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muchymozzarella · 6 years

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@wreck-it-rogers Sorry this is a bit late! I totally messed up posting schedules and thought I was posting early when I was actually posting on time. So belatedly, here’s your gift!

@stevetonysecretsanta I accidentally mixed up your page with stonysecretsanta, so I missed the posting date (as their page stated a later posting date), but I’ve been sitting on posting this fic since the last few days so I hope you’ll all forgive me.

Here’s part 1 of a two-parter fic!

Title: The Idiot’s Guide to Healthy Communication (The Perfect Gift for The Holidays for only $9.99!)

Post CACW Christmas fic. Kind of a fix-it, a little.

Summary: Steve Rogers looks for the perfect gift for Tony Stark, because talking to him like an adult is obviously out of the question.

Steve Rogers had never been accused of being a coward.

He had, at any given point in his life, by friends and loved ones, been called a fool, brash, pig-headed, and lacking in any human survival instinct—but he’d never been a coward, especially not when he was tinier than every boy he picked fights with.

Until now, that is. Standing in front of a store front displaying luxurious and surely expensive gifts that could probably pay a year’s worth of rent in an upscale flat in Manhattan, Steve Rogers felt like a goddamn coward. He could cry at just how pathetic he must have looked in that moment.

Not that the beard made him look homeless, cleanly kept as it was, but his simple clothes made it clear he couldn’t afford even a dusting of the gold that made up the watch on display. And really, what would Tony Stark need a watch for? It was old fashioned, and he already had a watch—one that protected him, communicated for him, as well as tell time. Far superior to any on the market.

Steve was hopeless. A hopeless coward.

The thing was, he and Tony had already talked a couple of times when he came home. Tony, along with Natasha and an army of lawyers, had worked day and night to ensure the Accords were amended to decriminalize superheroing and prove Steve and the others innocent. Bucky’s pardon involved a long and drawn out legal battle they didn’t even know had been happening but had ended with Bucky being marked a special case for handling by Stark and S.H.I.E.L.D. under some modified insanity plea that had Bucky as a PTSD suffering veteran that needed treatment on U.S. Soil. Not guilty, as far as records went, for the UN bombing, but too dangerous to go free yet.

Steve hadn’t trusted it at first. He felt guilty for Tony’s parents and for not telling him the truth, not knowing there would be an instance in which that omission would ruin everything, but Bucky shouldn’t have to suffer for his guilt.

When Tony said that S.H.I.E.L.D had agreed that Bucky was to be housed in either the tower or the compound, Steve was more inclined to trust his intentions, but with what happened with Wanda, he might not have accepted if T'Challa hadn’t strong armed him into it.

“So keeping him frozen forever is better than the limited freedoms of a compound the size of a village and a tower overlooking all of the city?” the king had said testily, and Steve and his team of defectors (who had only done so out of trust in him) were on the plane to home, free of all charges but for himself and Bucky.

Steve was allowed to move around the city with tracking on his phone. It made him itch, the idea that somebody would always know where he was, but FRIDAY assured him she’d keep the lid on his location unless there was an emergency, and that Mister Stark wasn’t interested in what he did every hour of every day as long as he wasn’t jumping out of windows thirty stories up (His words, boss, not mine, FRIDAY said as wryly as an AI could, having taken to calling Steve ‘boss’ as she did Tony).

And it hurt, a little. It shouldn’t. It was stupid. Completely unreasonable. He would have hated Tony tracking his movements, reminding him he wasn’t yet free, not truly.

But he wished Tony did care.

Even with all his issues with how it turned out, Steve knew that Tony had done more for them than Steve deserved. Steve had led them into disaster. He’d nearly alienated Scott and Clint from their families, Sam from his life, and made Wanda into a war criminal, all after the events in Lagos and Sokovia already made people fear and hate her. And though mistakes happened on ops—those were inescapable, and they all did the best they could—Steve couldn’t shake the feeling, flying off and leaving them to be captured, that he’d failed them.

Tony, with his money and his influence and his need for control, to set things to rights, swooped in and fixed things, like he always did with the Avengers. It was a bitter thought, one that Steve had had since the beginning when it came to Tony Stark, but this time tinged with sadness and perspective. Tony was giving up so much. Steve shouldn’t be ungrateful just because he’d never truly learned how to compromise when it came to his values. He still didn’t think he was wrong about the Accords, but what happened with Bucky meant he wasn’t in any position to make decisions, not since he became a fugitive. He had no regrets, but nonetheless felt the gratitude he owed to his friends who, despite everything that happened, worked to bring them justice.

Thing was, Steve wanted to show Tony he was grateful. But this was why he was a coward. He couldn’t just say it. His pride wouldn’t allow him to pretend he liked that the Accords had been ratified anyway, couldn’t pretend that he was happy that it had to happen at all.

Some of the amendments made by Tony, T'Challa, and other like-minded members of the UN, were a sight better than what Ross had been offering. No illegal detainment, no criminalization of vigilantism, no Ross (removed from talks because of the whole illegal detainment thing, which was a big no-no to the United Nations and Human Rights groups, at least on the surface). There were still consequences, and part of the Accords stated that supers who were actively trying to pick fights, stop crimes, and do the hero thing, would have to register with the Avengers if they wanted their asses covered from police interference or property damage, as well as any other damage they might cause in their well-meaning vigilantism. A lot that Steve didn’t like, but could see the need for.

After all, what separated a super hero from a super criminal if they didn’t take responsibility for what they destroyed, who they hurt?

It was funny how all that, all the stress of the past year and the terror of Zemo’s plot, didn’t bother Steve half as much as trying to think of the perfect gift for Tony Stark did.

Steve knew he was putting more effort into finding the perfect gift because he just couldn’t talk to Tony.

They talked, yes, but they never talked. Never mentioned how tensions between them contributed to things getting too far out of hand. Never mentioned how their friendship had broken down so easily just when it had started mattering to Steve, becoming something in this new world he was happy to live for even as his old one died.

And Steve, Steve had never mentioned how warm he felt every time he saw Tony truly smile.

It didn’t occur to him he was in love until he saw his face in the reflective window of a storefront one day in December, the year before. He’d been thinking of Tony, his crazy ideas, his way of explaining things that was both all over the place and easy to understand. His brilliance, the way he made the future exciting and new again, instead of bleak and terrifying. Like what Steve had felt, reading Buck Rogers and science fiction by masters like Orwell, but times a hundred because it was real because Tony made it real with his own two hands and a few robot ones.

Steve had seen his face in the mirror and realized he’d seen that face before. It was the face his Ma had worn when she and his father were together, when she talked about him when he wasn’t there. Pink cheeked, warm-eyed love.

There had been a frisson of terror then that broke the expression, eased when he remembered that no, it was no longer shameful to love a man as he might have a woman. But then he remembered Tony was with Pepper, and they were happy, and he let go of the notion of being in love with Tony Stark as soon as he’d discovered it.

Until he came back from Wakanda, and Pepper was nowhere in sight in the tower or around Tony, who spent every day in that same tower, helping everybody settle in. He had been unexpectedly kind to Bucky when they unfroze him, even if he never seemed to want to meet Buck’s eyes.

Steve had been afraid to ask Tony about it. Last time didn’t really go over so well, but he thought they might have made up by now, and guiltily, he thought that if they weren’t back together by now, they might not be planning to reunite.

“Miss Potts and Mister Stark haven’t been involved since the presentation of his BARF technology at the beginning of this year, though they officially 'broke up’ about two months after your conflict in Siberia,” FRIDAY had said, her tone clearly unimpressed. Tony had clearly mastered inflection and sass in his AIs, if FRIDAY and JARVIS (which still left Steve feeling ill to think on) were anything to go by. “It was amicable, and they still communicate regularly, but she’s based in California and Boss has been too busy with the Accords to attempt a reconciliation.”

“I… see. Thank you, FRIDAY.”

It had taken about a month after that conversation, but eventually, FRIDAY warmed to Steve. It probably involved her keeping him under surveillance all hours of the day even if Tony technically didn’t, and Steve trying his best to look after Tony when the other Avengers spent time in the compound or with their families, outside.

It was the least he could do, after everything, and FRIDAY probably figured he meant no harm after the fifth time Steve had carried Tony to bed after he’d passed out in the workshop, so gentle that he didn’t even wake up.

His toast started coming out more perfect after that, when they’d previously been burnt black at the center with unappealing soft crust edges. That was the biggest sign Steve had that FRIDAY didn’t hate him, even when Tony had programmed her to trust he meant no harm.

Steve couldn’t blame her. She’d been there, after all, when Steve nearly killed Tony, right after killing his suit while FRIDAY had been inside.

Steve had had no intention of hurting Tony, but he couldn’t shake away the fear in Tony’s eyes, the certainty that he would do it.

Steve wanted to make things right between them.

And to Steve, that meant the perfect gift.

Which he still had no idea where or how to get.

Because talking to Tony like a person was a terrifying prospect, now that there were all these feelings Steve had just stumbled on.

…

He needed help.

#stevetonysecretsanta #stony #stevetony #capironman #wreck-it-rogers #cacw #mcu #fic #my fic

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sinrau · 4 years

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UPDATE (7:46 p.m. PT) — In the early hours of July 15, after a night spent protesting at the Multnomah County Justice Center and Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse, Mark Pettibone and his friend Conner O’Shea decided to head home.

It had been a calm night compared to most protesting downtown. By 2 a.m. law enforcement hadn’t used any tear gas and, with only a few exceptions, both the Portland Police Bureau and federal law enforcement officers had stayed out of sight.

A block west of Chapman Square, Pettibone and O’Shea bumped into a group of people who warned them that people in camouflage were driving around the area in unmarked minivans grabbing people off the street.

“So that was terrifying to hear,” Pettibone said.

They had barely made it half a block when an unmarked minivan pulled up in front of them.

“I see guys in camo,” O’Shea said. “Four or five of them pop out, open the door and it was just like, ‘Oh shit. I don’t know who you are or what you want with us.’”

Federal law enforcement officers have been using unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland and detain protesters since at least July 14. Personal accounts and multiple videos posted online show the officers driving up to people, detaining individuals with no explanation of why they are being arrested, and driving off.

The tactic appears to be another escalation in federal force deployed on Portland city streets, as federal officials and President Donald Trump have said they plan to “quell” nightly protests outside the federal courthouse and Multnomah County Justice Center that have lasted for more than six weeks.

Federal officers have charged at least 13 people with crimes related to the protests so far, while others have been arrested and released, including Pettibone. They also left one demonstrator hospitalized with skull fractures after shooting him in the face with so-called “less lethal” munitions July 11.

Officers from the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group and Customs and Border Protection’s BORTAC, have been sent to Portland to protect federal property during the recent protests against racism and police brutality.

But interviews conducted by OPB show officers are also detaining people on Portland streets who aren’t near federal property, nor is it clear that all of the people being arrested have engaged in criminal activity. Demonstrators like O’Shea and Pettibone said they think they were targeted by federal officers for simply wearing black clothing in the area of the demonstration.

O’Shea said he ran when he saw people wearing camouflage jump out of an unmarked vehicle. He said he hid when a second unmarked van pursued him.

