By N. IRAZU
On July 1, immigrants detained in the private detention centers of Mesa Verde (MV) and Golden State Annex (GSA) in California launched a labor and hunger strike. The struggle that these immigrant workers are now carrying out within these detention centers is of the utmost importance not only for the brave struggle they are waging, but also because their struggle demonstrates the unity of the anti-capitalist, immigrant, working-class, anti-carceral, and environmental movements.
The main demands [1] of the strikers towards the directors of the detention center and ICE are::
1) End the Mesa Verde and Golden State Annex ICE Detention Contracts by December 2024
2) Freedom: Review our cases for release fairly
3) End Solitary Confinement
4) Stop Violating Your Own Standards: ensure adequate medical care, mental health care and food, and end retaliation
5) Phone calls: stop charging us to call our families, lawyers and communities
Retaliation: Report by an immigrant worker
These detention centers are owned by a private company, The GEO Group. No company likes workers who defend themselves, much less a prison and torture company. The retaliation to this new strike has also been harsh and sinister. Indeed, the company is taking advantage of the high summer temperatures to break the strike. Right now, in the middle of summer, the temperature in central California reaches unbearable and even dangerous levels. The temperature forecast in Bakersfield, Calif., where the Mesa Verde Detention Center is located, indicates “excessive heat.”
J.H, an immigrant worker previously imprisoned by ICE, who takes part in the solidarity campaign with the strikers, spoke to Workers’ Voice in an interview conducted for this article. He explained how GEO jailers utilize the heat as a strike-breaking tactic:
J.H.: “ In this strike they are receiving retaliation; one is that they are going to cut off […] some numbers they had to communicate with lawyers, for free. Another is that at GSA they cut their air conditioning. The temperature reached 110 [degrees Fahrenheit] and up. Without air conditioning in a place like this, they are at risk of heatstroke. Another is that they don’t want to provide them with cold water; they don’t put ice in their gallons of water. It is hot water, and the temperature there is unbearable.”
Workers’ Voice: “Cutting off the air conditioning, cutting off the cold water—did that happen after the strike started?”
J.H.: “Yes. They say the machine is broken, but I don’t trust what they say. What our compañeros have told us is that due to the PBNDS [ICE standards], [they say in justification] that they do not have to give them cold water. I can say that when we started the [previous] strike, they put us in solitary confinement. It is a way to break these strikes.
“Clearly, GEO has found creative ways to break the strike. They are taking advantage of rising temperatures due to climate change to suffocate strikers with heat, denying them cold water and air conditioning.
“For migrant workers, the problem of high temperatures is nothing new: they take lives on the border, where many die of sunstroke and dehydration searching for paths through the desert, and in the countryside, where agricultural workers work under the sun all day long without their bosses providing them with shade and cold water. This tactic by GEO is just one more example of how companies not only ignore, but rather take advantage of, climate change.
“GEO also carries out retaliation against strikers in more traditional ways. On July 11, the Committee in Solidarity with the strikers reported that in addition to not turning on the air conditioning or providing ice, GSA authorities canceled access to the yard and announced that legal speed dialing would also be canceled. This is on top of regular violations like lack of cleanliness, toilet paper, and poor quality food.
“In protest against the cancellation of access to the courtyard, detainees in one dormitory refused to line up for the daily count until they were granted access to the yard. In another dormitory, where access had been restricted from two hours to one hour, the detainees held a peaceful sit-in protest. Their demands were met.”
The 2022 strike
For some context: This is not the first time such a strike has taken place at the MV and GSA detention centers. In 2022, dozens of imprisoned immigrants went on a labor and hunger strike. Their demands were hardly out of this world—a minimum wage for the work done, since they only pay one dollar a day, adequate food, reasonable prices at the commissary, and against the high costs for making phone calls. [2]
In response to these sensible demands, GEO retaliated harshly, imposing solitary confinement and transferring strikers to detention centers in Texas so they could be force-fed, a brutal and dangerous practice in which a tube is inserted through the nose and into the stomach to pass food. [3] It is the equivalent of torture. Now that the detainees have gone on strike again, we can see that the spirit to struggle is stronger than the barbarous reprisals.
