By Caroline Keane
During the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been 3 waves of hunger strikes at the Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC)—formerly known as Northwest Detention Center (NWDC)—with as many as 300 people participating in one and lasting at least 100 days.
Hunger strikes by prisoners (migrant and non-migrant) have been ongoing for many years. Hunger strikes at NWIPC have been ongoing since 2014, there has been a new wave of hunger strikes in detention centers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Detainee’s demands include humanitarian visas now, reuniting families, stopping deportations, releasing of prisoners with underlying health conditions, and the use of appropriate shower curtains. One strike was initiated after a guard kneeled on the neck of a 19-year-old at the NWDC. A report by University of Washington illuminated the abusive conditions at the facility, something that detainees have been decrying for years.
The conditions, already widely condemned, in these detention centers have been exacerbated by the pandemic. For a number of detainees, they are so deadly and intolerable and the prospect of starving oneself becomes preferable to life inside. Prisons are already known to be violent and challenging to live inside of. To choose to weaken one’s one immune system and strength during a pandemic illustrates the desperation that they share. Prisoners, particularly migrant prisoners, are left with limited access to the outside world, especially during COVID-19. This makes it so their own bodies become one of the only methods for acts of resistance and solidarity. The already intolerable conditions inside of ICE facilities become increasingly more inhumane, prisoners strike in the only way they can. Their plight remains largely ignored, except by activists and detainees’ loved ones. The only way to ensure that migrant detainees are being treated humanely and to end this public health risk is to listen to their demands and close the detention centers down for good.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, it became clear that the lives of the detainees would not be protected. The supposed crime by migrating to the US had already deemed the prisoners unworthy of basic human rights such as edible food, freedom from abuse and sanitary living conditions. Prisoners continued to be detained where social distancing was not possible, and were not provided with necessary sanitation items or PPE. Hunger strikes during the pandemic began on March 27, 2020, when over 60 women initiated a hunger strike, and by the first week of April 300 people were participating. Prisoners reported that guards did not wear masks or gloves. Hunger striker’s demands included the immediate release of vulnerable people, humanitarian visas to detainees and a moratorium on deportations and transfers.
According to Detention Watch Network, by April 15 2020, three weeks into the pandemic, there had been 16 confirmed hunger strikes nationwide by detained migrants. Conditions were not only intolerable at NWIPC, but at many other ICE facilities across the United States.
Guards tested positive for the virus, and some of them continued to work while positive. COVID-positive detainees were transferred into NWIPC and from NWIPC to other ICE facilities.
In November, a guard kneeled on the neck of a 19-year-old. Democracy Now reported seven detainees initiated a hunger strike in response and four others being placed in solitary confinement for speaking out against the attack. An act some found particularly offensive the same year as the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter uprisings.
According to La Resistencia, in December there were two detainees on hunger strike, protesting the dangerous conditions inside the facility, Victor Fonseca and Gabriela Parra Perez. They demanded the release of prisoners with underlying health conditions.
According to La Resistencia’s reporting on Twitter, as of January 8th four women were still on hunger strike along with Victor, who has hypertension and failing kidneys. They demanded to free all who were sick. Two guards had tested positive on January 16th, and ten people were actively participating in the hunger strike.
Another hunger strike was initiated in February, with one detainee protesting the installation of short, translucent shower curtains leaving the prisoners exposed. ICE and GeoCorp seemed to take away the small amount of privacy the detainees had.
According to La Resistencia, Victor Fonseca’s hunger strike has lasted for 100 days as of March 2, 2021. Victor told La Resistencia, “On Monday, I will be reaching one hundred days of my hunger strike, and I am not stopping. I will keep fighting for my freedom, my family, and my life. Our struggle keeps going to close this detention center by 2025, this building that has separated so many families and unjustly deported so many.”
Detainees at the NWIPC were not alone in using hunger strikes to demand better conditions and survival from COVID-19. There are reports of hunger strikes in at least 13 other ICE facilities in the US during the COVID-19 pandemic.[ref]Reports of Hunger Strikes in 13 other facilities:
https://www.propublica.org/article/ice-detainee-says-migrants-are-going-on-a-hunger-strike-for-soap
https://www.kqed.org/news/11835611/ice-detainees-at-yuba-jail-press-for-covid-19-protections
https://scalawagmagazine.org/2020/09/new-orleans-hunger-strike-ice/
[/ref]
I spoke with Maru Mora Villalpando, an organizer with La Resistencia, an immigrant’s rights advocacy group, to gain some perspective on the hunger strikes and our current moment as it relates to detention center abolition. I asked Maru about how public perceptions have shifted since hunger strikes have been ongoing at NWIPC and throughout La Resistencia’s work to support them.
“The advances we have seen are several that can be seen outside detention, people know of the existence of this system, the call for the end of detention has grown, along with the call to abolish ICE. The response from Biden to the immigration enforcement, is a result of those years of internal organizing in detention centers. Conditions after a very well publicized hunger strike do get a bit better. But with time when there is no public pressure, they go back to the same bad conditions. Under COVID all detention conditions have worsened.”
