(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Brazilian Man’s Suicide Sends Shockwaves Through ‘Inhumane’ ICE Detention Center [1]

['Eduardo Campos Lima', 'Tina Vasquez', 'Liz Robbins', 'Chris Gelardi']

Date: 2023-08

Brazilian Man’s Suicide Sends Shockwaves Through ‘Inhumane’ ICE Detention Center Detainees at New Mexico’s Torrance County Detention Facility recently launched a hunger strike, motivated in part by the August death of a 23-year-old asylum seeker in custody.

SÃO PAULO – The August suicide of a young Brazilian man detained at a New Mexico Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility has spurred new calls for action among immigrants’ rights advocates and fellow detainees, who recently launched a hunger strike to protest alleged abuse and inhumane conditions.

Kesley Vial, a 23-year-old asylum-seeker from Brazil, was found unconscious in his cell at the Torrance County Detention Facility on Aug. 17 and taken to the University of New Mexico Hospital. He died a week later. Though an official cause of death has yet to be determined, the American Civil Liberties Union and New Mexico Immigrant Law Center—who are in contact with Vial’s family and with other detainees at the facility—say that Vial died by suicide.

Vial had been in ICE custody for around four months at the time of his death. Border patrol agents first detained him on April 22 in Texas, following a border crossing. He was initially held at an immigration center in El Paso, before being transferred to Torrance. The privately operated ICE facility in Estancia has attracted national controversy amid officially documented reports of safety risks and unsanitary conditions, with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) going so far as to call for the immediate removal of all detainees earlier this year.

Vial’s death has compounded the suffering that many immigrants in ICE custody say they’ve faced at Torrance. Some fear that another tragedy could unfold at any moment. Detainees and advocates now tell The Appeal that the only way to achieve justice is to shut the facility down.

Vial was born in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, and raised by his grandmother after his mother moved to the United States when he was a child. Vial spent part of his childhood in Galileia, a small city in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, before moving to Camboriú, in the state of Santa Catarina.

Victor Venâncio, a former classmate of Vial’s who still lives in Brazil, recalled studying together in 2008.

“He was a cool kid. A number of our childhood friends ended up going to the United States,” Venâncio told The Appeal in Portuguese during an interview.

After finishing school, Vial worked at a store and liked to play the guitar in his free time, a cousin told The Appeal in messages over social media. She asked to remain anonymous because she’d been advised not to speak to the press while Vial’s family considers its legal options. Vial was a “dreamer” and a “hard-working guy who could not harm anyone,” she said.

On April 22, border patrol agents detained Vial in El Paso after he crossed the border. He was taken to an immigration center and was kept there for a week.

At the detention facility in Texas, Vial was placed in a cell with an acquaintance from Brazil who had also been detained after crossing the border.

“I had not seen Kesley for seven years,” the man told The Appeal in Portuguese during an interview. “We had been friends in Galileia years ago.”

The man, who has since been released from ICE custody and asked to remain anonymous due to legal concerns, said that the facility in Texas was “tough,” and had “too many immigrants and only a few agents to handle all of them.”

After a few days in custody, the two old acquaintances parted ways. The friend was sent to another detention center in the South, where he said conditions “were much better.”

Vial, on the other hand, was taken to one of the worst ICE detention centers in the country. Indeed, since 2019 when Torrance began to receive asylum-seekers and immigrants, it has been the subject of intense criticism from detainees, non-governmental organizations, and federal officials alike.

In 2021, Nakamoto Group, ICE’s official inspection contractor, reported several issues at Torrance, including “numerous instances of sanitation and safety concerns” related to food preparation and chronic staff shortages.

“The current staffing level is at fifty percent of the authorized correction/security positions. Staff is currently working mandatory overtime shifts,” the report said.

Two detainees told inspectors they had “submitted sick call slips and had not been seen by medical staff.”

In February 2022, the Department of Homeland Security’s OIG carried out a surprise inspection at Torrance that resulted in an alert the following month recommending the immediate removal of all detainees from the facility.

The OIG report highlighted “critical staffing shortages that have led to safety risks and unsanitary living conditions” at Torrance. Inspectors identified serious problems concerning sanitation and hygiene.

But ICE did not accept OIG’s recommendation to remove detainees from the facility. Immigrants’ rights advocates say the situation did not improve after the report.

“The OIG does not have the power to order ICE to do something,” said Rebecca Sheff, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of New Mexico, in an interview with The Appeal. “The same conditions persisted and in some cases they got worse. Those were the conditions that Kesley faced there.” Sheff said less than 100 detainees remain at Torrance, most from Latin America, but also from Turkey and other countries.

Detainees have also reported being denied information about their immigration cases. This has led to a form of indefinite detention for some people, during which they have no idea how long they might remain incarcerated, or whether or not they’ll be deported. Vial tried repeatedly to get updates on his case, but couldn’t get clear answers, according to Sheff.

“At some point after he was ordered to be deported, he was put into a plane,” she said. “But without any explanation he was taken out of it later and brought back to Torrance.”

After returning, Vial began “manifesting psychological problems,” a fellow Torrance detainee from South America, who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation from ICE, told The Appeal in Spanish. A short time later, Vial was found unresponsive in his cell.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://theappeal.org/torrance-detention-center-kesley-vial-brazil/

Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/