Punjabi detainees on hunger strike in US being ‘force-fed’

Friday, 01/02/2019

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TEXAS: Federal immigration officials are force-feeding six immigrants, including Punjab-origin detainees, through plastic nasal tubes during a hunger strike that’s gone on for a month inside a Texas detention facility, The Associated Press has learned.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says 11 detainees at the El Paso Processing Centre have been refusing food, some for more than 30 days. Detainees who reached the AP, along with a relative and an attorney representing hunger strikers, said nearly 30 detainees from India and Cuba have been refusing to eat, and some are now so weak they cannot stand up or talk.

Another four detainees are on hunger strikes in the agency’s Miami, Phoenix, San Diego and San Francisco areas of responsibility, said ICE spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa said.

The men say they stopped eating to protest verbal abuse and threats of deportation from guards.

They are also upset about lengthy lock ups while awaiting legal proceedings.

In mid-January, two weeks after they stopped eating, a federal judge authorised forcefeeding of some El Paso detainees, Zamarripa said. She did not immediately address the detainees’ allegations of abuse but did say the El Paso Processing Centre would follow the federal standards for care.

The men with nasal tubes are having persistent nose bleeds, and are vomiting several times a day, said Amrit Singh, whose two nephews from Punjab have been on hunger strike for about a month. “They are not well. Their bodies are really weak, they can’t talk and they have been hospitalised, back and forth,” said Singh, from California.

“They want to know why they are still in the jail and want to get their rights and wake up the government immigration system.”

Singh’s nephews are seeking asylum. The court records show they pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour charge in September after illegally walking across the border near El Paso.

To force-feed someone, medical experts typically wind a tube tightly around their finger to make it bend easily, and put lubricant on the tip, before shoving it into a patient’s nose. The patient has to swallow sips of water while the tube is pushed down their throat. It can be very painful.

Ruby Kaur, a Michigan-based attorney representing one of the hunger strikers, said her client had been force-fed and put on an IV after more than three weeks without eating or drinking water.

“They go on hunger strike, and they are put into solitary confinement and then the ICE officers kind of psychologically torture them, telling the asylum seekers they will send them back to Punjab,” Kaur said.

Since May 2015, volunteers for the non-profit Freedom for Immigrants have documented 1,396 people on hunger strike in 18 immigration detention facilities.

“By starving themselves, these men are trying to make public the very suffering that ICE is trying keep hidden from taxpayers,” said Christina Fialho, director of the group.