Through her work, Jeannie Parent demonstrates a dedication to serving the immigrant community in Kern County, and when people may feel alone, she is there as a friend and an ear to listen.
In 2015, Parent was asked to visit a detainee at the Mesa Verde detention center who had been transferred there from Richmond. She explained that immigrants used to be held in a jail in Richmond, and it was closed down due to people advocating for its closure. His name was Kwesi, which later became the name of the organization she and several others founded to visit detainees. The organization is Kern Welcoming and Extending Solidarity to Immigrants (KWESI).
When she visited Kwesi, she stated that it was her first time ever being in any type of correctional facility. Kwesi was a man who sought asylum to escape being killed in his village in Ghana for being a Christian. Despite taking the legal avenues to be in America, he was detained.
“What was shocking was that he came to the border, basically knocked on the door of the United States, and at a legal point of entry, asked for asylum. This is what our country allows,” said Parent exapling that Kwesi said he never committed any crimes and never even drank alcohol. “He was a rule follower, and following the laws of the United States, he was still imprisoned, and I think that was horrifying to me.
Since then Parent stated she has visited many people who followed the rules and always did as they were supposed to, yet they were imprisoned. Parent explained that when she goes to visit detainees, she keeps an open mind and tries to just be there for them.
“A lot of them, like Kwesi was the first ones that said this: Thank you for coming to see me. Now I know I exist. No one knows. Not one person in the entire world knew where he was or what had happened to him. Imagine, no family, no one knew. So by us going to visit, okay, someone knows I’m here. Someone other than me knows where I am,” said Parent.
She visited women who were escaping persecution in Cameroon, female mutilation, and being raped in front of their children, and would be detained while their case was going on, and would get out when they won.
“They’re all shocked that they come to the county of freedom, the land of the free, and they’re imprisoned,” said Parent, stating that once they would get a hearing, they’d win within 30 minutes.
Parent explained that this is a process the country has allowed.
“They’d win their cases because that is what our country does. Right? That is what I always felt. This is who we are. We welcome those that are persecuted in other countries. But that is not the case anymore, “ said Parent.
One of the first women she visited is now a citizen and a nurse. Parent said she is now working toward her PhD and emphasized again that it is not working that way anymore.
Parent’s dedication to be there for immigrants has gone beyond visiting the detention centers. In 2023, a clergy form Los Angeles asked Parent to help house 10 refugees from Mauritania who had been released from the detention center in Adelanto. KWESI rented a home for them stay in, and parent was able to get several volunteers to help with case management.
“It was the most challenging aspect of the work that we’ve done, I would say. Because we were asked to take them for two or three weeks, and it turned into a year,” said Parent.
She explained that some of the people she housed spoke little to no English, so they were working through both language and cultural barriers to interact with each other. One of them spoke a little French so Parent tried her best to use her high school French lessons to communicate, which she stated was not the best.
Several of them either went to LA, where they knew people, or other states within the first several months; however, Samba stayed for about a year. Parent was able to help him with his asylum, work permit, and Medi-Cal applications. She explained that when someone comes as an asylum seeker, they are not able to start working right away.
“You have to wait six months before you can apply for a work permit, and then it takes another month or two. And that was two years ago under Biden, so I don’t know how long it’s taking now, if they’re even approving work permits,” said Parent. “So all that time we were supporting him.”
Samba eventually decided to go to LA, where his friends were.
“It was very challenging, and I learned a lot, I’d say, about the process of what an immigrant has to go through when they come here, legally, mind you,” said Parent.
Prior to KWESI, Parent taught English at Bakersfield College to students who spoke many different languages and supported dreamers. She started a scholarship at BC called the Dream Act Scholarship before the Dream Act was law, and sat on the board for the Dream Fund at BC.
“So for years I’d been involved in supporting immigrants, but this is the turn it took, and to me it’s just sitting and listening to people.”
Through the years, Parent has visited and met with hundreds of immigrants, and one narrative, she said it is important to correct the wrong notion that immigrants are dangerous criminals.
“I feel like the false narrative is that they’re all bad guys. This is all over the Department of Homeland Security website,” said Parent. “They call them the worst of the worst illegal alien criminals. I have been doing this work for over 10 years. These are not the worst of the worst. First of all, asylum seekers are not illegal criminals. Undocumented immigrants are not criminals. They have not committed a crime.”
Parent explained that even those who have criminal backgrounds have already served the time for that crime and spoke about stories where people end up detained longer than they were in prison for the crime.
“There’s a guy in there right now, he served three months for a bar fight or something. He served his time. He finished that. Immigration picked him up in Pennsylvania,” said Parent, adding that he has been sent to a few other states in the meantime. “He’s been in detention six years. Six years in detention. I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done. This makes ICE the judge and the jury. These people are not getting due process. They’re just waiting.”
She explained that although Samba has been out of detention, he still has not had his first immigration hearing nad there are people in detention waiting who do not know what will happen to them or have not had a hearing.
“I think that people don’t understand the psychological torture of uncertainty. When you are detained, you don’t know what’s going to happen to you,” said Parent.
She added that she has met many people who have been detained for three years or more. In prison, she explained, people know how long they will be there and can mentally wrap their minds around it be but those who have gone to prison and then to detention have told her it’s worse than prison.
When Parent goes to visit people in detention centers, she is just trying to be there to listen.
“I’m not there with an agenda. I’m there to listen,” said Parent.
She stated that before COVID, she’d go to visit a person each week until they were released and develop relationships with them. Parent also said that when she speaks to the detainees, she can see they have hope and are doing what they can to maintain their sanity. She spoke about a trans woman who is being held in the California City Detention Center, who has organized ESL (English as a Second Language) classes for those in her dorm.
“She is like I’m not gonna let them bring me down. I’m not gonna let this place bring me down,” said Parent.
The work Parent does can be emotionally taxing at time but she said seeing the injustice makes her keep going.
“The injustice of what I see, of the stories I hear,” said Parent, speaking of someone who has hd a green card for years yet was detained when they went for a check-in.
“So if I can do something to help at least one person’s life today, then I feel better than just despairing and feeling, oh, what to do, right? Because it’s just gotten worse. I mean, a couple of years ago, I’m like, okay, it would be great if a young person came in and took this over because there’s a lot of administrative work that I do like the commissary deposits and keeping track of everything, and then once the current administration got going. I’m like, no, I can’t, I can’t stop,” said Parent.
