ATTICA CALLING – issue #3

ATTICA CALLING – issue #3

WHO ARE THE REAL CRIMINALS? ICE DETENTION AND US PRISONS

We are in the midst of an explosion of mass detention of immigrants. In just one year, the number of people being held in detention centers increased by 75% to a record 73,000 people in mid-January. At the same time, vicious rhetoric and racist propaganda from the right blames immigrants for the poverty, disenfranchisement, and downward mobility of US-born people who are being screwed by cuts to desperately needed government benefits like SNAP and Section 9 housing, turning people in the same boat against each other.

To accommodate the magnitude of their abductions, ICE has built up a nationwide network of detention centers. It is difficult to get accurate information from these facilities but detainees from young children to adults have reported violence, overcrowding, starvation, and medical neglect. Dozens have died in ICE custody since 2025 and their families are left with no clear answers about what happened. 

“The excuse of a few violent criminals is used to justify the mass incarceration of poor and oppressed populations.”

In the area around New York City, ICE has quietly been buying up warehouses over the past few weeks to convert into detention centers. In particular, they’ve bought property in small towns a stone’s throw from the city, like Chester, NY, and Roxbury, NJ. Because their high deportation quotas are at odds with their inefficient and disorganized bureaucracy, ICE is arresting immigrants way faster than they can deport them. Not only does this result in extreme overcrowding in ICE detention centers, but it’s driving an urgent demand for new detention centers to be built. It also drives ICE agents to use underhanded tactics to expedite deportations, like moving immigrants out of New York State within days of their arrest (which makes it much more difficult for them to fight or delay their deportation) and coercing immigrants into signing self-deportation papers.

Similar to the US prison system, which holds a few genuinely fucked up individuals alongside millions of people with low level charges, and US jails like Rikers Island, where 90% of inmates are legally innocent and awaiting trial, the vast majority of detained immigrants have no criminal record. The excuse of a few violent criminals is used to justify the mass incarceration of poor and oppressed populations. This is because, like the prison system, which serves to keep Black and Latino people oppressed, locked out of stable, legal employment opportunities, and unable to organize or sustain resistance to the system oppressing them, immigrant detention is a form of state repression used to control immigrant populations.

The US has always relied on immigrants as cheap labor while simultaneously rejecting and brutalizing them to satisfy the white supremacists in power. This latest upsurge in extreme state repression against immigrants has stoked widespread fear and uncertainty among immigrant populations that forces them to accept terrible working and living conditions. Working 80 hours a week for below minimum wage and no overtime is still better than rotting in a detention center, and is often better than what’s waiting for immigrants in their home countries if they’re deported. That same fear and uncertainty also means that immigrants are unable to plan their futures in this country, which prevents them from having aspirations that could lead them to rise up against their place at the bottom of the US economy.

There’s a rich history of rebellions in US prisons despite the most extreme repressive conditions, from Attica to San Quentin. Similarly, over the past few months, immigrants in detention centers have been rising up against the brutal repression they’re facing, from protests in a detention center in Dilley, TX demanding the release of a sick child, to the escape of three detainees from a detention center in Newark, NJ.

“The US has always relied on immigrants as cheap labor while simultaneously rejecting and brutalizing them to satisfy the white supremacists in power.”

Whether we’re talking immigrant detention centers or prisons holding US citizens, the bottom line is they have the wrong people inside them. Rather than locking up masses of poor and oppressed people grabbed off the street, these cages should be full of killer cops, COs, and ICE agents, pimps and rapists, and the politicians and CEOs that profit off all this human suffering. stable, legal employment opportunities, and unable to organize or sustain resistance to the system oppressing them, immigrant detention is a form of state repression used to control immigrant populations.

Essay by Michael Cleaver

Michael Cleaver is a writer and artist currently incarcerated at Midstate Correctional Facility who was present when Messiah Nantwi was murdered. This is his firsthand account of what he witnessed.

There was snow on the ground and the prison had come under control of the National Guard. On that day, everything was business as usual. But when the pre-lunch time count was called at 11:15, Messiah Nantwi was missing. He had gotten some bad news. The DA had strong evidence that besides his previous charge he had murdered two people in New York. Messiah was crying in the shower. No one wants to be seen crying in a state prison. The National Guard could not find him anywhere and called the Correctional Emergency Response Team. He was eventually found in the shower. I listened to him curse at the guards. 20 minutes later the Emergency Response Team did arrive. Many inmates watched from their doors because the CERT team consisted of 15 white men dressed in SWAT gear who entered with batons out. I did not watch, I thought ,”now they are going to beat the shit out of him.”

The CERT team was shown to Messiah’s room. He was still wearing headphones. The leading CERT member struck Messiah and his roommate’s door from with a baton perhaps to get his attention. They were there to arrest Messiah. 