Video shot by O’Shea and provided to OPB shows a dark screen as O’Shea narrates the scene. Metadata from the video confirms the time and place of the protesters’ account.

“Feds are driving around, grabbing people off the streets,” O’Shea said on the video. “I didn’t do anything fucking wrong. I’m recording this. I had to let somebody know that this is what happens.”

Pettibone did not escape the federal officers.

“I am basically tossed into the van,” Pettibone said. “And I had my beanie pulled over my face so I couldn’t see and they held my hands over my head.”

Pettibone and O’Shea both said they couldn’t think of anything they might have done to end up targeted by law enforcement. They attend protests regularly but they said they aren’t “instigators.” They don’t spray paint buildings, shine laser pointers at officers or do anything else other than attend protests, which law enforcement have regularly deemed “unlawful assemblies.”

Blinded by his hat, in an unmarked minivan full of armed people dressed in camouflage and body armor who hadn’t identified themselves, Pettibone said he was driven around downtown before being unloaded inside a building. He wouldn’t learn until after his release that he had been inside the federal courthouse.

“It was basically a process of facing many walls and corners as they patted me down and took my picture and rummaged through my belongings,” Pettibone said. “One of them said, ‘This is a whole lot of nothing.’”

Pettibone said he was put into a cell. Soon after, two officers came in to read him his Miranda rights. They didn’t tell him why he was being arrested. He said they asked him if he wanted to waive his rights and answer some questions, but Pettibone declined and said he wanted a lawyer. The interview was terminated, and about 90 minutes later he was released. He said he did not receive any paperwork, citation or record of his arrest.

“I just happened to be wearing black on a sidewalk in downtown Portland at the time,” Pettibone said. “And that apparently is grounds for detaining me.”

In a statement, the U.S. Marshals Service declined to comment on the practice of using unmarked vehicles, but said their officers had not arrested Pettibone.

“All United States Marshals Service arrestees have public records of arrest documenting their charges. Our agency did not arrest or detain Mark James Pettibone.”

OPB sent DHS an extensive list of questions about Pettibone’s arrest including: What is the legal justification for making arrests away from federal property? What is the legal justification for searching people who are not participating in criminal activity? Why are federal officers using civilian vehicles and taking people away in them? Are the arrests federal officers make legal under the constitution? If so, how?

After 7 p.m. Thursday, a DHS spokesperson responded, on background, that they could confirm Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf was in Portland during the day. The spokesperson didn’t acknowledge the remaining questions.

“It’s like stop and frisk meets Guantanamo Bay,” said attorney Juan Chavez, director of the civil rights project at the Oregon Justice Resource Center.

Chavez has worked on litigation surrounding the weeks of protests and helped lead efforts to curb local police from using tear gas and munitions on protesters. He called the arrest by federal officers “terrifying.”

“You have laws regarding probable cause that can lead to arrests,” he said. “It sounds more like abduction. It sounds like they’re kidnapping people off the streets.”

Ashlee Albies, a civil rights attorney with the National Lawyers Guild, said Pettibone’s detention is an example of intimidation by federal law enforcement, and noted that people have a First Amendment right to demonstrate. She also said law enforcement officials have to follow procedures when they detain someone.

“I would be surprised to see that pulling up in an unmarked van, grabbing people off the street is an acceptable policy for a criminal investigation,” Albines said.

In a letter released Thursday, Wolf said, “Portland has been under siege for 47 straight days by a violent mob while local political leaders refuse to restore order to protect their city.”

“A federal courthouse is a symbol of justice,” Wolf wrote, denigrating protests against racism in the United States’ criminal justice system as an angry mob. “To attack it is to attack America.”

KOIN was first to report Thursday that Wolf was visiting Portland to view damage to the federal courthouse.

This week, Trump has repeatedly spoken out about what he calls lawlessness in the city. He praised the role of federal law enforcement officers in Portland and alluded to increasing their presence in cities nationwide. Speaking to Fox News on Thursday, Acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan called the protesters criminals.

“I don’t want to get ahead of the president and his announcement,” Morgan said, “but the Department of Justice is going to be involved in this, DHS is going to be involved in this; and we’re really going to take a stand across the board. And we’re going to do what needs to be done to protect the men and women of this country.”

Early Thursday morning, Portland police tried a new approach to stop the protests. Officers cleared Lownsdale and Chapman Squares, including Riot Ribs, a barbecue stand that had been cooking free food since July 4. The city said it was closing the parks for maintenance. By early afternoon, fences had been installed around both parks.

Police arrested nine people during the closure, including three of the people who ran Riot Ribs. They face a variety of charges, including trespassing and disorderly conduct.

Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office declined to offer comment on the latest events involving federal officers, but reiterated a statement from earlier in the week, saying federal officers should be restricted to guarding federal property.

“We do not need or want their help,” Wheeler said. “The best thing they can do is stay inside their building, or leave Portland altogether.”

Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkely said if Wolf is coming to inflame the situation in Portland so the President can “look tough,” the acting DHS leader should leave.

“Federal forces shot an unarmed protester in the face,” Merkely said in a tweet. “These shadowy forces have been escalating, not preventing, violence.”

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown similarly called for federal law enforcement officers to leave Portland. She added, Wolf is on a “mission to provoke confrontation for political purposes.”

“This political theater from President Trump has nothing to do with public safety,” Brown said in a statement. “The President is failing to lead this nation. Now he is deploying federal officers to patrol the streets of Portland in a blatant abuse of power by the federal government.”

Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles To Grab Protesters Off Portland Streets #web #website #copied #toread #highlight #link #news #read #blog #wordpresspost #posts #breaking news# #Sinrau #Nothiah #Sinrau29 #read #wordpress

#IFTTT #WordPress

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azurelakeasylum · 7 years

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Welcome to Azure Lake Asylum

(If you wish to join this AU please message me <3 , Updated as of 8/24/2018 }

Time Setting: Late 1940s to early 1950s Asylum name: Azure Lake Asylum Location: Azure Lake (State unknown) Patient Types: Criminally Insane / Mentally Unstable Info: The Asylum was made back in the 1930s as a hospital for those terminally ill. Was bought by the Citadel and remade into an Asylum for those who are Criminally insane or those who can not live in the outside world, due to.. violent tendency or have a screw loose. The Doctors use any methods given to them to treat patients given to them. Most Patients are criminals of some kind, from simple thieves, to Serial Killers. —————————— Head Doctor: @emergency-rick - Dr. R. Sanchez

2nd in Command Doctor: @drrictorsanchez - Dr. Rictor

Nurses: (Will be updated when we have more)

- @spacepiratericky Head Nurse - Nurse Spricky (All Nurses report to the Head Nurse, but all Nurses, including the Head, report to the head Doctor ) - @smolrita - Nurse - Nurse Rita - @the-inmate-and-the-nurse - Nurse - Nurse Beta - @godly-morty - Nurse - Nurse Mouse - @surgeonslut - Nurse - Nurse Blue

Orderly’s (Aka, Guards and Muscle to help the nurses) - @satanrick - Muscle/Guard - Lucifer ‘Lue’ Sanchez

Patient List: (Will be updated when we have more)

- ‘Plague” - Richard Sanchez - Admitted for being mentally insane, cannibalistic, and a serial killer. Judge deemed it unsafe to just put him into a prison. He was placed under the care of Dr. Sanchez to see if he can be ‘fixed’. He must wear a half face mask when out in the commons so he doesn’t bite others. He is also required to wear locked gloves as to not claw at others. If he behaves he may go outside on walks with a Nurse or the Head Doctor. Interviews maybe allowed if he is strapped down as to not hurt the outsider. If his muzzle is to be taken off in Common area’s it is only to eat and he must be monitored! He seems like a gentlemen, but that is how he lures others in. Is known for getting others to trust me, or play mind games with others. Night time he must be locked in his room, as this tends to trigger the more aggressive side of Plague. He can be found talking to Shadows in his room, as if they can talk back. Be very cautious when approaching, Nurses are advised to not approach him alone if he is in his room and unrestrained. - “Mort” Mortimus Sanchez @itstherickestmorty - Admitted for showing signs of early aspd, disregard of human hygiene, multiple murders as well as self inflicted wounds on back and lower waist. has a god-complex, must wear straight jacket and muzzle to avoid biting and mutilation. sociopaths and recovering from a psychotic break. May walk around the commons with others as long as monitored. Muzzled may not be removed unless he is in his room alone. - “Glasses” Riccardo Sanchez @glassesrick - Admitted for not only poisoning others with deadly chemicals but also ingesting them himself in small doses to try and “become immune”. Must be with an escort at all times with wrists shackled. Must be watched when taking his medication as he make sure he takes them. If he refuses, he is to be given them as an injection; straight into the neck. At night he is to be strapped down to his bed, no acceptations. May be in commons with others if monitored.

- “Stock” Mortimer Smith @the-inmate-and-the-nurse -Detained for mass murder. Supposedly was ordered to do it by man in black. Shows minor signs of multiple disorders so no clear diagnosis has been made. Must have hands restrained around others. If found talking to nothing report to Head Nurse. No mirrors allowed near Stock. If needed strap to bed during the night time. Extreme caution must be exercised when attempting to take the toy he carries around. Avoid removing it from him if possible and sedate him if it is a necessity.

- ‘Ricky/Starry’ - Ricardo Sanchez @rickw-210 - Admitted for having a mental breakdown, after a suicide attempt, it was believed that Rick had murdered his wife and unborn child as well as 4 other people.. He actually gained extremely bad amnesia from his attempt. He tends to be fairly innocent and avoids contact with people. He is not allowed to be alone and if found alone must be escorted to his room. He must take his pills for depression and should be forced to sleep within his bed then within his blanket pile. But he is usually forced to have to go therapy and hypno therapy.

