Immigration and Customs Enforcement has confirmed that asylum-seekers who have been on a hunger strike in protest of abusive conditions and prolonged detainment are being force-fed, a torturous, painful process that has left some of the men in the El Paso Processing Center facility with “nasal and rectal bleeding and vomiting.”
“ICE acknowledged that officials had resorted to the extraordinary step of acting on the court orders to force feed the detainees,” with officials claiming that they “have explained the negative health effects of not eating to the detainees participating in the protest.” But that touches on why detainees are on strike in the first place. "My clients don't speak any English,” attorney Ruby Kaur said, “and part of the reason they are doing the hunger strike is that ICE has not provided them with anyone who can speak Punjabi.”
This has been an ongoing problem for federal immigration agencies. “A 2010 Government Accountability Office report found that the Department of Homeland Security didn’t have a systematic method for assessing its foreign-language needs,” the Arizona Daily Star reports. But “the federal watchdog closed its recommendation as not implemented in 2014, saying the department had not fully mets its recommendations.” Five years later, this is clearly still a major problem.
Some strikers also say they have been verbally abused, while others are undergoing “debilitating angst created by a total absence of information about their impending asylum cases.” They are striking because they are desperate, but someone is now finally listening. “I was deeply alarmed by this report,” tweeted Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas. “I immediately requested a visit, and was able to spend several hours this afternoon at the detention facility talking to personnel and to 6 detainees being force-fed, many of whom have been detained for 15-18 months.”
Some of the detainees have been striking for as long as a month, and have been force-fed for two weeks now. “This is unacceptable,” Escobar continued. “I’m closely monitoring this situation and as a new member of the House Judiciary, vow to implement policies that provide increased oversight and accountability to ensure detainees are treated with dignity and respect. El Paso and our country are better than this.” Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tweeted, “none of this should be happening in America.”