A group of people detained inside a private Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) jail in Georgia have begun a mass hunger strike this week to protest their prolonged detention and conditions at the facility, according to advocates and family members. Advocates estimate that at least 73 immigrant detainees are participating in the hunger strike inside the Folkston D Ray James ICE processing center in southeast Georgia. The Folkston facility, a former state prison, is managed by private prison company GEO Group under a contract with ICE. Some of the men participating in the hunger strike released a video and an open letter, asking to be released while they continue with their asylum and immigration cases. Two Russian asylum seekers detained in Folkston also released a document they wrote, describing what they claim to be internal “violations,” including allegations of poor medical care, threats from GEO Group guards, moldy food and lack of due process. “Many of us have been separated from our families,” reads the open letter, which was signed this summer by 45 detained immigrants and published this week, as dozens joined together to organize the hunger strike. “We have missed births, funerals, years of our lives while sitting behind fences without having committed a crime.” The hunger strike appears to transcend nationality, language and race, according to the video, the letter and the detainees’ report. Most of the men who signed the letter are asylum seekers from a wide range of countries, including Russia, China, Sudan, Afghanistan, Nepal and others. One of the main organizers of the hunger strike, a Russian asylum seeker named Idris Makhmudov, was reportedly placed in solitary confinement this week, according to Monica Whatley, a Georgia organizer with the Campaign to Shut Down the Folkston ICE Processing Center. [sic]and background, but we share one thing in common: we came to the United States seeking protection and have been detained ever since.” The men say in their letter that they have been locked up for a long time, anywhere from 16 months to nearly three years, from the time they arrived in the U.S. “yet, they have never been charged with any crime.” They argue that they should be free while their legal cases go through the immigration court system. “Many of us have tried every legal avenue available to seek release from custody. detention”, but without success, they say, adding that their letter is for those who believe in “justice and human dignity.” lung and has a US citizen son, advocates told The Guardian. The hunger strike at the Folkston facility represents the latest protest inside an ICE detention center, as the Trump administration continues its aggressive anti-immigrant crackdown. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE’s parent agency, did not respond to detailed questions about the allegations or requests for comment. immigrants, have been quietly increasing their arrests across the country. Applicants are being held in federal facilities like Folkston. The Folkston facility opened in 1997, but began detaining people in ICE custody in 2018. Last year, Florida-based for-profit company GEO Group extended its contract with ICE to expand the facility’s capacity. The latest ICE data from July of this year shows there were about 2,200 people detained. there. Most of the detainees in Folkston who signed the letter apply for asylum. The names, government-issued alien numbers, countries of origin and length of detention of the 45 men who signed it have been detained by ICE for at least a year. A Chinese man named Liang Sonji, who signed the letter, arrived in the United States and requested asylum in October 2023 and has been detained since then. identity or conduct background checks,” says the open letter, written by Makhmudov. “Two years, or more, without clear individual justification raises serious questions about fairness and reasonableness.” The two Russian men who also submitted a document about the conditions – Alexei Kovalko and Alexander Borovkov – accused an unnamed medical staff member at the center of telling one of them: “I have no obligation to treat you; the only thing I care about is that you don’t drop dead.” Kovalko and Borovkov also write describing moldy food, smelly water and other allegedly poor conditions at the detention center, including leaky roofs and plumbing problems. The document also says some GEO Group employees at the Folkston facility are “xenophobic” and rude, and frequently threaten detained immigrants with solitary confinement. The GEO Group and ICE did not respond to questions about these. There have been a series of hunger strikes inside ICE detention centers since the Trump administration took office again last year, some of which have received widespread attention. Earlier this year, a group of detainees inside the Delaney Hall facility in New Jersey, which is also operated by GEO Group, launched a hunger strike. of hunger strikes throughout the ICE detention network and the secretive response by ICE officials, including the finding that ICE has quietly sought court orders to apply “involuntary medical procedures” to 19 hunger strikers since January 2025, including force-feeding, a practice widely viewed as torture.
