American gulags (2)

The following is the second and concluding part of a feature that appeared on ‘The Progressive” site, titled: “American Gulags”.

The US, which shamelessly brags about human rights while trampling basic liberties within its borders, and yet feels no inhibitions in accusing independent countries refusing to follow its dictates as violators of human rights, has in reality turned into a land of prisons housing the largest number of inmates anywhere in the world, besides incarcerating in substandard and unhygienic conditions tens of thousands of innocent immigrants by cruelly separating parents from children, several of whom die as a result of lack of affection, undernourishment, diseases, psychological trauma and physical abuse by guards.

The death of Mariee, a toddler from Guatemala, shows how detrimental detention can be. This nineteen-month-old was in good health when she and her mother, Yazmin Juárez, who is seeking asylum, were sent to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley on March 5, 2018. By the time Mariee was released twenty days later, she was in failing health, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of her mother this past March in US District Court in Tucson, Arizona.

Says the lawsuit, which spells out the details of the case: “This was not merely an error in medical judgment. It was active neglect of a very sick child.”

The defendant in the case is the Arizona city of Eloy, which, despite being 900 miles from Dilley, was allowed to take responsibility for the Dilley facility by modifying its contract with CoreCivic, then called Corrections Corporation of America. Under this arrangement, the lawsuit says, Eloy was to be paid $438,000 a year for overseeing Dilley.

Upon their arrival at Dilley, Mariee and her mother were put in a crowded room with other sick children, and Mariee became ill with upper respiratory symptoms. The lawsuit says Mariee was inadequately and improperly treated, and that her condition continued to deteriorate. She was acutely ill on March 23, when the nurse who examined her said that Mariee would be referred to a medical provider. That never happened because the mother and her ailing daughter were released March 25 and put on a plane to New Jersey.

ICE’s record says Mariee was “medically cleared” by a licensed vocational nurse but no medical personnel examined her, according to the lawsuit. The following day, Mariee was admitted to an emergency room in New Jersey with acute respiratory distress. Over the next six weeks, Mariee was transferred to two different hospitals and received specialized care for respiratory failure, but she died May 10 while on advanced life support.

Although the city has denied any culpability for Mariee’s death, it has subsequently severed its ties to the Dilley facility. Mariee’s mother has also filed an administrative claim for wrongful death against the United States, seeking $60 million.

The deplorable conditions of detention are also evident in hunger strikes at US facilities—at least six in the first few months of this year alone.

In a class-action federal lawsuit filed last year on behalf of three detainees at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, the Southern Poverty Law Center is challenging the way CoreCivic has run its “voluntary” work program.

Says the lawsuit: “CoreCivic’s economic windfall, and profitability of its immigration detention enterprise, arise from its corporate scheme, plan, and pattern of systemically withholding basic necessities from detained immigrants.”

One of the plaintiffs, Wilhen Hill Barrientos of Guatemala, says he was required to work seven days a week and was put in the medical segregation unit for two months after he filed a complaint that he was forced to work even though he was sick.

Detainees can be paid as little as $1 a day, according to ICE’s detention standards. The lawsuit claims detainees are sometimes forced to pay for scarce basic necessities, such as toilet paper.

By the center’s count, eight other lawsuits have also been filed challenging work conditions at detention centers.

While the sheer number of immigration apprehensions prevents ICE from locking up everyone, US Attorney General William Barr is clearly trying to lock up as many as possible. He has directed the denial of bond for undocumented immigrants who did not enter the United States through a port of entry, even if they have shown a “credible fear” of persecution. On July 2, a federal district judge blocked implementation of Barr’s order. And the use of parole to let detainees out of facilities has dropped dramatically.

Liz Martinez, director of advocacy and strategic communications at Freedom for Immigrants, a California-based nonprofit, describes immigration detention as a system of “disappearing people,” forcing them to linger in limbo until their day of deportation comes.

Take the case of Rachel, an asylum seeker currently awaiting a decision by the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is reviewing her case. She fled her homeland, the Central African country of Cameroon, in 2016 because she feared being killed for refusing a forced marriage. She says a relative in Cameroon was recently killed because of his support of her.

Rachel, who doesn’t want her last name used, turned herself in at the Mexico-US border in January 2017, asking for asylum. She has since been in immigration detention, even though she could have been released to a sister and relatives in Ohio. She has spent most of this time in the El Paso Processing Center. Her plea for asylum was rejected by an immigration judge and dismissed by the Board of Immigration Appeals. A reversal by the Fifth Circuit could be her last hope.

