ICE Wants to Reopen the Crumbling Federal Prison Dubbed ‘Rape Club’
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) wants to expand its concentration camp network in California with a dilapidated Bay Area prison known as the “Rape Club,” advocates and organizers warned on Tuesday. They said repurposing the Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin (FCI Dublin), for use as a detention center would endanger immigrants in multiple ways—not only does it have a lengthy history of unchecked sexual abuse, but also the buildings are falling to pieces and heavily contaminated with toxic waste. Advocates argued the facility should be demolished and the property redrawn for community use instead.
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But a recent Bureau of Prisons environmental assessment recommending the facility be permanently deactivated is, counterintuitively, the first step toward ICE’s goal of seizing it, speakers said Tuesday. That’s because federal law requires the bureau to assess its environmental impact before offloading it to the General Services Administration (GSA), which can then make it available to other interested federal agencies. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is the likeliest taker; it has already toured the facility with private prison contractors in tow, advocates said, though they didn’t know from what company.
“We know that ICE is specifically eying Northern California, because thanks to many years of successful community organizing, the ICE contracts in the region were ended,” said Susan Beaty, senior attorney at the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice. As a result, there are no immigration prisons north of Bakersfield, California.
“This limits ICE’s ability to conduct mass enforcement in the region and it’s part of why we here in the Bay Area have not seen the level of ICE terror that other parts of California have seen, including the Central Valley and Los Angeles,” Beaty said.
A SURVIVOR OF FCI DUBLIN, Aimee Chavira, described the horror of living there, including rodent infestation, rotten food, and brown drinking water that sickened her and other imprisoned women. Chavira was part of the class action lawsuit against the Bureau of Prisons for sexual abuse at the prison, a case that concluded with a record-breaking settlement of $116 million for 103 survivors.
Chavira, now an organizer with the Dublin Prison Solidarity Coalition, recounted working in the safety department, where prison staff forced her and others to paint over mold and rust before inspections, then working in the medical department mopping up blood and washing the rags in the same machines as clothing for the other women, with no bleach or disinfectant. She recalled women trying to kill themselves, saying, “It went through my mind. Why? Because you cannot live under these conditions.”
She fears for immigrants’ safety if the U.S. government forces them into FCI Dublin, she said, and described the racist threats guards made toward people speaking Spanish.
Failing physical conditions were also a factor in FCI Dublin’s closure, as detailed in a 2,700-page environmental assessment.
“I’m a U.S. citizen and my rights were violated and I was abused,” Chavira said. “What does it tell you? That these immigrants are going to be abused, which is not right.”
Advocates’ warning on Tuesday came at the same time that the Department of Homeland Security has closed the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, which is responsible for investigating misconduct and abuse inside ICE prisons.
“This decision once again illustrates how no one is safe in ICE custody. While Republicans in Congress continue to push for billions in additional ICE funding, the demands to cut ICE funding and repeal the billions of dollars passed in last year’s reconciliation bill remain abundantly clear, urgent, and necessary,” Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network, said in a press statement. “We must collectively call for an end to the ICE age to stop the loss of life in ICE custody and to keep people and communities safe.”
Eighteen people have died in ICE custody so far this year. According to the Prospect’s tracker of deaths and injuries caused by ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents, multiple people who died this year killed themselves.
FCI DUBLIN IS AT 5701 8TH STREET, about 40 miles east of San Francisco, and sits on an 87-acre parcel. The all-women’s prison was built in the early ’70s and abruptly closed in 2024 after the former director said she couldn’t stop the rampant sexual abuse and exploitation of prisoners. One of the “Rape Club” officers, Jeffrey Wilson, was sentenced earlier this month to 52 months in prison for raping a prisoner; he used his position as a health tech to withhold her seizure medication unless she gave him sex. He’s the ninth FCI Dublin correctional officer to have either pleaded guilty or been convicted of sexually abusing prisoners.
The failing physical conditions were also a factor in FCI Dublin’s closure, which the 2,700-page environmental assessment details. It says what Chavira and advocates already know—that it’s dangerous and uninhabitable.
The buildings are over 50 years old and deteriorating in every way imaginable, with cracked foundations, painted-over windows, crumbling drywall, and leaking roofs. Asbestos, mold, lead paint, and other poisons have ruined the air and soil. The drains are clogged and there’s no central power or chilled water. When it rains, the roads flood and water pools behind the building, eroding the soil and posing “a risk of sinkholes.” The sewerage system is leaking and potentially contaminating the groundwater. It is an active cleanup site for toxic hazards. Fixing all of it would cost about $26 million over three years and $118 million over a decade, the report says. It also says that the site was assessed as is, which advocates said means the government is considering giving it to ICE in its current state.
Chavira described abuses that went beyond the physical environment, including mental, verbal, and physical abuse.
“Every type of abuse that someone can think about, that’s what we went through,” Chavira said. “We were there to pay for something, we did it, we paid for our crime … but we went beyond paying for our crimes.”
Chavira also spoke of how the abuse now lives inside her head. She’s been out for a couple of years, “but it doesn’t go away.” The experience stripped away the belief that she’d had her whole life that citizens and noncitizens alike have rights. That the government is here to help you.
“That is not true,” she said. If it were, she wouldn’t be living with the trauma and thinking “the government allowed this.”
“There’s certain traumas that you cannot get rid of,” she said. “This is a trauma you cannot get rid of.”
Advocates on Tuesday characterized the environmental report as a prelude to the GSA giving the facility to ICE. After all, the GSA has an “ICE Surge Team” looking for properties ICE can use. The GSA could also make it available to the Department of Defense, which owns land next to FCI Dublin and has played a role in expanding immigration detention centers at other military sites, including at the Texas military base Fort Bliss.
Local lawmakers are bracing for impact either way and watching how ICE has reopened other detention centers in California “hastily and with blatant violations of local regulations,” advocates said in their press release. Those include the Central Valley Annex and the California City Detention Center, run by the two biggest private prison companies in the U.S., GEO Group and CoreCivic.
Early last month, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors unanimously adopted a resolution opposing reopening FCI Dublin to imprison anyone, including immigrants. Though the resolution is symbolic, Supervisor David Haubert called it “an expression of our community that we do not want this,” Local News Matters reported. Late last year, Dublin City Council members passed a similar resolution that urged the Department of Homeland Security and the prison bureau “to engage in open and transparent communication with the City regarding any decisions affecting the site,” which advocates on Tuesday said has not happened.
Local News Matters also noted that the Bay Area is contending with Trump’s call to reopen Alcatraz Island as a prison, which local leaders estimate will cost about $2 billion. The site is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the region, with 1.2 million visitors per year; it has not been a prison for 63 years.
Advocates urged people across the country to email the prison bureau before the end of the 30-day comment period at bop-adm-facilities-s@bop.gov, “making clear that FCI Dublin must be demolished, and the property can never be used to cage people ever again.” They also invited all to attend ongoing ICE Out of Dublin virtual meetings throughout the month.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.
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