ICE detainees in California say they face retaliation, threats after making complaints

Lilian Marquez consumed nothing but water and vitamins for nearly four days last year. She was among more than 100 people at the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield who launched a hunger strike in April 2020 to raise awareness of what she called “life-threatening” conditions at the federal immigration detention facility amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Going without meals for more than 72 hours was challenging, she said. That was especially true because, she alleges, staff at the facility, owned and operated by private prison company The GEO Group, retaliated against her and others throughout the strike.

Her dorm’s access to phones, including those used to make legal calls, was cut for several hours, she said. Staff members tried to find out who organized the strike and why, she said. They told detainees that continuing to participate could hurt their chances of being released from detention and impact their immigration cases, she said.

A spokesperson for GEO did not provide comment for this story and referred The Bee to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. An ICE spokesperson directed The Bee to the Department of Homeland Security, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Staff’s response to the hunger strike was “discouraging,” Marquez said, but she said she knew she wasn’t doing anything wrong. People in jails, prisons, and detention centers — including non-citizens — have the right to engage in hunger strikes under the First Amendment. They also have the right to file internal grievances, hire and consult with lawyers, and communicate with the outside world.

“I felt that my life was in danger, and I had no out, no options,” Marquez told The Bee. “We felt that our voices needed to be heard, and we needed help. (The hunger strike) was the only way that we were able to express our free speech.”

Marquez is among eight people alleging that ICE and several of the contractors operating immigration detention centers in California retaliated against them and other non-citizens for attempting to denounce conditions in the facilities amid the pandemic, in violation of their First Amendment rights. Their experiences are detailed in a complaint filed Thursday with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

The immigrants say in the complaint that they tried to speak out by filing grievances and complaints, engaging in peaceful protests like hunger and labor strikes, and raising awareness of the facilities’ conditions through communication with the media, attorneys, and advocates.

They allege that ICE and its contractors responded by using pepper spray and pepper bullets and subsequently restricting shower access; perpetrating sexual harassment, physical assault, and beatings; exploiting solitary confinement; and shutting off access to lawyers, advocacy organizations, and family members, among other actions. They call on the civil rights office to investigate the “brutal and unlawful” acts of retaliation alleged in the complaint.

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, the ACLU Foundation of San Diego & Imperial Counties, the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, and Centro Legal de la Raza filed the complaint on behalf of three people who are currently detained and five who were previously in ICE custody and have since been released.

The complainants were or are currently detained at five immigration detention centers across the state. The facilities include Mesa Verde in Bakersfield, as well as the Golden State Annex in nearby McFarland, both owned and operated by GEO. They also include GEO’s Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County; the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, owned and operated by prison company CoreCivic; and the Yuba County jail. ICE contracts with the Yuba County Board of Supervisors to house detainees at the jail, operated by the county Sheriff’s Office.

Ryan Gustin, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, said the company denies the “specious and sensationalized allegations contained in this complaint related to CoreCivic and our Otay Mesa Detention Center.” He charged that the ACLU chapters’ “bias is evident within the complaint” and said the allegations are “designed to exert political pressure rather than serve as an objective description of the affirmative, proactive measures that OMDC has undertaken for over a year to address this unprecedented pandemic.”

“COVID-19 has created extraordinary challenges for every detention system in America – public and private,” Gustin said in a statement. “At the same time, the state of California on the whole has experienced some of the highest number of COVID-19 cases across the country. We have worked together closely with our government partners and state health officials to respond to this unprecedented situation appropriately, thoroughly and with care for the well-being of those entrusted to us and our communities.”

Leslie Williams, a spokesperson for the Yuba County Sheriff’s Office, said in an email that the agency would respond to the “ridiculous allegations” detailed in the complaint at the appropriate time in the court process.

Complaint seeks ‘thorough investigation’ of alleged retaliation

The widespread retaliation alleged in the complaint is another symptom of the COVID-19 crisis, according to Susan Beaty, staff attorney with Centro Legal de la Raza, a legal services agency that provides support to detained immigrants in northern and central California.

Immigrants have for years protested substandard conditions in ICE detention, Beaty said, and facility staff members have at times responded in a retaliatory fashion. But as the pandemic began unfolding last year, detainees across the state started to organize and protest detention conditions at unprecedented levels, they said. Media coverage of the hunger strikes, conditions, and COVID-19 outbreaks inside the facilities also increased.

