March 31 2018, 3:00 p.m.
During his six months in custody, Muhumed estimated that he had been a passenger on about a half dozen ICE flights. Typically, he said, those flights featured one ICE officer and a handful of contractors. Monday was different.
Inside the plane, Muhumed noticed approximately seven men in uniforms bearing insignia that read, “SRT.” The so-called Special Response Teams are an ICE tactical unit. Described on the agency’s website as elite, highly trained operators, SRTs are tasked with taking into custody and deporting “hardened criminals, such as drug cartel and violent gang members,” ICE’s “highest priorities for arrest and removal.”
Once Muhumed’s plane touched down in San Antonio, he and the dozens of other African immigrants he was flying with began exiting the aircraft. On the runway, they were greeted with another contingent of SRT officers — except these ones, Muhumed says, were decked out in what he calls “military gear: helmets, guns, bulletproof vests.”
Shackled in chains, Muhumed and the other detainees shuffled off the plane and were passed by their hands from one heavily armed SRT officer to the next. There was no doubt in Muhumed’s mind what the ramped-up security was all about. “Whatever they told you, it’s not true,” he recalled telling one of the SRT officers before his flight landed.
Muhumed is one of 30 Somali men who say they were subjected to a horrifying week of abuse at a for-profit immigrant detention center in Texas last month. Their allegations, which included claims of physical and sexual abuse, as well racial slurs, were detailed in a chilling reportpublished last week.
As The Intercept reported last weekend, those allegations resulted in complaints filed with the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department, accusing ICE’s contractors of multiple violations of federal law, including hate crimes, which were forwarded to the FBI.
ICE has refused to confirm whether it has opened an investigation into what happened at the West Texas Detention Facility, a for-profit operation run by LaSalle Corrections. Similarly, ICE has refused to address the ramped-up security Muhumed described witnessing during his transportation on Monday. In response to a series of questions sent Wednesday, a spokesperson for the agency instead pointed to general ICE policy on a range of issues without clarifying if, how, or why those policies were being implemented in the case of Muhumed and his fellow detainees specifically. LaSalle Corrections has not responded to requests for comment since the allegations came to light.
In the week since the reported abuse was made public, advocates for the men told The Intercept that oversight officials from DHS conducted interviews with the individuals named in the report.
In interviews this week, Muhumed recounted his experiences in West Texas, and the terror he has been living through, faced with the serious possibility of being separated from his wife and children and dropped off in a war-ravaged nation that he has not seen since he was a child.
Muhumed also described the anguish of watching mistakes he made when he was a young man come back around more than a decade later to wreak havoc on his adult life. As a high school administrator and youth counselor, Muhumed spearheaded a program in his community to turn refugee children, particularly young Somalis, away from drugs, crime, and radicalism. He has spoken out publicly against the terrorist groups that wield considerable power in Somalia, making the fact that the U.S. government has treated him like some sort of national security threat, while working hard to drop him off on the very turf where those groups operate, all the more ironic and terrifying.
Laila Jama, Muhumed’s wife, who also came to the U.S. as a refugee child from Somalia but eventually won her citizenship, is pregnant with twins and due to give birth in the next two weeks. She described to me how, over the last six months, she has made herself an expert on immigration law. That education, she said, has led her to conclude that the U.S. system of detention and deportation, when applied without discretion, is unfathomably harsh, especially if you come from an African country like Somalia.
The family’s account, bolstered by legal records and testimonials on Muhumed’s behalf, as well as prior reporting, suggests that ICE and the Trump administration may be taking a particularly hardline approach against immigrants of African descent, especially Somalis. Fraught with logistical challenges, that effort has resulted in men like Muhumed being shuffled from one disaster of a detention center to another as they await their banishment from the only country many of them have ever known.
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/31/ice-detention-immigration-somalia-refugee/
It's a good read there's more in the link.
During his six months in custody, Muhumed estimated that he had been a passenger on about a half dozen ICE flights. Typically, he said, those flights featured one ICE officer and a handful of contractors. Monday was different.
Inside the plane, Muhumed noticed approximately seven men in uniforms bearing insignia that read, “SRT.” The so-called Special Response Teams are an ICE tactical unit. Described on the agency’s website as elite, highly trained operators, SRTs are tasked with taking into custody and deporting “hardened criminals, such as drug cartel and violent gang members,” ICE’s “highest priorities for arrest and removal.”
Once Muhumed’s plane touched down in San Antonio, he and the dozens of other African immigrants he was flying with began exiting the aircraft. On the runway, they were greeted with another contingent of SRT officers — except these ones, Muhumed says, were decked out in what he calls “military gear: helmets, guns, bulletproof vests.”
Shackled in chains, Muhumed and the other detainees shuffled off the plane and were passed by their hands from one heavily armed SRT officer to the next. There was no doubt in Muhumed’s mind what the ramped-up security was all about. “Whatever they told you, it’s not true,” he recalled telling one of the SRT officers before his flight landed.
Muhumed is one of 30 Somali men who say they were subjected to a horrifying week of abuse at a for-profit immigrant detention center in Texas last month. Their allegations, which included claims of physical and sexual abuse, as well racial slurs, were detailed in a chilling reportpublished last week.
As The Intercept reported last weekend, those allegations resulted in complaints filed with the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department, accusing ICE’s contractors of multiple violations of federal law, including hate crimes, which were forwarded to the FBI.
ICE has refused to confirm whether it has opened an investigation into what happened at the West Texas Detention Facility, a for-profit operation run by LaSalle Corrections. Similarly, ICE has refused to address the ramped-up security Muhumed described witnessing during his transportation on Monday. In response to a series of questions sent Wednesday, a spokesperson for the agency instead pointed to general ICE policy on a range of issues without clarifying if, how, or why those policies were being implemented in the case of Muhumed and his fellow detainees specifically. LaSalle Corrections has not responded to requests for comment since the allegations came to light.
In the week since the reported abuse was made public, advocates for the men told The Intercept that oversight officials from DHS conducted interviews with the individuals named in the report.
In interviews this week, Muhumed recounted his experiences in West Texas, and the terror he has been living through, faced with the serious possibility of being separated from his wife and children and dropped off in a war-ravaged nation that he has not seen since he was a child.
Muhumed also described the anguish of watching mistakes he made when he was a young man come back around more than a decade later to wreak havoc on his adult life. As a high school administrator and youth counselor, Muhumed spearheaded a program in his community to turn refugee children, particularly young Somalis, away from drugs, crime, and radicalism. He has spoken out publicly against the terrorist groups that wield considerable power in Somalia, making the fact that the U.S. government has treated him like some sort of national security threat, while working hard to drop him off on the very turf where those groups operate, all the more ironic and terrifying.
Laila Jama, Muhumed’s wife, who also came to the U.S. as a refugee child from Somalia but eventually won her citizenship, is pregnant with twins and due to give birth in the next two weeks. She described to me how, over the last six months, she has made herself an expert on immigration law. That education, she said, has led her to conclude that the U.S. system of detention and deportation, when applied without discretion, is unfathomably harsh, especially if you come from an African country like Somalia.
The family’s account, bolstered by legal records and testimonials on Muhumed’s behalf, as well as prior reporting, suggests that ICE and the Trump administration may be taking a particularly hardline approach against immigrants of African descent, especially Somalis. Fraught with logistical challenges, that effort has resulted in men like Muhumed being shuffled from one disaster of a detention center to another as they await their banishment from the only country many of them have ever known.
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/31/ice-detention-immigration-somalia-refugee/
It's a good read there's more in the link.
