Photos: Alex Garland, Trust.org NDLON.org.
Forty-two people deported every hour of every day, more than 1,000 families torn apart every day had become just too many for immigrants and migrant rights activists law professor Angelica Chazaro, community organizer Carino Barragan, political strategist Maru Mora Villalpando, and immigration attorney Sandy Restrepo. They invited comrades in the struggle to join them in planning a direct action to draw attention to the human misery behind the grim deportation statistics and the anonymous Northwest Detention Center (NWDC), one of the largest in the country. They also invited the National Day Laborers Organizing Network with a track record of direct actions against deportations to provide expertise.
In the early morning hours of Feb. 24th,t despite a cold steady rain about 50 people gathered outside the private immigration prison determined to stop the deportation buses. Using ten people chained together, including two undocumented immigrants, one Mora Villalpando, and a floating tactical team, they turned back a bus and two vans. Although at least one of those vehicles was not headed to the airport to deport people, the action prompted ICE to unchain the approximately 120 people waiting to board the deportation buses and return them to their units.
Jose Moreno was on the van that was turned around. It was heading for the next stage in processing for being released on bond. He says when he left the bus, he and the others on board spread the word that there were people outside trying to stop deportations. He said, “If people who don’t even know us are trying to stop us from being deported, shouldn’t we try to help ourselves?”
On March 6th they were ready and 25 of the approximately 1,300 people held in NWDC signed a document calling for a general hunger strike to begin the next day. At the top of their concerns were their families. In part the call said:
Today we join ourselves to that effort and demand that the Federal Executive (Mr. President Barack Obama), use his presidential authority and order a total stop to the unjust deportations that are separating families, destroying homes, and bringing uncertainty, insecurity and unhappy futures to our children, our loved ones.
They also demanded an increase in pay from $1 per day, healthful food, reasonable commissary and phone prices, and reasonable bonds.
About 1,200 answered the call and began a hunger strike. The same group that had stopped the deportations sprang into action to provide support and bring the intense media scrutiny that the Feb. 24th action had engendered. In the following month the numbers would fluctuate, but at all times there were people on hunger strike. Jesus Gaspar Navarro, Ramon Mendoza Pascual and Miguel Angel Farias Sanchez were put in medical segregation and constantly threatened with forced feeding and sometimes with transfer to another facility.
Once the hunger strike was renewed Jesus Gaspar ended his hunger strike still in medical isolation on March 31. He had been fasting for nearly a month. He gave a radio interview and was immediately moved to disciplinary isolation, which includes no contact with others, no reading material, TV, commissary privileges or phone calls. Also in isolation is an Army veteran who advocated a work strike, and dozens who renewed the hunger strike.
Petition on behalf of Hunger Strikers and latest releases available at:
www.notonemoredeportation.com/2014/03/10/detention-hunger-
strike
Fund to support the families of human rights hunger strikers:
http://www.gofundme.com/7orehg
