MY FRIEND IN DETENTION
By: Valeria Castro Abril
The Otay Mesa Detention Center is located at the base of Otay Mountain, which is the tallest peak in the San Ysidro Mountain Range. These mountains lie just North of the San Diego/Tijuana border. I have walked through the thick brush of this terrain, down makeshift trails covered with evidence of human passage. Gatorade bottles, clothes, backpacks, medicine. The detention center is an upright blocky complex, crowned with rows of barbed wire. The Richard J Donovan Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison, is located less than a mile away. In the parking lot on my first visit, I was warned by a worker that I would be allowed in with only two belongings on my person.
“Just your keys and your ID,” he said from the window of his pick-up truck. The name Core Civic was stamped on the driver’s door and proudly displayed at the entrance to the lot. Core Civic is the company contracted by the U.S. government to operate this facility and over 80 others like it across the country. Last week was my third time in a detention center and the second time I'd visited my friend who’s been detained there since December.
“Do you have an ID, do you have any weapons on you?” A voice buzzed from the intercom. I do have an ID, I do not have any weapons. After a suspenseful couple of seconds, the heavy iron gate jolted and began opening before me. Its heft was impressive. I pictured it catching me in between, not slowing as it crushed me down the middle.
My slight familiarity with this process brought some ease to my steps as I entered the building. Inside the lobby were rows of metal benches, two vending machines, and a TV mounted on the wall. There was a small circular table adorned with a rose and white tablecloth. Hanging by the table, and I suppose the reason for such romance, was a black and white POW MIA flag. Beyond the snacks and the seating was the metal detector, x-ray machine, and bin-stack area one must pass through after they've checked in. In a few minutes the families, loved ones, and otherwise supporters of the folks who are locked up were called to make a line so that we may be escorted through the facility. We removed our shoes one by one, and passed quietly through the humming machines. We were led up several sets of stairs and through passages where the doors shut behind us as we went, then we arrived in the visitation room.
“Pick a chair, a red chair,” the guard said. “You will not exchange anything with the detainees. You are allowed one kiss and one hug at the beginning and at the end of the visit. These are optional, don't make it awkward.”
This guard's subdued warmth and dry humor stood out in the cold atmosphere. I picked a table on the outer edge with one red chair and one white chair facing each other. The table had a plastic divider in the middle, about the size of a ping-pong net. If the visitor and detainee wish to hold hands, they must do so with this plastic barrier held between. As the detainees were brought in, all wearing their dark blue scrubs, I could see their eyes excitedly scan the room like children in a school recital. My friend was near the end of the line; I waved and smiled as he met me. He is not a hugger but we hug because that is what you do when someone is hurting. You smile when you greet them and you give them a hug and you don't pull back until they do. I did not know my friend (only of him) before he was detained. His mom had told me about him months before, had mentioned his trusting nature, how it got him into trouble.
It is not lost on me how this may look, how it may ring in the ears of more prudent souls. I am a young-ish woman, twenty-six, and still living a life free from much obligation. My friend is twenty-two and a young man. Young men, he's told me on the phone, do not have the same discernment women do. My intention was to provide information and accompaniment. I had access, as a citizen, that he and his mother did not. The ability to go to the place where they lock up immigrants without much fear of being locked up myself. Nonetheless, the ethics of the whole thing used to rattle in my brain– the way things may look. Now I trust that true intentions are something to lean on. And my intention was to be there with a young man affected unjustly by the times.
I understand, too, that this is not behavior that most people would engage in. It is a bit bizarre to visit somebody who is imprisoned without knowing them. But didn't all the great benevolent rockstars do it too? Jesus and Mother Teresa? It is with that spirit of benevolence that I come, I tell myself. Not desperation. Not desperation at the violence I see all around me, not at the magnitude of pain. Not at my own loneliness, my own inner feelings of lack. I am no Mother Teresa.
I spoke with my friend for an hour. We laughed and discussed his case. He described me as elegant in my black shirt and black pants. I noticed the dimple in his cheek, only one. Soon the hour was over, detainees and visitors hugged and kissed. Some couples exceeded their one kiss allotment. Most embraced lovingly, some exchanged wet kisses. These felt strange in the stiff and fluorescently-lit room. I must admit my own discomfort at being witness to their PDA. It only makes sense, though, that ravenous affection would spring up here. Perhaps the reason for the single hug-and-kiss rule in the first place. My friend and I hugged once more, our allotment, and we both waved as we went out different doors. Him, back to the inner crevices of this eerie man-made cavern. Me, out into the dark and silence of Saturday evening.
I find my car in the now nearly empty lot and drive away from the facility. I carry the silence home, give thanks to God for my ability to leave that place. I visit my friend when I can, answer the phone when he calls. He does not ask much from me: to get in touch with someone or another, to send him pictures of his baby sister. Mostly, and this is the harder more complicated thing, he asks me to have faith. He recites Joshua 1:9 from memory over the phone.
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.
I trust that he is onto something.