Lawsuit: Detained immigrant beaten for role in hunger strike
Source: Associated Press
Gene Johnson, Associated Press
Updated 5:12 pm, Friday, February 23, 2018
SEATTLE (AP) — A guard at a privately run immigration jail beat a detainee because the man joined a hunger strike protesting conditions at the facility, the Washington state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said in a federal lawsuit Friday.
The organization sued U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as the GEO Group, which operates the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma.
According to the lawsuit, Jesus Chavez Flores is one of more than 120 immigrant detainees at the facility who began a hunger strike Feb. 7 to protest the conditions of their confinement, including the quality of the food their served and that the prisoners are paid just $1 per day to perform janitorial, kitchen, laundry or other work there.
After one guard falsely identified Chavez as an organizer of the hunger strike, another guard punched him in the eye to retaliate, and he's been held in isolation — alone 23 hours per day — since Feb. 10, the ACLU said. It added that he continues to have trouble opening his eye, his vision is blurry and that his requests for medical treatment have been rebuffed.
Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Lawsuit-Detained-immigrant-beaten-for-role-in-12704289.php
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