Vol. 78/No. 15      April 21, 2014

Adelina Cáseres, wife of prison strike leader David Vasquez, submitted a petition signed by 500 inmates.

The prison is designed to hold 950 inmates, but currently Immigration and Customs Enforcement says 1,100 are incarcerated there.

Because of lack of communication, deportations and transfer of strike leaders, supporters of the inmates don’t know how many remain on hunger strike. Adelina Pruneda, spokeswoman for ICE, did not respond to requests for information or comment.

On March 29 inmates’ family members and supporters held a rally of about 50 people at Guadalupe Plaza in Houston.

“These men are demanding justice and dignity,” Martina Grifaldo of Alianza Mexicana of Houston told the rally. “Many of them have been held without bond for more than a year. They are demanding an end to a system of double punishment” in which they are rearrested and deported based on criminal convictions years earlier.

The inmates’ petition also demands an end to verbal abuse, unhealthy food and overcrowding and the right to regular family visits.

“The worst thing is the uncertainty,” Ernestina Hernández, wife of Manuel Martinez Arámbula, told the Militant. “My husband was arrested 10 months ago. We can barely pay for the house and food on my income, and we certainly cannot afford a lawyer.”

The Corley detention center is operated by GEO Corrections, a private corporation that profits off incarceration of immigrants and others. The Florida-based GEO Group operates 97 prisons in the U.S. and three other countries.

While prison officials say conditions inside the center are sanitary and humane, relatives of the hunger strikers told the Militant that prisoners face daily abuses, such as food served with maggots and indignities from prison guards. Detainees are paid only $1 a day for custodial work performed.

Cáceres said her husband told her there were only two toilets for 38 detainees in his block, and that inmates with infected and open wounds were given only painkillers.

“My husband and two others have been put in punishment cells and shackled to their beds 24/7,” Cáseres told the Militant. “His wrists and hands showed the scars of handcuffs and he looked like he had been beaten. They are protesting horrible conditions inside, but this hunger strike is mainly against the Obama administration, which has deported more than 2 million people in less than five years.”  
 
 
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