When asked about how the hunger strikes fit into the greater struggle for prison abolition and the timing of that, Maru responded
“It is closer, and hunger strikes are not only a part of the greater struggle, they are a guide for us. Their demands and organizing are the call to organize outside as well.”
What can those on the outside learn from hunger striking prisoners?
“Hunger strikes are the most peaceful demonstration anyone can do, it is also the most difficult and unsustainable tactic an individual can do. Yet when people detained chose to do so, it reflects the extreme conditions they face. That’s why people outside must listen to people detained, follow their lead, not assume what to do or decide for their own individual tactic that works for them and not for the people detained organizing.”
How can those on the outside support people caged in the NWDC and their families?
“By supporting the work of La Resistencia, doing the calls to actions, attending our actions, sharing our social media posts, and donating so we can continue the work until NWDC is closed forever.”
At the NWIPC hunger strikes have been recorded since 2014. On March 7th of that year, 1,200 detained immigrants refused meals, some for up to 56 days. Two more strikes were organized that year, detainees demanding improved detention conditions and an end to deportations. La Resistencia was formed that year to support those inside the facility.
There were at least 5 hunger strikes in 2017, demanding an end to forced and low paid labor. The detainees were being paid $1 a day, to do rigorous labor, what some may call slave labor wages. That same year La Resistencia sued the facility, claiming the work program violates US laws against slavery. Detainees faced repression in the form of solitary confinement, threats of force-feeding, and transfers to other facilities.
In 2018, at least 120 detained migrants participated in a hunger strike demanding edible and healthy food, along with ICE providing fair hearings and lower bonds. Two of those who participated reported being attacked by guards in retaliation for the strike.
In 2019 at least 200 people participated in the strike, demanding better food, ending the abuse by guards, and shutting down the facility. Inmates speaking to La Resistencia reported finding blood, hair and maggots in the food while those in the kitchen complained of a rat infestation in the kitchen. At that point there had been 19 recorded hunger strikes at the NWIPC.
According to ICE data, as of March 12, 2021, there have been 34 cases of COVID-19 at the NWIPC. Their data did not specify any distinction between workers or detainees. A report by University of Washington Center for Human Rights revealed how unsafe and inhumane conditions at NWIPC have been. In regard to COVID protocol, the report found problems with social distancing, sanitation and masking, inmate transfers, testing and transparency. The history of inadequate access to medical care was continued by refusing to conduct widespread testing. The report illustrates the faulty logic behind migrant detention during the pandemic.
“First of all, both sets of guidelines—ICE’s and CDC’s—are based on the assumption that certain protections recommended for those outside carceral settings are not possible for those within jails and prisons. From a human rights point of view, this is a dangerously problematic assumption, for it naturalizes the ‘need’ for civil detention of immigrants, despite the strong condemnation of such practices in international human rights law, and further suggests that once detained, people have a less robust right to health than members of the general population.”
A report by Detention Watch Network revealed the enormous public health risk that continuing migrant detention was during the pandemic. In Washington state, ICE detention was responsible for 1,673 cases and 245,000 in the United States.The infection rate inside immigration detention centers was 13 times higher than that of the general U.S. population. ICE was also responsible for spreading the virus abroad by continuing deportations even while borders were closed. Detention Watch Network reported, “ICE exported the virus to Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, El Salvador, and India — all countries with few intensive care beds, few respirators, and relatively meager health systems particularly vulnerable to viral spread… Last spring, at one point, people deported from the United States made up as much as 20 percent of all known Covid-19 cases in Guatemala. In the 2020 fiscal year, ICE deported 164,455 people from the U.S., potentially sending thousands, or even tens of thousands, of cases throughout the world.”
Many detainees face repercussions for speaking out or striking against their detention and persecution in the form of solitary confinement, assault by guards, force-feeding, facility transfer and deportation. The hunger strikes are also a key part of their struggle for freedom. There have been detainees released in response to the hunger strikes and public pressure. There have been a number of lawsuits against the NWIPC over the years. According to ICE data, as of March 3, 2021 3,622 detainees have been released after court order.
A bill, HB1090, has recently passed in the Washington State House of Representatives to end the use of for profit detention centers in Washington. The NWIPC is the only one that currently exists. The many hunger strikes and the conditions that incited them were referenced in causes for the bill. If the bill passes in the Senate, NWIPC will close permanently in 2025, when the contract with GEOCorp expires. Similar for profit facilities would not be allowed to open.
Conditions inside ICE facilities, particularly NWIPC, are unliveable and this is only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. We must hear the prisoners’ cries to be treated humanely and respond by putting an end to the intolerable conditions that they face. The only way that can be done is by shutting the detention centers down. We can imagine alternatives or simply return to the recent time in which they did not exist, and push for a world where immigrants are given the same human rights as those with citizenship.
