John Washington Profile picture
Sep 14, 2020 9 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Along with @jlosc9 I spoke with a nurse whistleblower at a Georgia detention center, who described a host of extremely worrying abuses.

One symptomatic detainee, requesting a Covid test, was denied and told “Get your ass back in that room.”

interc.pt/35y6Hmf
@theintercept
The list of serious medical abuses is long, but some of the most troubling include:

-staff encouraged to downplay covid concerns
-staff not told that detainees they were interacting with had tested positive for covid.
-staff encouraged to work even when they were symptomatic
-staff ignoring symptomatic detainees
-refusing tests
-underreporting cases
-fabricating vital signs
-shredding sick call requests
One person detained there told us being isolated when they were tested was “complete torture, because it’s like a punishment."

“I didn’t want to say I had a pain in my throat, or that I had symptoms, because I didn’t want to go back to the punishment cell.”
Conditions in this and other detention centers are NOT SAFE, especially during a pandemic.

Even the medical area was dirty, the whistleblower told us.

“There was often blood on the floor that had not been cleaned up."
The CEO of LaSalle, the private corporation making millions by detaining thousands of people, claimed they were being “diligent in operating our facilities at the highest level.”

According to whistleblower, a veteran medical staff member died of covid contracted at the facility.
ICE has the legal capacity to let all of these people go, to close the detention center or, AT LEAST, to release the most medically vulnerable.
Instead, we are beginning to realize the extent of the "silent pandemic" raging behind the prison bars.
@GovAcctProj and @ProjectSouth both working to protect the whistleblower from further retaliation.

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More from @jbwashing

Mar 22, 2022
Exclusive: Nearly 1,000 pages of internal CBP documents shared with @theintercept reveal US gov's militaristic, multi-agency, multi-national efforts to seal off the border from peaceful asylum seekers.

My latest co-reported with @jlosc9

theintercept.com/2022/03/22/cbp…
Following Trump's 2019 SOTU fear-mongering of caravans, CBP cracked down around the cities of Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras, bringing in the military, national guard, Texas DPS, local police, establishing a no-fly zone and closely surveilling migrants, activists, and attorneys.
Under pressure from and in collaboration with US, Mexican authorities, including police notorious for murder/kidnapping of migrants, "tricked" asylum seekers into confinement in a former bodybag factory.

CBP internally referred to the asylum seekers as "detainees" and "bodies."
Read 6 tweets
Jun 3, 2021
DHS Secretary recently announced that ICE would be severing its contract with Irwin, the highly contentious detention center, "as soon as possible."

That's not quite what we're seeing.

My latest, with @jlosc9, for @theintercept
theintercept.com/2021/06/03/ice…
Since the announcement, people have been transferred INTO Irwin, and Marshals Service may continue operating with LaSalle Corrections, the for-profit prison company.
More complicated still, Biden signed an executive order in January to eliminate the use of private prisons. The EO doesn't mention immigration detention, but Marshals should be beholden to that order.

Last week, the Marshals resigned a contract in Ohio with a for-profit co.
Read 6 tweets
Apr 28, 2021
Groundbreaking news out of El Salvador.

A US military advisor was present in December of 1981 as Salvadoran soldiers carried out the El Mozote massacre, slaughtering almost a thousand civilians.

Read
@ElFaroEnglish's late edition newsletter:
mailchi.mp/elfaro.net/el-… Image
For decades, the US government tried to cover-up the US role in the worst massacre of a long, bloody war that killed over 70k and displaced at least a half a million people.

A pre-trial hearing this week included the bombshell revelation of integral US involvement at El Mozote.
Today's article from @raudaz_ and @romangressier for @_elfaro_ and @ElFaroEnglish details an expert testimony account about US Sergeant Major Allen Bruce Hazelwood's intimate role with the notorious Atlacatl battalion, which carried out the massacre.
elfaro.net/en/202104/el_s…
Read 4 tweets
Mar 14, 2021
As the number of children crossing the US-Mexico border increases, I take a look at the private security companies maneuvering to cash in on child detention.

for @theintercept
theintercept.com/2021/03/14/chi…
Two of the companies, Caliburn and Serco, have troubling histories with immigration detention, and have been accused of multiple counts of sexual abuse and fraud.

Another company, PAE, specializes in biometric data gathering.

All three stand poised for enormous profits.
The security companies are angling for different pieces of running Homestead, a child detention center, or "influx center" in Florida, which was shut down in 2019 after holding thousands of kids, charging up to $2million dollars a day, and facing withering criticism.
Read 7 tweets
Feb 5, 2021
So, @USBPChief Rodney Scott signed a potentially illegal administrative subpoena as part of a Border Patrol effort to destroy evidence and obstruct a homicide investigation after BP agents helped beat a man to death.

How much longer until Scott is fired?
theintercept.com/2021/02/04/bor…
new revelations in the case come in a petition to the @IACHumanRights in their first-ever hearing of an extra-judicial killing carried out by US officials.

Read petition in full here:
d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/alliancesandie…
and read more context in an excellent article about the case from @rdevro, for @theintercept
theintercept.com/2021/02/04/bor…
Read 5 tweets
Nov 9, 2020
ICE deported 57 Cameroonian asylum seekers last month.

They have since been detained, interrogated, and brutalized by the same gov officials many of them had previously fled.

Giscard wrote to me about the torture and the fear.

My latest for @thenation
thenation.com/article/politi…
Giscard wrote to me at length last May as part of the Migrant Voices series for The Nation.

He described being arrested and threatened for his politics, of his friends and family being killed, and why he needed to flee.

thenation.com/article/societ…
Despite the fact that his asylum case is currently pending in the 5th Circuit, ICE deported him.
Read 5 tweets

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