DUBLIN, Calif. — After years of staff-on-inmate abuse that earned the women’s prison in the East Bay city of Dublin the moniker “rape club,” the federal government last spring shut down the low-security facility.
Now, the Trump administration is considering turning it into an ICE detention center.
Last month, ICE officials were seen visiting the Federal Correctional Institution Dublin. ICE reportedly told the Mercury News, “We can confirm that ICE is exploring all options to meet its current and future detention requirements… amid a significant number of criminal arrests.”
The Bureau of Prisons ordered the closure of FCI Dublin in December of last year in the wake of an investigation by the Associated Press that revealed widespread abuse of inmates. One hundred and three survivors sued the prison, forcing the Board of Prisons to settle with them for $115 million, the largest settlement in the board’s prison history.
A former warden and staff members were sentenced to prison for assaults and other crimes against inmates.
Five hundred former FCI Dublin inmates were also relocated by the BOP. On February 25, a judge rejected arguments from the Trump administration seeking to alter protections for the inmates. The ruling requires an independent monitor to report on the treatment of the inmates and includes pathways to early release and home confinement.
On March 1, around 500 people, including some former inmates of FCI Dublin gathered near the prison to protest the proposed plan to turn it into an ICE facility.
Signs in all caps read, “NO ICE IN DUBLIN,” “BLOCK ICE,” and “KEEP FCI DUBLIN CLOSED.” Protestors chanted slogans as passing motorists honked their horns in support. “No more cages, no more walls. We will fight until they fall.”
Kendra Drysdale, 51, is a former inmate at the prison who attended the protest. “We want the rape club demolished and we deserve that,” she said, adding that because she spoke out against what she experienced in the prison, officials there “severely retaliated” against her by taking away her cell phone so she could not keep in touch with her family, and moving back her release date.
Drysdale’s case is still pending.
Since she got out last April, she has been working from San Diego as an advocacy coordinator for the Dublin Prison Solidarity Coalition.
“One of our key demands as survivors of the extreme abuse at Dublin has been for the permanent closure of the facility,” said Aimee Chavira, FCI Dublin survivor and advocate with the Dublin Prison Solidarity Coalition. “At FCI Dublin, noncitizens were specifically preyed upon by staff, and we have every reason to believe that ICE would carry on that tradition of abuse, retaliation, and medical neglect.”
Susan Beaty, the attorney representing the women who sued the Bureau of Prisons over the sex scandal, said that not only is the prison a symbol of sexual abuse, “it is not safe, it’s not habitable.”
She continued, “It is full of mold and asbestos amid crumbling infrastructure…it cannot house human beings.”
Trump officials have openly shared their plans to lean on prisons to house an expected increase in the number of immigrants detained by ICE as the administration pursues its policy of mass deportation.
A speaker at the protest read a statement from the family of Ulises Lopez, a 30-year-old husband, father, and longtime Bay Area resident with life-threatening health conditions. He was allegedly brutalized by ICE during an unlawful arrest last month that led to his being hospitalized. Before fully recovering, ICE took him to Golden State Annex, an immigrant detention center in McFarland, California, some 250 miles south.
“We cannot stand by and allow ICE to treat our loved ones like this,” the statement said. “Ulises has rights, and we demand that ICE stop their attacks on him and our community.”
Drysdale said many women who were held in the facility are still dealing with physical health problems from hazardous substances in the building, as well as the trauma of sexual abuse.
A handful of Trump supporters wearing MAGA hats were seen at the protests.
The event was organized by the Dublin Prison Solidarity Coalition, California Coalition for Women Prisoners, California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, Dignity Not Detention Coalition, Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, Tsuru for Solidarity, Kehilla Community Synagogue Immigration Committee, Detention Watch Network, NorCal Resist, and Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
