Support for women hunger strikers in ICE prison

Protesters in Portland, Ore., marched on April 19 in support of immigrant hunger strikers at the largest immigrant prison on the West Coast. Immigrant women have relaunched a hunger strike started in early March at the privately owned detention center in Tacoma, Wash., run on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

During the strike more than half of the 1,400 detainees refused cafeteria meals because the food was making them sick. ICE had agreed on April 16 to improve the food, but conditions have not changed as of April 24.

Besides nutritional food, some of the reasserted demands are decent medical care, more than $1 a day in prison wages, educational programs and contact visits with children and other family members. Helping with the strike is the Northwest Detention Center Resistance, a group led by undocumented workers, which organizes to stop detention and deportation of immigrants.