About KWESI

KWESI started in 2015, when an asylum seeker from Ghana named Kwesi requested a visit. He was released in May 2015 after spending two years in detention. He was only released because of the tireless advocacy—including protests, letters and appeals by lawyers and community activists.

Since then, members of KWESI have been regularly visiting asylum seekers and other immigrants awaiting deportation hearings who are from all over the world: Afghanistan, Belarus, Cameroon, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Iran, Iraq, México, Nigeria, Russia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Uzbekistan, and others.

KWESI also helps support those who have been released from detention. Immigrants often come to this country with little more than the clothes on their backs. Often, ICE “loses” all their belongings when they are transferred between various detention facilities across the country. We offer them clothes, backpacks, toiletries, and food to take with them on their way to where they will start their new life in the U.S. They also often need bus or train tickets as well. Frequently, they need a place to stay for a night (and in some cases, KWESI members have housed asylees for months!) as they make arrangements. We do not proselytize religion or offer legal advice to immigrants.

All of the people in detention are awaiting hearings in immigration court. Judges who handle the cases of those detained in Kern County are based in San Francisco Bay Area, Adelanto, and Van Nuys, and hearings are conducted remotely via video teleconference. The attorneys who handle these cases that are largely pro bono are also based in the Bay Area, though some of them make the 5 hour drive periodically to meet clients face to face. SF Immigration Court was recently closed, leaving a backlog of cases for that court alone of 120,000.

Golden State Annex opened in McFarland at the height of Covid in 2020. It has a capacity of 700.

Next door to Golden State Annex, is Central Valley Annex, which can also hold 700 immigrants. It opened in 2026. Both facilities are operated by the multibillion dollar international prison corporation, GEO.

In 2025, CoreCivic opened the detention facility in California City, which has capacity to imprison 2600 individuals. This is the largest facility in California. 

In total, more than 4000 immigrants from all over the country are detained here in Kern County.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), which doubled the number of people in immigration detention from 8,500 each day in 1996 to 16,000 in 1998. These laws gave the U.S. government the ability to deport lawful permanent residents convicted of certain crimes, required victims of persecution abroad to be immediately detained when claiming asylum at a U.S. port of entry, and took discretion away from judges to grant release to certain immigrants, creating a class of individuals in “mandatory” immigration detention. Today, the detention population has increased fourfold to more than 34,000 individuals each day, due in part to a Congressionally mandated lock-up quota.

This lock-up system is not only inhumane, but also a massive waste of taxpayer dollars. Congress has allocated a huge budget to immigration detention. ICE estimates that it costs the government $12,500 to deport each individual, but when the costs of apprehension, detention, legal processing, and transportation are combined, the government spends more than $23,000 to deport each person. Detention alone cost taxpayers approximately $2 billion in 2015.
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Since no independent oversight of the system is in place, people in immigration detention are vulnerable to abuse. Immigrants in detention facilities around the United States are often subjected to punitive and long-term solitary confinement. They are provided inadequate medical care, vulnerable to rape and assault, and often isolated from access to legal assistance and community support.