By N. IRAZU
“It is important we uplift the voices of the compañeros. We want all detention centers to be shut down.” —Juana, immigrant activist with Papeles Para Todos
Dozens of detained immigrant workers have been carrying out labor and hunger strikes In Mesa Verde and Golden State Annex in California[1] and at the Buffalo Service Processing Center in New York. The workers are fighting against the inhuman conditions in which they are kept locked up. Their valiant struggle against exploitation and oppression in these detention centers takes place in the midst of a presidential campaign where both candidates attempt to outcompete each other in who can be more anti-immigrant. While Trump issues the call for “Mass Deportations Now,” Harris vows to be even harsher on immigration than Trump.
With no allies in either of the capitalist parties, with immigration in the crosshairs, immigrant workers in detention centers in California and New York are leading the way in fighting back against the system of incarceration, super-exploitation, and torture that is the U.S. immigration system.
This is not the first time in recent years when detained immigrant workers have withheld their labor and sacrificed their health through hunger strikes to protest conditions in detention centers. In 2022, detainees in Mesa Verde and Golden State Annex in California went on labor and hunger strikes to protest the conditions they were subjected to by the GEO Group, the owners and profiteers of those detention centers. At that time, the strikes were carried out to protest the slavery wages of $1 a day, inadequate food, and the high prices for the commissary and to make phone calls. They wanted the detention centers closed down and their cases to be reviewed fairly, granting them freedom.
In order to break the strikes, GEO subjected immigrants to solitary confinement and even flew hunger strikers out to Texas in order to have them force-fed. Both of these practices amount to torture and can have long-lasting detrimental effects, as was the case with a number of the strikers subjected to these punishments.
The second round of strikes in these detention centers in California maintains many of the same demands, since these were not met by the time the last strike was broken by force. They want an end to solitary confinement, for GEO to meet the standards the federal authorities have set regarding treatment of detainees, and free phone calls in order to contact their family, community, and lawyers. In retaliation, in the middle of the summer heat, the administration of the detention center cut off air conditioning and refused to provide cold water, taking advantage of the climate-change-induced heat wave to break the will of the strikers.
GEO Group is a private, for-profit corporation, which administers detention centers around the country. It turns a profit through contracts it gets from ICE. It comes as no surprise that capitalist market incentives have produced horrific conditions in the camps.
GEO Group lobbies politicians, donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to primarily Republican (but also Democratic!) political campaigns[4] in the hopes of receiving juicy contracts in the future. But these carceral corporations do not have anything to fear from Democrats, since there has been “a boom in private prison revenues from ICE contracts during the Biden administration and an increase in the percentage of detainees being held in private facilities.”[5] GEO Group has received over $700 million in contracts since 2008[6], under Obama, Trump, and Biden.
Detained immigrant workers also carried out a hunger strike in Buffalo, N.Y., during the summer. On June 7, 40 detainees launched a hunger strike demanding the reinstatement of free phone calls and an end to the center’s “lock-in” policy, which kept detainees locked in their cells up to 18 hours a day. In retaliation, the authorities of the detention center threatened to use force, impose solitary confinement, ending access to jobs and recreational activities. [2] This was all laid out In a federal civil rights complaint made by a group of community organizations defending the strikers. Noted in this filing is that the only way to not be subjected to the lock-in is for the detainee to agree to labor for $1 a day, just as in California. Corporate jailers thus offer detained immigrants two choices—slavery or solitary confinement. Under such conditions, how could they not fight back?
The detention center in Buffalo is administered by Akima Global Services LLC, another for-profit corporation that earns its keep by obtaining contracts from the Department of Homeland Security. Since 2011, they have received over $168 million in contracts from the federal government[3], profiting from keeping immigrant workers locked up.
There are no allies of immigrant workers, detained or free, in either of the capitalist political parties. The Republicans and the Democrats target immigrant workers with racist rhetoric, incarcerate them, torture, and deport them. They seek to keep immigrant workers oppressed in order to super-exploit them and use them as a scapegoat for the inherent problems of the capitalist system. It is these same parties that destroy the countries that immigrant workers come from through their imperialist policies of pillage, which force workers to emigrate to the United States in the first place.
Striking detained workers lead the way in the struggle for liberation; they are demonstrating that even under the most adverse, brutal conditions of incarceration and torture it is possible to fight back in order to secure a better world. Their struggle has to be taken up, in solidarity, by the labor and social movements of this country. We must amplify their voices and create a movement that fights for the closure of all detention centers, an end to deportations, and citizenship for all.
Citations:
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/26/immigration-customs-enforcement-ice-hunger-strike-california#img-1
[3]https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/566dbc48-1f9d-f4fe-4b82-d44ed548c602-C/latest
[4]https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/geo-group/recipients?id=D000022003
[6]https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/9b308edb-a62c-659b-704b-ef4e5cf3f795-C/latest
First published at Workers’ Voice https://workersvoiceus.org/2024/09/04/detained-immigrant-strikers-protest-inhumane-conditions/
