By Angelo Haynes
On Sunday January 4th, protestors and organizers gathered at the Otay Mesa detention facility to protest the alleged crowded and unhygienic conditions of immigrant detainees currently held there. The protest was organized by local activists Blue Wong and Mariel of SD Bike Brigade in tandem with a coalition of other groups and individual activists from across San Diego County.
The protest is characterized as a “standing” protest and has been conducted once a week every Sunday, since last summer in June of 2025 and is expected to continue into the foreseeable future.
Protestors occupied the space for two hours, positioning themselves on a compacted dirt walkway on the edge of the facility with megaphones, loudspeakers, kites, flags and signage. They then began a campaign of yelling over the fence in an attempt to communicate through the walls of the detention center with the detainees being held there and glean important information that could be used to support them. Support could come in the form of political advocacy for the betterment of their conditions through inspections from elected officials, legal aid for release from custody and to connect them with worried family members.
SD Bike Brigade lead organizer Blue Wong explained about the impacts of her 6-month long campaign at the facility.
“I think that the biggest change is that the hostages are now organizing and they depend on us being out here. This is our tenth consecutive Sunday without missing a single Sunday so they really depend on us being here.”
“They started organizing because they understand that for us to put money on their books, we need their name, their A number and their country of origin which is really difficult to do.”
The A-number being referred to here is the Alien registration number, an identification number that the US Citizenship and Immigration Services Department uses to keep track of information such as immigration forms a non-citizen may collect over the time in the US.
Blue went on to state:
“We’ve gathered 22 languages that are spoken out here between all these activists out here. Because each time we come out, we learn that we need Farsi, we need Arabic…. Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, we know we have at least over 100 Chinese people in here, we know this place is overpopulated for sure.”
During the communication, an activist had obtained new information about an immigrant in captivity. They then began playing music at the request of another captive to uplift their spirits.
Other activists and groups were in attendance with loose affiliations ranging from unaffiliated individuals who came out in support, many of whom attended the No War in Venezuela protest in downtown the day before.
Protest organizers brought food and made homemade cookies with expletive opinions regarding ICE creating a friendly and albeit cheeky defiant atmosphere for volunteers.
The detention facility is located on the far east side of Otay Mesa and is nestled against the foothills of the Otay Open Space preserve and the Otay mountain wilderness. The surrounding area appears to be a commercial zone near the border that is mostly taken up by sprawling industrial parks including warehouses owned by Amazon, Calpine and Pio Pico Energy facility. The Richard J. Donovan State Prison is also just several blocks away.
As the protest continued, security patrols would periodically drive by in white pick-up trucks monitoring the protest, but no action or confrontation would occur and the protest remained peaceful.
Angelo Haynes is a born and raised San Diegan and a resident of Valencia Park in Southeast San Diego.
Good group of people at this gathering. There’s almost always food, dessert, beverages, tacos or burritos. Always positive. Always friendsly. About 35 people were there on 1/4.
Thanks for showing up.
I punch the Soros time clock!