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By Nasreen Mahmud, DiEM25, August 10, 2026

California’s fight against immigration detention offers lessons as the EU embraces mass deportation.

Federal officials are ramping up their efforts to bypass local laws and open new ICE hubs in central California with the goal of accelerating mass detention and deportations in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Currently they have to transport detainees south to conservative Kern County which creates operational strain, complicates logistics and makes rapid, high-volume immigration enforcement in Northern California impossible.

We have no active ICE detention facilities thanks to years of sustained local grassroots organizing and aggressive state legislative campaigns blocking them. ICE’s presence in the region is limited to its Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Field Office in San Francisco, which is bad enough. Although an administrative office, people are detained in its internal holding cells for days. The city and state’s sanctuary laws can’t shut it down because it’s located in a federally-owned building.

Prolonged political and legal resistance has also driven private prison operators to focus elsewhere by making their attempts to establish footholds legally, financially and logistically unviable.

But now, ICE is trying to re-open FCI Dublin – a women’s prison forced to close because of systemic sexual abuse, other human rights failures and hazardous structural decay like toxic mold, asbestos and leaking sewer systems – as a detention facility. Meanwhile, in nearby Gilroy, activists recently exposed ICE’s  secret lease of 24 acres of protected agricultural land meant for a 20,000 ft2 processing and short-term holding facility.

There’s fierce resistance from local communities, advocates and elected officials who can see this expansion is a direct threat to our immigrant neighbors, regional economy and public safety. It will create a profound chilling effect and generate widespread fear that keeps members of undocumented and mixed-status families from attending schools, seeking healthcare, reporting crimes against them, going to work or even just leaving their homes.

DiEM25 advocates for Migration Justice because migration is a human right. We oppose the use of private prisons because they generate dirty corporate profits and consider expanding detention facilities and conducting immigration crackdowns a violation of fundamental human dignity.

As a transnational movement, our response must be local and international. DiEM25 members should support the work being done by groups like the ICE Out of Dublin Coalition or the ICE Out of Gilroy Coalition. Participate in protests and marches, keep the pressure on local governments, county officials across the region and state officials to oppose any ICE plans for either site, and most importantly, help protect vulnerable undocumented people and mixed-status families across the region.

With the EU increasingly drawing inspiration from Donald Trump, we also need to confront the continuing ICE-ification of the bloc’s migration policy. The newly approved Return Regulation mimics US policy by creating a heavily policed forced return infrastructure. It  empowers national forces, backed by Frontex, to hunt undocumented migrants to enforce deportation orders, including raiding homes and workplaces.

By the end of this summer, return hubs will be established outside the EU, where people with rejected asylum claims will be held indefinitely. From autumn 2027, migrants deemed a flight risk or uncooperative face being detained for up to two and a half years, even families and minors in some situations. Those who refuse to actively participate in their own deportation can face fines, strict entry bans and criminal charges. Member states will also be able to strip them of social benefits and basic allowances to compel them to leave.

We should oppose these changes by using California’s anti-detention strategy: push for sanctuary cities and non-cooperation ordinances, attempt to ban detention facilities locally, establish rapid response and legal defense networks and create sanctuary zones in public services.

A democratic Europe cannot be built by abandoning those seeking safety: it can only be built by defending the rights and dignity of all.

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