Riya Khan was living every immigrant parent's dream: getting a law degree in Florida.
When she found out her mother was kidnapped by ICE at a routine immigration appointment, she rushed home to California to help. While visiting her mom at CoreCivic-owned California City Detention Center, she could tell something wasn’t right.
Her 64-year-old mother was quickly deteriorating, being denied her daily medications for high blood pressure, hypothyroidism, and pre-diabetes. Her blood pressure was dangerously high, putting her at immediate risk of stroke.
Riya and her father were able to advocate for her mother's release, but what happens to families who don't have law degrees? Or money for good lawyers? Or don't even speak English?
Since then, California State Senator Sasha Renée Pérez authored SB995, the Masuma Khan Justice Act, which would allow regular inspections of for-profit detention centers by local health and safety authorities, and fine these private corporate institutions $25,000 per violation, per day, paid to U.S. taxpayers.
The bill passed unanimously with bipartisan support, but was mysteriously struck down by the California State Senate Appropriations Committee headed by Democrat Buffy Wicks.
Senator Pérez has kept the fight alive, including the language from the Masuma Khan Justice Act in an amendment to SB957. Advocates are asking that California residents please reach out to Buffy Wicks, Gavin Newsom, and Robert Rivas to demand a vote on SB957.
Buffy Wicks: (916) 319-2014
Robert Rivas: (916) 319-2029
Gavin Newsom: (916) 445-2841
In my coverage of private for-profit detention centers, I have repeatedly been trying to get the word out that these centers are committing corruption in plain sight, stealing tax dollars from all Americans regardless of political affiliation or feelings on immigration.
It's a problem when the president is Republican. It's a problem when the president is Democrat. It is a completely nonpartisan issue, that everyone who isn't a rich detention center executive should be united in fighting.
What California State Assembly Appropriations Committee did to the Masuma Khan Justice Act should be a wake-up call that the corruption runs deep, and that politicians on both sides of the aisle are accepting favors in exchange for enriching CoreCivic and GEO Group's owners with regular working people's tax dollars – and they aren't even getting immigration control out of the deal.
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