January 16, 2020

Migrants hunger-striking at U.S. immigration jail on verge of death

topic:	Immigration
located:	USA
editor:	Yair Oded

Over the past few years, a steadily growing number of immigrants imprisoned at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities have been going on hunger strikes to protest their harsh and humiliating treatment and indefinite incarceration. A story by Truthout reveals that two Indian migrants held at a Louisiana ICE jail are on the brink of death after 68 days of refusing to eat or drink.

Hunger strikes by immigrant prisoners at ICE detention facilities became far more ubiquitous since Trump took office, as his administration instituted policies that prevented most asylum seekers from being released from jail while their claims are being considered - a process that can take months and in some cases, years. 

Freedom for Immigrants has reported that since 2015, 1,600 hunger strikes by ICE detainees were identified. 

According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, during the last year of the Obama administration (2016) immigration judges in Louisiana released almost 60 per cent of immigration detainees while their asylum cases were being processed; in 2019, that percentage had dropped to 27. In a class-action lawsuit against ICE and the Trump administration, the Southern Poverty Law Center stated that the number of people being released from the ICE headquarters in New Orleans after being arrested had dropped from 76 per cent in 2016 to 1.5 per cent in 2018.

Such statistics, seen throughout the United States, constitute a sombre manifestation of the government’s worsening attitude toward immigrants.  

One reason that propels detained migrants in jails across the country to embark on hunger strikes is the brutal treatment they are often subject to by ICE personnel. Migrants have repeatedly reported being humiliated, abused, and neglected by the prison staff. As of June 2019, 24 migrants have died in ICE custody since Trump took office. Immigrants also claim to be placed in solitary confinement  or be otherwise disproportionately punished for minor violations of the rules, such as talking back to guards who abuse them

This “animal-like treatment” by ICE, as described by another migrant who went on a hunger strike last year, coupled with the agony of being imprisoned for an indefinite amount of time leads many immigrants to feel that resorting to hunger strikes is the only way they can take charge of their own destiny. 

“The reason for me sitting on hunger strike is because I want freedom,” wrote one of the two Indians hunger-striking at the Louisiana ICE facility. “Since January 21, 2019, I have been locked inside four walls. For about a year I have been living my life inside suffocating.” 

ICE’s response to inmates’ hunger strikes are harsh, and in many cases the agency obtains a court order to force-feed and hydrate striking detainees - an incredibly painful and dangerous process that involves shoving a tube down a person’s nose and often results in bleeding and infections. As of now, ICE’s usage of force-feeding persists even in the face of harsh criticism levelled against it and despite the fact that multiple national and international human rights and medical organisations condemn it as ethically unacceptable.  

The two Indian asylum seekers striking in Louisiana can no longer walk and are in wheelchairs, Truthout reports, and both of them could suffer major organ failure or death within a week. Both men have lodged their asylum requests at legal ports of entry at the U.S.-Mexico border. Both fear deadly violence should they return to their home country, and both of them are willing to die to secure their freedom while their asylum claims are being examined - a right they are entitled to by Article 31 of the 1951 Refugee Convention. 

Image: Darren Hauck / Getty Images

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