GAINESVILLE – “Not here. Not now. Not ever,” declared faith leaders and activists outside the U.S. District Courthouse on Friday morning, where nearly 100 people gathered to oppose a proposed ICE detention facility in Clay County.
North Central Florida Indivisible, NCFI, organized the rally, a chapter of the Indivisible nonprofit organization. According to their website, their goal is to have, “a real democracy — of, by and for the people.”
Jyoti Parmar is the executive director of NCFI. She was born in India and immigrated to the United States in 1981.
“I learned early on after arrival in the US,” Parmar said, “that my status here was not the normal status I had at home in India, but a special conditional status where people were perfectly fine with me as long as I did not seem too foreign nor different. It took a decade to learn that I am often presumed to be guilty of the very things people are doing to me.”
Parmar said she was happy with the turnout, advertised on Facebook and through community outreach, even with little notice.
“I thought it was really necessary to gather our faith leaders,” she said. “They can preach from a moral standpoint and help get the word out.”
The protesters said they wanted taxpayers to know their dollars would be funding the facility. Parmar said this goes against the basic laws of the country.
“We cannot have our tax dollars and our representatives doing work that is against our moral values,” she said. “This country was built on the idea of the dignity of a human being and not having laws and anything imposed on them by kings — whether they crowd or take power by force.”
The Clay County facility would be the second announced so far this year, the first being “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Big Cypress National Preserve in the Everglades.
According to the Associated Press, the south Florida facility started accepting detainees on July 3 after President Donald Trump visited the center announcing a plan to house over 3,000 people.
The north Florida proposed site would be at Camp Blanding,a training facility for Florida national guardsmen just outside of Starke. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the plan for a new facility in June. He said it would complement the south Florida facility.
“We can’t have every illegal housed in our jails,” he said at the bill signing. “We actually have non-illegals who need to be housed there when they commit crimes too.”
Rev. Rebecca Putnam was also one of the leaders at the event. She is the pastor at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Gainesville and disagrees with the detainment of immigrants.
“I feel as someone who recognizes the inherent dignity of every human life,” she said. “That I can’t stand by and say nothing to this type of unjust detainment.”
She says her facility has served as a sanctuary church in the past in partnership with non-profit organizations.
In the early days of President Trump’s second term, he reversed a policy that designated certain locations including places of worship as typically safe from immigration enforcement activities. Those opposed said the move went against the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a law passed in 1993 to protect people’s religious freedoms from governmental interference.
“This action empowers the brave men and women in CBP and ICE to enforce our immigration laws and catch criminal aliens,” said the Department of Homeland Security the day of the reversal. “Including murderers and rapists — who have illegally come into our country. Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest.”
From day one of his second term, churches nationwide have joined a lawsuit against the Trump administration for the reversal — including Putnam and her church. According to the Associated Press, three months after the lawsuit was filed, the court sided with the president.
“This is not a righteous detainment of people who are dangerous,” Putnam said. “This is an unjust imprisonment of our friends and neighbors of people who are just trying to live a better life.”
Ethan Maia de Needell, 31 of Gainesville, said the nationwide ICE raids are shocking. According to an ICE post in May, between April 21 and 26 just over 1,100 immigrants were detained in the state of Florida — the largest number in one state in five days in ICE’s history.
“People are disappearing everyday,” he said. “Countless news stories are coming up… and it’s so easy for things to happen in our own backyard to slip beyond our notice. We want to raise awareness that this is happening because something needs to be done.”
After this event, NCFI is planning another protest at Camp Blanding to double down on their opposition to the plans.