Immigrant hunger strikers are being bullied and threatened with force feeding as the hunger strikes in Washington have reached their sixth day.
Restrepo, who met with some of the hunger strikers on Tuesday, described guards as armed and dressed in riot gear. “Immigrants on hunger strike are being placed in solitary confinement, coerced into signing deportation forms, and threatened with forced-feeding if they continue their protest. Asylum seekers are being threatened with denial of their cases,” Restrepo said.
The detainees are demanding safer working conditions, better treatment by guards, more sanitary food options, and for President Barack Obama to sign an executive order halting deportations until the U.S. immigration system is overhauled.
Comprehensive immigration reform has the popular support of the people, but the Republican Congress is holding it up. When President Obama spoke about his priorities for this year, he said that if Congress didn't act on certain measures, he would. But the problem is that on immigration reform, he has not followed through and acted. It is only fair that the President allow these people to stay, except in the case where people came for the purpose of committing other crimes, until this matter is resolved. Doing so would force Congress to act -- either pass immigration reform or no more deportations. They were the ones who gave George W. Bush permission to radically reinvent the Constitution through the unitary executive theory. They should have to live with the consequences.
We recently lost a Congressional election in Florida in a district that President Obama had won because the Democrats didn't turn out to vote. If Obama expects Democrats to get out and vote, then he has an obligation to listen to their concerns. The alternative is to deal with a Republican Senate and House for the final two years of his administration. History records that a blow was struck for freedom in 1964 when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. It wasn't the most popular thing to do, but it was the right thing to do. Obama has an obligation to respect the civil rights of immigrants and highlight the rampant obstruction of the GOP. It will only be a matter of time before immigrants get civil rights in this country and we live up to our stated ideal in the Declaration of Independence when we said that all men are created equal. But should he fail to act, history will record that President Obama did nothing to further it along.
It is now 50 years since the Civil Rights Act was signed and we are still witnessing examples of institutionalized thuggery like this:
Villalpando, who has communicated with some of the strikers, said that guards were also threatening strikers with deportation, and in some cases forcing them to sign consent forms authorizing immediate deportation.
In one case, she said that a detainee was dragged into a room before guards and told to end his strike or sign a form authorizing deportation. “When he refused to do either, one of the guards pulled his arm and forced his fingerprint," Villalpando said.
Strike leaders in particular, she said, are being targeted and placed in solitary confinement. "They are being told that they cannot rejoin the general population unless they end their hunger strike," she said.
Obviously, in certain twisted minds, all people are equal, but some people are more equal than others. Our country has a fundamental choice ahead of it. We can either get back to the basics and work towards forming a more stable and more perfect union, or we can continue the work of George W. Bush and form a more perfect police state. We can't do both and there is no middle course. But don't expect to win elections doing that -- a lot of people who voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 will simply sit out. I'm not saying that I agree with that, but I'm saying it as a fact of life.
"For us, this president has been the deporter-in-chief," said Janet Murguia, a former Obama ally and president of the National Council of La Raza, the largest Hispanic advocacy group in the United States. "Any day now, this administration will reach the 2 million mark for deportations. It is a staggering number that far outstrips any of his predecessors and leaves behind it a wake of devastation for families across America."
No matter what happens, this issue is not going to go away no matter how much the President or the media try to sweep this under the rug. The numbers have grown from an initial 750 hunger strikers to
around 1200 now. And the strikes have spread to four other states besides Washington. The President has an obligation to meet with the hunger strikers or their representatives and work out a solution.