Visiting Undocumented Detainees in Prison and For Profit Prisons

1. Visiting
What a First Friends Visit
Means to
Both Detainees and Volunteers
Written and Compiled by Sue

2. Visiting detainees is an
act of reclamation.
It is an opportunity
to salvage some dignity
for those who have been
battered by an
immigration policy
that has been
long broken.

3. Many wonder how undocumented
immigrants end up in detention in
the first place.

4. Surely, they must have broken the law.

5. This is not true in many cases. Latinos, Muslims and
other minority groups are being targeted in order to fill
quotas in a for-profit prison system. Long-term
residents with no criminal records, even those who are
legal American citizens, are being targeted for
deportation.

6. In order to maintain these quotas, some
immigrants are picked up while buying lunch
on construction sites where they work.

7. Some are pick up for failure to use a
directional signal while driving, or for
offenses such as littering.

8. They are shuffled into the system, into
detention centers and jails sometimes in
states far away from where they were
arrested.

9. Many are separated from their families, and
do not have anyone they can trust in this
country. The ones that do have relatives here
often are not visited, as their families are
afraid of deportation.

10. Detainees live in a state of constant worry and/or
fear, and often cannot sleep or even watch TV.
Many do not read or write, and cannot experience
the temporary refuge books or magazines may
provide.

11. A volunteer visitor is often their only contact
with the outside world, the only spot of
brightness in the long corridor of days and
months that stretch before them.

12. Having a visitor changes everything. A visit is
like a small light in a world of darkness.

13. Visiting is a ministry of sorts, in that the
visitor represents
kindness, hope, compassion and human
contact – something every human being
needs.

14. Visitors, too, get a lot out of the time they
spend with detainees. Friendships
form, cultural information is exchanged, and
in some small way, visitors feel they are
making a difference.

15. A visit doesn’t make everything better. It can’t. But, for
detainees, it is a chance to share a smile, to express how they
feel, to be themselves, and to cling to the hope that there are
people in this world who recognize and value them as human
beings.

16. One First Friends visitor, Frank Mc Cann says it best:
Visiting opens my eyes to the injustice dished out
daily to our immigrant brothers and sisters. I’m
challenged to channel my righteous anger into
constructive efforts to bring about non-violent social
change. These are good men with good families who
do not deserve the kind of deprivation they are
getting. I’ve come to experience how alike we are
and how much we have in common. I believe in them
and know I can never really be free as long as our
immigrant brothers and sisters are detained in our
jails and detention centers. A part of my heart lives