JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A local advocacy group for immigrants’ rights held a rally and news conference on Friday afternoon to denounce Governor Ron DeSantis’s plans to convert the Baker Correctional Facility into a new immigrant detention center, dubbed “Deportation Depot.”
The rally organized by Jacksonville Immigrant Rights Alliance took place around 6 p.m. at Friendship Fountain. It was joined by 50501 Northeast Florida, the Jacksonville Community Action Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, and more.
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“This project, cynically coined ‘Deportation Depot’ by state officials, is a dehumanizing term that JIRA and its coalition firmly reject,” a news release from the organization read. “We refer to the planned facility by its true name: Baker Cruelty Camp.”
Monica Gold was one of the protestors rallying against what the groups called an attack on immigrant communities.
“I couldn’t sleep soundly at night knowing that I didn’t do what I could to support my neighbors,” Gold said.
Maria Garcia said there’s a right side of history and a wrong side of history.
“The people that stood by and let these abuses happen, they’re going to be on the wrong side of history,” Garcia said.
The group also listed its demands that the rally promoted, which include:
- An immediate end to all future construction projects for the concentration camp at Baker Correctional Facility.
- The complete deconstruction and abandonment of the planned southern concentration camp in the Everglades.
- Continuous, independent investigations into the human rights abuses occurring within the walls of public and private detention centers across Florida.
- An end to Jacksonville’s 287(g) agreement, which allows for collaboration between ICE and the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office (JSO). This program furthers and enables systemic racial profiling and disproportionately targets Black and Brown communities, feeding the very detention system we oppose.
On Aug. 14, DeSantis announced that he was authorizing the opening of an immigration detention center at the Baker Correctional Institution in Sanderson, shifting plans away from the previously considered site at Camp Blanding.
The governor said the facility, once fully operational, will be able to house up to 1,300 detainees.
But the protestors said they’ll continue fighting no matter where the facility is built.
“I hope that the people in power realize that no one is going to sit idly by while they use our taxpayer dollars to fund cruelty camps and to dehumanize and degrade our neighbors,” Gold said. “We’re not just going to sit quietly while they do that. We’re going to fight back against it, and we’re going to grow in our numbers and increase in our power.”
The Baker Correctional Institution was among three North Florida prisons that were temporarily closed in 2021 amid staffing shortages and a drop in inmate population during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been closed ever since.
The governor said it will cost $6 million to get the facility “up and running,” and added that the costs will be reimbursed by the federal government.
“We don’t want more of our taxpayer dollars going towards the detention of immigrants in these cruel facilities,” Garcia said. “We are already outraged at the fact that the Everglades camp was built at the cost of 200 million plus dollars to the Florida taxpayers.”
“This project, cynically coined ‘Deportation Depot’ by state officials, is a dehumanizing term that JIRA and its coalition firmly reject,” a news release from the organization read. “We refer to the planned facility by its true name: Baker Cruelty Camp.”
Demonstrators said the project will rip families apart and speed up deportations.
“The fact of the matter is, we as Floridians and we as Americans have very real issues that are not going to be solved by demonizing and torturing and kidnapping people that look different than us,” Garcia said.