Thanksgiving Day Hunger Strikes by Over 100 Immigrant Detainees Reported

The #NotOneMore Deportation campaign reports that this Thanksgiving weekend, over 100 immigrant detainees across the country  — primarily asylum seekers fleeing persecution in their home countries — began hunger strikes to protest prolonged detention and detention conditions.  The hunger strikers included individuals at the Theo Lacy Jail in Orange, CA; Otay Detention Facility in San Diego, CA; and Etowah County Detention Facility in Etowah County, Alabama.

The Orange County Register reports that the 35 Orange County hunger strikers included detainees from both Theo Lacy (a medium security prison) as well as the James A. Musick facility in Irvine, CA (a minimum security facility), and that the detainees from the minimum security facility in Musick have since been transferred to Theo Lacy’s more restrictive conditions.  Theo Lacy was named by the Detention Watch Network as one of the ten most problematic immigration detention facilities in the U.S. several years ago, in DWN’s “Expose and Close” report. 

-JKoh