Detainees at Georgia ICE Facility Use Video Calls to Expose Conditions
Asylum seekers detained at the Folkston ICE Processing Center in rural Georgia used the facility’s video conferencing software to reveal poor living conditions and criticize what they call Trump's 'deportation courts.' In a five-minute video, four men from different countries described an immigration legal system that appears dysfunctional and designed to prolong their detention. The detainees are housed in former prisons with limited access to communication tools, which they must pay for using low wages earned through facility work programs. The video led to retaliation against the participants who were placed into segregation. Following this incident, 45 detainees wrote an open letter detailing conditions at Folkston and approximately 73 others began a hunger strike. The only means of communication available is GettingOut software owned by Telmate, which was recently fined $4.23 million for a data breach in 2020.
Topics: asylum seekers ICE detention legal system dysfunction video exposure