Did the ICE Prison Industrial Complex shoot itself in the foot by arresting Latino journalist Manuel Duran and sending him to GEO Group’s LaSalle Detention Center in Jena, LA?
Aside from the trauma of his arrest by Memphis police in the middle of MLK50 week April 3, and his being fast-tracked to the holding facility, Duran is getting story material from inside a system that is notorious for abuses of its detainees.
Incredibly, Duran was arrested while live-streaming as a reporter covering a “street theater” action to highlight abuses against detainees in ICE-contracted facilities. Duran clearly was operating as a journalist and was not breaking any laws or ignoring any police orders as he held his camera phone and eased backwards toward the sidewalk while he recorded the chaos of police making the first of nine arrests.
MULTI-DEFENDANT
Multinational GEO Group Inc. is the defendant in many lawsuits which claim the company imposes forced labor on its populations.
Based in Boca Raton, Florida, GEO Group is the second-largest private prison contractor in the U.S. – Nashville-based CoreCivic, formerly Corrections Corporation of America, is the largest.
A lawsuit filed earlier this year by California inmate Raul Novoa claimed that the company forced inmates to work for $1 a day, which they must spend on “food, water and hygienic products.”
The Detention Watch Network, a non-profit that tracks prison and detainee abuse, said 173 detainees died at GEO Group’s facilities, from 2003 to January 2018.
BUYING TRUMP, POLITICIANS
GEO Group keeps elected officials in its pocket by leveraging donations, such as $225,000 to a pro-Trump PAC in 2016. Trump has reversed President Obama’s policy of not using private contractors to hold ICE detainees.
GEO so far has donated $655,905 to candidates, PACs and influence groups and spent $1,710,000 in lobbying during the 2018 election cycle.
According to analysts at MarketWatch, GEO’s “revenue efficiency” per employee is $122,268 – a startling value when laid against the pennies a day credited to detainees who must pay it back to buy food and water at the detention centers.
SESSIONS INCENTIVIZES DETENTION
Attorney General Jeff Sessions early last year reversed Obama-administration policies to phase out use of private prisons to house federal prisoners and Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees. This supports future revenue growth of GEO Group and CoreCivic.
At the Jena, LA, facility since April 5, Duran has met detainees with horror stories similar to those found in lawsuits against the company.
SUING HOMELAND SECURITY
At a press conference Monday, Southern Poverty Law Center attorney Michelle Lapointe declared that Memphis police and sheriff’s departments had cooperated with ICE to round up and hold for deportation undocumented prisoners.
The SPLC, partnering with Latino Memphis, has filed a writ of habeas corpus in a Louisiana federal court, demanding his release and suing the Department of Homeland Security for violations of Duran’s constitutional rights.
Duran’s partner of seven years, Melisa Valdez, read Duran’s statement from the LaSalle Detention Center in Jena, LA, in which he cited stories about unjust treatment of other detainees he has met. Below is the entirely of Duran’s letter.
LETTER FROM ICE JAIL
“I cannot thank you enough for the support I have received since the moment of my arrest and subsequent transfer and incarceration in Louisiana. This episode in my life has not been easy, but I have taken it as an opportunity to learn first hand the drama and reality that our families are living when they are arrested by immigration and then
deported.
“Families like Jorge’s, who is in detention with me. He has been in jail for three months; he has three very young children, ages 4, 5, and 10. One of them has a heart problem. But Jorge will be deported as soon as his trip is allowed by his country’s consulate. He could not fight his case because he could not afford an immigration attorney.
“Or Fernando’s, who is 64 years old and has three U.S. citizen children, but has been in detention for the past seven months and is now about to be deported back to his country, away from his family and everything he knows, after his attorney couldn’t win his case.
“Once you’re inside the detention facility it is extremely hard to get the phone number of a private attorney, and if you are lucky enough to find one, the attorney costs thousands of dollars.”
A CRUEL SYSTEM
“No one should be deprived of their freedoms just for wanting a better future for their children. This is a cruel system that criminalizes people who pose no danger to this country.
“My greatest challenge will be to continue working for my people, no matter where I’m at. I could say that my destiny lies now in the hands of an immigration judge in Atlanta --someone I have never met and someone who does not know my story -- and I may never be granted the opportunity to tell my story, but my destiny lies in the hands of the judge of judges, and I’m willing to accept His decision.
“Through this experience I have learned first-hand details about the treatment our immigrants receive before they are deported. How they keep the lights on day and night and you have to sleep with a towel over your eyes. How they make you lie in bed for 45 minutes, in what seems to be at random, after roll calling and you cannot use the phone or the bathroom during that time. How they would not let you know your attorney is on the phone.”
DIMES FOR YOUR WORK
“How you get paid dimes for work, and you are on your own if you have no one outside adding funds to your commissary. How the visitation hours and your recreation hours happen at the time so you have to choose between seeing your family and getting some air. How the phones in the visitation room do not work and you have to scream through the soundproof windows. I will keep taking notes about my experience and I will keep on collecting my cellmates’ stories while I’m here.
“I am so fortunate that my family has the ability to travel to Jena, LA to see me. Many families, families like Jose’s, cannot travel to see him because they cannot afford the trip. Many of my cellmate families cannot come to Louisiana because they cannot pay for it, or are too afraid to make the trip, or cannot come inside the facility because they are undocumented themselves.”
‘I MISS EVERYTHING’
“As for me, I miss my home. I miss everything I left behind. I miss my life before April 3, I miss being in touch with my people and reading their messages. It is extremely difficult being cut off from everyone back home, uninformed, and alone. I try to stay positive as much as I can, but it’s not easy being isolated, and sometimes I just fail.
“Thank you all of you who have shown solidarity with my story. Non-Profits, the press, who have given me their support. Thanks to my family. Thanks to all the people who
have not abandoned me in this test. Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers. And finally, thanks to the team of lawyers who work to free me from this prison.
“Blessings, Manuel Duran”
EMBEDDED JOURNALIST
As a journalist embedded in that setting, Department of Homeland Security has created in Duran a unique threat to unveil DHS practices and conditions inside a GEO Group Inc. detention facility.
GEO Group and ICE must be aware of this condition — orders to snatch Duran into ICE custody quickly after his arrest came from high up in the Trump administration, according to our sources. His arrest and the arrests of other activists on the eve of MLK50, while both tourists and federal agents were swelling the city’s population, seemed to be a move to sweep political opponents off the streets and out of position to “misbehave” or embarrass politicians in front of tourists.
Link to earlier story: www.dailykos.com/…
Filmmaker Gary Moore operates the educational non-profit Citizens Media Resource and contributes stories of national interest to DailyKos.