Time Code 8:22. Tune in and listen. Because it’s not the first time a hunger strike has hit the Port Isabel Detention Center in Southern Texas.
Within the growing momentum of inspiring actions across the country (culminating in a massive rally in Washington D.C. on March 21st) are a group of 70 detainees at Port Isabel who quietly began a hunger strike two weeks ago to ask for fairness and justice in the immigration system (incidentally the strike was timed on the same day as the National Day of Action Against Sherrif Arpaio.)
Acknowledging a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. day, they announced their action, demanding a suspension of immigration enforcement until the passage of comprehensive immigration reform.
The broken immigration system does not guarantee impartial hearings to immigrants, violates due process, and continues to terrorize immigrant communities by taking away civil liberties, human rights and exhausting the will of immigrants with psychological torture and deplorable conditions until deportation feels like the only way out of the detention nightmare, regardless of the theoretical probablity of winning their case.
One example – people feel that they are being “experimented on for medication for mental illness, complaining that drugs were given out “like candy” without any mental health evaluation.
The strike is worryingly reminiscent of what took place in April 2009, when detainees at Port Isabel undertook a similar mass hunger strike to protest the frequent use of solitary confinement, extended or prolonged detention, and abuse. This was followed by isolated strikes and protests by other detainees in May and August 2009, all of which fell on deaf ears.
Far from receiving anything by way of a positive response, the authorities have only retaliated with attempts to break up the strike, including isolation and quarantine of hunger strikers and reorganizing people amongst different “pods” in an attempt to break the strike. After Southwest Workers’ Union members were invited to tour the facility to do away with any “misconceptions” they have about the conditions there, they were shocked when not only them but families of detainees as well as press were turned away.
But nothing beats hearing from the voices of those in detention. Listen to this Free Speech Radio report with hunger striker Kelly Maharaj, Congressman Solomon Ortiz and Anayanse Garza at the Southwest Workers’ Union.
Despite the promise of detention reform and the positive changes that we are (hopefully) about to see in the system, actions like these will continue until we see immigration reform that moves away from an enforcement-only approach to one that celebrates diversity.
Photo courtesy of www.dhs.gov
