The Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General has opened an investigation into the treatment of detainees by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Texas, following horrific reports that immigration officials were violently force-feeding some detained asylum-seekers who had gone on a hunger strike to protest their ongoing detention and other abuses.
“A spokeswoman for the inspector general's office, Tanya Aldridge, confirmed to the AP that the agency was investigating complaints made by detainees at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's El Paso Processing Center, but would not say whether the complaints involved the force-feeding or a broader list of concerns.”
But two of the men who have been interviewed by the inspector general’s office, cousins Jasvir and Rajandeep Singh, were among the numerous asylum-seekers who were being force-fed by ICE by at the El Paso Processing Center. The barbaric process—which the United Nations Human Rights Office said could violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture—reportedly left some of the men vomiting and with “nasal and rectal bleeding.”
The two men were eventually released on bond, following pressure from immigrant rights groups and members of Congress. "’Unfortunately it was traumatic for him to recount it all again,’ said Nicolas Palazzo, an El Paso-based attorney representing Jasvir Singh. Jessica Miles, who represents Rajandeep Singh, said that DHS OIG investigators ‘made it very clear that they were investigating the allegations of abuse during the force-feeding.’”
In February, nearly 50 House Democrats had called on the OIG to probe this abuse. “Responding with force-feeding, which the United Nations Human Rights Commission has called a cruel and inhumane practice that may violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture, is appalling and casts a pall over our government’s commitment to basic human rights,” they wrote.
As the Trump administration has made it more difficult for asylum-seekers to be released to family or other sponsors, more have been forced to resort to hunger strikes, NPR reported, in protest of their ongoing detention and other abuses. As many as 150 detainees refused to eat in one protest at a Louisiana facility last month, making it “at least the sixth hunger strike at a detention center in the first three months of 2019 alone.”