Statement: SIREN Celebrates Success of Community Efforts to Shutdown Camp Roberts

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For Immediate Release:

June 3, 2021

Contact: Jose Servin, Communications Manager, SIREN

jose@sirenimmigrantrights.org, 714-728-2520


SIREN Celebrates Fed's Decision not to House Unaccompanied Minors at Toxic Camp Roberts Military Base - a Huge Win for the Immigrants’ Rights Community

   Today, SIREN and community advocates from the #ShutDownCampRoberts Coalition are celebrating the news that, after months of community-led advocacy and resistance, the department of Health and Human Services has announced they are no longer considering Camp Roberts military base in San Miguel, CA as a site to detain unaccompanied minors. 

SIREN expresses its deepest sympathy to the children seeking care, compassion and relief from economic and natural disaster at the southern border. As such, we have consistently advocated against the proposed use of Camp Roberts to house up to 5,000 unaccompanied minors on the grounds that a military base with active military members and a history of toxic waste disposal is  a completely inappropriate location for housing children. SIREN condemns the use of any facility that deprives an individual of the freedom of movement and contributes to the U.S’s damning legacy of family separation. We continue to advocate for a better way to exercise our duty to support the international community in times of need. 

“We celebrate today because we don’t have to worry about the danger and damage that 5,000 children would have surely faced at Camp Roberts. The fight continues until our demands are met. SIREN and our partners will continue to oppose child detention - at Camp Roberts and anywhere else. There is a better solution for these children that is not rooted in the immoral and unnecessary expansion of the carceral system,” said Maricela Gutierrez, Executive Director of SIREN.

We call on our local representatives to urge the Biden administration to take the following steps:

  • Rescind provisions in the Title 42 Health Code that expel asylum-seekers and result in institutionalized family separation

  • End the use of large-scale ‘intake’ and ‘influx’ for holding children, especially those that exist on military bases

  • Implement policies and protocols that expedite the reunification of children with trusted family members, relatives, and/or caregivers

  • Abolish all detention centers, jails and prisons

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