Q&A: The inhumanity of America’s ICE detention facilities

A recent National Public Radio (NPR) report found systemic medical and other abuses against inmates in America’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities. Such abuses have persisted for years despite calls from human rights groups, lawyers and activists to stop them or shut down the facilities altogether.

For former ICE inmates like Karim Golding the NPR report is no surprise but reflects what he calls ICE’s “regular operating procedure”. In fact, while an inmate in an Alabama ICE detention facility he was directly subject to the kinds of abuse documented in the report. Making matters worse he experienced this during the Covid pandemic, where he says ICE staff failed to take proper measures to prevent the spread of the potentially fatal virus.

TRT World recently spoke with Golding about how he ended up in ICE detention, decided – with the support of other inmates – to contest the mistreatment he endured at the hands of ICE staff and why he was hardly deterred by the threat of being harshly (and unfairly) disciplined for that. The discussion, taken together with the NPR report, points to ICE having done nothing substantive to improve inmate conditions.

Could you provide some background as to how you first entered the ICE detention system?

KARIM GOLDING: Being young, trying to get out the hood, friends and I found hip-hop to be a valuable path. It allowed us to do a lot. If we weren’t ourselves artists we could still do things like coordinate interviews between magazines and rappers in prison, act as bodyguards for people in the hip-hop industry, promote concerts. We didn’t know that the “hip-hop police” would target us. It's the only task force for any musical genre. There’s no rock, country or blues police.

While the police were following us 50 Cent was a prominent hip-hop artist. He and Bang Em Smurf, another well-known New York rapper, were the founders of the hip-hop group G-Unit. Not all of the attention they were receiving at the time was positive. The media kept reporting on criminal allegations surrounding either 50, Smurf, G-Unit or some combination of the three, which gave the police more “reason” I guess to follow us.

My association with Smurf, specifically as his manager between 2006 and 2007, eventually led to me being charged with certain drug and firearm-related offenses. I was sentenced to 30 years in a federal prison but later transferred into ICE detention. American authorities initially tried to deport me to Jamaica, where I’m from originally, but they couldn’t. To do that they had to prove how I first entered the U.S. It was through JFK Airport with my mother when I was nine but they had nothing concrete to show for it.

During the Covid pandemic several American news sources were covering dangerous health and safety conditions within the ICE facility you were in at the time: Alabama’s Etowah County Detention Centre. The coverage shone a light, among other things, on how you played an important role in helping bring inmates together to contest those conditions. What do you feel primarily motivated you to do that?

KG: I've always gravitated towards leadership roles, right? I stand by what I believe. It doesn't matter to me what race you are. I'm going to defend you if I need to. I also use honesty as one of my tools to change what’s happening. When I got to Alabama there were a lot of ICE staff beating up on guys, shooting pellets at and tasing them, all that stuff. But I feel I was instrumental in helping stop that, at least for while. Wasn’t easy. There was division amongst African, Jamaican, Mexican inmates. When I started speaking truthfully, doing certain things that got them to see how we’re in the same boat, routinely abused and mistreated by staff, people got behind me. There were even some staff who felt safer when I was around because, knowing how to relate to inmates despite our differences, I prevented riots in the ICE facility. I was always approaching people with respect. I built trust with them that way.

Could you speak more directly to how staff handled Covid itself within Etowah and, perhaps alongside other inmates, you responded?

KG: Now, when Covid came around it was very easy to see the wrong being done by ICE staff. They weren’t taking any measures to prevent inmates from getting the virus. No social distancing. No testing. No proper cleaning of washrooms, cells, places where it wasn’t hard to catch Covid. Encouraged by the trust I gained from fellow inmates, I stepped up. Knew I had to do something about it. And the consequences were negative – for me and others. I organized for us to come together, ask staff about what was going on with them not testing us for Covid. Eventually we started demanding that we get tested, while still respecting the so-called “protocol” of filling out the sick forms that should’ve been enough for us to get checked for Covid in the first place.