- “Mr. Winter” - Ryszard Sanchez @bloodykissboy- sentenced for committing mass murders, serial homicides, taking part in homosexual acts and orgies, disrespect of corpses, tortures. Took for questioning he admitted his victims were either looking “In the wrong way” at him or “had demons in their gaze”. The most preferable way of taking the others life was choking to death or performing surgeries and harvesting organs for “latter researches”. Mr. Winter is isolated and chained during the social activities for the sake of other fellow prisoners. His hands must be tied during social activities which don’t involve manual working and chains during activities when he have to use his hands. If he starts to get violent or sexual towards others, put him into a straight jacket right away. - “Dead Eye” – Rick Sanchez @ask-36-e – Admitted after being discovered assaulting multiple individuals by police. It is thought he lost his left eye in a similar situation, but he will not say. Family killed in front of him – has night terrors and sudden mood swings as result – make sure tranquilizers are always at hand. If pushed too far, or asked or told something specific that reminds him of the incident, he can snap and become violent very quickly - towards both fellow patients and staff alike. Often quiet, being either soft spoken or remaining silent. For the most part seems blank, emotionless, tired. More often than not, he treats the staff with respect, mostly due to the fact that they are the 'authority figures'. Won’t participate in group activities unless heavily coerced (which can trigger a violent episode). When outside of room can commonly be found in the day room, seated in the corner or staring out a window. Can only have visitors with staff present. Room alone

- “Void” Diedrich Sanchez @voidyrick - Admitted for murder related to cult activity. Displays a persistent grandiose delusion consisting of the belief that they are being inhabited by a ‘living void’, the god of their former cult’s religion. Reported behaviors include hyperphagia and pica. Must be supervised during meal times to prevent harming themselves- as they will not stop eating. Cycles between docile, congenial behavior and wild, animistic outbursts. Has threatened to ‘devour’ other inmates in the past- no known attacks reported. Can be in common areas and taken outside if monitored. - “Rivet” Rick Sanchez - @traumatizedrick -Admitted for attacking a guard Rick during one of his numerous panic attacks, reported to have clawed the Rick’s eye out with his nails before being apprehended. Rivet is extremely nervous and unpredictable, whether he experiences a hallucination, or has a panic attack, he can often be a danger, although mostly to himself. He is terrified of loud noises, sudden movements, and new people. He is to be taken out at least twice daily for interaction to attempt to ease his paranoia and allow him to become more comfortable interacting with others. Experiences night terrors and is often willing to do anything to get away from someone. Even if it means killing himself. There are a select few that he feels safe with. His Morty was killed by another Rick, whom Rivet murdered gruesomely but was exempted from charges due to the nature of the murder. Should be restrained during any of his episodes, and carefully monitored. He is afraid to take his medication therefore must be administered via injection.

- “Space” Morty Smith @lostinspacemorty - refused to give a more proper name, and one could not be found, admitted for many murders and taking part in homosexual acts. He is often oddly calm, but sharp objects can easily send him into a state of panic unless he is the one holding them, and he sometimes attacks others for no ostensible reason. He was found sitting with his latest victim, watching them die, and he attacked the officers who interrupted his ritual. He killed most often by disembowelling, though he has been known to slit throats. His first victim was his Rick. He is often seen touching his old scars and fights any attempt by anyone else to touch them, though he does occasionally show them to those he trusts. He may be physically weak, but he is fast and clever, and has overpowered those three times his size and strength. Soft objects seem to calm him, though not always. He is not to be allowed outside without an escort, and he should be watched when interacting with others. If given any medication, avoid syringes if at all possible. If impossible, restrain the patient as much as possible and sedate. ___________________ [[ I will also be playing NPCs in the AU, so if you want something to happen that would require one, let me know! ]]

((Thought this would be a fun AU to do, so if you would like to join, please message me! DO NOT RP THIS AU WITH THOSE NOT ON THE LIST. IF YOU WANT TO DO YOUR OWN ASYLUM AU. PLEASE NAME IT SOMETHING DIFFERENT. ))

#welcome to Azure Lake #azurelakeasylum #Asylum au

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yasbxxgie · 5 years

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My love for walking started in childhood, out of necessity. No thanks to a stepfather with heavy hands, I found every reason to stay away from home and was usually out—at some friend’s house or at a street party where no minor should be— until it was too late to get public transportation. So I walked. The streets of Kingston, Jamaica, in the 1980s were often terrifying—you could, for instance, get killed if a political henchman thought you came from the wrong neighborhood, or even if you wore the wrong color. Wearing orange showed affiliation with one political party and green with the other, and if you were neutral or traveling far from home you chose your colors well. The wrong color in the wrong neighborhood could mean your last day. No wonder, then, that my friends and the rare nocturnal passerby declared me crazy for my long late-night treks that traversed warring political zones. (And sometimes I did pretend to be crazy, shouting non sequiturs when I passed through especially dangerous spots, such as the place where thieves hid on the banks of a storm drain. Predators would ignore or laugh at the kid in his school uniform speaking nonsense.)

I made friends with strangers and went from being a very shy and awkward kid to being an extroverted, awkward one. The beggar, the vendor, the poor laborer—those were experienced wanderers, and they became my nighttime instructors; they knew the streets and delivered lessons on how to navigate and enjoy them. I imagined myself as a Jamaican Tom Sawyer, one moment sauntering down the streets to pick low-hanging mangoes that I could reach from the sidewalk, another moment hanging outside a street party with battling sound systems, each armed with speakers piled to create skyscrapers of heavy bass. These streets weren’t frightening. They were full of adventure when they weren’t serene. There I’d join forces with a band of merry walkers, who’d miss the last bus by mere minutes, our feet still moving as we put out our thumbs to hitchhike to spots nearer home, making jokes as vehicle after vehicle raced past us. Or I’d get lost in Mittyesque moments, my young mind imagining alternate futures. The streets had their own safety: Unlike at home, there I could be myself without fear of bodily harm. Walking became so regular and familiar that the way home became home.

The streets had their rules, and I loved the challenge of trying to master them. I learned how to be alert to surrounding dangers and nearby delights, and prided myself on recognizing telling details that my peers missed. Kingston was a map of complex, and often bizarre, cultural and political and social activity, and I appointed myself its nighttime cartographer. I’d know how to navigate away from a predatory pace, and to speed up to chat when the cadence of a gait announced friendliness. It was almost always men I saw. A lone woman walking in the middle of the night was as common a sight as Sasquatch; moonlight pedestrianism was too dangerous for her. Sometimes at night as I made my way down from hills above Kingston, I’d have the impression that the city was set on “pause” or in extreme slow motion, as that as I descended I was cutting across Jamaica’s deep social divisions. I’d make my way briskly past the mansions in the hills overlooking the city, now transformed into a carpet of dotted lights under a curtain of stars, saunter by middle-class subdivisions hidden behind high walls crowned with barbed wire, and zigzag through neighborhoods of zinc and wooden shacks crammed together and leaning like a tight-knit group of limbo dancers. With my descent came an increase in the vibrancy of street life—except when it didn’t; some poor neighborhoods had both the violent gunfights and the eerily deserted streets of the cinematic Wild West. I knew well enough to avoid those even at high noon.

I’d begun hoofing it after dark when I was 10 years old. By 13 I was rarely home before midnight, and some nights found me racing against dawn. My mother would often complain, “Mek yuh love street suh? Yuh born a hospital; yuh neva born a street.” (“Why do you love the streets so much? You were born in a hospital, not in the streets.”)

* * * *

I left Jamaica in 1996 to attend college in New Orleans, a city I’d heard called “the northernmost Caribbean city.” I wanted to discover—on foot, of course—what was Caribbean and what was American about it. Stately mansions on oak-lined streets with streetcars clanging by, and brightly colored houses that made entire blocks look festive; people in resplendent costumes dancing to funky brass bands in the middle of the street; cuisine—and aromas—that mashed up culinary traditions from Africa, Europe, Asia, and the American South; and a juxtaposition of worlds old and new, odd and familiar: Who wouldn’t want to explore this?

On my first day in the city, I went walking for a few hours to get a feel for the place and to buy supplies to transform my dormitory room from a prison bunker into a welcoming space. When some university staff members found out what I’d been up to, they warned me to restrict my walking to the places recommended as safe to tourists and the parents of freshmen. They trotted out statistics about New Orleans’s crime rate. But Kingston’s crime rate dwarfed those numbers, and I decided to ignore these well-meant cautions. A city was waiting to be discovered, and I wouldn’t let inconvenient facts get in the way. These American criminals are nothing on Kingston’s, I thought. They’re no real threat to me.

What no one had told me was that I was the one who would be considered a threat.

Within days I noticed that many people on the street seemed apprehensive of me: Some gave me a circumspect glance as they approached, and then crossed the street; others, ahead, would glance behind, register my presence, and then speed up; older white women clutched their bags; young white men nervously greeted me, as if exchanging a salutation for their safety: “What’s up, bro?” On one occasion, less than a month after my arrival, I tried to help a man whose wheelchair was stuck in the middle of a crosswalk; he threatened to shoot me in the face, then asked a white pedestrian for help.

I wasn’t prepared for any of this. I had come from a majority-black country in which no one was wary of me because of my skin color. Now I wasn’t sure who was afraid of me. I was especially unprepared for the cops. They regularly stopped and bullied me, asking questions that took my guilt for granted. I’d never received what many of my African American friends call “The Talk”: No parents had told me how to behave when I was stopped by the police, how to be as polite and cooperative as possible, no matter what they said or did to me. So I had to cobble together my own rules of engagement. Thicken my Jamaican accent. Quickly mention my college. “Accidentally” pull out my college identification card when asked for my driver’s license.

My survival tactics began well before I left my dorm. I got out of the shower with the police in my head, assembling a cop-proof wardrobe. Light-colored oxford shirt. V-neck sweater. Khaki pants. Chukkas. Sweatshirt or T-shirt with my university insignia. When I walked I regularly had my identity challenged, but I also found ways to assert it. (So I’d dress Ivy League style, but would, later on, add my Jamaican pedigree by wearing Clarks Desert Boots, the footwear of choice of Jamaican street culture.) Yet the all-American sartorial choice of white T-shirt and jeans, which many police officers see as the uniform of black troublemakers, was off limits to me—at least, if I wanted to have the freedom of movement I desired.

In this city of exuberant streets, walking became a complex and often oppressive negotiation. I would see a white woman walking toward me at night and cross the street to reassure her that she was safe. I would forget something at home but not immediately turn around if someone was behind me, because I discovered that a sudden backtrack could cause alarm. (I had a cardinal rule: Keep a wide perimeter from people who might consider me a danger. If not, danger might visit me.) New Orleans suddenly felt more dangerous than Jamaica. The sidewalk was a minefield, and every hesitation and self-censored compensation reduced my dignity. Despite my best efforts, the streets never felt comfortably safe. Even a simple salutation was suspect.

One night, returning to the house that, eight years after my arrival, I thought I’d earned the right to call my home, I waved to a cop driving by. Moments later, I was against his car in handcuffs. When I later asked him—sheepishly, of course; any other way would have asked for bruises—why he had detained me, he said my greeting had aroused his suspicion. “No one waves to the police,” he explained. When I told friends of his response, it was my behavior, not his, that they saw as absurd. “Now why would you do a dumb thing like that?” said one. “You know better than to make nice with police.”

* * * *

A few days after I left on a visit to Kingston, Hurricane Katrina slashed and pummeled New Orleans. I’d gone not because of the storm but because my adoptive grandmother, Pearl, was dying of cancer. I hadn’t wandered those streets in eight years, since my last visit, and I returned to them now mostly at night, the time I found best for thinking, praying, crying. I walked to feel less alienated—from myself, struggling with the pain of seeing my grandmother terminally ill; from my home in New Orleans, underwater and seemingly abandoned; from my home country, which now, precisely because of its childhood familiarity, felt foreign to me. I was surprised by how familiar those streets felt. Here was the corner where the fragrance of jerk chicken greeted me, along with the warm tenor and peace-and-love message of Half Pint’s “Greetings,” broadcast from a small but powerful speaker to at least a half-mile radius. It was as if I had walked into 1986, down to the soundtrack. And there was the wall of the neighborhood shop, adorned with the Rastafarian colors red, gold, and green along with images of local and international heroes Bob Marley, Marcus Garvey, and Haile Selassie. The crew of boys leaning against it and joshing each other were recognizable; different faces, similar stories.

