When people arrive at the Ste. Genevieve jail after being arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, they can go days in detention without reaching their families.
“Can you imagine not knowing where your spouse is for five or six days? That, to me, is just horrifying,” said Susan Johnson, an activist in the southeast Missouri county providing aid to detainees during their stay at the jail.
In July, Johnson began organizing volunteers in her hometown of 5,000 people after learning about the work of Abide in Love activists supporting federal detainees in Rolla and became the organization's first affiliate chapter.
The jail in Ste. Genevieve is one of four in the state that contract with the federal government to house people awaiting immigration proceedings, including deportation.
Ste. Genevieve Chief Deputy Jason Schott did not disclose how much money the county receives to house the detainees, but Phelps County reported a rate of $85 per detainee per night. The jail in Rolla recently decided to end its acceptance of ICE detainees.
The Ste. Genevieve jail is overseen by the sheriff’s department and has a capacity of 450 detainees, but Schott did not say how many ICE detainees are at the jail on average per day. Unlike some other jails in the state, the Ste. Genevieve County Detention Center does not post a public roster of its inmates.
“They are cared for here and we treat them like human beings,” Schott said. “They've come into our facility because we've been asked to house the individual due to either a crime or they've come into the country through a process that's illegal for the lack of better terms, but they are cared for here until they are transported out of our facility and taken to another place, or are taken out of the country.”
St. Louis Public Radio’s Ulaa Kuziez spoke with Johnson and Sara Drost, members of Abide in Love Ste. Genevieve.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Kuziez: Why was it so important to try to find a way to support the detainees in Ste. Genevieve?
Johnson: So many of them are just taken. I like to use the word abducted because that's what is happening. They are taken from traffic stops, car accidents, job sites, you name it, and their families don't know where they are. The very first person I was asked to help, the wife did not know where her husband was for five or six days. She actually got in touch with the group in Phelps County, and they found him in the Ste. Genevieve county jail, and I'm still corresponding with him and his wife. They deserve to get a phone call home, they deserve to have their loved ones know that they are safe and know where they are.
Kuziez: What kind of support has the group been offering people detained by ICE at the Ste. Genevieve County Detention Center?
Dorst: I would say the main thing that we do is what we call our pen pals. They directly communicate with the detainees, and they see, they find out what they need the most at that time. So if they need a calling card to call their families, we supply that. If they need legal assistance, we try to connect them. We can find out court dates for them, if they don't know when things are happening. When we started, we found out that our jail had zero Spanish reading materials, and like 90% of the population coming in was Hispanic or Latino. So we supplied some Spanish reading materials to the pods that have ICE detainees.
Kuziez: Have you been receiving support from the community in Ste. Genevieve or even outside of Ste. Genevieve?
Johnson: Yes, it's been really nice to see. Our volunteer list is getting huge. I don't think we're going to fit in our meeting space much longer, but we've got lots of local support, lots of St. Louis support. We are nonpartisan, nonreligious, but we're finding some of our big supporters are actually members of the Catholic Church. But even in Ste. Genevieve, I've just been surprised. I've had people after I wrote a letter to the editor, dropping checks off at my house.
And we've really seen very little negative feedback. I think people understand what we're doing. Our big message is about how these folks aren't being charged with any crimes. They aren't criminals. They haven't committed these heinous crimes that sometimes the news is telling us that they are doing. They're not gang members. They're just moms and dads and, you know, brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles, and they're just here trying to live their lives, and they are contributing to the community, and by putting them in jail, they're not contributing the community, and their families are suffering because of it.
Kuziez: Can you talk about your relationship with local elected officials and the county staff?
Johnson: Honestly, most of what we're doing, we're able to do independently. The jail uses a service called City Tele Coin, and so it's a third party that handles all of the communication. So basically, as long as you have enough money, you can communicate with anyone in our jail. So it hasn't really required us to be super involved with elected officials. In our day to day, we have lots of questions as far as some of the things that detainees bring to us that we don't know about, and it would be great to have some responses to those questions. I think we're trying to stay within our scope. We would obviously love to work with the county officials if there's a way we could make their jobs easier by assisting these detainees. You know, if they're not scared, if they're not worried, that would probably help the jail staff as well.
Kuziez: Sara, how does it make you feel knowing so many of your neighbors and community members support this work?
Dorst: It warms my heart. It keeps me going. It can be very heavy work when you hear some of the stories, and when we've been working with someone for so long, and then they are deported, that’s hard. When I have worked with the families in person, I see the absolute terror in their faces when they're saying: "I can't go back. I can't go back there. I will be killed. My children will be taken." When I was at our last meeting, and I looked around the room, and I saw all these people who want to help, and all these people who want to make a difference, and I see the groups of people who are sending in contributions, or who are helping with the transportation, it's definitely reassuring, and it gives me a little bit more hope in humanity.
Kuziez: The jail in Phelps County in Rolla recently cut ties with ICE so they'll no longer house detainees that ICE picks up. What’s your reaction to that? Is that something that you hope the Ste. Genevieve jail would do as well?
Johnson: I've got pretty mixed feelings about that. What the Phelps County Abide in Love was doing is great … because at least when they were in the Phelps County Jail, they could help. And now no one knows where all those detainees are going to go. If Ste. Genevieve no longer houses ICE detainees, I would probably be quite glad, because I have serious moral issues with the whole system. But then I would be concerned about where they are going, and if there is a group like us wherever it is they're going. As long as we have ICE detainees, we're going to continue doing what we're doing. I see it as a form of protest. We're helping them and and we're not standing out in front of the sheriff's department with signs, but we're actually doing something that's helping their terrible situation.
