Welcome to Lumpkin

Welcome to Lumpkin, GA

Population: 1100

Detained immigrant population: 1900

Since early September I have been in Lumpkin, GA. While at first glance it seems to be a ghost town, if you happen to catch the early morning traffic at the one gas station, the lunch rush at Lily’s Café, or the late afternoon dinner needs being met at the Dollar General — the only store that meets “general household needs” in town — you may start to believe otherwise.

What you likely won’t catch is that it is also home to Stewart Detention Center — which is the largest immigrant detention facility east of the Mississippi. This facility has been in operation as an immigrant detention center since 2010, with beds for 1800 despite the last public report showing they held over an average of 1900 people the government has identified as men each day. This facility sits just under one mile out of town, hidden behind a few groves of trees, a field of bright goldenrod and purple trail vines, a long road that curves into a hidden parking lot, and a few very plain and worn out signs saying “Detention Center” as you approach. You don’t see the massively high chain link fences, topped with 2 rows of concertina wire from the road. You certainly don’t see the 4 tiny court rooms inside where politically appointed judges sit, who between 2013 and 2018 denied 93.5% of asylum seekers to the US, in comparison to 57.6% nationally, or how the majority of the detained immigrants lack legal representation for various reasons but prevalent among those is the extremely remote location of the facility and lack of services for lawyers to be more present.

Folks keep asking me, what are you doing there, in Lumpkin, at Stewart? The truth is — I don’t know yet. I only know that I went and I was appalled. I couldn’t return to doing something that seemed to only serve myself, not after the commitments that I made this year, not after reevaluating my own complicity in the world, in this society that we are currently living in. I sit daily with heavy feelings about the awareness I have, about the role of white antiracists, about dismantling the structures that are hurting so many while actually trying to live and thrive within what currently exists. I question so many things every day but I never question that what we must do is change so much of our society right now, and that perhaps there is something I can do during my time here.

There was an incident in Chapel Hill just a week before my first visit to Lumpkin, GA, that keeps resonating with me every day that I go sit in the immigration courtrooms. After my own trial, a handful of us were wanting to enjoy a beer and rehash the afternoon’s fuckery. While sitting at a bar across the street from campus, we observed some North Carolina based local right wing conspiracy theorists hanging out on McCorkle place and we stepped up to see what they were doing.

One of them, running for political office, was challenged on his platform of wanting to stop all immigration to the United States for the next ten years and I asked him, “Like, how do you justify that, what is your reason?” He laughed in my face and said, “We are full!”

We are full?

Where?

How?

When?

Since early July, I’ve driven thousands and thousands of miles from the east coast to the Midwest to the deep South and even ended up over in Texas for a few days. I hate city traffic (ok, cities in general) and consciously manipulate my GPS to avoid them. Do you know what I see when I do this, as I drive hundreds and thousands of miles? I see empty space, beauty, and opportunity. Way too often I also see destitution. I see towns devastated by economic collapses, automation, loss of jobs, loss of union jobs, loss of their hospitals or clinics or social services. Grocery stores are gone, farm stands are shuttered and rotting. All of these things that provided for our communities…are gone or have become extremely limited, particularly here in the rural South. I see these towns and I see these hours and hours of roads and space in between them and I can only think that we have so much room.

Yet we say that someone trying to feed their family or somebody trying to escape persecution for their sexuality or their political beliefs or gang violence so intense that it demands more obedience than a country’s government has somehow threatened us? Has somehow made us less safe? As opposed to the lack of safety when corporations and misaligned local and federal government budgets have stolen our livelihoods and communities away from us? When the drive to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and the individualism that we teach and preach through so much in our society has stolen the hearts of our communities from us, has even stolen our reasoning for understanding the complex world?

How can we look at another human being who is also struggling in this world or who is even struggling worse and say, “You! You are the cause, you who I know nothing about, who was born in a place I don’t understand, whose family has probably strived for some sort of food and shelter for themselves or could not strive for this because they were born into a family or a community or a country already struggling and in chaos. You are the cause for our hardship!”

How have we come to such a place where we say that we should put people in cages, rip children from their parents, or create double and triple jeopardy for those who have been criminalized by the government? How has this become a priority in the name of safety or protective measures instead of pushing for us all to have the basic human needs for survival met — such as safety, food, clean water, and stable housing to meet diverse family structures?

Every day that I sit in court, I listen to the hypocrisy of how we define safety, threats to our community, (in)stability of individuals. The values that I believed our society governed and strived for when I was still young and naïve are nowhere to be seen. The reasons that I have heard stated by government attorneys or judges that have been given to deny somebody bond have been unbelievable. One from a couple weeks ago was that he had multiple (2?) children by two women and has moved around the country a lot for different jobs. I just wanted to scream, “Well, bitch, that’s gawd damn near everybody I know in the military, practically!” Should we all be denied our loved ones and safety and stability, like many of our military deported brothers and sisters already are, when relationships change or jobs become scarce or our traumas and lack of personal securities manifest in being criminalized by the government? These same human realities exist across all of us, regardless of our religious or national affiliations, often despite our religious beliefs and national affiliations.

So what am I doing in Lumpkin? While I am still unsure, I hope that I am most importantly bearing witness and joining with thousands of others in continuing to expose the hypocrisies of this broken and heartless system. I am also connecting with the detained people as I can — whether through an encouraging “Buenos dias, good morning,” and smile in the courtroom or a letter or a visit — and the families who often come with a limited understanding of the courts and detention center policies. Detained people have shared with their lawyers that the mere presence of a courtroom observer or lawyer positively changes the judge’s general treatment of them (which is frightening, because one judge in particular already treats them pretty poorly even in our presence). In Lumpkin, I am being present and acknowledging the reality of what is happening across the country.

I hope that you will bear witness with me.

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