This talk looks at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California and the grassroots movement to abolish ICE led by formerly detained migrants and local activists. It focuses on the Adelanto Toxic Tours, a community action where survivors and organizers guide people through the areas surrounding the detention center to share stories about environmental harm, toxic exposure, and violence inside detention. Through these tours, activists connect damage to the land with harm to migrant bodies, showing how detention impacts both people and their environments. The presentation highlights how organizing in Adelanto challenges detention and imagines futures beyond cages, surveillance, and border enforcement.

Cinthya Martinez is an Assistant Professor in the Latin American and Latino Studies Department at UC Santa Cruz. She earned her doctorate from the University of California, Riverside in Ethnic Studies. Her teaching and research interests are sexual violence, abolition theory/praxis, and migrant detention. Her research and current book project, ICE on Fire: Incinerating Prison/Border Violence through Feminist Abolition Geographies, investigates sexual violence and reproductive (in)justice in ICE detention facilities, while examining how affected communities, and migrant activists more broadly, are forging geographies of abolition through confronting the connections between bodies in resistance, the carceral, and border regimes.

Winter 2026 COLLOQUIUM SERIES

THE CENTER FOR CULTURAL STUDIES hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work-in-progress by faculty & visitors. We are pleased to announce our Winter 2026 Series. Sessions begin promptly at 12:15 PM and end at 1:30 PM (PST) in Humanities Building 1, Room 210.

Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.