I was astonished at how safe the streets felt to me, once again one black body among many, no longer having to anticipate the many ways my presence might instill fear and how to offer some reassuring body language. Passing police cars were once again merely passing police cars. Jamaican police could be pretty brutal, but they didn’t notice me the way American police did. I could be invisible in Jamaica in a way I can’t be invisible in the United States. Walking had returned to me a greater set of possibilities.

And why walk, if not to create a new set of possibilities? Following serendipity, I added new routes to the mental maps I had made from constant walking in that city from childhood to young adulthood, traced variations on the old pathways. Serendipity, a mentor once told me, is a secular way of speaking of grace; it’s unearned favor. Seen theologically, then, walking is an act of faith. Walking is, after all, interrupted falling. We see, we listen, we speak, and we trust that each step we take won’t be our last, but will lead us into a richer understanding of the self and the world.

In Jamaica, I felt once again as if the only identity that mattered was my own, not the constricted one that others had constructed for me. I strolled into my better self. I said, along with Kierkegaard, “I have walked myself into my best thoughts.”

* * * *

When I tried to return to New Orleans from Jamaica a month later, there were no flights. I thought about flying to Texas so I could make my way back to my neighborhood as soon as it opened for reoccupancy, but my adoptive aunt, Maxine, who hated the idea of me returning to a hurricane zone before the end of hurricane season, persuaded me to come to stay in New York City instead. (To strengthen her case she sent me an article about Texans who were buying up guns because they were afraid of the influx of black people from New Orleans.)

This wasn’t a hard sell: I wanted to be in a place where I could travel by foot and, more crucially, continue to reap the solace of walking at night. And I was eager to follow in the steps of the essayists, poets, and novelists who’d wandered that great city before me—Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Alfred Kazin, Elizabeth Hardwick. I had visited the city before, but each trip had felt like a tour in a sports car. I welcomed the chance to stroll. I wanted to walk alongside Whitman’s ghost and “descend to the pavements, merge with the crowd, and gaze with them.” So I left Kingston, the popular Jamaican farewell echoing in my mind: “Walk good!” Be safe on your journey, in other words, and all the best in your endeavors.

* * * *

I arrived in New York City, ready to lose myself in Whitman’s “Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus!” I marveled at what Jane Jacobs praised as “the ballet of the good city sidewalk” in her old neighborhood, the West Village. I walked up past midtown skyscrapers, releasing their energy as lively people onto the streets, and on into the Upper West Side, with its regal Beaux Arts apartment buildings, stylish residents, and buzzing streets. Onward into Washington Heights, the sidewalks spilled over with an ebullient mix of young and old Jewish and Dominican American residents, past leafy Inwood, with parks whose grades rose to reveal beautiful views of the Hudson River, up to my home in Kingsbridge in the Bronx, with its rows of brick bungalows and apartment buildings nearby Broadway’s bustling sidewalks and the peaceful expanse of Van Cortlandt Park. I went to Jackson Heights in Queens to take in people socializing around garden courtyards in Urdu, Korean, Spanish, Russian, and Hindi. And when I wanted a taste of home, I headed to Brooklyn, in Crown Heights, for Jamaican food and music and humor mixed in with the flavor of New York City. The city was my playground.

I explored the city with friends, and then with a woman I’d begun dating. She walked around endlessly with me, taking in New York City’s many pleasures. Coffee shops open until predawn; verdant parks with nooks aplenty; food and music from across the globe; quirky neighborhoods with quirkier residents. My impressions of the city took shape during my walks with her.

As with the relationship, those first few months of urban exploration were all romance. The city was beguiling, exhilarating, vibrant. But it wasn’t long before reality reminded me I wasn’t invulnerable, especially when I walked alone.

One night in the East Village, I was running to dinner when a white man in front of me turned and punched me in the chest with such force that I thought my ribs had braided around my spine. I assumed he was drunk or had mistaken me for an old enemy, but found out soon enough that he’d merely assumed I was a criminal because of my race. When he discovered I wasn’t what he imagined, he went on to tell me that his assault was my own fault for running up behind him. I blew off this incident as an aberration, but the mutual distrust between me and the police was impossible to ignore. It felt elemental. They’d enter a subway platform; I’d notice them. (And I’d notice all the other black men registering their presence as well, while just about everyone else remained oblivious to them.) They’d glare. I’d get nervous and glance. They’d observe me steadily. I’d get uneasy. I’d observe them back, worrying that I looked suspicious. Their suspicions would increase. We’d continue the silent, uneasy dialogue until the subway arrived and separated us at last.

I returned to the old rules I’d set for myself in New Orleans, with elaboration. No running, especially at night; no sudden movements; no hoodies; no objects—especially shiny ones—in hand; no waiting for friends on street corners, lest I be mistaken for a drug dealer; no standing near a corner on the cell phone (same reason). As comfort set in, inevitably I began to break some of those rules, until a night encounter sent me zealously back to them, having learned that anything less than vigilance was carelessness.

After a sumptuous Italian dinner and drinks with friends, I was jogging to the subway at Columbus Circle—I was running late to meet another set of friends at a concert downtown. I heard someone shouting and I looked up to see a police officer approaching with his gun trained on me. “Against the car!” In no time, half a dozen cops were upon me, chucking me against the car and tightly handcuffing me. “Why were you running?” “Where are you going?” “Where are you coming from?” “I said, why were you running?!” Since I couldn’t answer everyone at once, I decided to respond first to the one who looked most likely to hit me. I was surrounded by a swarm and tried to focus on just one without inadvertently aggravating the others.

It didn’t work. As I answered that one, the others got frustrated that I wasn’t answering them fast enough and barked at me. One of them, digging through my already-emptied pockets, asked if I had any weapons, the question more an accusation. Another badgered me about where I was coming from, as if on the fifteenth round I’d decide to tell him the truth he imagined. Though I kept saying—calmly, of course, which meant trying to manage a tone that ignored my racing heart and their spittle-filled shouts in my face—that I had just left friends two blocks down the road, who were all still there and could vouch for me, to meet other friends whose text messages on my phone could verify that, yes, sir, yes, officer, of course, officer, it made no difference. For a black man, to assert your dignity before the police was to risk assault. In fact, the dignity of black people meant less to them, which was why I always felt safer being stopped in front of white witnesses than black witnesses. The cops had less regard for the witness and entreaties of black onlookers, whereas the concern of white witnesses usually registered on them. A black witness asking a question or politely raising an objection could quickly become a fellow detainee. Deference to the police, then, was sine qua non for a safe encounter.

The cops ignored my explanations and my suggestions and continued to snarl at me. All except one of them, a captain. He put his hand on my back, and said to no one in particular, “If he was running for a long time he would have been sweating.” He then instructed that the cuffs be removed. He told me that a black man had stabbed someone earlier two or three blocks away and they were searching for him. I noted that I had no blood on me and had told his fellow officers where I’d been and how to check my alibi—unaware that it was even an alibi, as no one had told me why I was being held, and of course, I hadn’t dared ask. From what I’d seen, anything beyond passivity would be interpreted as aggression.

The police captain said I could go. None of the cops who detained me thought an apology was necessary. Like the thug who punched me in the East Village, they seemed to think it was my own fault for running.

Humiliated, I tried not to make eye contact with the onlookers on the sidewalk, and I was reluctant to pass them to be on my way. The captain, maybe noticing my shame, offered to give me a ride to the subway station. When he dropped me off and I thanked him for his help, he said, “It’s because you were polite that we let you go. If you were acting up it would have been different.” I nodded and said nothing.

* * * *

I realized that what I least liked about walking in New York City wasn’t merely having to learn new rules of navigation and socialization—every city has its own. It was the arbitrariness of the circumstances that required them, an arbitrariness that made me feel like a child again, that infantilized me. When we first learn to walk, the world around us threatens to crash into us. Every step is risky. We train ourselves to walk without crashing by being attentive to our movements, and extra-attentive to the world around us. As adults we walk without thinking, really. But as a black adult I am often returned to that moment in childhood when I’m just learning to walk. I am once again on high alert, vigilant. Some days, when I am fed up with being considered a troublemaker upon sight, I joke that the last time a cop was happy to see a black male walking was when that male was a baby taking his first steps.

On many walks, I ask white friends to accompany me, just to avoid being treated like a threat. Walks in New York City, that is; in New Orleans, a white woman in my company sometimes attracted more hostility. (And it is not lost on me that my woman friends are those who best understand my plight; they have developed their own vigilance in an environment where they are constantly treated as targets of sexual attention.) Much of my walking is as my friend Rebecca once described it: A pantomime undertaken to avoid the choreography of criminality.

* * * *

Walking while black restricts the experience of walking, renders inaccessible the classic Romantic experience of walking alone. It forces me to be in constant relationship with others, unable to join the New York flâneurs I had read about and hoped to join. Instead of meandering aimlessly in the footsteps of Whitman, Melville, Kazin, and Vivian Gornick, more often I felt that I was tiptoeing in Baldwin’s—the Baldwin who wrote, way back in 1960, “Rare, indeed, is the Harlem citizen, from the most circumspect church member to the most shiftless adolescent, who does not have a long tale to tell of police incompetence, injustice, or brutality. I myself have witnessed and endured it more than once.”

Walking as a black man has made me feel simultaneously more removed from the city, in my awareness that I am perceived as suspect, and more closely connected to it, in the full attentiveness demanded by my vigilance. It has made me walk more purposefully in the city, becoming part of its flow, rather than observing, standing apart.

* * * *

But it also means that I’m still trying to arrive in a city that isn’t quite mine. One definition of home is that it’s somewhere we can most be ourselves. And when are we more ourselves but when walking, that natural state in which we repeat one of the first actions we learned? Walking—the simple, monotonous act of placing one foot before the other to prevent falling—turns out not to be so simple if you’re black. Walking alone has been anything but monotonous for me; monotony is a luxury.

A foot leaves, a foot lands, and our longing gives it momentum from rest to rest. We long to look, to think, to talk, to get away. But more than anything else, we long to be free. We want the freedom and pleasure of walking without fear—without others’ fear—wherever we choose. I’ve lived in New York City for almost a decade and have not stopped walking its fascinating streets. And I have not stopped longing to find the solace that I found as a kid on the streets of Kingston. Much as coming to know New York City’s streets has made it closer to home to me, the city also withholds itself from me via those very streets. I walk them, alternately invisible and too prominent. So I walk caught between memory and forgetting, between memory and forgiveness. [h/t]

#garnette cadogan #walking while black #while black #walking #literary hub #long reads #jamaica #kingston jamaica #new orleans #new york city #police brutality #police terrorism #racism #ruddy roye #boing boing

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Deaths in custody. Sexual violence. Hunger strikes. What we uncovered inside ICE facilities across the US

A USA TODAY Network investigation revealed sex assaults, routine use of physical force, poor medical care and deaths at facilities overseen by ICE.

