As of the time of writing, detained immigrants are on hunger strike in Delaney Hall in New Jersey, at the Adelanto detention center in California, at the North Lake detention center in Michigan, and at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania. The demands from every group of strikers are, at their core, the same: treat us like human beings.
Detention Watch Network’s press release quotes Nanci Palacios Godinez: “The hunger strikers at Adelanto and Delaney Hall are bravely calling attention to a long-known truth: Immigration detention as a whole is unnecessary, rife with systemic abuses and completely arbitrary — full stop. People in immigration detention are describing it as ‘hell on earth’ because it is. ICE’s immigrant detention system deprives people of freedom, isolates people away from loved ones, and subjects people to abysmal conditions, including inadequate medical care and mental health services, inedible food, and racist abuse… No one should suffer in these conditions. Immigrants are our family members, neighbors, friends, and coworkers — worthy of dignity and respect regardless of where they came from or how they arrived in the U.S.”