By Greg Rodriguez
June 3, 2009 was a day of anger and sadness for people in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas—a region known for its vast rural landscapes and primarily immigrant community. At around 6:15 a.m., Southwest Workers’ Union (SWU) member Nadezhda Garza received a phone call from a detainee inside the Port Isabel Detention Center (PIDC). The worried voice on the other end of the phone line informed Garza that fellow detainee Rama Carty had been assaulted by four private guards and one federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent at around 5:45 a.m. The ICE agent allegedly involved was identified as Lieutenant Sandoval. When Carty demanded to speak with representatives of Amnesty International, USA, the guards proceeded to drag him away. Policy Director of Refugee and Migrant Rights for Amnesty International, USA, Sarnata Reynolds, and a representative named Daryl Grisgraber, were at PIDC since June 2. They were writing up a report on conditions inside the facility, and met with Carty on the day before the assault.
At around 8:00 a.m. after the assault, Carty called Garza to corroborate his friend’s phone call, but also to inform her of his situation: “He said they were transferring him to a detention center in Louisiana, and from there he will be deported to Haiti,” Carty said. Carty then requested to speak with Amnesty International in order to stop the transfer. Carty then told Garza that his friend needed to remain in the PIDC in order to show his documentation regarding the abuses. According to Garza, Carty wanted to assert that he was a U.S. citizen and had the documentation to prove it. He wanted to make it clear that justice was being obstructed. He was sent to Texas, and did not have the legal resources to fight his way out of detention.
No Time Wasted
As soon as the initial phone call came from Carty’s fellow detainee, organizers on the outside took action. “We began to make phone calls to our community activists and friends. We sent out a press release to both local and international media in order to make this as public as possible.” said Hector Guzman, a student organizer in McAllen, Texas. Garza also called the ICE office, which oversees the PIDC, and spoke to Assistant Field Director James Bentsen. When she informed him of the incident, he simply said “I don’t believe you” and shrugged it off.
The SWU staged a zero hour protest circa 1:30 p.m., outside the PIDC, denouncing what happened and demanding a freeze on Carty’s deportation. Still, protesters felt that their biggest chance of stopping the illegal removal of Carty was for Amnesty International to take action. They were, after all, on the inside.
Organizers made several phone calls to Reynolds, informing her of what was happening with Carty and requesting they meet with him and stop the transfer. Amnesty International was notified, yet refused to move on the situation. Instead, they implied that they had a schedule to meet and that Carty would not be deported right away. Garza said “(Amnesty International) proved themselves impotent … they let it happen. That is why we want community organizations in the (PIDC)—people who have a connection with the people in there, not out-of-towners who are just here to compile a report, and too worried about their schedule to pay attention to a crisis that went on right under their nose.”
Towards the end of the demonstration, Amnesty representatives drove out of the facility and admitted to protesters that Carty had been rushed out of PIDC. They did not bother to join the community action or step out of their vehicle. Since April 2009, local organizers with the SWU and members of Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) have been working for justice at PIDC. They have had weekly visits with the detainees, but have not been allowed to monitor conditions on the inside or the state of those still fasting.
The hunger strikers are spearheading a movement to put an end to the inhumane detention of immigrant workers, and we should view this struggle as part of the broader class war. The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) actions against Carty are viewed as retaliation and have had a definite effect on all the immigrants at PIDC.
Hunger Strike Organizer
Who is Rama Carty? Rama Carty is a known leader and participant in a hunger strike that has been going on at the PIDC since late April. He was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo to Haitian parents, but has lived in the United States for more than 38 years. After he and other detainees read a report documenting the deplorable conditions that exist throughout the entire immigrant detention system, they felt compelled to do something about it, and decided to stage a hunger strike. Soon after, the hunger strike spread to include up to 200 detainees at the PIDC.They demanded (and continue to demand) the right to due process, medical attention for all detainees, access to legal resources, and an end to physical and verbal abuses by guards at the facility.
At the time of his transfer, Carty had been detained by DHS/ICE for over 13 months, after serving a two-year sentence for a drug conviction he had already served time for. He also said that his drug conviction was wrongful. Carty has been interviewed by several news sources, including a recorded telephone interview with the Texas Observer which was aired on the popular independent radio/television news program Democracy Now.
At the writing of this story, it was known that Carty was at the LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, Louisiana. The Consulate General of Haiti is refusing to issue DHS a travel permit in the name of Rama Carty because they have no Haitian birth record for him. Rama Carty has the strong language of a revolutionary, with such calm and concentrated delivery comparable to that of Mumia Abu Jamal. Our hearts and solidarity are with him.