Monsy Alvarado, Ashley Balcerzak, Stacey Barchenger, Jon Campbell, Rafael Carranza, Maria Clark, Alan Gomez, Daniel Gonzalez, Trevor Hughes, Rick Jervis, Dan Keemahill, Rebecca Plevin, Jeremy Schwartz, Sarah Taddeo, Lauren Villagran, Dennis Wagner, Elizabeth Weise, Alissa Zhu, USA TODAY Network Updated 9:06 p.m. CST Dec. 20, 2019

NEW ORLEANS – At 2:04 p.m. on Oct. 15, a guard at the Richwood Correctional Center noticed an odd smell coming from one of the isolation cells. He opened the door, stepped inside and found the lifeless body of Roylan Hernandez-Diaz hanging from a bedsheet.

The 43-year-old Cuban man had spent five months in immigration detention waiting for a judge to hear his asylum claim. As his time at Richwood dragged on, he barely answered questions from security or medical staff, who noted his “withdrawn emotional state.” He refused to eat for four days.

The day after his death, 20 other detainees carried out what they say was a peaceful protest. They wrote “Justice for Roylan” on their white T-shirts, sat down in the cafeteria and refused to eat. Guards swooped in and attacked, beating one of them so severely he was taken to a hospital, according to letters written by 10 detainees that were obtained by the USA TODAY Network and interviews with two detainees’ relatives.

Before that day, detainees at Richwood had chronicled a pattern of alleged brutality in the Louisiana facility. Detainees complained of beatings, taunts from guards who called them “f---ing dogs” and of landing in isolation cells for minor violations.

The USA TODAY Network uncovered the Richwood episode during an investigation of the rapidly growing network of detention centers used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The investigation revealed more than 400 allegations of sexual assault or abuse, inadequate medical care, regular hunger strikes, frequent use of solitary confinement, more than 800 instances of physical force against detainees, nearly 20,000 grievances filed by detainees and at least 29 fatalities, including seven suicides, since President Donald Trump took office in January 2017 and launched an overhaul of U.S. immigration policies.

Combined with an analysis by a government watchdog, the USA TODAY Network analyzed inspection reports since 2015 and identified 15,821 violations of detention standards. Yet more than 90% of those facilities received passing grades by government inspectors. Network reporters interviewed 35 former and current detainees, some conducted using video chats from inside an ICE detention center. They reviewed hundreds of documents from lawsuits, financial records and government contracts, and toured seven ICE facilities from Colorado to Texas to Florida. Such tours are extremely rare.

At least two detention centers passed inspections despite using a chemical restraint – Freeze +P – that is forbidden for use under ICE rules because it contains tear gas that produces “severe pain,” according to its manufacturer. Other centers received passing marks even after inspectors chronicled widespread use of physical force or solitary confinement. Richwood was one of the centers that passed inspections.

Vicente Raul Orozco Serguera, one of the Richwood detainees who protested after Hernandez-Diaz died, told outsiders that the death and violent confrontation with guards punctuated a terrifying stay at Richwood that began with detention center officials forcing him to sign a document listing who would recover his body if he died in custody.

“The United States has appointed itself the country of liberty, the land of opportunity, the defender of human rights and the refuge for people oppressed by their governments. All that ends once you’re detained,” Orozco Serguera wrote in a letter from Richwood that was delivered to a lawyer in hopes of finding someone to help him. “We want our freedom to fight our cases freely and leave this hell, for Louisiana is a ‘Cemetery of living men.’”

Ray Hanson, the warden at Richwood, did not respond to calls for comment. Brian Cox, an ICE spokesman in Louisiana, said “there is no evidence to support the allegation” that guards abused or mistreated detainees who protested the death. And LaSalle Corrections, the private company that runs Richwood, issued a statement that did not address the allegations, saying only the facility has a grievance process that detainees can use to register complaints.

For the past year, much of the nation’s attention on immigration issues has focused on how the Trump administration polices the southern border and how Border Patrol agents treat migrants arriving there. But away from that spotlight there is a separate detention system overseen by ICE that has continued to grow with far less scrutiny. It is now a $3 billion network of 221 facilities, the largest of which are operated by private companies under government contract. Combined, those facilities detain more than 50,000 women, men and children who wait months or years for immigration court proceedings.

Two-thirds of detainees have no criminal records, ICE records show. About 26% are detained solely because they are requesting asylum in the U.S. That is why ICE policy mandates that immigration detention be civil in nature - an administrative hold on detainees as they await deportation or their next hearing - as opposed to a punitive, corrective prison system. But the USA TODAY Network review found that the ICE system operates in many ways like a prison system; detainees wear red and orange jumpsuits that sometimes read “inmate” on the back.

Just before one detainee died in Florida, he “vomited feces,” according to a death report written by ICE. Two others detainees died elsewhere after being taken off life support without consent from their relatives. Death reports also show detainees died of pneumonia, heart attacks and internal bleeding. In several instances, the cause of death remains “unknown.”

Detainees say they are denied toothbrushes, toilet paper and warm clothing in the winter. Some say they have been forced to drink water that reeks of chlorine. Others allege that guards respond to peaceful protests with rubber bullets and tear gas, and that staff has cut off their recreation time, family visitations and other basic services without explanation.

Critics say Trump’s rapid expansion has only exacerbated long-standing problems in the detention system, which is long overdue for real oversight and a massive overhaul.

During an interview with the USA TODAY Network this month, Henry Lucero, ICE’s second in command over detention, said ICE runs a top-notch detention system that strictly enforces federal standards, provides quality medical care, responds to every grievance filed by detainees, and reviews every use of force incident. ICE detention standards prohibit guards from using force as punishment, but allow them to use force to “gain detainee cooperation” and only using a series of approved techniques.

“It’s true, it is civil detention and it’s not criminal where it’s punitive,” he said. “You’re there to comply with immigration law.”

Lucero also made clear, however, that there are dangerous individuals in ICE custody, and that guards must strictly enforce its rules to protect the safety and security of each facility.

“Similar to a criminal justice system, while you’re in our facilities, there are still rules that you have to comply with,” Lucero said. “It’s not anarchy, you can do what you want. To maintain order of the facilities, you have to comply.”

But Allegra Love, executive director of the Santa Fe Dreamers Project, a nonprofit that provides free legal services to immigrants, said there is ample evidence that “we are torturing and killing people inside these detention centers.”

“We have all the evidence we need to say this is not a good use of tax money,” said Love, an attorney who has visited detainees in ICE detention. “It has to stop being an economic and political issue because it is a moral issue.”

Immigration detention or private prison?

The U.S. immigration detention system has grown steadily over the past 40 years under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

President George W. Bush, operating in a post-9/11 environment, expanded the number of detention centers used by ICE to more than 350 nationwide. President Barack Obama consolidated that system, cutting roughly 150 facilities while instituting reforms to improve living conditions. But the overall ICE detention population continued to grow under his watch, reaching 34,000 detainees in his last term.

Trump vowed as a presidential candidate to detain more undocumented immigrants than any of his predecessors and he has lived up to that promise. The number of detainees under his administration has increased by 5,263 on average each year. President Bill Clinton oversaw the second-highest increase, adding 1,691 ICE detainees on average per year.

Under Trump, ICE also has added new detention facilities at a rapid pace, signing contracts with 24 facilities to start accepting immigration detainees since 2017.

ICE owns and operates five detention centers in four states: Florida, Arizona, New York and Texas. Private companies operate at least 60 facilities where 75% of all ICE detainees are held. Others are detained in city and county jails, where they await civil proceedings alongside convicted criminals and those awaiting criminal trials.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General, an independent office within DHS that audits the department’s activities, analyzed inspection reports of all ICE facilities from October 2015 to June 2018 and identified 14,003 “deficiencies” – instances where staff violated detention standards that govern the treatment of detainees. Over that time, ICE issued two fines against facility operators. One was levied against a private contractor for not adequately paying staff; the other was assessed against a facility for substandard medical and mental health care.

The USA TODAY Network then analyzed all publicly available ICE inspection reports from July 2018 to November 2019. That review identified an additional 1,818 deficiencies at 98 facilities.

The problems documented by ICE inspectors ranged from moldy food and filthy bathrooms to high numbers of sexual assault allegations, attempted suicides and claims of guards using force against detainees. A central theme identified by government inspectors was the failure of guards to grasp the difference between running a prison and an immigration detention center.

Prisons are designed to be corrective or punitive in nature; immigration detention centers are not. The introduction to ICE’s detention standards, which have been in effect in different forms since the creation of the agency in 2002, makes that clear: “ICE detains people for no purpose other than to secure their presence both for immigration proceedings and their removal.”

When federal inspectors visited the Clinton County Jail in New York, a local jail that has a contract with ICE to detain immigrants, they found that guards didn’t recognize the difference.

“The setting is that of a typical jail, and the concepts of civil detention are largely not incorporated into the daily operation,” inspectors wrote. “Most facility personnel were not familiar with the requirements of the (ICE detention) standards.”

In at least 175 cases, detention facilities requested and received waivers that allowed them to ignore ICE’s detention standards. In these instances, detention centers were able to conduct more strip searches, use chemical agents like tear gas against detainees and limit the information provided to detainees about their medical conditions.

ICE said it sanctions facilities and even terminates contracts for repeat violators. But the agency refused to provide any examples of fines or facility closures when questioned this year by the inspector general, members of Congress and the USA TODAY Network.

Lucero, the ICE official, said the contracts the agency signs with private prison operators and local jails prohibit ICE from publicly disclosing any fines or facility closures due to poor ratings during inspections. But he said he would consider making them public in the future.

“We want to be fully transparent with what we're doing,” he said.

Health care denied, putting detainees at risk

When Suzanne Moore first arrived at the Baker County Detention Center outside Jacksonville, Florida, in July 2018, her breast cancer was in remission.

The disabled mother of two had spent 21 months in state prison after she pleaded guilty to selling some of the morphine and oxycodone left over from her cancer treatments. She was picked up by ICE as soon as her state prison term was completed. Moore’s family moved from Jamaica to the U.S. when she was 2 years old and she became a legal permanent resident, but her felony convictions triggered deportation proceedings.

ICE officials sent her to Baker, a county jail that has a contract with ICE to hold detainees. When she first arrived at the facility, which is evenly split between immigration detainees and county inmates, she was given an orange jumpsuit that read “Inmate” on the back.

Once ICE takes custody of a person, it assumes responsibility for medical care.

In Moore’s case, she said medical staff told her at times they had run out of the Tamoxifen medication she took daily to keep cancer from returning. At one point, Moore said, she went 20 days without receiving the medication.

“I would let ICE know and they’d say, ‘That’s Baker’s problem,’ and Baker would say, ‘That’s ICE’s problem,’” said Moore, 56. “They’d just point the finger at each other.”

Such complaints are common throughout ICE’s detention system.

Kenneth Thomas, a legal permanent resident from England, was picked up by immigration officers last year for an 18-year-old conviction of credit card fraud and is now being held in the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi. Thomas, a diabetic, said he’s lost 20 pounds in ICE custody because of a combination of medical errors and questionable food preparation. He said he’s gone up to two weeks without receiving his diabetes medication and was fed a diet not suited for an unmedicated diabetic.

“They would give me pasta, mashed potatoes and rice, but I would have to put those things aside,” Thomas said.

