Biography
Nicholas Vazquez, 22 at the time and of Miami, Florida, was one of the "GEO9," a group of Fort Lauderdale Food Not Bombs activists arrested for the December 3, 2019 blockade of the Boca Raton, Florida headquarters of the GEO Group — the private-prison corporation that operates immigration detention centers for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including Florida's Broward Transitional Center. The activists sealed the building's entrances, parking garage and elevators with concrete-filled tires and barrels to shut down "business as usual" and protest GEO's role in immigrant detention and family separation. Initially charged only with misdemeanor trespassing, the protesters were re-arrested in February 2020 on far more serious felony charges — false imprisonment and conspiracy to commit false imprisonment — after police alleged that a security guard had been confined inside the building during the blockade, exposing them to up to 15 years in prison. The escalation was widely criticized, including by U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, as an attempt to criminalize and chill political protest against the private-prison industry.