Nearly two weeks ago, women detainees began a hunger strike at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center outside of Austin, Tx.
The “residents” are protesting their treatment by facility employees, quality of food, living conditions, and the fact that they are being held there at all. For all means and purposes the women at Hutto are prisoners, the facility being the equivalent of a medium security prison, not a mere “residential center”.
Hutto is an immigrant detention center ran by the for-profit prison corporation Corrections Corporation of America, a company with a less than endearing track record of prison conditions and treatment of its employees, contracted to do so by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).
Hutto is an immigrant detention center ran by the for-profit prison corporation Corrections Corporation of America, a company with a less than endearing track record of prison conditions and treatment of its employees, contracted to do so by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).
Many of Hutto’s 500 residents are here seeking asylum in the U.S. from violence in their home countries–countries under the gun of U.S. imperialism, with most of them being from Central America.
An ICE policy set in 2010 mandates that if an asylum seeker is deemed to have credible fear of persecution they should be considered for parole. According to U.S. government statistics, 82 percent of 16,077 women fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras were deemed to have a credible fear of persecution or torture if they were to return to their home countries.
In light of this report it would seem clear that many of the women in detention should be on parole, or at least seriously being considered for parole, yet Hutto remains full, the pressure of keeping the facility full running at odds with the residents’ right to freedom from persecution and imprisonment.
On Nov. 7, a significant number of supporters of the hunger strikers demonstrated in front of the detention center to bring light to the plight of the women on the hunger strike and express solidarity.
The hunger strike at Hutto comes shortly after similar ones in mid-October at a detention center in El Paso, Texas and the LaSalle Detention Center in Louisiana. In both of these cases many of the strikers had already been believed to have credible fear, but again were still being held in detention. In El Paso, 11 of the strikers were released after a week, while in Louisiana the strike lasted two weeks.
This wave of hunger strikes doesn’t seem to end with the women of Hutto Detention Center either, another hunger strike having begun at the Adelanto Detention Facility in Southern California days after the start of the Hutto hunger strike.
At Adelanto the number of strikers reportedly peaked around 300 men, but has fallen down to roughly 60 as of Thursday and Friday.
“If it’s going to take us one week or one month we will continue,” Shannah Abdullah, an asylum seeker from Ghana who has been in detention for 11 months, told reporters by telephone, as she is striking for parole and to make the conditions suffered by detainees known.
ICE denies the existence of the Hutto and Adelanto hunger strikes, saying that a couple detainees have refused meals, but not large groups. Visitors and attorneys of detainees claim otherwise though, with Grassroots Leadership having published letters from striking detainees at the Hutto facility detailing their experiences at home and in detention.
Release the women hunger strikers at Hutto!
