By Peyton Fleming
When Egyptian-born Izzy Aly was released from a Pennsylvania ICE detention center in late June, it wasn’t a stroke of random luck.
The 40-year-old’s discharge after six grueling months inside the massive Moshannon Valley facility—despite his deteriorating health and stage 3 kidney disease—was the hard-won result of immigrant rights advocates fighting for his freedom.
Aly was released June 19 after an extensive legal and public relations campaign by the nonprofit immigrant group Juntos and its Moshannon Valley Support Network. Three days later, Aly was back home in Florida, beaming as friends wearing “Free Izzy” t-shirts greeted him at the Amtrak train platform in Orlando.
These nonprofits, and hundreds like them around the country, are helping detained immigrants secure legal aid and essential resources. This support is critical at Moshannon—a sprawling ICE facility run by the private prison corporation GEO Group—where three detainees have died in the last three years.
Yet, today, these grassroots organizations are at a breaking point. With nationwide ICE detentions surging, groups like Juntos desperately need immediate funding to keep pace with the soaring demand for bond fees, legal representation and basic necessities for those locked inside prisons.
Aly, who spent 13 years studying and working in the U.S. while awaiting approval on his green card, was one of the lucky ones who got out. Returning to Philadelphia after a trip to Egypt to grieve his father’s passing, he was arrested by immigration authorities and sent to Moshannon, where his health suffered and he lost 45 pounds.
Activists learned of his plight from one of Izzy’s friends. They sprang into action, holding press conferences, organizing protests and funneling direct aid to Aly. The effort was coordinated through the Shutdown Detention Campaign.
“Juntos and the entire Shutdown Detention Campaign are working tirelessly to connect family members, loved ones and folks being detained inside Moshannon with the resources they need,” said Megan Guidi, founder of Pittsburgh Women for Democracy and a Shutdown Detention and an Indivisible PA Steering Committee member. “With additional funds, organizations like Juntos could support so many more people and families as they navigate a broken immigration system and an administration focused more on cruelty than constitutionality.”
We’re hearing these stories all across the country as thousands of people, most with no criminal convictions of any kind, are being detained every day.
“Our bond fund is depleted and help is needed,” said Susan Shepard, treasurer of the Beyond Bond & Legal Defense Fund, a project of the Boston Immigrant Justice Accompaniment Network (BIJAN), which has spent $1.9 million on bond fees this year to help 220 detained immigrants gain freedom from ICE jails.
Shepard said higher bond fees are also squeezing resources. “Bond amounts have gotten outrageously higher in the past year as judges need to look tough on immigrants,” she said.
The De-ICE Citizens Bank Coalition, which is pressuring Citizens Bank to cut financial ties with ICE prison companies, is holding a ‘Solidarity Donations’ campaign on Saturday, July 18 as part of the 80+ standouts being held outside Citizens’ bank branches across the Eastern US.
Beyond building awareness about Citizens’ deplorable role in funding ICE prisons, we’re shining a light on the enormous stress that immigrant families and community groups helping them are facing today. Direct aid efforts such as Juntos and the BIJAN Bond Fund desperately need support.
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Wonderful story!