Three many years in the past, I used to be sentenced to life with the potential of parole in California. A misplaced, scared teenager, I discovered myself in a maximum-security jail: Pelican Bay Safety Housing Unit. Caught behind the cubic holes of a metallic door, I used to be one of many many hundreds of males despatched to solitary confinement. Each time I used to be taken out of the cell, my each motion was meticulously monitored. Two officers locked chains round my waist and irons on my ankles.
In these small corridors of eight cells per pod, I used to be taken away from the world and surrounded by a violent jail tradition. Anxiousness consumed me. Within the abyss of isolation, my solely human connections had been my next-door neighbors.
I refused to surrender. Unable to learn or write, I picked up an English dictionary, pen and paper. I devoured books, decided to be taught all the things about “The Land of the Free.” The extra I discovered, the extra I recognized with my new dwelling. I got here to like my adopted nation and by no means gave up on the potential of a second likelihood — perhaps even a home with a white picket fence to reside the American Dream.
To be discovered eligible for parole, I must be deemed by the parole board to be rehabilitated and not a hazard to public security. That’s the acknowledged objective of time spent in California prisons.
Underneath the state’s mannequin of “normalization,” I’m known as by my identify, not a quantity. I’m handled as an individual to create circumstances as shut as potential to life exterior of jail. The California Mannequin has given me the chance to work with the San Quentin jail administration on tasks that advance social justice and rehabilitation. Juvenile lifers like me have a recidivism rate of less than 2%.
All incarcerated persons are apprehensive about transition to the surface world. However in my case, the prospects are so daunting that I’m not even looking for parole. If I had been freed, I might go straight into the arms of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In 2023, California handed Meeting Invoice 1306 to forestall transfers into ICE custody as soon as an incarcerated immigrant is granted parole or compassionate launch. However Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill. Since 2019, California prisons have transferred more than 12,000 individuals into ICE custody. The state would do the identical to me if I had been launched.
In ICE custody, I would definitely be caught up in mass deportation to El Salvador, a nation I left behind as a 12-year-old. There, I might face yet one more life sentence in an El Salvadoran mega-prison, the notorious Terrorism Confinement Middle, or CECOT. El Salvador imprisons individuals they imagine to be related to gangs, which would come with me as a result of I tattooed myself as an adolescent. Being despatched to CECOT is even worse than the solitary confinement I skilled right here in California. I might be trapped inside a jail system constructed to isolate individuals and destroy human connections. It’s a digital demise sentence.
My older brother Gabriel resides this actuality proper now.
He was sentenced to life in California jail at 16 years previous. After 32 years incarcerated, he was granted parole, solely to be delivered into the arms of ICE. In September 2024, he was transported to CECOT.
Gabriel can not make cellphone calls, obtain guests and even write to my mom to let her know he’s alive.
“They simply killed my son,” exclaimed my mom over the cellphone. I felt powerless, gasping for air as I processed this horrible information. “I’ll by no means see him once more. He’s virtually useless,” she mentioned. She additionally informed me that if she fails to ship $7 a day to the Salvadoran jail system, Gabriel, if nonetheless alive, would most likely starve to demise.
Trapped between California’s normalization mannequin and CECOT’s black gap, I discover myself between the cement partitions of two distinct jail worlds.
I’m glued to my TV within the jail cell. I see ICE brokers chasing brown individuals throughout the fields that they harvest to feed Individuals. I ask myself: “Is that this the America I discovered about? Do immigrants’ lives matter?”
Malcolm X, who additionally discovered to learn and write in jail, fought towards the injustice and hatred of racism, and Martin Luther King Jr. preached the facility of affection and the worth of equality. That is the America I discovered about.
In right this moment’s America, nevertheless, actual freedom will not be an possibility for me.
Edwin E. Chavez has been incarcerated for 32 years, at present at San Quentin Rehabilitation Middle. He’s concerned in restorative justice and rehabilitation efforts.
