WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – A hunger strike against inhumane conditions at an illegal immigrant detention center in the US State of Arizona was prompted by the death of a detainee, the migrant rights group the Puente Movement told Sputnik on Tuesday.
“Some of what triggered the hunger strike is the death of Jose de Jesus Deniz-Sahagun. It [Sahagun’s death] also brought up for them [illegal immigrant detainees] all the conditions they have been living under,” the Puente Movement Organizing Director Francisca Porchas said.
Porchas added that the Puente Movement received several anonymous letters from detainees stating that Sahagun was beaten, stripped down, and taken into solitary confinement, where they believed he died on May 20, 2015.
Sahagun is the third person to die in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in 2015.
The death and inhumane treatment prompted up to 200 illegal immigrants at the Eloy Arizona Detention Center to start a hunger strike over the weekend demanding better living conditions and treatment at the facility.
ICE denied that any of detainees have refused food and stressed that migrants at Eloy receive constant medical assistance.
She attributed the poor conditions to the Corrections Corporation of America, a private contractor that builds, manages and operates prisons, jails and detention centers around the United States.
Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said that thousands of undocumented migrants, including children, are denied food, water and medical care while being held in frigid and filthy US detention facilities along the Mexican border.
On Monday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights slammed US immigration detention centers for their inhumane conditions, citing a lack of health care, violence and overcrowding. The UN envoy called for an overhaul of US policy on migrants, especially women and children, whose rights he said are being gravely violated.
The Puente Movement is a grassroots migrant justice organization, based in Phoenix, Arizona, whose mission is the development, education, and empowerment of migrant communities.
