Hundreds of immigrant men at North Lake Processing Center, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility, began a hunger strike on April 20 in an attempt to assert their rights to due process, edible food, and an end to sleep deprivation. Outside the prison, advocates from all over Michigan converged to offer solidarity to those inside and share the strikers’ demands with the wider public.

“There are people who want to speak and want their voices to be heard … but [ICE] is covering everything up,” says a man who was released from the prison on April 24 after winning a habeas corpus petition. The man, identified by the pseudonym Juan in a Spanish-language interview released to the press, says that “almost everyone” inside the prison is participating in the hunger strike.

The Prison Up North

Most visitors to Baldwin, Michigan, are there for outdoor recreation. Located a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Detroit, Baldwin has a small downtown with an ice cream shop, a pizza joint, and a boat store catering to summer tourists, just like most other small towns in the area. Tall pine trees sprout from both sides of the highway leading into the town and signs for campgrounds and boat launches abound. But a few blocks away is one of the largest immigrant prisons in the country, North Lake Processing Center, where around 1,400 immigrants are currently jailed.

The prison is almost hidden; it’s easy to drive past the unassuming street where it’s located. Unlike most state prisons, there are no road signs indicating its location and it cannot be seen from the highway. Instead, it’s tucked into the pine trees located a few blocks through a neighborhood off Route 10 where the paved road turns to dirt.

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Two weeks ago, hundreds of men began a hunger strike at the prison where they are being held for the crime of being migrants. Their conditions are deplorable, but their spirits are not broken, and neither are those of their supporters on the outside.

Read the rest of the story at: https://truthout.org/articles/hundreds-of-incarcerated-migrants-go-on-hunger-strike-in-remote-michigan-prison/