ICE Detainment Center Guards Allegedly Set Up Suicide Death Pools

Say what you will about cops — even the federal ones — but they have nothing on the people charged with guarding people who have been detained or imprisoned. The cruelty of cops is slightly tempered by the fact that anyone with a cell phone, dash cam, or doorbell surveillance device might catch them in the act. It’s not much a deterrent (and it’s a far better deterrent than police body cameras, ironically enough) but it’s better than the absolute nothing that’s in place in detainment centers, jails, and prisons.

Cops can control their own cameras. Prison guards can control an entire network of cameras. And they’re far more used to dehumanizing people than law enforcement officers on the outside.

So, it’s hardly surprising that the people keeping an eye on the thousands of migrants being imprisoned indefinitely by this administration would be the most inhumane. If citizens stuck in prisons are treated like (diseased) cattle at best, the people dumped into ICE detention centers are treated like something even worse: vermin. That’s a loaded term. And I’m using it correctly when speaking about this administration.

The Associated Press has obtained some evidence of the day-to-day oppressive indignities ICE detainees suffer through each day. And from an unlikely source: 911 calls placed by detainment center staff. Things have to be particularly horrific for guards to consider calling 911 for help.

And they are:

The calls to 911 poured in from staff at Camp East Montana in Texas, the nation’s largest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility, at a rate of nearly one a day for five months, each its own tale of pain and despair.

A man sobs after being assaulted by another detainee. Another bangs his head against the wall after expressing suicidal thoughts. A pregnant woman complained of severe back pain and also had coronavirus.

Even worse is what’s been said by the detainees. Welcome to the Trump’s brave new world, where bigoted anti-migrant enforcement is now coupled with the potentially deadly effects of this administration’s anti-vax healthcare stance:

The detainees describe a camp where an average of about 3,000 people have lived per day in loud and unsanitary quarters, diseases spread easily and sleep is a luxury. The center will be closed to visitors until at least March 19 because of a measles outbreak, according to U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar.

That’s mass inhumanity, aided and abetted by an administration that doesn’t care how many people die so long as it can claim some sort of revenge over COVID-19 policies put in place in the last year of Trump’s previous presidential term.

Here’s the more selective inhumanity, which isn’t any better:

At one point [detainee Owen Ramsingh] said he overheard a security guard talking about bets made among the staff over which detainee would be next to die by suicide. The guard said he had paid $500 into a pool, with the total pot riding on the outcome. The talk was particularly jarring, he said, because he had contemplated suicide himself.

Some of you might be saying to yourselves “Well, that’s just something one guy said.” And that’s true, it’s just one guy saying this. But this is also just one guy saying this:

The DHS spokesperson said Ramsingh’s account was false, though provided no indication of how the agency had sought to verify that.

True or not, these are the facts on the ground in Camp East Montana:

Ramsingh said he heard of the betting pool after Jan. 3, when ICE said security guards responded after a 55-year-old Cuban man tried to harm himself and then used handcuffs and force to restrain him. A medical examiner ruled that Geraldo Lunas Campos’s death was a homicide caused by asphyxia.

On Jan. 14, staff reported that a 36-year-old Nicaraguan man died by suicide days after he was detained while working in Minnesota.

Given what we know about what’s happening in this detainment center, coupled with what we know about the historical sadism of “screws,” this doesn’t seem that far-fetched. Then there are the 911 calls — placed by the guards themselves — that made it clear at least six other detainees had attempted or considered attempting suicide during that same time period.

So, while it could just be some guy saying something, consider this: the DHS has more to gain from denying this than Ramsingh — who has already been deported — has to gain from making this allegation.

I don’t find this allegation unbelievable. It seems like exactly the sort of thing people trained and encouraged to treat detainees as less than human would do, especially when suicides and suicidal ideation are a daily occurrence. The government contractors employing them are profiting from human misery. Why shouldn’t they?