On June 15th, ICE cruelly retaliated against detainees participating in ongoing hunger and labor-strikes across the country by rolling out new operating standards for detention centers. These standards serve only to intensify the inhumanity inside ICE concentration camps, and squash the brave acts of resistance led by the immigrants being held there.
Hundreds of detainees across 5 detention centers remain on strike, with 50 women joining the strike in Delaney hall last week to further the demands for the liberation of pregnant women and women under 21. Strikers have been putting their lives on the line since late April to demand liberation and dignified conditions. These rebels are at the forefront of the fight against ICE, and together are forging a path in a larger fight against the deportation machine. ICE is now punishing this rebellion by breaking down the standard practices required for private prison contractor’s care of detainees.
At Geo Group’s request, ICE no longer requires private detention centers to comply with state and federal labor laws. Detention centers no longer have to pay detainees a meager $1 a day for their participation in voluntary work programs (VWPs) as was previously required. While many detainees are coerced into VWPs by means of a deprivation scheme where they cannot obtain clean water or food free of mold without saving their $1 a day for weeks, others have been forced to participate under threat of solitary confinement or the withholding of commissary. By removing the requirement that detainees be paid for their work, ICE has strengthened their repressive apparatus by opening the door to the collective punishment of detainees who are desperately participating in VWP’s to survive. Collective punishment is a well documented strategy to break up pockets of resistance within the prison complex, and under these new operating standards we will see it used in more robust ways to extinguish the fire of the hunger strikes.
Private prison contractors are also no longer required to admit every person that ICE detains into their facilities. People detained by ICE are frequently lost to their families and the world until they are admitted to a detention center. This “processing limbo” is a period where the kidnapped are not yet recorded in any immigration system, often held in undisclosed locations like hotels hundreds of miles from the site of their detention. Under these new operating standards, people kidnapped by ICE can be held in this limbo indefinitely, pushed from place to place as detention centers continually refuse to admit them. This loophole is also intended to curb ICE’s liability for detainees. If ICE brutally arrests someone and puts them in critical condition, they can be left to die in processing, waiving the responsibility of the detention centers to report and record in-custody deaths.
The new policies also permit ICE and detention staff to communicate with detainees exclusively by means of AI chatbots, completely dehumanizing detainees and subjecting them to an emerging form of cruel and unusual punishment. The pigs working in these detention centers are no longer under obligation to listen to or empathize with the people they degrade, and this effectively streamlines the breakdown of conditions by removing humanity from the situation completely.
Mainstream media outlets are reporting on these perverse policy changes as standard updates in the ever more sickening practices by ICE terrorists. In reality, this is a direct response from ICE to crush the resistance brought forth by hunger strikers, and drive home even further (if there was ever any doubt) that their detention centers are concentration camps. ICE has already sought to crush the strikes by separating families who are participating in the strikes together, throwing leaders of the strikes into solitary confinement, forbidding visitations for strikers, and committing acts of collective punishment. These vile policy changes are the next aggressive step toward extinguishing the movement. Yet, in the face of this brutal repression and isolating measures, the strikers have not backed down. Bullshit newscasts are pushing the lie that the hunger and labor strikes have ended, but in reality they rage on with the women of Delaney who have joined the strike and brought forth broader demands to end the patriarchal violence occurring inside detention centers. Strikers are bravely standing firm in their demands and noncompliance, and more detainees are joining the struggle each day. ICE feels the force and pressure of their strategy, unity, and fierce demonstrations on the outside, and they’re scrambling to quell the threat by introducing these disgusting new policies. The most vulnerable among the movement to smash the deportation machine are sacrificing what little they have left and risking their lives in detention, and it is our responsibility on the outside to turn up the heat and fight alongside them.
We cannot allow these state thugs to tighten their grip around the detainees. We cannot give up while strikers continue to starve. We cannot lose momentum while ICE forces detainees into slavery and death. We must show up at ICE’s doorstep to demand the liberation of all the kidnapped. Come ready to local detention centers on June 27th for Viva La Huelga protests across the country to fight back with the strikers, and show the state that they cannot kill the resistance.
¡Libertad Para Los Secuestrados!
¡Alto A Las Deportaciones!
¡Viva La Huelga!
Dare to Struggle 