About 500 people came to protest FCI Dublin turning into an ICE detention center. March, 1, 2025
DUBLIN, Calif. – Hundreds of people turned out Saturday afternoon, protesting near the now-closed federal women’s prison in Dublin where some fear it may become an ICE detention center.
Protesting ICE
Protesters carried signs that read “Keep ICE out of Dublin” and chanted “B-O-P or I-C-E. It is all the same to me. No more cages, no more walls. We will fight until they fall.”
“No one is illegal,” Chelsea Garcia, 36, of Walnut Creek said. “We all came from immigrants. The system is so flawed. Everyone deserves to be here.”
Mary Morehead, a Canadian immigrant who has lived in Dublin for over two decades, said she came out to support the voiceless and the powerless.”
Her husband, James Morehead, added: “The U.S. is built on immigration…immigration is going to win in the end because the U.S. can’t do it on its own.”
About 500 people came out to protest FCI Dublin becoming an ICE detention center. March 1, 2025
500 protesters
They were among the roughly 500 people who came to stand on the corner of Dublin Boulevard and Arnold Road to protest a possible ICE detention center at the former women’s prison, called FCI Dublin, which was shut down in April 2024 after a national sex scandal there and is now empty.
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.
Small support for Trump
A small group of Trump supporters stood on Dublin Boulevard. March 1, 2025
There were three visible supporters there for President Donald Trump. They carried American flags and wore MAGA hats. They stood alone on a traffic island and did not interact very much with the protesters.
Trump promised mass deportation of undocumented immigrants during his campaign and is continuing to receive much support for making good on his promises.
Dublin police and Alameda County sheriff’s deputies were stationed by the prison but did not appear at the protest.
Currently, ICE has entered contracts with five federal prisons to hold immigrant detainees at facilities in Miami, Philadelphia, Kansas, Atlanta and New Hampshire. A BOP executive told U.S. senators this week that so far, 700 immigrants are being held at four of the five prisons.
FCI Dublin is not on any official list to become an immigration detention center at this point, but a union official told KTVU federal immigration officials visited the former women’s prison there on Feb. 14 and 15.
ICE has not responded to multiple requests by KTVU seeking more information on what will become of the Dublin prison. And the BOP has referred all those questions to ICE.
BOP union officials and members of Congress have both written letters to the Trump administration in recent days, saying that putting detainees who have committed civil violations by crossing into the United States illegally along with convicted criminals is inhumane.
The BOP executive told Congress that at this point, the undocumented immigrants are being held separately from the general prison population.
Prison unsafe, fewer ICE arrests
Susan Beaty, the attorney representing the women who sued the Bureau of Prisons over the sex scandal that led to the arrests and convictions of seven correctional officers and the prison’s eventual closure in 2024, was alongside the protesters.
“This prison is not safe, it’s not habitable, it is full of mold and asbestos amid crumbling infrastructure…it cannot house human beings,” Beaty said.
And despite the empty facility being in California, where there are plenty of immigration lawyers to help, Beaty said that in the past, fewer undocumented immigrants were rounded up and deported if there were no detention centers to put them in.
“As a community in the Bay Area, we don’t want ICE in our backyard…when ICE doesn’t have a place to cage people, there are less raids,” Beaty said. There are less arrests. We’re saying ‘no, we don’t want ICE detention in our community, and we want ICE out of the Bay Area and out of California.”
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