Day 80 in South Asians' hunger strike in ICE detention

Five South Asians at La Salle Detention Facility have been on hunger strike.

ASAM NEWS

Five male Indian asylum seekers have reached the 90th day of a hunger strike at the La Salle Detention Facility in Jena, Louisiana.
According to American Bazaar, each of the men have formal sponsors in the US who have committed to housing and supporting them while they fight their asylum case. A petition to release the detainees while their asylum cases are processed states that the men have been force-fed and force-hydrated. The petition has garnered over 26,000 signatures.

“I have been visiting them for the past three months and have watched them slowly disappear as the days carry on,” Freedom for Immigrants volunteer Michelle Grafeo said. “ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is prepared to let them die. I, however, am not.”

Grafeo told American Bazaar that she met with two hunger strikers on Sunday and learned that three of the men are being held in isolation as punishment for not drinking Boost. She added that all five men are wheelchair bound and unable to get out of bed without assistance.

Freedom for Immigrants has filed complaints with the Department of Homeland Security Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties on behalf of the detainees, demanding that systemic civil rights violations the men have faced in ICE custody be addressed.

One complaint is that ICE is violating its own policy of giving people in detention the right to independent medical evaluation. According to licensed New Orleans physician Catherine Jones, staff at the LaSalle Detention Facility have denied repeated requests for accurate and updated medical records.

“This makes it impossible for us to have a clear understanding of the hunger strikers’ current medical conditions,” Jones said in a statement, “and completely negates their access to independent evaluations, which is especially crucial as they enter the critical time in their hunger strike when vital organ functioning begins to shut down.”

According to American Bazaar, medical professionals say vital organs may begin to fail after 75 days without adequate nutrition. Many asylum seekers from South Asia have previously resorted to hunger strikes to protest against the inhumane conditions in detention facilities.

A 2019 factsheet from civil rights organization SAALT states that patterns of abuse towards South Asians in American detention facilities include inadequate or non-existent language access, denial of religious accommodations, retaliatory solitary confinement, gross medical neglect, and high bond amounts.

WION reports that the five hunger strikers include four Hindus and one Sikh. According to American Bazaar, the detainees are seeking asylum for a variety of reasons and have differing legal situations.

Day 82: The hunger strike is a protest of last resort for South Asian asylum seekers

Five South Asian men on the 82nd day of their hunger strike are on the precipice of death as their organs begin to shut down in the LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, Louisiana.
“The men in Jena-LaSalle are on the brink of death," said Lakshmi Sridaran, Interim Executive Director of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT).

"No one should have to go to such great lengths simply to have their cases heard and to gain their freedom. They should not be in detention in the first place and the only legitimate alternative is release.“ said  Sridaran.

Freedom for Immigrants (FFI) has filed two complaints with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) on behalf of the five men, demanding DHS address the systemic civil rights violations the men have faced under ICE custody.

The first CRCL complaint calls on ICE to use its prosecutorial discretion to release all five men. Each of them have formal sponsors in the United States committed to supporting and housing them while they fight their asylum case.

The second complaint, submitted in collaboration with Physicians for Human Rights, addresses the significant delays in receiving critical medical records from ICE. Beginning in November, an FFI affiliated volunteer submitted multiple requests to ICE for these records, with the consent of the men engaging in hunger strikes. However, ICE has refused to release these records. Without this critical information, independent physicians cannot conduct an assessment of the medical treatment these men are receiving while in detention.

“Under ICE’s own policies, people in detention have the right to independent medical evaluation. However, staff at the LaSalle Detention Facility have denied our repeated requests, which were made in line with their policies, for accurate and updated medical records," said Dr. Catherine Jones, MD, a physician in New Orleans.

"This makes it impossible for us to have a clear understanding of the hunger strikers’ current medical conditions and completely negates their access to independent evaluations, which is especially crucial as they enter the critical time in their hunger strike when vital organ functioning begins to shut down,” saud Hibes,

Medical review of individuals on hunger strikes by medical experts not connected with the government is critical because of ICE’s history of systemic medical neglect of individuals -- from children separated from their parents to the hunger strikers -- in their custody. 

In October last year, Dr. Parveen Parmar reviewed the medical records of a man who had been on hunger strike for approximately three months while detained at the El Paso ICE Processing Center. Upon review of the medical documents Dr. Parmar stated that it was “the worst medical care I have seen in my 10 years of practice.”

