via Hermana Resist comes the news of a solidarity fast in the name of ending abuse in the Port Isabel Detention Center.

Southwest Workers’ Union and Community Organizations Declare Solidarity Fast:

“Stop the Abuse at the Port Isabel Detention Center!!!”

WHERE: Port Isabel Detention Center

27991 Buena Vista Blvd, Los Fresnos, TX

WHEN: Wed. April 29, 2009, 11AM

Contact: Anayanse Garza

Southwest Workers’ Union

956.207.9459

Tomorrow, Wednesday, April 29, 2009, Southwest Workers’ Union and other Community Organization will fast from 6AM-6PM and Rally in from the Port Isabel Detention Center.

Community members will officially declare themselves on a fast in solidarity with Detainees. We are declaring a 1 day fast and demanding to be let into the facility to monitor the detainess on hunger strike.

Most importantly, detainees have been separated and isolated. If any harm should fall on any of the detainees on Hunger Strike we are holding Field Director for ICE at the facility personally responsible as well as Dora Schriro, Special Advisor on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Detention & Removal to the Secretary of Homeland Security.

We demand that:

Community members be allowed to enter the facility and monitor the detainees on hunger strike.

-Detainees on the Hunger Strike must be allowed visitation during the required -hours and to make a public statement.

-To know the status of the hunger strike and a report on the condition on the hunger strikers by made publically

-Detainees should get the required medical attention they need if they are ill or have medical complications.

-Detainees should have adequate legal resources available to them

-Detainees have a right to due process

-All physical and verbal abuse from ICE and ATSI officers must stop immediately

For more info. Call Anayanse Garza: 956.207.9459

Basically, what is going on is that people being held at the detention center are protesting the fact that they are pretty much being held indefinitely with no legal recourse to their detentions at all (link via ansel here):

“It’s unconstitutional. It’s unjust,” Carty said. “We’re held well past any reasonable time under the law, or just any reasonable time, period.”

Carty fell under the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2008 after he served two years in prison for what he says is a wrongful drug conviction. He spent time in detention centers in Maine and New Hampshire before being sent to Texas in December. In March, he came across an article in USA Today about a new Amnesty International report on how thousands of immigrants are detained for months or years without any meaningful judicial review of whether they should be released.

No matter what you think of undocumented migration, I think we can all agree that locking people up and throwing away the key without giving those people the benefit of a trail and a reasonable consistent sentence to fit the crime (some people are being held for a few days/hours and others have been held for years–all for the same thing) really shouldn’t be too much to ask for. Not in this great democracy we all live in. Right?