A group of Russian citizens who launched a hunger strike to protest conditions at the Folkston D. Ray James ICE Processing Center in the U.S. state of Georgia were placed in solitary confinement, Ksenia, the wife of detainee Andrei Mikhailov, told The Insider.
“Last Friday, the administration learned about the planned protest. Russian-speaking detainees from different housing units were brought together, and [the] officers openly threatened them: ‘If you’re up to something, don’t do it. You’ll regret it,’ and explicitly hinted at solitary confinement. Yesterday, those threats were carried out: four of the guys were made an example of and locked up in solitary.
Because of the direct pressure from the officers, the detainees decided not to wait until Tuesday morning and started the protest earlier. As my husband told me, the hunger strike in his block officially began with yesterday’s dinner (on the evening of Oct. 5). We’re still trying to determine the exact situation in the other units because coordination between different sections of the facility is difficult.”
Ksenia said she, her husband, and another couple were detained in Florida in February while they were on vacation.
“Border Patrol simply pulled us over on the road. As we later learned in immigration court, the car we had rented through the Turo app, where private owners rent out their vehicles, was somehow listed in some database as being connected to an offender or an undocumented immigrant. The patrol ran the license plate on the highway and immediately intercepted us.
They put us under intense psychological pressure and practically forced us to sign documents agreeing to voluntary deportation, but we flatly refused. They wouldn’t let us call our lawyers and took our phones away. The detention itself was a farce and lawless, and the way they continue to hold people is no different.
Andrei, meanwhile, had committed no offenses. He is a political asylum seeker from Russia who was persecuted there for his opposition views. At the time of his arrest, he had been living legally in the U.S. for about two years, working, paying taxes, and had no criminal record..”
According to Ksenia, Andrei and the other man with them were taken directly to an immigration detention facility after their arrest, while their wives were taken to an office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), where officials released them after checking their documents and confirming that the women were in the country legally.
“They told us: we have no idea why you were detained in the first place. We asked: ‘Then maybe you can release our husbands, too?’ They said that once the men had already been taken into detention, there was nothing they could do and we would have to hire lawyers.”
As The Insider previously reported, a group of Russian citizens held at Folkston D. Ray James produced a report describing harsh conditions at the facility, including a lack of clean drinking water and negligent medical care. Several dozen detainees launched a hunger strike in protest.
