Gustavo Adolfo Flores Coreas recalls being subjected to “abusive pat-downs” by guards every time he left his dorm at the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield.
The 31-year-old on Thursday told The Bee he began to skip meals to avoid the uncomfortable pat-downs by the guards employed by The GEO Group, which operates Mesa Verde and the Golden State Annex in McFarland for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“It was awful,” Coreas, who is now housed at the Golden State Annex, told The Bee during an interview about the pat-downs at Mesa Verde. “I didn’t want to be excessively touched.”
Another detained immigrant, 25-year-old Rigoberto Hernandez Martinez, arrived at Mesa Verde in winter and recalled how cold it was inside the facility. He also remembers being given a blanket with holes in it.
“It was really freezing in here,” Martinez told The Bee during an interview.
Coreas and Martinez are among about 77 immigrants at the two Central Valley immigration detention facilities who are taking part in a hunger strike they began Friday. The hunger strike comes after a 10-month-long, ongoing labor strike to protest getting paid $1 per day to work to maintain the facilities.
In July 2022, a group of nine immigrants sued The GEO Group over the $1 wage.
The immigrants and the ACLU of Northern California told The Bee the hunger strike also comes amid “abhorrent” and “soul-crushing” living conditions at both facilities. They say, at times, immigrants have been given expired and cold food, and are not treated in a timely manner when a medical condition arises.
Plus, since the labor strike began, the ACLU of Northern California said it has received reports of retaliation.
The GEO Group denies strike happening; ICE puts off comment
A GEO Group spokesperson on Friday said the company “strongly rejects these baseless allegations.” The spokesperson also said currently there are no hunger strikes at either of the two facilities.
ICE defines a hunger strike as nine consecutive meals missed. The hunger strikes at both Central Valley facilities began Friday.
The GEO Group referred questions by The Bee about the hunger strike, and whether it calls for nine meals to be missed for it to be considered a hunger strike, to ICE. The federal immigration agency said it would respond on Tuesday.
According to a policy revised in 2016, any detainee who doesn’t eat for 72 hours should be referred to the medical department for an evaluation.
Detainees should be delivered three meals per day regardless of their response to the offered meals, the policy says.
The GEO spokesperson said allegations are “part of a long-standing radical campaign to attack ICE’s contractors, abolish ICE, and end federal immigration detention by proxy in the state of California.”
“We also note that certain detainees take actions that are instigated and coordinated through a politically motivated and choreographed effort by outside groups,” the spokesperson said in an email to The Bee.
In 2020, ICE made similar claims and denied that a hunger strike was taking place at Mesa Verde when attorneys and detainees said a strike was underway.
Detained immigrants have faced retaliation after labor strike
Minju Cho, a staff attorney with the Immigrants’ Rights Program at the ACLU of Northern California, said detained immigrants have already been met with significant retaliation since their labor strike began.
The forms of retaliation, she said, have included being placed in solitary confinement, being threatened with transfer to an out-of-state facility, being written up, and “perhaps, most shocking” at Mesa Verde, “they have been subjected to sexually abusive pat-downs.”
Before the labor strike, immigrants were patted down as necessary, but not excessively.
“Once the labor strike began, we started hearing a lot of reports about people being groped, rubbed, made to feel very uncomfortable, having their private parts touched unnecessarily, and being subjected to comments by the guards about their bodies,” Cho told The Bee on Thursday.
That prompted the ACLU of Northern California to file a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, she said.
In the wake of a hunger strike at an immigration facility in Tacoma, Wash., earlier this month where strikers were met with violence in retaliation, Cho urged caution by The GEO Group. Guards at the Tacoma facility used smoke bombs and pepper spray on the first day of the strike.
“The hunger strike is a peaceful, constitutionally-protected expression, and the hunger strikers have the constitutional rights to express themselves this way without interference from GEO or ICE,” she told The Bee. “They have first amendment rights that they did not shed when they walked through the detention facility doors.”
‘No other choice, but to put our lives on the line to be heard’
Coreas and Martinez say they are taking part in the hunger strike to call for their release and for the facilities to be shut down.
At one point, Martinez said he became “really sick” and it took seven days to be seen by medical personnel. Then, he says, it took about five months to seen by a specialist.
“They’re supposed to at least provide us with the minimum, yet they fail to do so,” Martinez told The Bee.
Martinez said the facilities have failed to provide them with basic necessities, and don’t acknowledge their grievances.
“Now, we have no other choice, but to put our lives on the line to be heard,” he told The Bee of the hunger strike. “We are willing to continue over to the end ... until we can’t no more. Until we get released. These facilities need to be shut down.”
Coreas, who also had medical needs at one point, said he has filed several grievances over the living conditions. He was initially housed at the Golden State Annex before being moved to Mesa Verde, and then back to the Golden State Annex where he is now.
He described Mesa Verde as “way worse” than the Golden State Annex, and “horrible.” He said even the ICE agent who checks on him offered to transfer him back to the Golden State Annex.
“He was like, ‘Hey man, I know this place sucks,’ and those were his words...” Coreas told The Bee. “’But if you want I can move you back to State Annex.’”
Coreas said he has had a “horrible experience.”
“I don’t wish this predicament that I find myself in, which is, you know, immigration detention, on anyone,” he told The Bee.
Martinez said immigrants deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
“They get paid millions of federal dollars to take care of us immigrants in their custody, but they fail to do so,” he said of The GEO Group. “Somebody needs to be held accountable for everything that’s been taking place.”
Dangerous working conditions, the organization says, such as exposure to black mold, have prompted state regulators to carry out an inspection that resulted in six violations, and $104,000 in fines.
ACLU supports hunger strike, immigrants’ demands for improvements
Cho said her organization supports the hunger strike for various reasons.
“First, we believe that immigration detention is inhumane,” she told The Bee. “While it continues to exist in California, we are committed to doing our part to ensure conditions are safe and as humane as possible which is exactly what the strikers are calling for.”
The strikers’ demands include the immediate release of people in detention, for detained immigrants to be paid California’s minimum wage of $15.50 per hour , safer working conditions, prompt medical attention, and access to fresh and high quality food, among other requests.
“They articulated their specific demands to the facility and to ICE, and none of them have been met..” she said. “That’s why they are escalating to a hunger strike.”
CORRECTION: A quote in the original story from Minju Cho, a staff attorney with the Immigrants’ Rights Program at the ACLU of Northern California, had an incorrect word. The correct quote: “Once the labor strike began, we started hearing a lot of reports about people being groped, rubbed, made to feel very uncomfortable, having their private parts touched unnecessarily, and being subjected to comments by the guards about their bodies.”
This story was originally published February 17, 2023 9:28 AM.
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