Protest exposes inhumane treatment of immigrants

On April 14, the Prison and Jail Project, based in Americus, Ga., and Alterna, a faith-based community organization from LaGrange, Ga., held a march and rally at the entrance to the Stewart County Detention Center located in Lumpkin, Ga.

Starting from the courthouse square, some 40 people including small children and two people in wheelchairs held signs and banners denouncing the government’s repressive policies towards immigrant workers and their families.

At the detention center gates, speakers declared their solidarity with those held inside. Columbus-based lawyer, Joseph Wiley Jr., who went into the detention center following the rally to meet with his clients, promised to make sure the detainees would know of the protest supporting their human rights.

Lumpkin, the county seat of Stewart County, was named for Wilson Lumpkin, a 19th century two-term governor of Georgia and U.S. congressman. Also a senator, Lumpkin was identified in history books as a leading advocate of “states rights” and “Indian removal.”

Located some 30-plus miles south of Columbus, Ga., Lumpkin’s population of 1,265 is over 70 percent African-American. According to the latest government figures, almost 27 percent of Lumpkin’s residents live in poverty. Of those under the age of 18, close to 36 percent are poor.

In 1999, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the country’s largest owner and operator of private prisons, chose Lumpkin as the site for the construction of a 1,524-bed medium-security facility. CCA operates 65 prisons in 20 states and the District of Columbia with a capacity of housing 72,500 inmates. Completion of the massive $45 million Georgia project was held up for several years while CCA searched for a government agency to fill its beds at a profit.

In the fall of 2006, this detention center started operating as a regional Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. As workplaces across the country began to be raided by armed ICE agents, many of those arrested for immigration violations ended up in the concertina-wire surrounded prison, sitting in the middle of a vast field, a mile or so from a rural Georgia town.

The only lawyer in the area is Lumpkin’s mayor, “Ed” Cannington Jr., who was first elected in 1979. There is no local Latin@ or Asian population. The closest immigration lawyer is in Columbus. Most of the legal assistance comes from Atlanta, almost 3 hours away by car.

In late March 2007, El Salvador’s consul general’s office in Atlanta began receiving hundreds of calls from detainees about the deplorable conditions at Stewart.

The callers said that some 1,000 immigrants were holding a two-day hunger strike to protest the lack of medical care, inadequate food, non-existent or limited access to lawyers, excessive administrative punishments and restricted contact with families.

The March 22 edition of the Atlanta Latino newspaper broke the story and gave voice to the immigrants’ struggle taking place so far from any major population center.

Staff members of Consul-General Asdrúbal Aguilar interviewed several dozen detainees including 70-year-old Guillermo Antonio Carpio who is HIV-positive, has Parkinson’s and is diabetic. He told of the lack of medical care and proper food. Days go by before ill detainees are seen by a doctor or given their medications. Since most were arrested at their jobs, they were not carrying a full supply of any medicines, much less copies of their medical histories.

Very few of the 311 employees at the prison speak Spanish and communication with the 100 or more detainees from countries in Asia is even more problematic.

José Saúl Hernández Argueta told investigators that he and his wife were arrested in Oct. 2006 in a raid on a Houston meat-packing plant. Their 8-year-old son was in school and left alone. Relatives took the boy in but were unaware of his medical needs. The child has since died from asthma. The distraught father said, “My wife is currently in an immigration jail in Texas and I don’t even know if she knows about our son.”

Among the more than 1,200 held in detention there as of this date, some are former workers at the Swift meat plant in Marshalltown, Iowa, who were arrested on Dec. 12, 2006, when ICE raids took place in 6 states and detained 1,300 people on immigration charges.

The prison also holds workers from the Smithfield hog-processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C., the focus of a determined union organizing drive.

Following the hunger strike, all the women detainees were removed to the Etowah County Detention Center in Gadsden, Ala.

The writer spoke at the rally representing the International Action Center in Atlanta.