Starving for Justice in ICE Detention

By Sarah Gardiner, The New York Times

31 January 20

For immigrants languishing behind bars, a hunger strike is often the sole remaining means of protest against a dehumanizing and unjust system.

n Jan. 29, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported to India an asylum-seeker who had spent nearly eight months in ICE detention. He was one of five asylum-seekers of South Asian origin who went on a hunger strike in October at the LaSalle Detention Center, an ICE processing facility in Jena, La, operated by the for-profit prison company GEO Group. All five had exercised their legal right to claim asylum, after escaping religious or political persecution.

My organization, Freedom for Immigrants, runs a national visitation network of more than 4,500 volunteers, who conduct weekly monitoring visits in immigrant jails and prisons throughout the country. One volunteer, who visits with two of the men detained weekly has reported that their condition is deteriorating: They are short of breath and have difficulty moving without assistance; their bones are visible, their skin tone grayish, their eyes hollow and their features sunken.

Despite legal avenues for release and the fact that all of the men have family or close friends willing to care for them upon release, they have been detained for more than a year in facilities with extensive and well-documented histories of abuse, including overcrowding, medical neglect, sexual assault, barriers to legal access and retaliatory use of solitary confinement. In a recent statement to volunteers, three of the detained men report that they have been held in solitary confinement, in apparent payback for their strike. All have said they will continue their hunger strike, even if it means death.

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