Abuse and Retaliation Against Hunger Strikers in U.S. Immigration DetentionWe provide below a portion of the executive summary of a recent report by Physicians for Human Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union concerning resistance by detained refugees using hunger strikes, many of them women, and violations of their human rights by the U.S. While the report speaks to forced feeding, use of freezing cold rooms and solitary confinement, the women hunger strikers have also brought out that threats are made against them using their children. Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) threaten to remove children or prevent the mothers from seeing them, for example, as a means to coerce them into ending the strikes. To date, most of the detention centres involved remain open. Mr. Otieno (a pseudonym) an asylum seeker from East Africa, is one of the many people in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention who began a hunger strike to protest poor conditions and seek release during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than listen to his pleas, ICE retaliated by locking him in a freezing cold room, force-feeding him through a nasogastric tube against his will, and transferring him to three different facilities. Only after subjecting him to all of this did ICE finally release him from detention in late 2020. Mr. Otieno, who lost 28 pounds and now takes medication for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, described it as "an experience that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy." He said, "They put me on a bed and handcuffed me to an emergency medical stretcher. ... [They] strap you on the chest, waist, legs, [with] hard restraints ... there is no point in fighting back because you are there with six male, strong officers, and three nurses, and there is nothing you can do." The doctor claimed to have a judicial order but declined to show it to him. Mr. Otieno saw two other hunger strikers who were also force-fed. The decision to begin a hunger strike in immigration detention is not taken lightly. A detained person's refusal to eat may be the last option available to voice complaint, after all other methods of petition have failed. Detained and imprisoned people worldwide have engaged in hunger strikes to plead for humane conditions of confinement or release from captivity and to bring attention to broader calls for justice.
People may be locked up for many months -- even years -- as they await final adjudication of their cases or deportation. Trapped in a system marked by mistreatment and abuse, medical neglect, and the denial of due process, hundreds of people in immigration detention engage in hunger strikes as a means of protest each year. ICE's failure to provide safe and humane conditions in detention during the COVID-19 pandemic has only raised the stakes for detained people. Although some detained people, on occasion, are able to bring outside attention to their hunger strikes, very little is known of ICE's systemic response to hunger striking detainees. This report provides for the first time an in-depth, nationwide examination of what happens to people who engage in hunger strikes while detained by ICE. For the full Executive Summary, click here.
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Each day, the United States government unnecessarily locks up
thousands of people in civil immigration detention, including children,
in over two hundred immigration detention centres
around the country.