NNIRR Reeves Update and Urgent Action Alert: Call to End Inhumane Detention and Crisis At GEO Private Prison in Pecos, TX

NNIRR Reeves Update and Urgent Action Alert

March 20, 2009

 

Call to End Inhumane Detention and Crisis

At GEO Private Prison in Pecos, TX

 

GEO Group administrators, supervisors and employees continue inflicting severe abuses and violating the rights of immigrant detainees at the privately-run prison in Pecos, TX. Detainees at the GEO Group run-prison are being subjected to inhumane treatment, denying them medical care, providing inadequate food and placing detainees in harm’s way with the unsanitary conditions of detention. Geo Group maintains the prisoners in overcrowded conditions at the Reeves County Detention Complex facilities (RCDC).

 

Last week, NNIRR received a report of another inmate death at Reeves County facility. Although initially reported as a suicide, it is highly unlikely that an inmate who was three months short of completing a five-year sentence would take his own life, in light of recent reports from Reeves County inmates who testify to the brutal treatment and conditions at the facility by guards.

 

TAKE ACTION, CALL:

• Congressman Ciro Rodriguez 23rd district (TX):

Tel (202) 225-4511

Fax: (202) 225-2237

Email ciro.rodriguez@mail.house.gov

Senior Staff: Cesar Blanco: cesar.blanco@mail.house.gov

 

• BOP Director Harley Lappin

Tel (214) 224-3389

Email: scro/execassistant@bop.gov

 

• RCDC Warden Richard Subasavage

Tel (432) 447-2926

Fax (432) 447-9224

 

TELL THEM:

• End the inhumane treatment and punishments against immigrant detainees and hold GEO Group accountable.

 

• Investigate the allegations of prisoner deaths and other abuses and violations of detainees’ rights

 

• Allow detainees to have access to their families, independent medical exams and legal counsel

 

• Allow the media and immigrant and human rights institutions access to the Reeves County Detention Facility Complex in Pecos, TX.

 

TO READ THE FULL ACTION ALERT UPDATE Click here

 

“Can you imagine? They are so crowded and don’t have room even to walk. They are being punished for protesting the horrible conditions, and now they are not letting them out to see the light of day. They are being held under inhumane conditions, and what we want is for them to be transferred out of there or released.”

– A sister of a Reeves County detainee who has been there since April 2008.

 

(Oakland, CA) Immigrant detainees at the GEO Group private prison in Pecos, TX, reported that another inmate turned up dead last week. Privately operated by the GEO Group Corporation, the Reeves County Detention Complex has three large units holding over 3,500 immigrant detainees.

 

Over the last four months, immigrant detainees at the Reeves County private prison facility have protested, exposing the severe human rights abuses and prison guard maltreatment they have been suffering.

 

In December 2008 and then in late January 2009, detainees staged protests to bring attention Geo Group’s pattern of abuse at Reeves, in particular GEO punishing those who needed or asked for medical care with excessive amounts of time in solitary confinement.

 

Detainees and their families have provided testimony on the inhumane conditions at the Reeves facility including:

 

• Medical neglect and no access to services: Detainees with special medical needs or who ask for medical care when ill are subjected to punishment for requesting medical attention or services. They are placed in solitary confinement for excessive amounts of time. Due to severe overcrowding, most do not have access to any medical services. Detainees have reported at least five deaths of fellow inmates in the last few months.

 

• Abuse by guards: Detainees face inhumane living conditions exacerbated by the harassment, ridicule, and abuse from GEO Group guards at the facility.

 

• Overcrowding and unsanitary conditions: After being locked out of the units for nearly a week in January and February 2009 and forced to sleep outside in the cold without blankets or bedding, denied access to facilities, running water or regular meals, over 2,000 detainees were then crammed back into a unit meant for 1,200 persons.

 

• Inadequate bedding and food: Detainees have been receiving one meal per day and have not recovered any of their personal belongings including extra changes of clothing, shoes, toiletries, pillows, blankets. Many who have been unable to purchase new bedding are sleeping on the bare floor.

 

• Inadequate facilities: Due to severe overcrowding and limited facilities, many detainees do not have access to showers and have to wait up to a week to take a shower.

To continue reading, click here:

 

 

_____________________________________________________

Arnoldo Garcia

National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights

Red Nacional Pro Derechos Inmigrantes y Refugiados

310 8th Street Suite 303

Oakland, CA 94607

Tel (510) 465-1984 ext. 305

Fax (510) 465-1885

www.migrantdiaries.blogspot.com

www.nnirr.blogspot.com

www.nnirr.org

 

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See NNIRR's letter with signatures

to President Barack Obama at

www.nnirr.org

 

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