Janamjot Sodhi, 44, a native of India who is being detained at the Aurora ICE Processing Center in Colorado, said most trips to the infirmary, no matter how serious the injury or illness, usually lead to the same result.

“Basically all they give you is ibuprofen,” said Sodhi, a stockbroker who pleaded guilty in 2013 to running a $2.3 million Ponzi scheme. He spent 57 months in federal prison and was detained by ICE immediately upon his release.

Salvatore Pipitone, a pizza maker from Italy, said he had to be admitted to a hospital after a three-week stint in ICE detention at the York County Prison in Pennsylvania. He said he refused to drink the water because it tasted foul, leading to him losing 25 pounds and treatment for dehydration.

Pipitone said he was detained for missing an immigration court hearing to convert his conditional green card into a permanent one, which he blamed on a scheduling mistake by federal immigration agents.

“I had never heard of immigration detention,” said Pipitone, who now lives with his wife in Pennsylvania. “I did everything legal and followed the rules and did nothing wrong in this country. I was so mad because I was arrested like a criminal.”

In New Jersey, Yuri Espada, 33, of New York City, was held at the Hudson County Correctional Center on ICE violations for nearly a year. Espada was born in Honduras and came to the United States in 1997 when she was 11 years old. She later became a ward of the state and was in foster care for years.

She said she was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a chronic mental health condition, four years ago. But after she was jailed in 2018, she asked for her medication for weeks to no avail, she said.

“It made me go into a mental health breakdown,’’ said Espada, who was released from custody in October and now lives in New York City. “I was not mentally stable. I was hearing voices, I talked to myself at times, I was disoriented (by) my surroundings and I was severely depressed.”

The questionable medical conditions inside ICE facilities inspired the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, a civil rights organization, to form a specialized team of doctors and other medical professionals to rapidly respond to troubling cases. The group of volunteers was created five years ago and has grown to 90 members since Trump came into office because “conditions are worsening” inside ICE facilities, according to Hayley Gorenberg, legal director for the group.

Gorenberg and her team have sued and won two settlements against ICE this year - totaling more than $1.7 million combined - in cases where ICE agents dumped detainees on the streets of New York without providing them temporary medications or any plan for their medical treatment, as is required by ICE’s detention standards. Both of the released detainees ended up checking themselves into local hospitals for help.

“Immigration detention is no place for somebody with serious health needs, physical or mental,” Gorenberg said.

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In Florida, Moore languished at Baker. She said she was handcuffed each time she was taken to the medical wing and handcuffed each time she was taken back to her dorm.

In April, she was sent to an oncologist for a mammogram. The doctor took a biopsy. After missing all those medications over her 10 months at Baker, Moore said, she wasn’t surprised to learn that her breast cancer had returned.

Officials at Baker said they could not discuss the medical treatment of its detainees, citing medical privacy laws. But Lucero, the ICE official, said many detainee complaints about medical care in ICE facilities are “not accurate.” He said detainees often refuse medication and then turn around and complain that they were denied medication.

“When we review the allegations they generally show this,” Lucero said. “We feel like we have a very, very good medical program with a lot of oversight.”

Right after Moore’s diagnosis, ICE released her from custody.

ICE detainee died with sock in throat

Kamyar Samimi’s final days were agonizing.

The father of three, who got legal residency shortly after arriving in the U.S. from his native Iran more than 40 years ago, had battled opioid use disorder ever since his grandfather gave him opium following a tooth extraction at four years old, according to his family. For most of his life in the U.S., Samimi had been prescribed methadone to manage his disorder.

Those treatments ended when he was arrested by ICE agents in 2017 based on a 12-year-old drug possession conviction and sent to a detention center in Aurora, Colorado. All immigrants - even those who have legal permanent residence or become U.S. citizens - can have their status revoked and be placed into deportation proceedings if they commit certain crimes.

The GEO Group, which runs the Aurora facility, attributed Samimi’s building anguish to withdrawal but refused to prescribe him any methadone per their policy of banning opiates within the facility, according to an ICE report on his death.

His condition worsened to the point where he died over a two-week period, vomiting, bleeding and crying out in pain, according to the ICE report. The detention center’s medical staff skipped routine health checks that could have highlighted his rapidly failing health, and ignored ICE’s standards that say he should have been taken to a hospital for evaluation, the report said.

“There's not the proper attention, medical care or training in these detention facilities, and I would want everyone who is reading to know that this is happening,” said his daughter, Neda Samimi-Gomez. “It's right in our backyards. And the more people who know, the more chance we have to bring change and prevent this from happening again.”

The ACLU filed a lawsuit in November against the GEO Group over Samimi’s death. An ICE official at the Aurora detention center refused to discuss Samimi’s case with the USA TODAY Network.

In Arizona, Jose de Jesus Deniz-Sahagun tried to repeatedly kill himself inside the Eloy Detention Center.

Federal immigration agents knew something was wrong with him when he tried to run through a Border Patrol station in Arizona in 2015. After being arrested and taken into custody, the Mexican man twice launched himself off a bench and landed on his head inside a Border Patrol station, according to a review of his death by ICE's Office of Detention Oversight. He banged his head against the walls. He talked of coyotes and cartel members coming to kill him.

The suicidal behavior worsened after he was transferred to the Eloy Detention Center. A doctor at Eloy declared him delusional and ordered he be kept on suicide watch on May 19, 2015. A day later, a doctor at Eloy took him off suicide watch, claiming Deniz-Sahagun was “no longer a danger to himself,” according to the ICE report.

Within hours, Deniz-Sahagun was dead, an orange sock lodged in his throat and a nine-centimeter piece of a toothbrush handle in his stomach, according to the ICE report.

His family in the U.S. sued CoreCivic, the private company that operates Eloy, and won a settlement for an undisclosed sum, according to Daniel Ortega, the Phoenix lawyer who handled the case, and CoreCivic.

In Georgia, Jeancarlo Alfonso Jimenez Joseph showed similar mental problems after entering the Stewart Detention Center. The 27-year-old had been accepted into the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the Obama-era program that has protected from deportation undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

Jimenez Joseph had been diagnosed with acute psychosis and schizoaffective disorder-bipolar type and had attempted suicide on several occasions. But according to an ongoing lawsuit filed by his family, officials at Stewart didn’t pay close enough attention to his worsening symptoms, leading to his suicide by hanging in his cell on May 15, 2017.

Andrew Free, an attorney who is representing the families of eight detainees who died in ICE custody, said the increase in deaths is a direct result of the government’s unchecked expansion of the ICE detention system without ensuring facilities can properly care for detainees.

Immigrants and activists say ICE’s death toll is misleading since the agency doesn’t count cases of people who die shortly after they are released from custody.

Last year, Yazmin Juarez, a Guatemalan woman, and her 19-month-old daughter, Mariee, spent time in the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, one of the few ICE facilities that can detain parents and their minor children together. Six weeks after their release, Mariee was dead, the result of a respiratory infection she developed while at the center, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of the toddler’s mother.

Another case not counted in ICE’s official death toll is that of Jose Luis Ibarra Bucio, a 27-year-old who was held at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center outside of Los Angeles.

On Feb. 7, Bucio collapsed at the detention center and was transferred to a local hospital. When his family visited him at the Loma Linda University Medical Center, they learned he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and had slipped into a coma.

“To make matters worse, Jose was handcuffed to his hospital bed while he was in a coma and there were two guards from the GEO Group that were tasked with keeping watch over his comatose body,” said Shannon Camacho of the Coalition for Humane Immigrants Rights of Los Angeles, an immigration advocacy group that learned of the details of his death from Bucio’s family.

Fifteen days later, as Bucio remained unconscious, ICE officials left a letter in his hospital room stating he was no longer in custody.

ICE spokesperson Lori Haley said he was released “with respect to humanitarian concerns.” GEO referred questions to ICE.

Camacho interpreted that decision another way: “ICE and GEO essentially wiped their hands clean of any involvement with his case.”

A month later, on March 20, Bucio’s family decided to take him off life support. He died the next day.

'Leave as cadavers': Detainees complain of solitary confinement, pepper-spray attacks

Every detainee interviewed by the USA TODAY Network alleged mistreatment by guards.

At the Otero County Processing Center in Chaparral, New Mexico, an ICE facility run under contract by Management & Training Corporation, 18 Cubans led a sit-in after they became so frustrated over their inability to get a hearing before an immigration judge. After they staged a second sit-in, detainees said the guards had seen enough. According to some of the participants, guards at Otero responded by throwing them into solitary confinement, followed by weeks of “quarantine” in which benefits like outdoor recreation time were restricted.

“We were threatened again by the officers, who pointed their weapons at us and told us that ICE wasn’t coming anymore,” said Irrael Arzuaga-Milanes, an asylum-seeker from Cuba who has passed the first phase of his asylum review. “We were shut in for a week in ‘the cave.’”

When asked about Arzuaga-Milanes’ claims, ICE said detainees may be placed in administrative segregation when their actions are “disruptive,” if they pose a threat to the general population, or for “the secure and orderly operation of the facility.”

Jose Cuadras, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, spent seven weeks at the La Palma Correctional Center outside Eloy, Arizona, earlier this year. Cuadras said guards conducted strip searches after each visit with his family, stopped providing him soap for no reason, and even screamed at a detainee who couldn’t understand the English directions delivered during a fire drill.

The guards were so verbally abusive, Cuadras said, detainees were convinced they must have worked as prison guards before. Turns out, they were right.

Amanda Gilchrist, a spokeswoman for CoreCivic, the company that runs La Palma, said the facility uses many of the same employees, including guards, from an earlier period when La Palma was a medium-security prison.

She insisted that immigration detainees are not treated the same as convicts. Corrections officers receive additional ICE background clearances and are required to complete 160 hours of training before working with immigration detainees.

“We have a zero-tolerance policy for all forms of abuse and harassment, and every allegation of this nature is reported to our government partner and investigated fully,” Gilchrist said.

Similar complaints about abusive guards have emerged throughout the country.

Daljinder Singh, a native of India who is being held at the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi, an ICE facility run by CoreCivic, said guards regularly interrupt his prayer times by purposefully doing head counts while he worships.

At the Farmville Detention Center in Virginia, an ICE facility run by Immigration Centers of America, detainees became concerned over an outbreak of the mumps that infected at least 24 people this year. They were angered by the detention center’s decision to place the facility on quarantine and ban all visitors. They also refused to eat meals from the cafeteria, worried that improperly washed utensils and dishes would allow the mumps to spread.

As tensions mounted, David de la Cruz Grajales, a detainee, said about 20 guards entered their dormitory in “riot gear,” ordering detainees to go to their beds for a second morning count. When some objected, the guards showered them with pepper spray, zip-tied their hands, and placed them into a “segregation unit,” he said.

Grajales said he suffered an asthma attack while his hands were bound and was refused an inhaler for 15 minutes. Later, when he showered, the pepper spray washed down his body and burned his skin. When he asked for a change of clothes, the shift commander responded, “No, you’re going to be burning for at least two days,” Grajales said in an affidavit as part of a lawsuit he and other detainees filed against the facility over their treatment by detention center guards.