The hunger strike has long been the only way to resist, the weapon of last resort, by the powerless and disenfranchised. It can involve either a time-limited symbolic refusal of food, or – in more extreme cases like the one at the LaSalle detention facility – a prolonged fast that eventually leads to loss of cognition, organ damage and even death.

Mahatma Gandhi used political fasting to great effect against the British in India and to pressure Hindus and Muslims to halt sectarian violence. He came to regard the hunger strike as one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal of non-violent resistance.

Gandhi's longest hunger strike was only 21 days but it was long enough to embarass the British government eventually leading to colonizers to grant independence to India.

From their strict enforcement of questionable immigration policies including the detention of asylum seekers who have not committed any crimes, the US government under Donald Trump appears to be a more stubborn animal than the British colonizers.

“The growing number of hunger strikes in ICE prisons across the country are no coincidence. It is indicative of complete disbelief in a fair legal process and the lengths ICE is willing to go to indefinitely detain them. Some of these men have been locked up for nearly 2 years," said Sofia Casini, FFI's southern regional coordinator. 

"We are deeply concerned that ICE appears willing to let these men die in detention to make an example of them rather than be released to community, where each man has family or close friends willing to provide housing and support.” she said. 

With Gandhi's example, the detained men know that the refusal of food can shame the authorities who bear ultimate responsibility for the lives of those in their custody. In this way, it can be understood as a form of “moral jiu jitsu” that uses the overwhelming power of the government rationalization against it.

By their action, hunger strikers also exert some measure of control against a system that strips them of their humanity. They demonstrate that they are sovereign over their own bodies and that the most serious decision of all – over life and death – is still in their hands.

Sunday Read: After 78 days, South Asian hunger strikers in ICE custody are on the brink of death

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was first published in Truthout.org on Jan. 9. It has now been 78 days since the South Asian men have been on their hunger strike. A petition drive has been launched by MoveOn.org asking for their release.

By MIKE LUDWIG
TRUTHOUT

Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission 

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana — 
With hunger strikes sweeping immigration jails across the country, two Indian asylum seekers protesting their incarceration at a remote Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) jail in Louisiana are reportedly on the brink of death after refusing to eat or drink for 68 days, according to a volunteer who regularly visits the two men.

The hunger strikers have a clear demand: to be released so they can pursue their asylum cases outside of jail.

Medical staff at the LaSalle ICE Processing Center are force-hydrating both men, a painful and disturbing process that involves restraining the striker and forcing fluid through nasal passages with tubes, according to Michelle Graffeo, a volunteer with Freedom for Immigrants. Mr. Singh, whose name has been changed to protect his identify, described the forced-hydration process as terrifying and confusing because jail staff do not speak his native language, and videotaped the procedure.

“It’s a really scary process,” Graffeo said in an interview.

Both men fear they will face violence if they are deported to India and asked volunteers to keep their names out of the press. One is 37 years old and the other is 22, and both filed asylum claims after crossing at a legal port of entry at the U.S.-Mexico border before being shuffled through the nation’s vast immigration detention system.

Graffeo said the two men can no longer walk and are in wheelchairs. They could suffer organ damage or even death within a week, as many hunger strikers do not make it past 75 days.

“It’s a rapid decline at this point,” Graffeo said.

Three other men at the facility are also on strike but recently began drinking some fluids, and all five have been subjected to forced hydration over the past month after refusing to eat and drink, according to Freedom for Immigrants.

Hunger strikes have erupted at immigration jails nationwide as the Trump administration responded to an influx of migrants and asylum seekers at the southern border with policies that prioritize incarceration, with many adults held indefinitely as they wait to see a judge. Last year, immigrant rights groups documented 14 hunger strikes at immigration jails across the country. Strikers typically protest poor conditions and medical treatment and demand their right to freedom and due process. Freedom for Immigrants has identified 1,600 hunger strikers in immigration jails since 2015.

“The reason for me sitting on hunger strike is because I want freedom,” Mr. Singh wrote in a statement and said he began his hunger strike on November 1. “Since January 21, 2019, I have been locked inside four walls. For about a year I have been living my life inside suffocating. In my whole life I have not lived inside four walls like this.”

In 2016 — the last year of the Obama administration — immigration judges in Louisiana approved the release of nearly 60 percent of jailed immigration defendants on bond, but that number has steadily decreased, and dropped to 27 percent in 2019, according to data obtained from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) named LaSalle, where the two men have been on hunger strike for 68 days, in a class-action lawsuit against ICE and the Trump administration. SPLC alleged that immigrants at isolated, privately run jails were systematically denied proper access to legal representation. Immigration defendants with legal representation are more likely to be released on bond and are 10.5 times more likely to win their cases than those without a lawyer, the group argued in its complaint.

