Hunger strikers at Torrance County ICE detention facility say they're being targeted

Oct. 12—Asylum-seekers and other migrants engaged in a hunger strike at a detention facility in Torrance County to draw attention to what they say are inhumane conditions temporarily suspended the action Tuesday after some of them disappeared in the middle of the night, a detainee said.

He described detainees being awakened late Monday by guards shouting at them and leading some away.

"The strike has been paralyzed because all the people participating have been struck with fear that they might be put into a cold, lonely, dark, hole," Orlando de los Santos Evangelista said through an interpreter in a phone interview Tuesday.

"They started eating again practically because they were forced to," he added.

An immigrant attorney suggested the penalty for hunger strikers might have been more severe than solitary confinement.

"A bunch of people were transferred for deportation last night at midnight," said Sophia Genovese, a managing attorney for the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center. "We are struggling to get in contact with our clients. It appears to be in retaliation for speaking up and complaining about the conditions in the facility and for going on this hunger strike."

She and other legal advocates say hunger strikers have been alternating the demonstration for several weeks, going 72 hours without food, even as they face threats of solitary confinement, force feeding, fabricated misconduct reports and expedited deportations.

The Torrance County Detention Facility — owned and operated by private prison operator CoreCivic — is one of three privately run facilities in New Mexico that hold immigrant detainees, most of whom cross the into the U.S. near El Paso in hopes of being granted asylum. It has come under fire from the Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General, which recommends removal of detainees, and New Mexico's Democratic congressional delegates.

CoreCivic, however, denies claims of a hunger strike and poor conditions at the detention center.

Spokesman Matthew Davio wrote in an email Monday, "Not one detainee has missed a meal."

Davio also denied reports of cold and dirty living quarters, inoperable plumbing, the presence of insects and other insanitary conditions.

De los Santos Evangelista, 39, said he has been held at the Torrance County Detention Facility since July, when he crossed into the U.S. near Juárez seeking asylum from police persecution in the Dominican Republic.

Detainees who were shaken Monday night by the sight of guards taking away some hunger strikers agreed to stop the strike only temporarily, he said.

"Security people said they were going to help us reach a solution," he said. "... We are waiting for a response. Depending on that response, we will be making a decision. But we still haven't received a response from them."

While the facility's population has averaged around 200 men over the past year, there were 77 detainees as of Sept. 16, according to a report from the office of U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M. The majority of them are from Turkey, Columbia and Ecuador.

Genovese said about 95 percent are people who have committed no crime and would be eligible for release on their own recognizance while awaiting adjudication of their asylum petitions.

Instead, the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center says, they are being held in abhorrent conditions in the severely understaffed facility with little access to information about the progress of their cases.

More than a dozen men say in sworn declarations provided by the law center that rain comes in through the windows; plumbing is clogged or overflowing; showers and toilets are filthy and black with mold; food is undercooked, inadequate and sometimes unidentifiable; detainees are routinely screamed at because they don't understand English; and they are denied medical care for conditions such as heart disease and asthma.

They often don't have enough potable water to drink, according to the men's statements.

"We came here to escape the violence, extortion, death and injustices that we have suffered in our countries. But what we found was prison, mistreatment and humiliation. No human being should be subjected to the conditions we now live in," De los Santos Evangelista said in a recorded statement regarding the strike late last month.

Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General issued a "management alert" to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in March calling for the "immediate removal of all detainees" at the Torrance County facility following an unannounced inspection in February that found severe staffing shortages had led to "safety risks and unsanitary living conditions."

Inspectors cited several issues in a 19-page report:

* More than 80 of the 157 cells holding detainees had "plumbing issues, including toilets and sinks that were inoperable, clogged, or continuously cycling water."

* Faucets were missing cold and hot water buttons, and some did not produce hot water.

* Broken sinks and water fountain restrictions left detainees "drinking water from a communal area faucet intended for filling mop buckets."

The Office of the Inspector General issued a second report Sept. 28 repeating some of the findings and adding new ones.

"We identified critical staffing shortages and violations of ICE detention standards that compromised the health, safety, and rights of detainees," inspectors wrote in the more recent report. "Specifically, Torrance did not meet standards for facility conditions, facility security, medical care, use of force, detainee classification, communication between staff and detainees, and access to legal services."

Davio wrote in an email Monday that CoreCivic disagrees with the Office of the Inspector General's findings and recommendation for removal of detainees.

Genovese said the inspector general does not have enforcement authority but reports go to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who could order ICE to close the Torrance County Detention Facility.

A group of regional immigration advocates — including the Immigrant Law Center, the Innovation Law Lab, the American Civil Liberties Union, Justice for Our Neighbors El Paso, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and Detention Watch Network — filed an administrative complaint Aug. 30 urging Homeland Security's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties to investigate the facility and order the release of everyone held there.

Genovese said the law center also has been speaking with New Mexico's congressional delegates but declined to comment on the specifics of those discussions.

A spokesman for U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich wrote in an email Monday that Heinrich and fellow U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján, Rep. Stansbury and Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández wrote Mayorkas in December asking for increased oversight of the facility after Haitian asylum-seekers faced barriers to legal counsel.

"The reports of the conditions inside the privately-run facility are abhorrent," Heinrich said in a statement Monday.

"CoreCivic's lack of action to remedy the conditions, while attempting to restrict access to detainees seeking basic legal information, only furthers my belief that we must stop corporations from profiteering off of incarceration," he continued. "All of our detention facilities in New Mexico need to be run by the government."