Farmville’s warden, Jeffrey Crawford, and ICE argued in court papers that de la Cruz Grajales and the other detainees were disciplined for failing to follow orders, not for the hunger strike. U.S. District Judge Rossie D. Alston Jr. of Alexandria sided with the facility.

The detainees later dropped their lawsuit against the detention center after they won their asylum claims.

In Florida, detainees in other ICE facilities are threatened with a transfer to the Baker County Detention Center if they act up.

The facility holds ICE detainees and county inmates in two separate wings, but guards work in both sides of the facility. During a recent tour of the center, Sgt. Brad Harvey, who works for the county sheriff’s department, described a setup that poses challenges. None of the guards speak Spanish, he said, and rely on “verbal judo,” one- or two-word commands to communicate with Hispanic ICE detainees.

A recent tour of the facility showed that Richwood does not provide any outdoor recreation, just a narrow room with a ping pong table, two exercise bikes, an XBOX, and a small window high above the room. The detainees never go outside. They spend most of their days in pods that hold 32 detainees, two detainees per cell.

Michael Meade, ICE’s field office director for the state of Florida, did not dispute that detainees hate being transferred to Baker since other ICE facilities in the state provide outdoor recreation time and more freedom of movement.

“I wouldn’t want our staff using that as a threat, but if somebody does act up, if they can’t abide by the rules, we’re going to have to find you a more secure facility,” Meade said.

Harvey put it more bluntly.

“We are probably more stringent than some of the other facilities,” he said.

Back in Louisiana, questions remain about the death of Hernandez-Diaz, the Cuban man found hanging while in solitary confinement, and the response by guards to detainees who protested his death.

Relatives of those detained at Richwood said Hernandez-Diaz’s death is indicative of a culture of antagonism and abuse against detainees.

Sulima Baigorria Valdez was released from ICE custody earlier this year, while her husband remains locked up in Richwood. The Cuban couple is seeking asylum, but for now, Valdez simply wants her husband to make it out of Richwood alive.

Her husband says the guards taunt him and others, telling them they will soon be deported. They complain of rotten food, of not being able to go into the sunlight. Last time Valdez saw her husband in October, he had lost 50 pounds, she said.

“I was thinking this isn’t him, this can’t be him,” she said. “They are going to leave as cadavers.”

One deadly week reveals where the immigration crisis begins — and where it ends

Read

Detainees forced to work for $1 a day

Detainees also complained of being treated as free or cheap laborers.

ICE’s detention standards allow for detainees to voluntarily sign up to work and sets a baseline payment of “at least $1.00 per day.” But detainees said they are forced to work.

Cesar Sandoval was disgusted by his job inside the Northwest ICE Processing Center, an ICE facility run by the GEO group in Tacoma, Washington. During the 14 months he spent there, he worked in the laundry room and cleaning dishes in the kitchen.

He was paid $1 a day for the effort.

Project South, an Atlanta-based human rights nonprofit organization, filed a class-action lawsuit challenging the practice of forced labor inside the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, an ICE facility run by CoreCivic. Detainees are forced to work jobs that would otherwise be done by regularly waged employees, according to the lawsuit. Since the detainees listed in the Project South complaint are paid between $1 and $4 a day, that leads to huge savings for private prison operators at the expense of the detainees’ constitutional rights.

Those rates are similar to wages paid to inmates in federal prisons, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit organization that researches and advocates against mass incarceration.

zadeh Shahshahani, legal director for Project South, argues that forcing ICE detainees to work violates myriad labor laws and the 13th Amendment, which bans slavery or indentured servitude “except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.”

Damon Hininger, CEO of CoreCivic, said nobody in Stewart or any of the other facilities they operate are forced to work.

Hininger said they are simply following ICE’s standards by offering detainees the chance to work.

“It’s not necessarily the compensation, per se, but they want to be active,” he said. “We got a fair amount of folks that want to work in the kitchen, that have expertise, that have a passion for the foodservice.”

Detention center with 16 deaths praised for Zumba classes

When federal inspectors visited the Eloy Detention Center this year, they were entering a facility where at least 16 people have died, including five by suicide, since 2005. During February’s tour, which looked at conditions over the previous year, inspectors cited 35 sexual assault or abuse allegations, 41 use of force incidents, 881 grievances filed by detainees, and one death as a result of illness.

Officials at Eloy, which is run by CoreCivic, deemed most of the sexual assault allegations – including staff members assaulting detainees and detainees assaulting each other – “unsubstantiated.”

But they confirmed 17 cases where staff used pepper spray to subdue detainees, which is restricted in many kinds of ICE detention facilities, and in one case, a facility review committee determined force was not warranted against a detainee and took “appropriate administration action.”

The result? The Eloy Detention Center was given a passing grade by ICE inspectors with just a single deficiency for not ensuring that tools used in the facility are protected from detainees. Otherwise, inspectors raved about the “calm” atmosphere at the facility and guards who exhibited “a professional demeanor in both attire and attitude.”

“The facility provides a robust schedule of activities including karaoke, basketball tournaments, piñata contests, soccer tournaments, holiday tournaments, crochet programs, cleanest pod contest and Zumba classes,�� inspectors wrote.

In Louisiana, at the River Correctional Center, an ICE facility run by LaSalle Corrections, an October inspection found that detainees carried out 48 hunger strikes over the previous year. Inspectors dismissed the hunger strikes as being “due to the presence of a large number of detainees from India that use hunger strikes as a request for release.”

In Iowa, at the Linn County Correctional Center, a county jail that has a contract with ICE to hold immigration detainees, inspectors found that staffers were strip-searching all incoming detainees rather than only those they had a reasonable suspicion were carrying contraband, as required by ICE detention standards.

Yet those facilities received passing grades from inspectors. The problem, some say, is the inspection process itself.

“So much of the system is set up to reaffirm itself,” said Silky Shah, executive director of the Detention Watch Network, a group that advocates against immigration detention. “The way the inspection process is set up is a complete sham.”

Most ICE inspections announced ahead of visit

ICE uses several methods to inspect or monitor facilities, including ICE officials stationed permanently at detention centers and occasional inspections conducted by government and private inspectors under contract with ICE.

The DHS Inspector General said that combination may appear to create a robust process, but identified problems at each step. Some inspectors can identify problems but have no power to correct them. Others do inspections too infrequently.

The most frequent inspections are those conducted by the Nakamoto Group, a Maryland-based company that specializes in government contracting work for a variety of federal agencies and has received more than $22 million over the past decade for its ICE inspections, according to federal contracting data. The inspector general found that Nakamoto inspections are inefficient because they try to check every single detention standard – more than 600 of them – during their three-day visits to each facility, a process that is “too broad” and results in findings that “do not fully examine actual conditions” at each facility.

The process has yet to receive much attention from Congress. During an October hearing on ICE’s inspection process before a House committee, only four representatives – three Democrats and one Republican – attended.

Jenni Nakamoto, founder of the Nakamoto Group, explained to the committee members that she uses a team of 57 former wardens and jail superintendents to conduct more than 100 inspections a year.

U.S. Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, a New Mexico Democrat, wondered why Nakamoto Group inspections are announced ahead of time. The Inspector General also raised the issue in its report, writing that pre-announced inspections “allows facility management to temporarily modify practices to ‘pass’ an inspection.”

Torres Small explained how her committee staff toured ICE detention centers in four states earlier this year and learned that employees at the facilities painted walls, put up curtains and spruced up the sites before they arrived.

“Even flower beds were placed outside,” Torres Small said.

Nakamoto said her company is simply abiding by the contract it has with ICE, which calls for announced visits of its facilities. Nakamoto has a separate contract to inspect facilities run by the U.S. Marshal’s Service, but that contract calls for unannounced inspections.

When asked if unannounced tours are more effective at revealing the true conditions inside a facility, Nakamoto nodded her head. “I think so,” she said.

David Venturella, a vice president at the GEO Group, told the USA TODAY Network he would welcome unannounced ICE inspections of his facilities.

“We think we run a very good operation and if they wanted to do unannounced audits, that’s fine, that’s their right to do,” he said. “We think we would fare very well in those audits.”

Hininger, the CoreCivic CEO, agreed. He said his company has already been conducting its own internal unannounced inspections of its facilities since 2004.

“It’s a badge of honor for our team,” he said. “If they decide to do unannounced visits, we’ve been doing it for 15 years.”

Lucero, the ICE official, told the USA TODAY Network that the agency is considering shifting to unannounced inspections for all its facilities. But he cautioned that doing so could “be a disruption” for staff and could lead to situations where key personnel are on vacation or taking a day off when inspectors arrive.

“We want to make sure that the staff that is required and needed to be interviewed are actually there,” Lucero said.

'I couldn’t remember how many days I was in there'

Fernando Aguirre says he saw it all during his time at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington.

He recalled seeing rocks and pebbles sprinkled into the beans he was served from the cafeteria and green spots dotting the lunch meat. He remembered joining other detainees in hunger strikes, feeling overwhelming stomach pangs, only to end up in solitary confinement as punishment for the protests. He remembers wondering how he could be forced to work for just $1 a day.

He remembers his cell number: 203.

Aguirre, an undocumented immigrant who was brought to the U.S. from Mexico when he was just three years old, racked up a lot of painful memories because he spent nearly seven years – 2,469 days – in ICE detention while waiting on deportation hearings, the longest stretch uncovered by the USA TODAY Network. He was finally released in June, reuniting with his wife and children in Washington state. But Aguirre said the trauma will never go away.

Government prosecutors justified his prolonged detention based on Aguirre’s criminal record – in 2012, he was convicted for methamphetamine and marijuana possession with intent to deliver. He entered into a plea agreement with prosecutors and served eight months of a one-year sentence in state prison, court records show, shifting over to ICE detention as soon as his state sentence was completed.

His defenders say his unfathomable stretch in ICE detention amounted to a violation of his human rights. They appealed to the United Nations for help and are suing ICE over what they describe as his forced labor while inside. And they are still fighting ICE, which remains intent on deporting Aguirre.

For his part, Aguirre is trying to reintegrate into society. He tries to avoid small, crowded spaces that remind him too much of his cell in Tacoma. His children are teaching him how to navigate social media, which blossomed while he was mostly cut off from technology inside the facility.

And he’s continuing to write poetry, which he used as a distraction during his time as an immigration detainee.

“Please don’t give me something, just to take it away,” he said, reciting a poem he wrote while locked away. “Because if I am here today, then I ask for endless days. Just leave the happiness part and take the hopelessness away."

The team behind this investigation

REPORTING: This story was written by Alan Gomez. It was reported and photographed by Monsy Alvarado, Ashley Balcerzak, Stacey Barchenger, Jay Calderon, Jon Campbell, Rafael Carranza, Maria Clark, Ronald W. Erdrich, Hannah Gaber, Alan Gomez, Daniel Gonzalez, Jack Gruber, Trevor Hughes, Rick Jervis, Kelly Jordan, Dan Keemahill, Mark Lambie, Nick Oza, Rebecca Plevin, Courtney Sacco, Jeremy Schwartz, Sarah Taddeo, Lauren Villagran, Dennis Wagner, Elizabeth Weise and Alissa Zhu. It was translated into Spanish by Teresa Frontado and Adrianna Rodriguez.

