ICE Prison Hunger Strike Extends to Day 3: "Treating Us Like Animals"
"We will continue to hold out," prisoner Jose Ramon says about conditions in Michigan ICE prison. Female prisoners held up SOS signs as supporters rallied outside
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Status Coup has learned that a hunger strike at the largest ICE prison in the midwest has extended into a third day as nearly 200 male prisoners continue to refrain from eating despite threats and intimidation from ICE guards.
As we broke on Tuesday, the hunger strike, inside North Lake Detention Center in Michigan, was launched on April 20th in protest of horrid conditions inside the prison owned by controversial for-profit prison operator GEO Group.
Multiple sources told Status Coup that, after the male prisoners launched the strike, ICE guards retaliated by taking away prisoners’ recreation time, cutting off phone lines to deny prisoners’ incoming or outgoing calls, and threatening expedited deportation.
Those expedited deportation threats worked to end some prisoners’ involvement in the strike—but nearly 200 being held in the Delta unit are still holding firm.
As Status Coup reported on Tuesday, prisoners launched the hunger strike over horrid conditions including:
Freezing temperatures
Only one thin blanket provided; prisoners have to purchase additional blankets and sweatshirts out of their prison commissary account.
Insufficient medical care: prisoners are unable to get the treatment they need or see specialists for certain conditions. Regardless of medical symptoms, prisoners are only receiving Tylenol or Ibuprofen.
Doctors and guards don’t speak the language prisoners speak (and insufficient number and quality of translators).
If prisoners arrive at medical unit early in morning, they don’t get seen that day.
Guards using racist language toward prisoners
Prisoners getting paid $1 dollar a day to work jobs in kitchen, laundry rom, etc.
Prisoners’ work pay often delayed
“Today marks the third day without food,” Jose Ramon, a male prisoner, said. “We remain steadfast here; Delta Wing has gone without eating for three days now and we will continue to hold out.”
Another prisoner, Ahmad Alnajdawi, a Jordanian immigrant, shared the inhumane treatment of prisoners.
“I have a lot of people here who speak Arabic, and this is very hard for them. They cannot talk to the case managers; they cannot talk to the ICE officers; they cannot talk to anyone. The food here is pitiful. I want the people outside to know, they’re treating us like animals. Everyone here has a family, a wife, a parent, a dad, a mom. Everyone here has people outside who care for them. We’re all humans.”
On Tuesday, dozens of supporters gathered for a solidarity rally outside the rural-area ICE prison to show solidarity with prisoners. In response, female prisoners held up signs in the window that spelled out the distress signal SOS. Status Coup obtained a photo (red circle added by us). See below.
As Status Coup reported, over a dozen female prisoners inside North Lake Detention Center filed a Habeas Corpus petition describing the horrible conditions inside. Status Coup obtained the petition—including a horrific recounting from one female prisoner of physical abuse and starvation]she suffered while being detained for 21 days at an ICE field office before being transferred to North Lake Detention Center.
She believes she was beaten as a result of her sexual orientation—and described being beaten so severely she urinated on herself.
(Read documents below and here are are some key parts of her recounting this abuse)
“For 20 days I was starving, they only fed me snacks”
“I came to the US from Venezuela looking for freedom and justice.”
“Where I’m detained at North Lake Processing Center I feel lost and still having nightmares and scared.”
“In those weeks they didn’t let me take a shower. I was smelling horrible. Remember I peed on myself when they were beating me.”
“An agent said you have a right to call a lawyer but were not going to help you.”
“She gave me a sandal and said I can keep it until I leave and she started laughing and said that’s if you leave.”
“Most times I was afraid to sleep thinking someone is going to come and abuse me.”“Old man hitting me with such hate I believe they were mad at me & treated me so bad is because of my sexual orientation (I have a big LGBT flag in the back of my window in car)”
“They made me stay there until the bruises of my face & broken nose and mouth disappeared.”
The Michigan ICE prisoners aren’t the only ones waging a hunger strike. Last week, prisoners at a Pennsylvania ICE prison launched a hunger strike after staff refused to respond to a prisoner who was gagging and lost consciousness—instead telling prisoners to provide their fellow prisoner with medical care.
And there is NO ONE in America that doing anything about it! This is NOT who we are (or who we were before Trump) and I am so ASHAMED of what our nation has become. Count me along with those who say they will NEVER, NEVER, NEVER forgive the 77 million people who voted for this pestilence called Trump, et al.
I lived about 20 miles from Baldwin in the 1970’s and substitute taught (!) at the local school. It was a very small quiet town, out in the middle of nowhere, a rare black community in rural Michigan. It is impossible for me to reconcile this story from Baldwin, Michigan with the town I knew. I pray to God to save all the folks who are being treated so cruelly and inhumanly due only to their skin tone or nationality. It is a sin against everything we value.