Two asylum seekers have filed a federal lawsuit “contending the Trump administration violated religious protections,” alleging that while they were being detained at the Federal Correctional Institution in Oregon, the Sikh men “were denied a vegetarian diet” and “told to pray in their cells,” despite their religious beliefs forbidding them to pray in a room with a toilet. “The lawsuit said those are violations of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” the New York Times reports.
Asylum seekers Pachattar Singh and Gurpreet Singh, among the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees held at federal prisons due to overcrowding at ICE facilities following implementation of the barbaric “zero tolerance” policy, also alleged in the suit that Sikh detainees “were forced to eat meat to avoid malnutrition and starvation.” Detainees held at other federal prisons due to ICE overcrowding also alleged abusive conditions that violated their religious beliefs.
In California’s Victorville prison, an asylum seeker identified as Sukhwinder said “he was not allowed to wear the turban and bracelet many Sikhs wear as part of their faith. Hindus housed in the same facility were forced to eat meat for more than two weeks, despite their religious beliefs, he said.”
Victorville was stretched to capacity even before the influx of immigrant detainees were transferred there, Huffington Post reported in August, with the facility reportedly putting “medical staff, teachers, food service workers, and other prison employees ... on guard duty to cover the prison’s basic functions.” That same month, a delegation of House Democrats toured the facility, saying migrant detainees shouldn’t even have been transferred there in the first place.
“The Federal Bureau of Prisons made some improvements in the housing and food for detainees at Sheridan, the lawsuit said, but restrictions remained. The last Sikh detainee at Sheridan was released in late September,” the New York Times continued. “’Plaintiffs' inability to freely exercise these religious beliefs was a cause of immeasurable distress for them,’ the lawsuit said.”
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