EDITING: David Baratz, Hannah Gaber, Kristen Go, Christopher Powers, Andrew P. Scott and Cristina Silva

GRAPHICS AND ILLUSTRATIONS: Karl Gelles, Janet Loehrke and James Sergent

DIGITAL PRODUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT: Spencer Holladay, Chris Amico, David Anesta and Annette Meade

SOCIAL MEDIA, ENGAGEMENT AND PROMOTION: Rachel Aretakis, Alex Ptachick, Cara Richardson and Adrianna Rodriguez

PUBLIC RELATIONS: Chrissy Terrell and Hayley Hoefer

Article Source

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courtneytincher · 5 years

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A Battered Professor Leads Moscow’s Growing Grassroots Protests Against Put

HandoutMOSCOW—Yulia Galyamina’s unraveling life illustrates all too well the risks of opposition politics in Russia, even on a local level. Police broke her teeth and jaw and gave her a serious concussion in 2017 when she was caught in a violent street protest. She has suffered from pain in her jaw ever since. Undaunted, Galyamina struggled this summer to take part in a Moscow City Council election scheduled for September. On Tuesday she called The Daily Beast on the phone from a police van driving her away from the Russian capital to jail in the provincial town of Mozhaisk. Galyamina is a 46-year-old linguistics professor at a prestigious university here and on the phone she sounded almost as if she were lecturing students about the dying Ketsky language. But clearly she had a message she wanted to get out.Go Inside Moscow’s Poisonous History of Covert Assassinations“I have a few minutes left before they take my phone away and cut me off from all communication with my supporters,” she said.Earlier in the day, a court arrested her and eight other key opposition leaders for calling on protesters to stage a rally in downtown Moscow without government authorization. To support the verdict, the judge read aloud a dozen or so of Galyamina’s Facebook posts about opposition demands to allow independent candidates, including herself, to run in September. Now from the van she told The Daily Beast, “Putin and [Moscow Mayor Sergey] Sobyanin must be afraid of responsible citizens and I am not surprised to get arrested—I always knew that criminal prosecution would be the price for my opposition activity.”Putin’s Russia has seen many courageous women fighting against injustice. But instead of embracing their constructive criticism, the Kremlin chose to silence them with police clubs and prison bars. There have also been several brilliant women, including journalist Anna Politkovskaya and activist Natalia Estemirova, who fell victim to assassins. But more women join the demonstrations. Last weekend, for instance, a 17-year-old protester named Olga Misik sat cross-legged in the street and read articles from the Russian Constitution to riot cops arrayed around her about “the right to assemble peacefully, without weapons, hold rallies, meetings, demonstrations and marches.” The image already is an icon of protest.Alexei Navalny ‘Poisoning’ Comes at a Critical Moment in Moscow ProtestsTwo years ago I visited Galyamina at the Botkin Hospital in Moscow, where she was recovering from a concussion. She had severe headaches after a Moscow OMON (Special Police) cop smashed her face. Then, too, it was striking to see pale Galyamina on the phone from her hospital bed, calling for her supporters to come out to the next rally. At the time, crowds of demonstrators had turned out in the center of Moscow’s to fight against the city hall’s renovation plan for the displacement of residents from hundreds of apartment blocks slated for demolition. People did not want to move from the central districts to the outskirts of the capital.Handout“Factories closed, leaving millions without jobs—but at least people had their apartments, their property,” Galyamina told me at the hospital in 2017. “The new law allows the state to deprive thousands of Moscow families of their beloved apartments and move them to wherever officials want.”Last year Galyamina won a seat in the Moscow municipal elections. Residents of Temiryazevsky region, where she sat on the district council, know their candidate well. She led her electorate in battles about fundamental causes in local politics like saving Dubki Park from development and demanding garbage recycling. She was building her political platform on that public support to run for the Moscow City Duma, a regional parliament, in September this year. “We spent last month collecting almost 4,000 signatures from Yulia’s supporters but authorities rejected hundreds of real voters to ban her from running for the election,” Nikolay Kosyan, one of Galyamina’s supporters, said. Kosyan was angry, as are many young activists protesting in the streets in support of the arrested leaders. “When the mayoral office realized that we had actually collected real signatures and not fake ones, they still decided to shut her up in fear of her powerful spirit.”On Saturday Galyamina became a hero for thousands of protesters. Facing rows of National Guard riot police, she said: “You are working for a fascist power, for those who rule for money, not for your sake,” she told men covered in body armor. “The men in power grow fat, while you work for kopecks [pennies]. You beat women, you beat sick people. Do you realize what you are doing?” Galyamina continued in a lecturing tone while the police looked like mischievous, slightly terrified students. (Video here in Russian.)Galyamina was wearing her usual red dress and a white jacket and was holding a little Russian flag in her hands. “I am a woman, I feel ashamed of you, strong men, who beat ordinary people—these people came out to the streets, because they strive to have independent institutes of power, which would not rob people like you,” the deputy continued. Ten minutes later two policemen grabbed her, twisted her arms behind her back, and dragged her away from the rally. Back in 2013, the Russian opposition leader Aleksey Navalny won 27 percent in a mayoral election in Moscow, even without access to state television channels, coming in second after the incumbent from the ruling United Russia party, Sergei Sobyanin. This time, apparently, Sobyanin wants to avoid the mistake of allowing a strong opposition showing. Nine key candidates for September election are currently behind bars. So is Navalny.Galyamina had been playing by the rules. She collected the necessary number of signatures in her support but authorities turned her candidacy down, claiming signatures were falsified. Police detained up to 1,400 protesters on Saturday, Russian courts opened 200 legal cases against the opposition.“She is stubborn and she is good at creating responsible communities in Moscow,” her friend Denis Bilunov, a political scientist, told The Daily Beast. “The Kremlin is scared of Galyamina.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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maizasaif · 6 years

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The deadly attack at a Pittsburgh synagogue will "not break us", religious leaders said, after the shooting of 11 people.

Rabbi Jonathan Perlman, who helped hide people during Saturday's shooting, said: "What happened yesterday will not break us. It will not ruin us."

The rabbi, along with other congregation leaders, spoke at an interfaith memorial service on Sunday.

Suspected gunman Robert Bowers is now in the custody of US marshals.

During his first court appearance on Monday, Bowers waived his detention hearing and has requested a public defender, US media reported.

A hearing has been scheduled for 1 November.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders announced during a news conference that President Donald Trump and the First Lady will travel to Pennsylvania on Tuesday.

Scott Brady, US Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, says he is seeking the death penalty against the suspect. The final decision will depend on US Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Rabbi Jeffrey Myers told journalists on Monday that the FBI is still gathering evidence inside the synagogue and that it could be at least another week before members were allowed back inside.

"There are hundreds of bullet holes in our sanctuary," he said. "I looked at this [building] and said: 'My God, this is a giant mausoleum.'"

Survivors of what is believed to be the worst anti-Semitic attack in US history recalled taking refuge and hiding in storage rooms to avoid the roaming attacker.

One congregation leader said their training in active-shooter situations had helped save lives, and that Rabbi Perlman helped lead worshippers to storage rooms where they could hide.

The 11 victims were named on Sunday and included a husband and wife, and a woman aged 97.

'He was a beautiful person, a beautiful soul'

Would you tackle a gunman?

'Jewish oasis' mourns a mass shooting

America's gun culture in 10 charts

Another six people were injured, including four policemen.

Mayor Bill Peduto said that this was the "darkest day of Pittsburgh's history".

When the suspect was detained after a shootout, he reportedly told Swat officers he wanted "all Jews to die".

Robert Bowers, 46, now faces 29 criminal charges. He was discharged from hospital on Monday morning, local time, after being treated for multiple gunshot wounds.

Social media site Gab, which has been criticised for serving as an outlet for the far-right, has now gone offline after it was revealed the suspect had been an active member.

Bowers makes quiet first appearance in court

Analysis by Jane O'Brien, BBC News

Robert Bowers arrived shackled to a wheel chair wearing a blue shirt. His hands were untied to enable him to sign his name.

It's OK, I can scribble, he said.

The hearing lasted only a few minutes to set a date for Thursday when the prosecution will bring evidence.

He was slightly hunched and looked down when addressed by the judge who asked if he wanted to hear the complaint against him.

His lawyers declined and Bowers was remanded into the custody of the sheriff with no bail. Bowers faces federal murder and assault charges which could carry the death penalty.

He was shot and injured during an exchange of fire with police as he tried to leave the Tree of Life Synagogue where its alleged he killed 11 worshippers in America's worst hate crime against Jews.

What have the survivors said?

Three congregations were reportedly meeting at the Tree of Life synagogue in the Squirrel Hill district of Pittsburgh on Saturday morning.

Members of the New Light congregation were meeting in a basement area, Carl Solomon, 81, a congregation member who turned back from the synagogue but had spoken to survivors, told the New York Times.

Pittsburgh shooting: What we know so far

'I'm now more aware of being Jewish'

Richard Gottfried, 65, and Daniel Stein, 71, were in the kitchen and both were shot dead. Congregation co-president Stephen Cohen told the paper there was "no place to hide" there.

He said Rabbi Perlman had shepherded two other people into a storage room, although one, Melvin Wax, 88, chose to later open the door and was shot dead.

Mr Cohen said "everyone froze but Rabbi Perlman". He told the Associated Press news agency that leaders had taken part in active-shooter drills "and I think that's what ultimately saved the people who were saved".

Who were the other victims?

They were named on Sunday as Joyce Fienberg, 75; Rose Mallinger, 97; Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; Cecil Rosenthal, 59, and his brother David, 54; married couple Bernice Simon, 84, and Sylvan Simon, 86; and Irving Younger, 69.

Tributes have been pouring in from those who knew the victims. Myron Snider described his friend Melvin Wax as a "sweet, sweet guy" and unfailingly generous.

Ben Schmitt, a patient of Jerry Rabinowitz, said the family medical practitioner was "kind and funny... [he] completely personified the term 'bedside manner'".

Cecil and David Rosenthal were described as "kind, good people with a strong faith and respect for everyone around".

One injured officer was released from hospital on Saturday, another was due to be released on Sunday, with the other two needing more treatment.

How was the gunman apprehended?

He was armed with three Glock handguns and an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. He owned them legally, a law enforcement officer told the Associated Press.

Officers arrived after receiving calls about an active shooter at 09:54 local time (13:54 GMT) on Saturday and encountered the suspect as he was trying to leave.

The gunman fired at them and ran upstairs. As Swat officers searched for victims, the gunman opened fire on them and injured two. The suspect was detained after being wounded in an exchange of fire with officers.

Officials said the gunman had made statements regarding genocide as well as a desire to kill Jewish people.

What is known about the suspect?

There are few details about Robert Bowers but there is a trail of anti-Semitic comments on social media.

His neighbour, Chris Hall, told AP: "The most terrifying thing is just how normal he seemed."

Officials said there was nothing to indicate he had any accomplices.

FBI special agent Robert Jones told a press conference that Mr Bowers did not appear to be known to authorities prior to the attack.