US federal immigration officials are force-feeding six hunger-striking immigrants through plastic nasal tubes inside a Texas detention facility, The Associated Press news agency reported on Thursday.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said 11 detainees at the El Paso Processing Center have been refusing food, some for more than 30 days.
Detainees who spoke to the Associated Press, along with a relative and a lawyer representing hunger strikers, said nearly 30 detainees from India and Cuba have been refusing to eat and some are now so weak they cannot stand up or talk.
Another four detainees are on hunger strikes in the agency’s Miami, Phoenix, San Diego and San Francisco areas of responsibility, said ICE spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa on Wednesday.
The men say they stopped eating to protest verbal abuse and threats of deportation from the guards. They are also upset about lengthy lockups while awaiting legal proceedings.
In mid-January, two weeks after the immigrants stopped eating, a federal judge authorised force-feeding of some El Paso detainees, Zamarripa said.
She did not immediately address the detainees’ allegations of abuse but did say the El Paso Processing Center would follow the federal standards for care.
ICE officials say they closely monitor the food and water intake of detainees identified as being on a hunger strike to protect their health and safety.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has implemented a crackdown on immigration, sending thousands of troops to the US-Mexico border, allowing the government to shut down for 35 days over his demand for a border wall and promising to cut the number of refugees entering the country to a historic low.
Nosebleeds and vomiting
The men with nasal tubes are having persistent nosebleeds and are vomiting several times a day, Amrit Singh told the Associated Press. Singh’s two nephews from the Indian state of Punjab have been on hunger strike for about a month.
“They are not well. Their bodies are really weak, they can’t talk and they have been hospitalised, back and forth,” said Singh, from California.
“They want to know why they are still in the jail and want to get their rights and wake up the government immigration system.”
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| Since his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump has vowed to build a border wall [File: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters] |
Singh’s nephews are both seeking asylum. Court records show they pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour charge in September after walking across the border between official ports of entry near El Paso.
There have been high-profile hunger strikes around the country at immigration detention centres in the past, and non-consensual feeding and hydration have been authorised by judges in court orders.
Media reports and government statements do not indicate that any immigration detainees underwent involuntary feeding in recent years. Rather, they show immigrants opted to end their hunger strikes when faced with nasal intubation.
ICE did not immediately respond to the Associated Press’s queries about how often they force-feed detainees.
To force-feed someone, medical experts typically wind a tube tightly around their finger to make it bend easily, and put lubricant on the tip, before pushing it into a patient’s nose. The patient has to swallow sips of water while the tube is pushed down their throat. It can be very painful.
The El Paso detention facility, located on a busy street near the airport, is highly guarded and surrounded by chain-link fence.
Ruby Kaur, a Michigan-based lawyer representing one of the hunger strikers, said her client had been force-fed and put on an IV after more than three weeks without eating or drinking water.
“They go on hunger strike, and they are put into solitary confinement and then the ICE officers kind of psychologically torture them, telling the asylum seekers they will send them back to Punjab,” Kaur said.
‘Solitary as punishment’
Eiorjys Rodriguez Calderin, who on a call from the facility described himself as a Cuban dissident, told the Associated Press that conditions in Cuba forced him and other detainees to seek safety in the US, and they risk persecution if they are deported.
“They are restraining people and forcing them to get tubes put in their noses,” said Rodriguez, adding that he had passed his “credible fear” interview and sought to be released on parole. “They put people in solitary, as punishment.”
The “credible fear” interviews are conducted by immigration authorities as an initial screening for asylum requests.
ICE classifies a detainee as a hunger striker after they refuse nine consecutive meals.
Federal courts have not conclusively decided whether a judge must issue an order before ICE force-feeds an immigration detainee, so rules vary by district and type of court, and sometimes orders are filed secretly.
In Tacoma, Washington, where immigration detainees have held high-profile hunger strikes in recent years, courts have ordered force-feeding at least six times, according to court records.
In July 2017, a federal judge refused to allow ICE to restrain and force-feed a hunger-striking Iraqi detainee who wanted to be housed with fellow Iraqi Chaldean Christians detained in an Arizona facility.
Since May 2015, volunteers for the nonprofit Freedom for Immigrants have documented 1,396 people on hunger strike in 18 immigration detention facilities.
“By starving themselves, these men are trying to make public the very suffering that ICE is trying to keep hidden from taxpayers,” said Christina Fialho, director of the group.
While court orders allowing force-feeding have been issued in cases involving inmates, Fialho couldn’t recall a situation when involuntary feeding actually occurred in immigration detention facilities because the inmates opted to eat.
History of blowback
The force-feeding of Guantanamo Bay detainees through nasal tubes garnered international blowback. Hunger strikes began shortly after the military prison opened in 2002, with force-feeding starting in early 2006 following mass refusals to eat.
After four weeks without eating, the body’s metabolic systems start to break down, and hunger strikers can risk permanent damage, including cognitive impairment, said Dr Marc Stern, a correctional physician at the University of Washington in Seattle who has previously consulted with the Department of Homeland Security.
“You can become demented and lose coordination, and some of it is reversible, some of it isn’t,” Stern said.
“The dangers are not just metabolic. If you are very weak, you could very simply get up to do something and fall and crack your skull.”
Force-feeding raises ethical issues for medical professionals who work inside ICE facilities.
The American Medical Association has expressed its concern about physicians participating in the force-feeding of hunger strikers on multiple occasions, and its own principles of medical ethics state “a patient who has decision-making capacity may accept or refuse any recommended medical intervention”.
The association also endorses the World Medical Association Declaration of Tokyo, which states that when prisoners refuse food and physicians believe they are capable of “rational judgment concerning the consequences of such a voluntary refusal of nourishment, he or she shall not be fed artificially”.