As many as 7 CERT officers entered Messiah’s room. One of them punched the roommate in the ribs. They proceeded to try and handcuff Messiah. He said, for everyone to hear, “But I didn’t do anything.”

The batons started to swing. They struck every metal object in the room. Windows, lockers, and bedframes pinged and tinged. Everyone except me leaned out their doors to watch but saw little. Messiah finally came to rest. He was beaten unconscious or perhaps choked out. His roommate said an officer stood on his neck while another kicked him in the face. Messiah was hand and footcuffed and carried down the hall face up like a hog. He was bloody, unrecognizable, and struggling to breathe. 

The dorm was on the second floor. The officers dragged Messiah down the metal stairs which clinked with the sound of foot cuffs. At the bottom of the stairs, he was lifted again and carried across the street to the medical building famous for further abuse. A few CERT officers hung around. Messiah’s roommate came to me for the coffee I was drinking. I had heard the officers tell him to “clean this shit up,” meaning to clean the blood.

A few inmates watched from the dorm’s TV room, as a medical van arrived driving backwards. The EMTs unloaded a gurney and ran into the medical building. A few seconds later Messiah was wheeled out of the medical building underneath a sheet receiving CPR from the female EMT who rode the gurney all the way into the back of the van. Sergeant Slawson, who’d led the 15 men to brutality, who carried the only camera on the scene and caught no useful video, was now standing in front of the medical van pointing to the prison gates.

An officer showed back up at the dorm a few minutes later. Messiah’s now meticulously clean room was declared a crime scene.

Messiah was crying in the shower. No one wants to be seen crying in a state prison.

I told Messiah’s roomie he was the key witness. I spent the rest of the day making calls trying to get him in contact with the New York Times. At 11PM a reporter, Jan Ransome, agreed to talk with him the next morning. I walked to his room to tell him, but he had been moved to a maximum security prison while I’d been on the phone. The next day, Jan Ransom took the testimonies from 8 other witnesses willing to talk to her and produced a milquetoast article in the NYT. What did I expect?

I spent the next two weeks drawing the scenes exactly as witnesses agreed on. We were visited by the first Black legislator with a felony on his record. He had supported his family as a child selling crack, killed a man, and turned himself in. Everyone agreed I should give my drawings to him. But he had no time for me or my crummy drawings. He did not even look at them. I kept them, I was annoyed.

I had the pleasure of meeting the Superintendent of Midstate. This man named Hilton is the man I personally blame for Messiah’s death. He didn’t want us telling other prisoners what his men had done. Three of the eight who were in the NYT were forcibly removed and sent to other prisons for no reason. 

Soon Hilton hired new Black boy scout officers and had them accompany National Guard for training. This seemed an apology for the 15 whites who’d killed the man we were now all quite fond of.

Killer COPs Too Selfish to not snitch, While the Courts Cover Their Ass

Last February, after ten killer COs from Marcy Correctional Facility were indicted for murdering Robert Brooks, COs from across New York staged an unauthorized strike to protest their fellow pigs being held accountable. While pigs whined in comfort for less mandatory overtime, fewer restrictions on solitary confinement, and free reign to abuse as they please, prisoners faced a hellish lock-down. Visitations were paused, food and medical needs were neglected, and 7 prisoners were killed.

On March 1st, 2025, at Mid-State Correctional Facility in Upstate New York, cowardly COs ganged up 15-to-1 on 22 year-old Messiah Nantwi for the offense of taking a shower during count. Messiah yelled, “I didn’t know it was count,” but was still beaten to death by the killer pigs, none of whom were wearing body cameras. They moved quickly to tidy up the scene: forcing prisoners to mop up the blood, planting a weapon on Messiah, and scheming a cover story. We know these COs show out for one another—whether in work stoppages or in conspiracy—while the courts aid and abet their crimes at every step.

As of now, 9 of the COs have taken plea deals, with some like David Ferrone—who openly admits to planting a knife on Messiah—getting out of any jail time on a conditional discharge. There are five killer COs who have yet to face trial, primarily for charges of murder and manslaughter. The defendants aim to place blame on each other for their strategy, a plan backed up by the recent judge’s ruling to split up the proceedings into three separate trials. While these cowardly pigs snitch on each other, the courts only want to do damage control in the face of mass outrage.

No judge is going to secure the justice that’s deserved without mass pressure. Any existing chance for accountability is only possible due to the bravery of the inmates who spoke out about what happened, but we need to continue demanding justice for Messiah—both inside and outside of the prisons—until these murderous pigs are locked up for good.

Attica Calling is a newsletter that exposes the torture, murder, and mistreatment inmates face on the daily across NY state correctional facilities. Incarcerated people exposing the horrors behind bars to the rest of the country is crucial in order to challenge the system.