Immigrants held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Hudson County Correctional Facility in New Jersey are being forced to take drastic measures in order to obtain basic hygienic items during the coronavirus crisis, ProPublica’s Dara Lind reports. “We started a hunger strike for them to give us toilet paper and soap—which is the most important—and hygiene supplies, like to clean our hands,” Ronal Umaña, one of the strikers, said in audio of a call obtained by the outlet.
”In the recording, Umaña explained that the facility has provided hand sanitizer for guards but not for detainees,” Lind said. “Umaña said detainees receive a single bar of soap for a week, both for showering and washing hands; if they want more, they must buy it from the prison commissary for $1.70.” Without money in their accounts, they’re going without basic daily items. To add salt to the wound, Umaña said in the recording that when detainees complained to guards that they could get sick and die, guards retorted, ‘Well, you’re going to have to die of something.’”
Hudson, which Lind noted jails “people arrested by local officials separately from those being held by ICE,” is the latest New Jersey facility where immigrant detainees have launched hunger strikes in recent days. Earlier last week, detainees at the Essex County Correctional Facility began a strike in protest of their ongoing detention, saying in a statement released by the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project that “This coronavirus is getting out of control and if we were to be infected I am sure everyone would rather die on the outside with our families than in here.”
The New York Immigrant Family Unity Project said in an updated statement that deteriorating conditions at Hudson forced detainees there to strike as well. “Among reports of egregious conditions, we have heard that ICE is not responding to medical sick calls and that there are sick people in units who are not being treated or tested,” the group said in the statement. “Due to ongoing ICE enforcement, we have also received reports that ICE continues to bring new people into the Hudson County Correctional Facility, further exposing hundreds of people to a heightened risk of COVID-19.”
“Each cell does not have enough materials to disinfect. There is bacteria everywhere,” the detainees said in the updated statement. “Ever since one person on our old block had symptoms, the medical staff refuses to see us because they are afraid of infecting themselves with the virus. Even those of us with diabetes, they are not calling us to take our insulin. We make requests but they do not respond.” These are dangerous conditions, yet Lind reported that “Shortly after Umaña’s call, the detention center was placed on 14-day lockdown, further restricting public access.”
Just as this piece was about to be published, ICE confirmed that its first detainee has tested positive for COVID-19. BuzzFeed News reports this person was also being detained at a New Jersey facility. ICE has endangered lives by refusing to release even the most vulnerable of populations. “As every hour passes, ICE’s continued inaction and complete disregard for human life brings us closer to a massive public health crisis,” the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project said in the updated statement. “With confirmed reports that an ICE staff member in Elizabeth Detention Center and a staff member in the Bergen County Jail in New Jersey have tested positive for coronavirus, it grows clearer that it is only a matter of when, not if, an outbreak of COVID-19 will ravage immigrant detention facilities.”