Boston March Against Cages / Marcha Contra las Jaulas Demands the American Correctional Association Stop Accrediting Abusive Prisons and Migrant Camps
PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 4, 2019
Contact: (617) 315-4299, nomorecages@protonmail.com
BOSTON, MA- On Sunday, approximately 500 people shut down Boylston Street in a march to condemn the American Correctional Association (ACA) for supporting mass incarceration and immigrant detention.The ACA, a professional organization for the prison and detention industries, is in Boston August 1st-6th for its annual conference at the Hynes Convention Center. “We’re out here because we believe no one should profit off of caging human beings. We want an end to incarceration, whether it’s at the border or in our backyard,” says Mike Cox, an organizer with Black and Pink. The event was organized by a coalition of prison abolition groups and immigration justice groups, including Deeper Than Water, Black and PinkBoston, Black Lives Matter Boston, and Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network.
The group carried signs that read “No Cages, No Camps” and “No Profits from Prisons” and chanted “Free the prisoners free them all, brick by brick, wall by wall.” When they reached the Convention Center, the group played recordings and read testimony of prisoners in Massachusetts prisons and ICE facilities. “I’ve suffered medical neglect and humiliations that have had serious consequences to my health,” said Jose Marco Tapete Gonzalez, who is currently detained at GEO group’s Adelanto Detention Facility. “I am sad and I feel very bad, but I’m not giving up. On the contrary, I’ll use this opportunity to expose the negligent treatment, horrible conditions and humiliations that we have to endure in ICE jails.” On Thursday, the ACA will host an awards banquet for the Senior Vice President of GEO Group, which runs the majority of detention facilities at the border and has earned $450 million in ICE contracts in the past two years. “It’s terrible, the psychological and emotional torture that’s happening at the detention facilities. It will take the effort of good people in this country to change the laws,” said woman seeking asylum and recently processed through the port of entry at Nogales, Arizona.
In their speeches, the protesters demanded that the ACA 1) shut down all prisons and detention facilities, 2) stop accrediting or rescind accreditation of facilities with documented human rights violations, and 3) make the credentialing process public. The ACA is the largest accreditor of for-profit prisons and immigration detention facilities in the US, and its accreditation process has recently come under national scrutiny for being little more than a rubber stamp. ACA-accredited facilities have been found guilty of widespread human rights abuses, including the recently re-accredited NCCI-Gardner, where prisoners have raised concerns that the water runs brown. “We can and we must build a world without cages,” said Elizabeth Rucker, an organizer with Deeper Than Water.
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