The United States’s system for incarcerating immigrants has grown steadily over the past three decades and is now the largest in the world. Comprehensive immigration reform remains elusive in Congress, and the number of migrants and asylum seekers held in immigration jails and border holding pens has swelled under the Trump administration’s brutal immigration crackdown. The Trump administration has forced other asylum seekers to wait in Mexico, where they live in squalid camps and face frequent harassment from gangs and the police.

At the ICE field office in New Orleans, the agency’s regional headquarters, the number of people released after being arrested by ICE agents dropped from nearly 76 percent in 2016 — the last year of the Obama administration — to 1.5 percent in 2018, according to the SPLC. Meanwhile, a number of local and privately run jails in Louisiana have signed lucrative contracts with ICE to incarcerate people awaiting immigration hearings as detention has rapidly expanded under the Trump administration. Many asylum seekers jailed in Louisiana were detained at the southern border and transferred from others states.

TWITTER

The entrance to the LaSalle ICE Processing Center in Louisiana.

“People need to remember these are people who came in from legal ports of entry,” said Graffeo, who regularly drives three hours to visit the hunger strikers at the remote jail. “They claimed asylum, their claims are legal, but during this administration nothing has been consistent. I mean, policy changes by tweet.”

Graffeo said both men in deteriorating condition at LaSalle appear to have legitimate asylum claims, with documentation to back them up. One was violently attacked after converting to Christianity. The other was attacked and beaten by members of a rival political party. He told Graffeo that he would be a “dead man” if he was deported to India, so he might as well take his chances at LaSalle, even if the hunger strike kills him.

Advocates say forced medical treatment of hunger strikers has become more common in ICE jails, particularly at the El Paso Processing Center in El Paso, Texas. Last year, 16 men on prolonged hunger strike were force-fed at the El Paso facility, according to the local chapter of Advocate Visitors with Immigrants in Detention (AVID).The latest round of strikes began in October, with five men refusing to eat by mid-November, including two men transferred from a privately run jail in Louisiana for forced medical treatment.

By now, three of the five strikers at the El Paso facility have been deported, an AVID volunteer said in an email. One man reached 65 days on hunger strike and was force-fed for a month before being granted bond by an immigration judge and released. The fifth man remains on hunger strike and is in poor condition. He is currently being force-fed and receiving “subpar” medical treatment, the group said.

ICE has set protocols for responding to a hunger strike and jail officials typically obtain a court order before force-feeding a prisoner. A number of medical and human rights groups consider force-feeding to be a form of torture.

“Force-feeding, especially when carried out by medical professionals, is ethically unacceptable,” said Ranit Mishori, the senior medical adviser at Physicians for Human Rights, in a recent statement. “This practice is condemned by national and international medical organizations and experts and violates a detainee’s right to refuse treatment and to use a hunger strike as a form of political dissent.”

An ICE spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about the hunger strikers in Louisiana.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Read the original Truthout article here.

Two Indian hunger strikers released

SCREEN CAPTURE

Demonstrators protest the detention of asylum seekers.

Two of the nine South Asian men who have been on a hunger strike have been released from the El Paso immigration detention center.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa confirmed Thursday that Jasvir Singh and Rajandeep Singh were released on bond from the El Paso Processing Center.

Each man was greeted by a small group of supporters in the parking lot of the Otero County Processing Center in Chaparral, New Mexico, where they had been sent over the weekend after a three-and-a-half-month stint at the El Paso facility where they have been detained.

“I feel freedom, sir,” said Jasvir Singh, 22, shortly after his release on Tuesday. “The first thing I have to do is take care of my body.” He came back to the Otero detention center on Wednesday for the release of Rajandeep Singh, 23, who is his second cousin. They plan to join family in California.

After The Associated Press revealed ICE was force-feeding nine immigrant detainees through nasal tubes in January, the facility stopped the controversial practice in February under public pressure.

The United Nations human rights office said in February that the force-feeding of immigrant hunger strikers there could violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture.

Immigration judges initially ordered that both men be deported. Their uncle Amrit Singh said they will appeal their immigration cases and join family in California. One man’s attorney said an appeal already was filed.

