cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/47682555
More than two weeks since detainees began a hunger and labor strike inside Delaney Hall—and their allies outside answered with near-daily protests—it’s still incredibly difficult to find out what’s going on inside the facility. Often, family members find their visits rescheduled or canceled, and journalists have not made it in, either.
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“They told me that if I were to speak to any detainees, the oversight tour would immediately be cut off and stopped. This is impeding my ability to lawfully do the oversight that I’m legally allowed to do, and I told them I thought this was a deep breach of my responsibilities and what the American people are demanding.”
What he was able to see was disturbing.
As Kim walked past the women’s unit, he said, he saw a group of women frantically waving their arms and pointing at someone curled up on a bed in pain. “They’re just frantic and waving and pointing, and I saw the woman curled up on the bed. I asked, ‘What is happening here?’” The guards, Kim said, didn’t answer. (GEO Group and ICE did not respond to requests for comment.)
“They continue to have only one full-time doctor here for hundreds of detainees, many of whom have significant medical concerns,” Kim said. At this point, there are about 600 people jailed in Delaney Hall, a thousand-bed facility which has faced accusations of inadequate medical care, wormy food and abusive guards.
On his oversight visit, Kim asked the guards why detainees’ video calls are being restricted. “’We’ll get back to you,’” he said the guards replied. He asked after specific detained people, whose families had asked him for help. Again, he said, the guards responded, “’We’ll get back to you.’”
He asked about one detained woman who has been hospitalized for several weeks. “They aren’t telling her family where she is, which hospital she’s in. They’re saying it’s a security problem,” Kim said. Guards told the family to file a Freedom of Information Act request to find out where she is, he said. “Can you imagine if your loved one was in a hospital and you don’t know what hospital they’re in, and then you’re told to just file some bureaucratic papers, and cross your fingers that they’re going to get back to you?”
“That’s the stuff that just pisses me off about this. I was here to get answers for these family members that I talked with earlier today, and I didn’t get them.”
We must acknowledge the probability that the US government is engaging in an ongoing neglect and torture campaign against ICE detainees. The only possible reasons I can conceive for this level of obfuscation are either what I’ve mentioned above or an ongoing epidemic of some nearly untreatable disease in their facilities. Neither explanation makes their actions moral or legal.