Our New Anahuac

SOUTHWEST WORKERS’ UNION

For Immediate Release

Immigrants Hunger Strike to Protest Slow Processing at the Port Isabel Detention Center

Organizations Call for Alternatives to Detention in Friday Vigil in Raymondville

Contact: Anayanse Garza, 956.207.xxxx

Los Fresnos, TX – Last Monday, 49 prisoners at the Port Isabel Detention Center began a hunger strike to protest the long length of time it has taken to process paper work.  Immigrant detainees have many complaints about due process and conditions at the detention center. Even immigrants who want to be voluntarily deported have been refused papers for this. Detainees say that the legal library has been shut down and they have not had access to computers in order to check the status of their cases for over a month now.  There is speculation that PIDC has not renewed its license for the legal library.  As a result the majority of immigrants remain without access to legal resources.

On Friday, October 16, 2009 organizations from across Texas will call on ICE to use alternatives to detention and to shut down detention centers notorious for human rights abuse.  The vigil will take place at the Willacy County Detention Center, the Rio Grande Valley’s other large immigrant detention center, and will highlight the concerns of detainees at both centers.

In April 2009, Dora Schriro visited the Raymondville “Tent City” Detention Center and the Port Isabel Detention Center.  Two weeks later Families For Freedom (New York), Southwest Workers? Union and CASA began to bring to light a massive hunger strike by immigrants who protested against physical abuse, poor conditions, lack of medical care, racial and religious discrimination and principally lack of due process.

In June, Amnesty International visited the Port Isabel Detention Center after immigrants there wrote a letter to them voicing their concerns about the conditions and the lack of due process they were facing at the facility. During their visit Rama Carty, a prisoner at the PIDC who was outspoken about the plight of immigrants at the facility the hunger strikes continued, was assaulted and forcefully transferred with the intent to deport to Haiti although no travel documents had been issued for him.

Throughout this time immigrants have continued their hunger strike.  In the case of PIDC government oversight has not resolved the problem of prolonged detention and lack of due process, a priority for anyone wishing to be re-united with their family.

Luis Jean Bapiste from Haiti has informed us that he has been on Hunger Strike for over two weeks now.  He is refusing water and food.  He has not been able to take his medication for his heart problem.  According Mr. Bapiste he has no criminal convictions and has been detained for nine months. He plans to continue his hunger strike until he is released and reunited with his family.

Victor Djangmah from Ghana, is another detainee who continues his Hunger Strike of two weeks to protest the lack of due process.  His consulate has said they will not issue papers for him yet he remains in detention by orders of PIDC.

In early October in the 35-page report, produced for Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, by Dora B. Schriro, an adviser who has since quit to become the correction commissioner in New York City, presented findings made during a six-month review of the detention system.  According to the report, 57 percent of the 178,605 people sent through the Criminal Alien Program in the 2009 fiscal year had no criminal convictions, an increase since 2008, when non-criminals were 53 percent of the 149,067 detainees sent through the program.  Clearly government oversight has not been able to prevent human rights abuse and prolonged detention even for non-criminal immigrants.

As a response to the report by Dora Schriro DHS, Judy Rabinovitz, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, has said that she was pleased that the Obama administration was making improvements. But she said the government should reassess whether everyone arrested for an immigration violation should be detained at all.
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