Released After Ten Months, ICE Detainee Describes Torturous Conditions at West Tennessee Detention Facility

Read our feature article “Only Those With the Courage To Fight Have the Courage To Win: Combat and Resist ICE Terror!” here.

The Worker interviewed Jose, a Mexican construction worker who has lived in the United States for almost 30 years. Jose was recently released from the West Tennessee Detention Facility after being held there for nearly ten months. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained Jose after Tennessee state troopers arrested him for allegedly running a stop sign, a claim that Jose disputes.

In this interview, Jose describes the mistreatment he suffered while in detention and shares his thoughts on how working people can fight back against ICE terror.

How and why did ICE detain you?

It was a state trooper who stopped me. He told me it was because I didn’t stop at a stop sign, and it wasn’t true. He saw I was Hispanic. That’s why he stopped me. ICE took me from him.

What was the process like when you arrived?

It’s a jail, they strip you naked. You have to sit down, the guards inspect you, you have to cough, and then after they process you the guards take you to wherever you’re assigned. Each part of the facility is given a letter for a name—H, J, G, M, O. You are given a letter and that is where you go. I had never experienced anything like this in my life.

When I first arrived, me and other people there did not see the sun for maybe three months.

I was there ten months and it was not easy. You get sick. I came out sick with like acidity, gastritis.

Everything there was horribly managed. They gave us food, yes, three times a day, but it wasn’t edible. It was overcooked. The pasta came out really mushy, the rice was sometimes a little raw on top so when you bit into it, it crunched. Foods you’d never imagine you’d eat.

What was the situation like in the detention facility over the ten months you were held there?

Many signed self-deportation papers, many didn’t. I didn’t sign. Supposedly they had to give us a bond, but they didn’t give it to us. When I finally had a hearing, there was no bond. When the judge showed up, he just looked at me and told me to talk with my lawyer. Then I had another hearing in a few months. At the next hearing, same thing: talk to my lawyer, wait a few months until the next hearing. It was like that until my final hearing. The truth is, the place is a jail; they open the cell doors, they lock you in, they keep you inside.

We all got sick. But the guards just wanted to cure everything with pills, everything, everything, just pills. There’s a doctor there, and if you feel something more serious, you talk to him. You put in a request for the doctor, but they don’t call you the next day. They wait two days, three days, sometimes longer. The whole time, you get sicker. And all they would give us is pills.

One time I got sick and I was coughing up blood, it felt like a car had run me over. Walking was difficult. I had a cough so dry, I felt like my lungs were going to burst. I had never had a cough like that in my life. I’d tell them I was coughing up blood, and all they would do is give me cough syrup, give me a Theraflu and more pills. Just pills, pills, pills to death.

What other challenges or mistreatment did you face?

They have a lot of restrictions. The guards would not bring you a book to read or anything for free, you have to buy it. Supposedly we had to have access to computers and a library with books. But the only books you could read in the library for free were books of lies provided by the company, CoreCivic, which works for ICE. Truthfully, the only time they would ever take us to the library was when they had to show someone a judge’s email or whenever people needed to send paperwork.

There came a point when the food made me sick and I couldn’t eat it anymore. So I bought food to avoid eating what they gave us.

Another problem was that my son had to send money to the facility for my commissary, which I used to buy the food. Eventually, my son was running out of money to send.

I knew there was money on the debit card I had with me when I was detained. So I told the guards, “Hey, I need my son to come for my debit card so he could send money.” But the guards didn’t let this happen. Then I’d tell them to bring me my phone so I could make the money transfer to my son myself. But they didn’t allow this to happen either.

How many children do you have?

I have seven. And I support all my kids!

How did your detention affect your children?

Bad, bad, bad. This affected them enormously. Because my son was the one who carried all the load, it affected him a lot.

He became me. He had to pay the bills for cell phones, for insurance, for rent, for this and that, for everything. He had to handle all of it and that affected him.

Did you witness or hear about any incidents or abuse when you were there?

The guards would try to force people to sign self-deportation papers. They would put people in a room and three guards would jump them and pressure them to sign. The guards would knock a person to the floor and get on top of the person. One guard would sit on the person’s feet, one guard would press their knee into the person’s chest, and another guard would grab the person’s fingers so they could force them to put their fingerprints on the deportation papers.

I didn’t experience this personally, but they did it to two people who were in the same area as me. One time, a Cuban man came into the facility bleeding, with his finger messed up. He told us that they ganged up on him to pressure him to sign.

While you were in detention, you participated in a hunger strike. Can you tell us about why you went on strike?

We went on strike because they were violating our rights. They ganged up on us to sign papers by force and they weren’t giving us hearings. We were told we had the right to a bond and the right to go to a hearing and show everything, all the evidence and everything. But they were denying this right to us. No asylum, no humanitarian parole, nothing at all.

What should foreign-born workers and the working class do to combat ICE terror?

Neither political party helps. The only thing we are expected to do is work, work, work. When Obama came in, everyone hoped he was going to give us papers. We thought this because he’s Black and the two most discriminated races in this country are Hispanics and Black people. But he didn’t give us anything!

Unity makes strength. It’s like this: if all the workers decide that we won’t work, the country shakes and things change.

Image: The CoreCivic Houston Processing Center, 2018. Credit: Patrick Feller on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

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