Baldwin, MI: Noise Demo Rallies Against Geo Group’s Notorious Detention Camp

Report from No Detention Centers in Michigan on New Year’s Eve noise demonstration outside of Geo Group ran immigration detention prison.

On New Year’s Eve, Tuesday, December 31st, 2019, dozens of people from around the state of Michigan gathered outside the North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin to greet a new decade of resistance and to make sure that the immigrants imprisoned there know they are not alone.

North Lake is a prison recently reopened by the GEO Group, one of the largest and most notorious private detention firms in the country, to incarcerate undocumented immigrants who have been convicted of so-called federal crimes. Immigrant-only facilities like this one, run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, are known as “shadow prisons” because of the secrecy and opacity with which they operate.

As of October 2019, North Lake is the only such prison in the entire Midwest. It’s hidden away in Lake County, a beautiful area where communities struggling with poverty deserve better than the GEO Group’s economic exploitation and incentivized cruelty. In its efforts to disguise the racist violence of the carceral system from which it profits, GEO (and those who echo its propaganda) will often claim that this facility is for “bad people,” that it has nothing to do with ICE and plays no part in the separation of immigrant families.

As of October 2019, North Lake is the only such prison in the entire Midwest.

But not only do we know that immigration-related offenses such as unauthorized reentry have recently become the largest class of federal crime; we also offer our support to all imprisoned immigrants, whatever their stories are, because everyone deserves dignity and respect. We understand that GEO runs concentration camps at the border for ICE, and also that prisons of all kinds separate families every day and have done so for generations.

This is why we met outside North Lake at the dawn of a new year with music, chanting, and bright lights. We broadcast messages with the hope of making it easier for prisoners at North Lake to contact us, and we urge anyone who has any information on people incarcerated at North Lake to send us a message on Facebook or email us at [email protected]

We’ll keep coming back and keep organizing until North Lake is closed and the people held in shadow prisons are free.