For-profit prisons
You have to take a few things into account. First of all, calling these places “detention centers” mystifies what they really are—prisons for immigrant workers. These prisons are maintained for profit; The GEO Group makes money by obtaining ICE contracts to maintain these facilities. As with any other company, the capitalists, that is, the owners, have one principal thing in mind—maintaining and increasing their profits. It is for this reason that those who are incarcerated not only experience the daily depredations of prisons, but are also exploited, being forced to carry out janitorial work to maintain their living spaces. They receive a salary of only one dollar a day, when the minimum wage in California is $15 an hour.
If we view this as we would with any other company, we will observe more than normal exploitation, where the worker is paid only a part of the value they produce. Here we see super-exploitation, where the worker’s salary does not represent even a minimal part of the work they do. Exploiting detained immigrants in this way provides GEO with handsome profits.
It is worth saying that any company has one main purpose—to profit. When it comes to the prison industry, this becomes even more nefarious. When the Department of Homeland Security conducted a surprise inspection of the Golden State Annex, they discovered that ICE paid $25.3 million to GSA for empty beds. That is to say, in the contract between ICE and this private company it was stipulated that that amount would be paid to keep 560 people detained, while in reality GSA only had 136 imprisoned. [4] And what was ICE’s response upon seeing that not all the beds were occupied? They sent more incarcerated people! There are now around 400 people incarcerated in the GSA facility. [5]
We can see here the big problem with a prison system that works within the logic of capitalism. The more people detained, the more profit can be made. The relationship between the state and private companies can also be seen in the stock market. Following the attempted assassination of Trump on July 13, GEO stock increased by 9.35%, as expectations of Trump winning the presidential election rose. [6] Companies that profit from the detention and torture of immigrant workers are licking their lips, dreaming of even more profitable contracts than those they already receive under Biden’s presidency.
The fight continues
The strikers inside the Golden State Annex and Mesa Verde are not only facing the administrators of these detention centers, but are up against the U.S. government and its anti-immigrant and anti-worker policies, and against the barbaric capitalist system as a whole. By proposing a labor and hunger strike, they denounce the system that criminalizes workers for crossing borders in search of a better life. The evolution of the struggle, from a labor strike to a hunger strike, demonstrates the courage of the strikers in their fight to have their demands met.
The reality is that, since prison companies receive contracts from the state, even if they go on strike, GEO still makes profits from keeping them incarcerated. On their side they only have themselves and their community in solidarity, on the other, there is the entire capitalist system, with its prisons, ICE, and climate change. It is important to keep in mind that this occurs under a Democratic president and in a state with a Democratic governor, proving once again that we cannot look for allies in the immigrant struggle in any of the parties of the capitalist class.
If more Democrats are elected in November, nothing is going to change, because they are the ones who maintain the system that is currently brutalizing immigrant workers. Only the working class can liberate itself. These immigrant workers, under the harshest regime of repression, are the ones leading the way. This strike can be a spark that ignites wider struggles against all the cruel manifestations of the capitalist system as these vanguard workers pull other sectors of the class into motion. This is an opportunity for all progressive groups and institutions to come together in struggle against these inhumane conditions.
We have to surround our comrades in solidarity, raising our voices in support of their struggle, providing material solidarity for their contribution campaigns, and taking to the streets to march for them. This fight involves all workers and all immigrants.
Finally, a few words from J.H. on the importance of building solidarity with this strike: “These comrades who are detained are fighting for their human rights. They are teaching empowerment, that even if you are in a position like that, you are in the fight. They are ready to face any retaliation. They are going to fight for their rights to get a change. And it relates to what’s happening out here. They are being exploited, just like their family members are being exploited, just like the undocumented people who live here in the United States, who are not paid what they should be paid.
“Even if one is detained or outside, the government does not want to give those rights and benefits to the undocumented, to continue exploiting them, to continue obtaining profits off their backs.
“Outside, an undocumented person receives a minimum wage that makes it difficult for them to support their family, in California, where everything is very expensive. This is how things are related, and how federal systems like ICE and corporations like GEO don’t mind separating families. They are discriminatory and oppressive systems. They don’t mind rounding up immigrants on the streets, just as they don’t mind having them in a detention center and exploiting them and then completely separating them from their families. […] But what I can say is that my comrades in the detention centers are showing the empowerment that a defense can be waged against this mistreatment.”
References:
[3] https://workersvoiceus.org/2023/04/27/camp-guards-violently-break-immigrant-hunger-strike/
[4]chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2024-04/OIG-24-23-Apr24.pdf
