New York / Miami, United States.
More than a hundred prisoners of it detention centers for immigration from the United States are on a hunger strike in protest at the dire conditions they say are living in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic demanding their release.
More than 20 people in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in New Jersey have started a hunger strike to claim their freedom, they reported Thursday. pro-immigrant activists, which is also right in the middle of the covid19 pandemic.
Meanwhile in Florida, immigrants in ICE custody at the Glades County Detention Center, they started a hunger strike on December 28, according to reports received by defenders of the group Immigrant Action Alliance, and this Wednesday more than 100 men and women took part in the strike.
In this case, your main requirement is that you have a ICE representative to describe the conditions in which they find themselves in this prison that is operated by Glades County and has an agreement with the immigration office.
In New Jersey, for his part, Abolish ICE Coalition (Abolish ICE) reported on Thursday in a letter to Governor Phil Murphy that 24 immigrants held at the ICE detention center in Essex County Jail are on hunger strike to claim their freedom and that others will begin in the center of the county on Monday. Hudson, in both cases after other recent strikes.
Attention
“The strike coincides with one rebound in Covid-19 cases in detention centers, creating fear and a sense of urgency and exacerbating the already dire conditions of people in prisons and ICE centers, ” says the letter, which is part of a signature campaign to draw the attention of authorities to the affair.
According to the latest figures from ICE, there are currently 497 inmates who have tested positive to the Covid-19 tests and are therefore isolated or follow-up.
In addition, the activist group has indicted Anthony Cureton, Sheriff of Bergen New Jersey, to invite photographers to document the cleaning of some cells in a ‘publicity stunt’ that, they claim, involves the deportation of a family man and some inmates’ reports of ‘concealment’unsanitary, unsafe and inhumane conditionsduring the pandemic.
Marlene Nava Ramos, representative of the organization Critical resistancedenounced in a note the “separation from the family“, the” mental torture of indefinite detention “and” trauma “of the detainees, and the courage of 10 men who recently underwent a 34-day hunger strike in Bergen and faced” reprisals “, one of them deportation.
According to “Abolish ICE”, the detainees in Bergen “cleaning products have been consistently refused, PPE (protective equipment) and medical care during the pandemic “and documented cell cleaning”that is not true” why “detained several people“They continue to report poor conditions and according to ICE statistics there are 7 diagnoses of covid-19.
All ten men faced retaliation such as “water, medical care, heating, blocking windows and tampering with facility staffAnd further, five of them were transferred to other centers, one of which was deported. Two of them “managed to get their freedom” after the hunger strike, the note indicates.
These hunger strike announcements come when an outbreak of the COVID-19 in Yuba County, California, where, according to court documents disclosed by the medium KQED, more than 80 people tested positive for the virus in that prison that also houses immigrants detained by ICE.