500 Immigrant Dads Are Staging a Hunger Strike at a Texas Detention Center

“We are asking the government to free us. We are not criminals.”
Image of barbed wire fence in front of a detention center
Bloomberg

With migrant families still facing the fallout of the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy and resulting migrant family separations, more than 500 fathers detained in one south Texas immigrant detention facility are beginning a hunger strike to protest the treatment of immigrants, as reported by The Guardian.

The news of the strike was first announced to the public Wednesday by nonprofit advocacy group Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES). According to BuzzFeed News, more than 500 fathers detained at the for-profit Karnes County Residential Center will be refusing food in an attempt to force U.S. authorities to expedite their cases.

"Everyone has agreed that we will stop eating,” one unidentified father said in a statement distributed to reporters by RAICES. “We are doing so because we don't know what will happen to us.”

“We need to know if we will be deported or allowed to remain in this country,” he continued. “We are asking the government to free us. We are not criminals.”

BuzzFeed News reported that some of the children detained will participate in a modified strike as well, refusing to participate in scheduled activities at the facility, located an hour southeast of San Antonio.

One father told RAICES, “The children no longer want to be here, detained. We can’t stand it anymore. We are desperate.”

Many of the fathers at Karnes have only recently been reunited with their children after being separated under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy, and they may face quick deportation. In fact, Vox reported that approximately 1,000 children over the age of 5 who have been reunited with their families have parents that have final deportation orders. NPR reported that some families agreed to deportation to “put an end to the separation nightmare,” while others said they felt “coerced” to accept their deportation orders, their children used as a bargaining tool, rather than pursue asylum claims.

RAICES said it has not been given information on the immigration status of the detainees at Karnes, according to The Guardian.

The Texas Observer reported in July that according to court filings, the government planned to use the for-profit Karnes center to house families facing “imminent deportation” — earning it the designation as a “deportation factory” from The Observer.

But as NPR noted, federal judge Dana Sabraw, of the Southern District of California, has ordered an indefinite stay on family deportations pending [a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)] (https://www.teenvogue.com/story/aclu-challenge-trump-administration-immigrant-family-separation-policy). Sabraw ruled that the administration must give families time to apply for asylum.

NPR reported that in the past few days alone, more than 500 migrant families have been transferred to Karnes and its twin facility, the for-profit South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, where mothers and their children are detained.

In a statement obtained by The Guardian, RAICES director of family detention services Manoj Govindaiah said, “The situation at Karnes today is one of the worst I’ve seen in my 12 years of practicing law.”

Govindaiah continued, “The trauma caused by their separations has forced these fathers into untenable positions of fear, anger, and despair. That these families feel the need to strike shows how tired they are of the games the administration continues to play with vulnerable communities.”

NPR reported on Thursday that 572 children remain in custody of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement and have not been reunited with their parents due to their parents being unavailable or officially considered ineligible due to a criminal record.

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