Supporters have been lobbying for their release for months.

Javier Singh "knows that he faces certain death if he continues to strike and he knows that he also faces death if he’s deported back to his home country,” said Linda Rivas, the executive director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center.

With their release, both Singhs will be able to fight for their asylum claims from outside of detention, said Rivas.

Earlier, two of other hunger strikers were deported back to India.

Rivas said Singh is one of the last people who continues to strike and has been subject to force-feeding, solitary confinement, and has reported instances of physical and verbal abuse.

“It doesn’t matter where you stand on the political spectrum,” Rivas said, “we should be appalled and horrified at the torture that these people were subjected to in the way that they were force-fed.”

The Washington Post stated beside El Paso, there have also been hunger strikes in Miami, Phoenix, San Diego, and San Francisco.

“They go to the extreme of having to hunger strike in order for them to be heard,” Rivas said, “because they’ve been in detention for several months and often times they will be there over a year.”

Rivas continues, “They have viable asylum claims and they are still not released and they are subjected to abuse.”

The Washington Post reported a statement from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), saying “ICE does not retaliate in any way against hunger strikers,” and that ICE “closely monitors the food and water intake of those detainees identified as being on a hunger strike.”

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ICE deports two of the detained Sikh hunger strikers

ASAM NEWS

Two Sikhs who have been on hunger strike at a detention facility in El Paso have been deported, according to the civil rights group, South Asian Americans Leading Together.
They were a part of a group of nine Sikhs known as the El Paso 9 who have been on hunger strike since at least the beginning of the year. The 9 are seeking asylum.

SAALT says that Amrit Singh, an uncle of two of the El Paso 9 who remain at the facility, was notified of the deportation early Thursday.

AsAmNews was not independently able to confirm the deportations.

“We are outraged by this development,” said Lakshmi Sridaran of SAALT. “The men who were deported yesterday were in no physical condition to travel – much less to a country where their lives are already endangered. The inhumane treatment of individuals in detention facilities across the U.S. is unconscionable. The remaining individuals in the El Paso facility must be released immediately and given adequate medical attention.”

On Valentine’s Day, a court ordered ICE to stop force feeding the hunger strikers in what was considered a victory by supporters of the El Paso 9. However, some of the 9 remain on hunger strike.

“Deportation continues to be used as a final and cruel form of retaliation by ICE to target individuals who have witnessed and speak out against abusive treatment and violation of civil rights,” said Jennifer Apodaca of Detained Migrant Solidarity Network . 

“ICE continues its practice of evading accountability by deporting individuals to ensure that those with critical information are gone, essentially erasing evidence. We demand that all deportations be halted immediately until the full set of information is made public.”

Force-feeding of immigrant detainees halted; hunger strike spreads

The hunger strikers in the immigrant detention center are no longer being force-fed after a judge said ICE had to stop force-feeding them.
On Feb. 14, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stopped force-feeding the hunger strikers, most of them from the Punjab region of India, inside the El Paso detention center in Texas, reports the Associated Press.

“No hunger strikers housed in El Paso are currently being fed pursuant to court orders at this time. Medical staff at the facility continue to closely monitor the health and vital signs o f all the hunger strikers to insure they continue to receive proper medical care,” ICE spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa said in a statement.

Twelve people at the detention center—nine from India and three from Cuba—remain on hunger strikes, said Zamarripa.

“This is a win for us,” said Louis Lopez, who is representing Malkeet Singh and Jasvir Singh in the case heard Feb. 13 in El Paso. Both men are Punjabi Sikhs in their early 20s. “They have a First Amendment right to protest.

Supporters of the Sikhs, some who have been in ICE custody more than a year while fighting deportation, were protesting the length and conditions of their detention.

Michelle Iglesias, an ICE physician overseeing the force-feeding in the El Paso facility, said she will seek a court order when she observes a drop in magnesium, phosphate and potassiam levels, among other health factors.

The hunger strikers, who are getting legal support from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The El Paso hunger strike has inspired other immigrant detainees. Rhode Island-based community groups Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance and the Fighting Against Natural Gas Collective say they've been in contact with about 70 detainees at the Suffolk County House of Correction who are participating in a hunger strike that began Feb. 15.

The communications director for Sikh Americans Legal Defense and Education Fund Gujari Singh said, “It is imperative that the Department of Homeland Security immediately release the individuals engaged in these hunger strikes to ensure their well-being, safety, and protection of their due process rights.”
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