Medical staff gave the slips to higher-ups in the ICE administration. They came to us afterwards and said, “Well, basically y'all should know that anybody that gets tested is going to go to solitary. And everyday you’ll be on a 23 hour lockdown with no TVs. None whatsoever”. ICE was trying to make sure no inmates got tested because if they did and their results showed they were Covid positive, it would have to ship them away from the facility we were in. ICE didn’t want that because that would mean it’d have to end their contract with private companies paid to manage us in the facility. ICE made it a priority to avoid that over our health and, given the potential lethality of Covid, our lives too.

Instead of moving inmates out the facility ICE made sure it received more. Often staff lied in reports they made, saying that no cases of Covid were present when there actually were. Meanwhile inmates were being thrown into the box, how inmates refer to solitary confinement – and none of them were ever getting tested. It’s like instead of helping them staff were trying to kill them.

How long were you in solitary confinement?

KG: Two months. During the course of that I found out something because, you know, I'm real creative. Right before they threw me in solitary I snatched an intake sheet from an office desk. It literally showed when these guys [inmates] came into the facility and how the outbreak happened in the facility: Dudes weren't being quarantined for 14 days. ICE was sending them into the general inmate population only after three. This was happening despite a state mandate requiring that inmates be quarantined for 14 days. It also made a ton of us sick. The medical examiner, in my view, was responsible for the negligence.

At any time did ICE staff finally agree to test you for Covid or did they remain indifferent to the demands you and other inmates were making to be tested?

KG: I can’t confirm exactly how many of us were tested but, yeah, they tested me and my results were positive. There were some inmates in solitary that tested negative at first but eventually ended up positive because they had them housed with, you know, everybody else that was positive. Needless to say our health plummeted and our living conditions made things worse. Inmate bed sheets weren't being changed, even though – as with any kind of virus obviously – they needed to be. We weren’t just locked down for the 23 hours per day they initially threatened but often for more than 24 hours at once. They didn’t care that a lot of us were really sick, not receiving proper medical attention.

On top of that we had to clean our own showers. I filed a bunch of formal complaints, trying to get the American government to see what was happening to us. At one point I ended up filing a 250 page legal document against the Trump administration for not taking that seriously. We were owed a certain level of care but instead the system, seeing our sick and vulnerable state, took that as an opportunity to violate our fundamental human rights. At the same time those companies I was talking about earlier were making money off our suffering. Who are the real criminals? It turned out that the judge to whom I presented the legal document had ties to Trump, so she dismissed it.

Notwithstanding the hellish conditions of Etowah, were there any opportunities to make positive use of your time while in the facility?

KG: I can only speak from my experience. I've been in ICE detention facilities in New Jersey and New York, and also the south [United States]. There is no serious vocational trade, no educational programs in them. Neither have I heard – among staff in the facilities – so much as a discussion about rehabilitation, as in helping an inmate help themselves and maybe providing them, say, adequate resources to facilitate the process. Then again, what do the many incarcerated in ICE detention for “illegally” being in the U.S. – having to flee from war, persecution, some serious threat or danger in their home country that renders them refugees in America – need to be rehabilitated from? A lot of people locked up in ICE initially came to America looking for honest work. But because they were missing the proper government documentation or whatever they kept being turned away from employers. It made them susceptible to taking up offers from let’s just say bad actors who’ll pay those in their position, desperate for money, to commit crimes. Now they’re on a different track – moving further and further from establishing themselves in America as, you know, law-abiding, contributing members of society. When they’re eventually apprehended by law enforcement, an ICE facility could be a place where they’d have a second chance, turn their life around if those programs I mentioned were available.

What might that look like?

KG: Take, for instance, somebody who comes to the U.S. but is sent to an ICE facility because a court has deemed them in violation of this or that immigration law. In another world maybe they’d be able to eventually return to their home country and be like, “I wish things ended up differently in America but at least I learned about heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems while I was in ICE detention. Yeah I got deported but I know how to install and repair home air conditioners. People pay for that and so now I can be an entrepreneur”.

When people are operating from that mindset, you’re going to see a lot less crime in the world. It’s simple mathematics. Spend more on helping people help themselves and they become pro-social. I’m not just talking about textbook-type education, where people are trained to follow just what they read. I mean creating real opportunities where people can learn what they’re good at and also benefits others – locally and abroad. Money should be going into that, not building more ICE facilities that strip people of their dignity.