A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Immigrants in an ICE detention facility in southeast Georgia are on a hunger strike. They're protesting what they say are prolonged detentions in subpar conditions. Here's WABE's Emily Wu Pearson.
EMILY WU PEARSON, BYLINE: The hunger strike started October 6. It comes after 45 men held in the Folkston D. Ray James ICE processing center published a letter. It says many of them are asylum seekers who have been at the facility an hour north of Jacksonville, Florida, for years - some since the Biden administration. Idris Makhmudov is the first signatory. He wrote the letter.
IDRIS MAKHMUDOV: I even believe that prisons can be better because you know when you'll be out. In here, what kills you more every day - that you don't know when all this going to be changed.
PEARSON: Lawyers say Makhmudov was deported to Russia shortly after the hunger strike began. But the letter complains about insufficient medical care, food that makes people sick and that the facilities are dirty. That's what Polina Chertushkina heard from her husband, Andrei, who's still there on hunger strike. He had a work permit and is seeking asylum. ICE detained him in Florida in February, she says.
POLINA CHERTUSHKINA: My husband was first sent to the place known as Alligator Alcatraz and later moved to D. Ray James in Georgia.
PEARSON: Her husband is from Russia. Others who signed the letter are from countries like China, Afghanistan, Yemen and Nepal. ICE says it's monitoring the situation and will, quote, "intervene when it becomes necessary." A spokesman says 13 people are still on hunger strike. Immigrant rights advocates say there are a lot more. There have been hunger strikes at ICE facilities over the years, not just during the Trump administration, and strikers have been force-fed in the past. Just this summer, immigrants in a New Jersey detention center refused to eat for about a month.
For NPR News, I'm Emily Wu Pearson in Atlanta.
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