With Detainee Hunger Strike in Third Week, ICE Is Failing to Review Requests for Freedom, Advocates Say

A hunger strike at two California immigration detention centers is entering its third week, and immigrant advocates say U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is failing to properly consider the strikers’ requests to be released.

In a letter to ICE leadership Wednesday, more than 100 faith-based groups, civil rights organizations and legal service providers charged that ICE is violating its own policies by not giving a thorough individual review to each detainee’s request to be released.

The hunger strike began Feb. 17 with 84 men held at two for-profit detention centers in Kern County, the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield and the nearby Golden State Annex in McFarland, according to advocates in close touch with the detainees.

The men are protesting what they call “soul-crushing” living and working conditions, and launched the hunger strike as an escalation of a 10-month-long labor strike, over $1-per-day pay for janitorial work. They also complain of black mold, spoiled food, sexually abusive pat-downs and the use of solitary confinement as retaliation.

An ICE spokesperson last week confirmed the hunger strike, saying it became official under agency policy as of the evening of Feb. 19, after detainees had missed nine consecutive meals. Under ICE standards, medical staff are required to carefully monitor the health of hunger strikers in detention (PDF).

ICE officials declined to comment for this story or to say how many people it considers to be on hunger strike at the two facilities.

On Thursday, roughly 40 of the men were continuing to refuse food and had only consumed liquids for 14 days, according to Aseem Mehta, attorney with the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco who is representing the hunger strikers in a lawsuit filed last week.

The class-action suit alleges that ICE and The GEO Group, the company that owns and operates the prisons, have tried to punish the hunger strikers (PDF) by placing them in solitary confinement and denying them family visits, yard time and access to church and the law library. The retaliation violates the detainees’ First Amendment right to protest their conditions, according to the complaint.

“It didn't have to get to this point,” said Mehta. “For almost one year now, the individuals in these facilities have been attempting to negotiate with ICE for better treatment, better conditions and better care at the facilities. And ICE and GEO have stonewalled them all along the way.”

The men ultimately decided that the only thing they would accept is release from detention and that they would stop eating until they are released, he said.

Accordingly, 38 of the men have filed petitions with the help of lawyers — and dozens of others submitted them on their own — asking to be released while their cases proceed through the immigration courts, said Mehta.

Under U.S. law, certain asylum seekers, and noncitizens convicted of certain crimes, are subject to mandatory detention while they are in deportation proceedings (PDF). But immigration attorneys argue — and ICE's own guidance states — that ICE has inherent “prosecutorial discretion” to release individuals on a case-by-case basis.

“ICE has the discretion and the authority to release every single one of these individuals,” said Mehta.

In their letter to ICE, the advocates asserted that the agency “can and must use its professional judgment to evaluate enforcement decisions in every individual case.” But they say ICE has denied nearly all of the hunger strikers’ release requests, so quickly, in many cases, that ICE could not have reviewed the evidence submitted.

In one example given, an individual submitted more than 200 pages of evidence in favor of release, but the request was denied just 19 minutes after it was filed. In another, a request was denied after 77 minutes, despite the fact that it included more than 100 pages of documentation.

“ICE has summarily denied or ignored every one of those requests, and this letter is calling upon ICE to follow the law and follow their own guidance to take an individualized review of every single request that's made to them,” said Mehta. “At bottom [ICE detainees] have a constitutional right to fair treatment and due process, and that right overrides any other consideration under the immigration laws.”

Meanwhile, in Louisiana, an estimated 300 immigrants detained at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center launched a hunger strike Thursday, demanding improved conditions and calling for their own release, according to Detention Watch Network, a coalition that seeks to end ICE detention. The detainees allege the facility, which is operated by The GEO Group, is moldy and unsanitary, and that they are not provided sufficient hygiene supplies such as toilet paper and toothpaste, according to the coalition.

KQED's Farida Jhabvala Romero contributed to this report.