SF Supervisor to Probe ICE Contractor After Death of Halfway House Resident

Updated 1:10 p.m. Tuesday

A San Francisco supervisor is demanding a hearing with one of the country’s largest private prison corporations after the death of one of its residents at a transitional housing facility in the Tenderloin.

Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, who oversees the Tenderloin, will call for the probe into Geo Group at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting. The company, which is also a contractor for Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, has come under fire over its facility at 111 Taylor St., which holds a place in LGBTQ history as the site of a 1966 riot for trans rights.

“This company runs ICE detention facilities for the Trump administration across the country,” Mahmood told KQED. “If someone is describing a private facility in S.F. as worse than a prison, we want to know what’s going on there. … We want to know how they are operating a facility in our own backyard.”

The push comes after Melvin Bulauan was found dead on the street in the Tenderloin on July 14, according to a GoFundMe organized by his family. Before he died, according to his family, he said he would “rather be back in prison” than continue living at 111 Taylor.

The same week, activists spoke out during a San Francisco Board of Appeals hearing to support efforts to convert the facility into a community center for transgender and other LGBTQ residents.

Mahmood said he plans to subpoena representatives from Geo Group and ask about living conditions at the 111 Taylor facility, including reports of civil rights violations. City officials believe it would be the company’s first such hearing before an elected municipal body.

The supervisor said his office is also planning to ask about Geo Group’s interactions with the federal government in its detention of immigrants amid escalating ICE raids.

After last week’s packed, five-hour hearing, the Board of Appeals upheld Geo Group’s use of 111 Taylor despite activists’ push to use zoning law to oust the private prison corporation.

The building at the corner of Turk and Taylor streets was formerly a diner called Gene Compton’s Cafeteria, frequented by women, queer and trans people. It has become known as a birthplace of transgender resistance after patrons fought back against a police raid at the diner, known as the Compton Cafeteria Riot — three years before a similar riot at Stonewall Inn in New York City.

Today, 111 Taylor sits at the center of the city’s historic Transgender Cultural District.

Geo Group purchased the site in 1989 and has since operated it as a halfway house for people on parole. At the Board of Appeals hearing last week, dozens of speakers described the site as having “prison-like” conditions.

“His death is not an isolated tragedy, but part of a larger pattern of institutional failure,” said Anjru Jaezon de Leon, Bulauan’s son. “We do not want our father’s death to go unnoticed. We are seeking truth, accountability, and allies, especially those willing to speak out about the harmful conditions in and around 111 Taylor St. and help us demand better for families like ours.”

In a press release, the family said that when they contacted Bulauan’s parole officer at Geo Group after identifying his body, the officer claimed to have no knowledge that their father had left the facility.

“This is about more than reclaiming a sacred space for San Francisco’s trans and queer community; it’s about justice for everyone who has been incarcerated, brutalized and killed by Geo Group,” Santana Tapia, a spokeswoman for the Compton’s x Coalition that sought to turn 111 Taylor into a community center, said in a statement.

Mahmood told KQED that concerns around immigration enforcement have heightened in the Tenderloin, the home of many immigrant families, as ICE raids have escalated in San Francisco. After hearing of Bulauan’s death, Mahmood said he sped up his efforts to find out about the site at 111 Taylor, which he said he had not entered himself.

A date has not been set yet for the hearing with Geo Group, but it will take place this fall.

“It’s heartbreaking to hear what the Bulauan family has experienced — no child should have to lose a parent under such circumstances,” Mahmood said in a statement. “It takes great courage and strength to turn pain into action.”

July 22: A previous version of this story said Bulauan’s family spoke out at the same public hearing where activists pushed for converting the 111 Taylor St. facility into a community center. They spoke at a different meeting of the city’s reentry council.