ADELANTO, CA

Last Friday (October 20), Miguel headlined the #SchoolsNotPrisons concert at Adelanto Stadium in Adelanto, California. The free show, which also featured performances by Los Rakas and Ceci Bastida, was a special event designed to raise awareness about the fight to close all immigrant prisons and demand the fair treatment of immigrants awaiting decisions on their ability to stay in the United States.

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Before the concert began, the artists and advocates for the cause held a news conference outside the Adelanto Immigrant Prison to launch a Change.org petition. The goal of the petition is to get major media outlets, such as the New York Times and Washington Post, to begin referring to detention centers as immigrant prisons.

“In Adelanto immigrant prison, 3 people have died in the last 7 months, and 6 people have attempted suicide since December 2016,” the petition reads. “Dozens of us have gone on hunger strikes to try and change things. In order to end the abuse, we must first call them prisons and then close them. Starting with Adelanto.”

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Many of the speakers spent time in these facilities. Eddy Zheng, who was detained while awaiting his deportation proceedings, was among those who spoke.

“Call it what it is, immigrant detention centers are prisons!” Zheng told the crowd. “They are inhumane prisons, and it’s time we change the language around that. We can’t allow the system to change the language for us, calling us good immigrants or bad immigrants; we’re all citizens of this earth and we need to recognize the humanity in each other. It is up to us to create that change.”

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During the concert, Miguel debuted a new song titled “Now” off his upcoming album, War & Leisure.

Check out “Now” below and pictures from the event above.