A version of this message was sent to our Friends of CASA via email on August 9, 2022. Stay connected and up to date on the work CASA is doing to serve the immigrant community — join in here.
Our community is still being terrorized by ICE.
Last year, we were victorious in passing Dignity Not Detention, a law that would end the collaboration between private jails and ICE in Maryland. Since then ICE has been using more discretion in their detaining of Maryland residents. But still ICE does not rest, and has been detaining people and transferring them to out-of-state detention centers like Berks County and Moshannon Valley Detention Centers in Pennsylvania.
“Then they put cuffs on my wrist and then they put chains on my ankles and then put me in a van,” says AJ, a Maryland man held at an ICE facility in Pennsylvania.
“We pushed this because our members – the ones actually affected by this, the ones at risk – said, ‘we have to do this,’” said Nick Katz, General Counsel for CASA. “The message isn’t that this should have been done differently here in Maryland, but that this needs to be done everywhere.”
Immigrants stand and fight to get ICE detention facilities shut down.
When CASA members fought for Dignity Not Detention, our intent wasn’t just to close all Maryland detention centers. As we’ve seen, ICE finds a way to detain people outside the state instead. Maryland was just the first in a series of victories we must realize in every CASA state. With your help we can expand this mission across our footprint and farther.
When our community is being over policed and unjustly detained we stand up and fight back. Thank you for fighting with us.
In solidarity,
Gustavo Torres
Executive Director, CASA
