ICE Wants to Reopen the Crumbling Federal Prison Dubbed 'Rape Club' by Whitney Curry Wimbish

[justaprogressive]

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.

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.

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“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.”

https://prospect.org/2026/05/07/ice-wants-to-reopen-crumbling-federal-prison-rape-club-fci-dublin-california/