Vol. 79/No. 16      May 4, 2015

In an attempt to intimidate the women, authorities at the privately run prison told them that they better start eating or ICE would take away their children and put them in foster care. Three leaders of the strike, and their children, were put in darkened isolation rooms. Strikers decided to end the action April 4.

Ten women restarted the strike April 15, vowing to eat just one meal a day until their demands for better treatment are met.

Kenia Galeano, 26, a leader of the first action, who was released with her 2-year-old son April 9 after immigration activists helped pay her bond, told the Militant in a phone interview that conditions in the center “are difficult.” The 532-bed prison — one of only three such detention facilities in the country — is run by GEO Group, one of the largest for-profit prison corporations in the country.

“The water is horrible,” Galeano, a garment worker from Honduras, said. “It tastes like Clorox, most of the children won’t drink it. But the water that they sell costs almost $2 a bottle. And those of us that work there only get paid $1 an hour.”

“The rice and beans they give us were almost always partly uncooked. The vegetables are overcooked and sometimes they give food that smells so bad the kids won’t even try it,” Galeano said. She was locked up in the center for five months.

Like many of the women, Galeano said she left her homeland because of threats from criminal gangs that left her in fear for her life.

As part of the protest, women in the camp held up signs with large letters spelling out “Libertad” — freedom — when a helicopter flew overhead April 2. Karnes personnel reported the action as an “insurrection.”

Asylum applicants used to be allowed to live with family and friends while their case was being reviewed, but “since June of last year, the Obama administration has upended that tradition,” the April 10 New York Times reported.

Immigration officials began detaining almost all women seeking asylum with children to “create a deterrent effect,” said Esther Olavarria, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson.

In February U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg ruled in favor of a petition by the American Civil Liberties Union overturning the policy. In response, immigration officials began setting exorbitant bonds — from $4,000 to as high as $15,000 — as a precondition to get out. Anyone who has been deported before isn’t eligible.

ICE says it plans to double the Karnes detention center’s capacity to more than 1,000 beds.

Government officials say these steps are needed to stop a wave of immigration from Central America. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported last year that it had detained more than 47,000 unaccompanied children from October 2013 to May 2014, nearly double the number from the same period the previous year. Most of the increase was from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Immigration authorities have also made it harder to win asylum. “Previously if you had a one in 10 chance of persecution you could be considered,” Mohammad Abdollahi, a spokesperson for Raíces, an immigrant aid organization, told the Militant by phone from San Antonio. “But now you have to prove a 50 percent chance.” Despite this, many of the women detained in Karnes had passed the initial “credible-fear” interview, a first step toward winning asylum.
 
 
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