Bay Area activists march 50 miles over fears FCI Dublin could become ICE detention center

DUBLIN — With blisters on their feet and sunburnt shoulders, hundreds from across the Bay Area ended their 50-mile trek Monday outside FCI Dublin, where fears are mounting the shuttered women’s prison could be revived as an immigration detention facility despite federal denials.

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With flags in hand, immigrant rights organizers and volunteers chanted in opposition to what federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have called “the largest deportation effort in American history.”

While typically focused on immigration issues, the fourth annual caminata — Spanish for hike — began this year on Saturday in downtown Napa and ended at the prison.

Starting at about 7 a.m. and ending around 5 p.m. each day, the three-day event occurred as federal officials have floated plans to create and expand immigration detention facilities in Northern California — with Dublin, Gilroy and Alcatraz discussed as possible sites.

“My energy comes from the fight against ICE, the fight to defend human rights, the fight to get ICE out of the Bay and say ‘no’ to these damn detention centers,” said Danny Celaya, an organizer with CSO Oakland. “This walk has folks from all across the Bay, Petaluma, Santa Rosa, Napa, Vallejo, San Francisco, Oakland, all over the place.”

FCI Dublin closed in December 2024 after accusations the prison staff, including the warden, oversaw rampant sexual abuse of inmates as part of a “rape club” at the low-security women’s facility.

The Department of Justice charged 10 former correctional officers with sexual abuse crimes. The Federal Bureau of Prisons closed the site in 2024 due to deteriorating conditions and understaffing.

In February, Bay Area lawmakers raised concerns that the Bureau of Prisons was considering reopening FCI Dublin for use as an immigrant detention center. The federal agency released a 2,700-page environmental impact report of the site, which found a leaking sewer system, mold, diesel fuel contamination, asbestos and lead.

The cost to remediate the site was estimated to be $118 million over a decade, according to the report.

A federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson said there were no plans to reopen the prison. A spokesperson for ICE also said there were no plans to reopen FCI Dublin, but the agency was working to expand detention capacity for the Trump administration’s massive deportation goals.

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Those denials didn’t stop the Northern California Coalition for Just Immigration Reform from holding its annual march. This year, however, was different.

Organizers said ICE enforcement actions by the Trump administration in Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago and Minneapolis had caused further stress and concern among immigrant communities.

“I have staff who have impacted family members. We represent immigrants in legal proceedings, so we have seen the fear, the concern and the anxieties induced by this federal government,” said Huy Tran, the executive director for the San Jose-based immigrant rights organization SIREN. “This has been the worst time for immigrants, at least in my lifetime.”

As their chants echoed through the numerous subdivisions along their path, many who walked wore monarch butterfly insignias, a symbol for migrants because of the butterflies’ cross-border migration.

“The monarch butterfly, for many years now, has come to represent migration and migrants because butterflies freely cross borders,” said Renee Saucedo, an organizer for the Sonoma County Sanctuary Coalition. “It is natural for them to migrate, and so that philosophy is applied also to people. People should have the freedom to migrate.”

Speakers on Monday described FCI Dublin in stark terms: an institution of rampant sexual abuse, a corrupt site of dehumanization and a potential concentration camp for immigrants.

One sign read, “No Dublin Dachau! No ICE.”

Tran said the march showed the Bay Area’s solidarity with the immigrant community. He asked that residents in the region acknowledge and see how immigrants are an intrinsic part of their daily lives.

“We’re facing the reality of FCI turning into a detention center and ICE expanding its facilities in Gilroy,” Tran said. “We have a relentless federal government ignoring constitutional norms, ignoring our rights, and looking for any opportunity to build out its power to detain people.”

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