Last month, a group of 25 Somali men alleged they were subjected to abuse “at the West Texas Detention Center, which is operated by LaSalle Corrections under a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” The Texas center, located near El Paso, has previously been described as “hell,” where last year other detainees alleged they were deprived of running water for days at a time. The group of Somali men “described beatings and indiscriminate use of pepper spray,” and were subsequently interviewed by ICE’s Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility. But, ICE officials just deported the group, “a decision their families say puts them in danger and advocates say undermines an investigation into how they were treated in custody”:
The men were interviewed by officials from ICE’s Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility, said Fatma Marouf, a law professor and director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Texas A&M University. But by deporting the men, ICE may have hamstrung its own internal investigation as well as any criminal investigation that might have been conducted by the Justice Department, Marouf said.
“I think it’s really disappointing that they were removed,” she said. “They did interview everybody at least once that I understand, so at least we have that evidence. But in terms of testimony in a trial, all the witnesses are gone, so it does limit what kind of testimony we can get and what kind of charges can be brought.”
Angela, the wife of one of the deported men, said she had no idea her husband had been deported until “his arrival in Somalia and contacted them via a video messaging app.” Angela said she and the wives of other detainees had “tried to contact authorities and alert them to what was happening in the detention center and were ignored. Angela said she thought that after they went public with their allegations, something would change. Instead, a week after the men spoke with reporters they were deported. ‘I felt like as soon as this stuff started getting circulated, they just wanted to silence all of us and throw it under the carpet,’ she said. ‘It’s weird and it’s sad and I feel like it was done purposefully.’” It’s absolutely not out of the question—ICE commonly acts out of pure vindictiveness.
Earlier this year, acting ICE director Thomas Homan, infuriated over California’s pro-immigrant legislation limiting cooperation with Donald Trump’s mass deportation force, threatened to escalate workplace and neighborhood raids in the state. Homan also promised that because of the state’s new laws, California will be on the receiving end of “collateral arrests,” a crass term describing when non-targets are swept up in targeted raids because they happened to be there at the time. In West Texas Detention Center’s situation, the group of Somali men, before they were deported, were exposing a facility that has been the site of abuse and horrific conditions for years. Fronteras in 2016:
The most serious complaints stem from December when the facility had problems with its water supply. Efrain Chavez was held at the detention center for six months while he awaited news on his petition for U.S. asylum. He said the taps went dry for three days.
"The toilets were all full of human waste," he said. "You can't imagine the smell. It was awful."
After the toilets were full, Chavez said the guards told inmates to use plastic bags. On another occasion, Chavez said he and his bunkmates found a live rattlesnake in their sleeping quarters. He said they had to kill the snake themselves after jail managers failed to respond.
The head attorney for the company that runs the West Texas Detention Center declined to comment for this story.
Guled Muhumed, one of the Somali detainees, said last month that of the nine detention centers he’d been transferred through in the six months since his arrest by ICE, West Texas Detention was by far the worst. “On the first or second day, one of the Somali guys was thrown on the floor,” he said. “Another guy, he was jumped by four or five officers because he talked back to them. The day that we were leaving, a guy in front of me who was shackled was beaten too, because he told them the handcuffs were too tight”:
One of the men deported said by phone that immigrants held in a processing center in El Paso were loaded onto a plane Thursday and released in Somalia’s capital of Mogadishu on Friday. He doesn’t speak the Somali language or know anyone in the country, said the man, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Abdollahih, because he’s afraid of being targeted by Islamic militants.
The Somali government is currently facing an insurgency by the al-Shabab militant group.
“There are spies that work with this group, and those people could spy up on you and all of a sudden they’ll make a quick phone call to tell those people on you,” Abdollahih said. “You can’t trust nobody. You keep it hidden. As soon as we went there, we tried to all disperse. There was some of the guys that are basically homeless right now.
“Western people like us, we don’t have no rights. We’re basically like nobodies to them. They’re looking at us like we’re people who are not even human,” he added. “They say they can’t trust us because they think we’re spies from the United States, and the government thinks we came over here to join al-Shabab. Basically we’re stuck in the middle of no man’s land.”
“An American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Detention Watch Network, and National Immigrant Justice Center report found that violations of medical standards played a prominent role in eight deaths in immigration detention facilities from 2010 to 2012,” according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association, while a Salvadoran asylum seeker was allegedly thrown into solitary for 60 hours unless she recanted her sexual abuse claims while in detention. She was eventually released from ICE custody. ICE is a danger to America, and if the current Republican-Congress refuses to get this agency under control, it’s time for a new Congress—and, some accountability when it comes to abusive guards.