’Suddenly they started gassing us’: Cuban migrants tell of shocking attack at Ice prison | US news | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/02/cuban-migrants-detention-ice-facility-new-mexico
▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ee41c0c479801b08f1797aa38f8b0fae751c16a9/0_130_3000_1801/master/3000.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-ali
The 14 May “attack”, in the words of Bacallao and other migrants, took place at Torrance County Detention Facility, a sprawling complex located about an hour south-east of Albuquerque. Set off from the desert scrub by a tall chain-link fence draped in rolls of razor wire, it is run by CoreCivic, a private prison company, and mostly houses migrants under the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. CoreCivic spokesperson Ryan Gustin confirmed the incident and said, in a written statement, that guards “responded to a protest” and used pepper spray “on a group of detainees who became disruptive by refusing to comply with verbal directives provided by staff.”Gustin declined to say what the migrants were doing to protest and what “verbal directives” they’d been given. He referred those questions to Ice, which did not respond to a request for comment.
A fuller account came from Bacallao and two fellow detainees, who said the attack came in response to a hunger strike the men launched to protest against the terrible food and their vulnerability to Covid-19.
The men were not detained because they’d been convicted of a crime; instead, like others in Ice custody, they were in a sort of immigration limbo, being held until the government could figure out what to do with them. They spoke with Searchlight New Mexico through a translator, though only Bacallao agreed to be quoted by name. “It felt like I had been burned with gasoline,” said one Cuban detainee who, like Bacallao, came to the United States seeking political asylum. “My throat closed, and I just fell on the floor. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was going to die.”
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