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Approximately 500 ICE prisoners, including of Russian and Chinese descent, have launched a hunger strike inside an ICE prison in Georgia—with dozens thrown into solitary confinement and some facing punishment for standing up to horrific conditions they allege they have endured…
In many cases for several years.
The detainees inside the Folkston ICE Processing Center launched the campaign in the lead-up to an Oct. 6 inspection planned for the facility. What started as dozens of strikers quickly grew.
“As of yesterday (Oct. 8), the approximate figure that we have of people who self-report participating in the hunger strike is over 500,” said Samantha Hamilton, a movement lawyer and organizer with the Campaign to Shut Down the Folkston ICE Processing Center. Her organization remains in contact with detainees and their families, offering one of the most detailed public accountings of the hunger strike’s current scope.
Status Coup News reached out to both ICE and GEO Group. A GEO Group spokesperson directed all questions to ICE. ICE did not respond.
The strikers hoped to draw attention to the deplorable conditions in which they live. These include moldy food, worm-infested water, deteriorating physical health, limited time outside of cells, and more, despite many having no criminal record. The prison is a for-profit venture operated by the company GEO Group, the same corporation that runs the Delaney Hall ICE Processing Center where multiple detainees have died.
For organizing their fellow detainees to push for better conditions within the prison, some prisoners face disciplinary charges.
“We know that people have been charged with at least two different offenses in the eyes of GEO Group,” said Hamilton. “One is organizing a group demonstration, and two is ... conduct that disrupts.”
GEO Group has also, according to Hamilton, put “at least 30” detainees “into solitary confinement for two months.” The use of solitary confinement as a means of breaking detainee solidarity within Folkston began with a smaller group of prisoners who had recorded and released a video about conditions inside. The company then put more detainees in solitary to break the strike.
At Delaney Hall, in New Jersey, GEO Group and the Department of Homeland Security ultimately broke a hunger strike by transferring detainees to other prison camps across the country. The separation left prisoners unable to care for one another and made outside support networks harder to access.
Severed connections with the outside world have come in a different form at Folkston. Activists who once communicated with detainees via a messaging app called Getting Out found their accounts inaccessible two days after the hunger strike began.
“Some members of our campaign who have been some of the main communicators with folks on the inside, we learned just last night, had their accounts terminated,” said Hamilton.
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