Read our article Combat and Resist ICE Terror here.
More than 400 detained immigrants entered their third day of hunger strike on September 1 at the West Tennessee Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention Facility.
Detainees are protesting deplorable conditions and coercive tactics used by ICE, including physical abuse used to force them to sign deportation papers.
The strike started hours after the largest ICE raid in Memphis history, when state forces arrested over 100 immigrants and citizens after trapping them in a nightclub early morning August 30.
A Venezuelan detainee took the strike public, calling reporter Veronica Salcedo from Nashville Noticias (news in Spanish) while she was covering the aftermath of the Memphis raid live. The detainee mentioned that he and all 400+ male detainees inside the facility were on hunger strike since the morning of August 30.
“[The guards] come through our cell blocks very early in the morning and also around 10am to find people to work in the kitchen, and so far no one has showed up,” the detainee shared with Nashville Noticias. He then explained how agents inside the facility are calling detainees to a separate room, where they are coercing them into signing deportation papers. If they refuse, the agents call security guards to batter the detainees, and force their fingerprints onto deportation papers.
Another detainee joined on the line with Nashville Noticias to corroborate the stories, with his personal testimony of physical abuse and coercive measures used by ICE agents. “They forced me to sign the order, pushing my fingerprints on the order,” he said. “It does not have my signature on it like it should because I won’t sign it. I have a family here… I won’t be able to see the judge anymore.”
The first detainee continued that people from “Venezuela, Columbia, South Asia, Russia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras” are all united on strike. The strikers started with a few willing to fight and the entire men’s section of the facility is now on strike. There has not yet been word from the women’s ward.
The wife of a detainee on hunger strike told The Worker, “My husband called me. He was stressing the hell out and was saying that there is a lot of mistreatment happening and he cannot say much because the calls are being recorded. He wants the people outside to know what is happening and that they are on hunger strike.” She has been blocked from being able to video call her husband for months.
The strike continues a national wave of hunger strikes in ICE detention centers. One of the largest has been at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, where over 300 detainees went on hunger strike for weeks between late May and early June while receiving support from daily protests outside the detention hall.
In Tennessee, protests have begun in the neighboring city of Memphis, and activists plan to picket outside the West TN Detention Facility.
Image retrieved from California Coalition for Women Prisoners.
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