In a telephone interview from the detention center, Rachel says: “I live in fear—in depression and confusion. I don’t know what is going to happen, today or tomorrow. They come and get people up at night and deport them.” She says that once in February and on two occasions since she filed her notice of appeal to the Fifth Circuit in March, a detention center officer has unsuccessfully tried to get her to sign papers authorizing her deportation.

Rachel adds: “I told him I can’t go back because my life is in danger. He told me he doesn’t care. He is doing his job. I should sign.”

Proposals for immigration detention have sparked grassroots opposition strong enough to prompt for-profit prison companies to withdraw detention proposals and persistent enough to get local governments to rethink their welcome. This resistance began before Donald Trump took office but has intensified under him.

Many local officials, who do not want to give their names for fear of being fired by the administration: “We don’t want to participate in abusing people.”

Here are some examples of these successful resistance efforts:

In Wisconsin State, community opposition recently helped defeat Immigration Centers of America’s proposed 500-bed detention facility in New Richmond, about forty miles from St. Paul. Dan Hansen, who was part of the resistance, says: “We don’t want to participate in abusing people who are here because they were abused in their home country.”

Hundreds of postings against the center appeared on Facebook pages, Hansen says. The city’s Facebook page was also targeted. Fliers, shared online and handed out in person, provided information for contacting public officials.

Emilio De Torre, who, as director of community engagement for the ACLU of Wisconsin, helped mobilize the resistance, says: “These were people who got together and pushed back and pushed back hard.”

In April, city officials issued a lengthy report concluding that the proposed facility did not fit New Richmond’s city plan, and Immigration Centers withdrew its proposal.

In Illinois State, in June, legislation was enacted prohibiting state and local government from entering into agreements with for-profit companies for immigrant detention centers. The measure was prompted by the Village Board of Dwight voting in March to annex eighty-eight acres, clearing the way for an Immigration Centers of America detention facility.

The proposal came after activists successfully organized against possible detention centers over the past eight years at three other Illinois sites—Crete, Joliet, and Hopkins Park—as well as four sites in northwest Indiana: Hobart, Gary, Elkhart County, and the Roselawn community of Newton County.

Whether such efforts succeed in keeping immigration detention centers out remains to be seen. Typically, a detention center involves the local government working with ICE and a for-profit prison company. But over the past fourteen months, local governments in places such as Adelanto, California, and Williamson County, Texas, have cut their ties to detention centers. However, this paves the way for ICE to then work directly with the for-profit prison companies to keep the detention centers open.

Illinois might not be able to stop such an arrangement, but its new law does prevent localities from getting reimbursed for providing infrastructure and other services for a detention facility.

In Michigan State, last fall, a proposal by Immigration Centers of America to convert a former state prison in Ionia into an ICE detention facility was picking up speed under then-Republican Governor Rick Snyder, whose former chief-of-staff, Dennis Muchmore, was reportedly lobbying for the company.

Says Oscar Castaneda, who, as an organizer for Action of Greater Lansing, helped mobilize the opposition: “I don’t think you should be making money off of people suffering.”

With Democrat Gretchen Whitmer’s election as Michigan governor in November, the dynamic changed. She reportedly demanded that Immigration Centers of America agree, as a precondition, not to take separated family members—a commitment the company could not make.

Governor Whitmer, who had control over the project because it would be built on state land, blocked the deal in February, with her spokesperson saying that “building more detention facilities won’t solve our immigration crisis.”

But the governor does not have sway over the GEO Group, which recently struck a deal with ICE to “reactivate” the 1,800-bed North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin, Michigan, for housing noncitizens sentenced for immigration offenses and other federal crimes.

In Wyoming State, in 2017, the Evanston City Council and Uinta County Commissioners passed resolutions in support of Management & Training Corporation locating a detention center in this part of Wyoming. That led to the creation of “Wyo Says No”, a coalition of eight state-based activist groups that has held public meetings and contacted public officials to oppose a detention center.

Antonio Serrano, an organizer with the ACLU of Wyoming, says: “We just remind Wyoming people of our values. We don’t like people—especially big companies like this—coming in and telling us what we should or should not be doing.”

Serrano also reminds residents that the state should not repeat its blatant disregard for human rights during World War II, when it housed a Japanese American internment camp. And, Serrano says, “We don’t want to be part of this big deportation machine that this administration is pushing. Being out here in Wyoming, we are better than that.”

AS/MG