Jail Protest by Immigrant Detainees Is Broken Up by Agents

By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: January 20, 2010

Agents in riot gear from Immigration and Customs
Enforcement tried to break up a hunger strike by
detainees at the Varick Federal Detention Center
in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday, three detainees at
the center said Wednesday in telephone interviews.

Matthew Chandler, a spokesman for the Department
of Homeland Security, denied that there was “a
sustained hunger strike” at Varick, but said
immigration agents entered and searched a jail
dormitory when detainees complaining about conditions refused to leave it.

A Jamaican detainee in one dorm said “all hell
broke loose” after about 100 inmates refused to
go to the mess hall on Tuesday morning and gave
guards a flier declaring they were on a hunger
strike to protest detention policies and practices.

The detainee, who asked that his name not be
published for fear of retaliation, said a SWAT
team used pepper spray and “beat up” some
detainees, took many to segregation cells as
punishment and transferred about 17 to
immigration jails in other states. The 20
detainees remaining in his dorm were threatened
with similar treatment if they continued the hunger strike, he said.

But Mr. Chandler, in a written statement, said,
“No pepper spray was used at any time during this
search, and any allegations of threat or intimidation are simply untrue.”

Two detainees in another dorm said they had seen
eight immigration agents in riot gear dragging
two detainees from the far side of the jail,
while at least eight other detainees were escorted toward the segregation unit.

“After we started the hunger strike yesterday the
SWAT team came into the other side,” Chao Chen,
36, a chef who is fighting deportation to China,
said as his immigration lawyer, Chunyu Jean Wang,
translated. “On our side a gentleman from
immigration came and told them not to strike.”

The third detainee, an architect who said he had
been a legal resident for 30 years, gave a
similar account, but he would not give his name.

“I don’t want to be singled out,” he said. “A lot
of things are happening in the night — people are being moved secretly.”

Last week, the government announced that it would
close the Varick jail and transfer all detainees
to the Hudson County Correctional Facility in
Kearny, N.J., by Feb. 28. The three detainees
said that they opposed the transfer, but that the
hunger strike was part of a broader protest over detention.

According to the flier, the idea for the hunger
strike originated at the Bergen County Jail, one
of several in New Jersey where the federal
government holds noncitizens while it tries to
deport them, including legal immigrants with old
criminal convictions, illegal immigrants and people seeking asylum.

“We are seeking answers from President Obama’s
administration in immigration reform that he
promised,” the one-page flier says, asking that
detention and deportation be suspended for people
with family members who are citizens or legal
residents. “Although many of us have turned our
lives around, building a family, contributing to
society in many ways and living the American
dream, in spite of that we are taken away from our love ones.”

The flier echoes a hunger strike statement issued
last week by detainees at the Port Isabel Detention Center in Texas.