reduce recidivism by increasing re-entry services, particularly for communities of color disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice system,” Saidi said.
Unlike the 169 ICE detainees at the jail as of Tuesday, Menendez, 39, doesn’t have to worry about her future destination. She left her two U.S.born children, an 18-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son, with relatives in the Los Angeles area.
She says she now lives alone in Santa Cruz de Yojoa, where she’s raising pigs. She doesn’t know when she’ll see her family again.
“To be so far away from my family is the saddest thing I have experienced in my entire life,” she said.
“This is a victory for the thousands of residents who advocated to end the contract” with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
John Gioia, Contra Costa County supervisor