Detainees at a third U.S. immigration detention center go on hunger strike, including Russian nationals

More than 30 people have gone on hunger strike at the El Valle immigration detention facility in Texas, the mother of one of the protesters told Vot Tak.

She said 15 women began the hunger strike October 11, and 20 men, including Russians, joined them later. The protesters say they face poor detention conditions and a lack of medical care, and are demanding that their rights be upheld.

The husband of one of the hunger strikers told journalists that, contrary to the rules, prison administrators are not monitoring the health of those refusing food: “The administration tells them straight out that there’s only one way out of this detention — deportation. They say, if you want, go ahead and sit there, starve. If you croak, we’ll take you away and bury you.”

El Valle Detention Facility has become the third immigration detention center where detainees have declared a hunger strike. In early October, asylum seekers at the D. Ray James immigration detention facility in Georgia filed a collective complaint about detention conditions and announced plans to begin a hunger strike. According to Vot Tak, detainees at the Winn immigration detention facility in Louisiana have also started a hunger strike.

Russians held at D. Ray James complained about poor food, communication problems, and being unable to see a doctor even with acute pain. Facility administrators threatened the detainees with deportation and with sending them “to your cozy Gulag.” They were seeking a transfer to another facility.

According to Georgia Public Broadcasting’s estimate, about 500 people are taking part in the hunger strike at D. Ray James. On October 11, Agentstvo, an independent Russian investigative outlet, reported that one of the organizers of the hunger strike in Georgia, Russian citizen Idris Makhmudov, was deported from the US. About 40 protest participants ended up in solitary confinement, sources told Agentstvo.