“So many people were coming together and protesting peacefully and demanding better conditions, and that was happening so frequently,” Beaty said. “And then the retaliation came in response to that, kind of at the same clip. The tactics aren’t new, but the level of repression and the consistency felt new to many of us.”

Vasudha Talla, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California’s immigrants’ rights program director, said the response from ICE and its contractors — which she called “pretty devastating” — was intended to “prevent any public knowledge” of conditions within the facilities.

“ICE and its contractors are seeking any way they can to prevent what are truly horrific conditions inside the facilities from becoming widely known, or even more widely known than they are right now,” she said.

ICE, in directing comments to Homeland Security, did not provide a response to attorneys’ comments describing an increase in retaliation amid the pandemic.

The complaint, Talla said, is intended to shine a light on the alleged retaliation and spur change.

The complaint calls on the civil rights office to conduct a “thorough investigation” of the immigrants’ experiences in detention and take remedial measures, including taking disciplinary action against the officers and agents that undertook, supervised, or approved of the alleged retaliatory measures and implementing training and other policies to ensure that ICE and its contractors’ staff refrain from retaliation in the future.

It also calls on the office to recommend ICE end detention contracts with GEO and CoreCivic for the facilities named in the complaint, as well as its contract with the Yuba County sheriff.

The complaint says that if facilities remain operational, the civil rights office should recommend that ICE prohibit First Amendment retaliation by the agency and its contractors and explicitly prohibit personnel from “profiling, surveilling, monitoring, targeting, harassing, revoking or rejecting applications from, fining, arresting, detaining, deporting, or otherwise discriminating against any individual, group, or organization based on their First Amendment activities.”

It also calls on the agency to adopt a new standard making clear that people “have a right to seek internal and external redress of their concerns — including the filing of internal and external grievances, communication with attorneys and advocates, speaking with representatives of the media — and cannot be retaliated against for exercising those rights.”

Detainees on hunger strike had to ‘sacrifice ourselves a little bit’

Joe Mejia Ramos, who spent nearly three years in ICE custody, including 11 months at the Yuba County jail, said he joined the complaint because he felt a “duty” to fight for people who remain in immigration detention.

He and other detainees launched a hunger strike in Yuba County in July 2020 to call on federal, state, and local officials to take adequate measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 inside the jail. They also called for safe and hygienic conditions within the facility, which he described as “filthy.”

Amid the strike, deputies confiscated or destroyed people’s commissary food, the complaint alleges. The detainees’ phones and televisions were shut off at times, and they were denied recreation time, it says. Some didn’t receive mail that they knew had been sent to them, while others’ legal mail was opened without them being present, it says.

Williams, the Yuba County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson, did not respond to The Bee’s questions about specific allegations detailed in the complaint.

Mejia Ramos said he has no doubt the deputies’ actions were intended to convince the detainees to end the strike.

“They were very clear about, ‘we’ll make all of this stop if you guys just eat,’” he recalled the deputies saying. “We’ll turn your TVs back on if you guys eat.”

Mejia Ramos said he abstained from eating for five days, despite the deputies’ actions, which he called “retaliation,” “terrorizing, “mental manipulation,” and “inhumane treatment.’‘

“As a collective, we knew that we had to sacrifice a little bit of ourselves for the better of the rest of our immigrant community in detention,” he said. “We needed to take drastic measures to make sure that somebody paid attention to the horrendous conditions they had us in at Yuba.”

Enrique Cristobal Meneses is one of the three complainants still detained — and still experiencing alleged retaliation.

Cristobal Meneses, who has been held at GEO’s Golden State Annex since November, told The Bee he has serious concerns about the facility’s COVID-19 safety measures. He said he’s also witnessed substandard detention conditions, including cockroaches and flies in food.

He said he has submitted 15 to 20 grievances to facility staff. In response, one facility leader repeatedly told him, “you are crying too much about everything,” according to the complaint. It says another asked him, “why are you helping people file grievances? Why are you attacking staff?”

GEO did not respond to questions about specific allegations included in the complaint.

Cristobal Meneses said he is concerned that adding his name to the complaint could further place him within the facility staff’s cross-hairs but, he said, “I want the community to know what we go through in here and what we experience in here, and what I have witnessed.”

Otherwise, he said, “it’s going to stay inside these walls and nobody will know what’s really happening in these facilities.”