los angeles

About BAJI Los Angeles

The BAJI LA Organizing Committee is a group of powerful volunteers committed to migrant’s rights, racial justice, and liberation for all oppressed communities. Members attend monthly meetings and plan campaigns and events to advance a collective vision for transformation.

Earlier this year BAJI expanded its work to support Black immigrants and refugees criminalized by Trump’s deportation machine by launching the first ever Black Immigrant Bond Fund.  Through the fund, BAJI LA was able to bond out Black immigrants detained at the Adelanto Detention Center in the Southern California which has been dubbed the deadliest detention center of 2017.

Last year, nearly 50,000 Black migrants and families entered the U.S. at the southern border seeking refuge. Thousands from Africa and Haiti have shown up at California ports of entry. Many of them are immediately incarcerated in detention centers throughout the state. By September more than a third of the detainees being held in California immigration prisons were from outside Latin America. Adelanto detainees began making headlines this summer by going on three hunger strikes against impossibly high bonds and inhumane living conditions that include physical abuse and medical neglect. BAJI LA heard from Black detainees who all expressed how difficult it is to pay the wildly high bonds slapped onto immigrants (or not being connected to networks and immigrants’ rights organizations that allow them to raise the money), forcing many of them to stay in detention. In collaboration with Adelanto Defense Fund, BAJI LA helped release Black immigrants from Adelanto, assisted with post-detention transition and also met with California Congressional offices to discuss detention conditions and bond reform.