Detainees at a Georgia ICE facility stage a hunger strike as lawmakers demand inquiries

Immigrants held at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in southeast Georgia are on hunger strike, protesting what they say are prolonged detentions and conditions inside, NPR reported¹. WABE reported that the strike at the Folkston ICE Processing Center continued into a second week and that an organiser had been deported, and described the site as a private prison operated by The GEO Group under contract with ICE⁴.

The Insider reported that Russians have joined a hunger strike at a third ICE detention centre this month, citing relatives of detainees who spoke to an independent outlet⁵. In El Paso, detainees at Camp East Montana, an ICE facility on Fort Bliss, are seeking independent monitors after deaths and alleged failures at the site⁶.

The pressure from Congress and the courts

Senator Warren is leading the Massachusetts delegation in pressing the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general to investigate conditions at the Burlington ICE facility, and the release described an expansion of warehouse-based immigration detention². Representatives Pettersen, Beatty and Kelly are leading members demanding answers on miscarriages in detention, and alongside Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper they asked the administration to abandon plans for a new ICE detention facility, according to Pettersen’s office³. Those are the lawmakers’ own characterisations of the facilities, set out in their own releases.

Litigation is running in parallel. A lawsuit alleges that unsafe conditions at a Texas ICE facility put immigrants at risk of injury or death⁹. The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico has sued ICE over detention contract documents, seeking its contracting agreements with CoreCivic, which runs the Torrance County Detention Facility and the Cibola County Correctional Center⁸.

Why it matters to investors

The facilities named in these reports are operated by listed contractors. WABE identified the Georgia site as a GEO Group operation⁴, and the New Mexico suit concerns CoreCivic’s contracts⁸. Conditions litigation, inspector-general referrals and records demands are the channels through which that contracting comes under review^2,8,9.

The political exposure runs the other way as well. Scripps News reported that major ICE contractors have given heavily to Republican candidates, with GEO Group contributing millions of dollars, mostly to pro-Trump super PACs, and named GEO Group and CoreCivic in its investigation⁷. None of the reports in this pack describes a contract being cancelled or a penalty imposed; they describe demands, suits and requests for monitors^1,3,6.