Immigrants at ICE centre thrown out of wheelchairs after asking for medical help, reports say

One detainee was told to go back to his cell, ‘or go die with the sick ones in the hole’

Detainees at a privately run US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centre were reportedly thrown out of wheelchairs and slammed to the ground by guards when they asked for medical assistance.

The immigrants, who were being detained at the Stewart Detention Centre in Georgia, run privately by CoreCivic, said that guards used excessive force when they asked for help.

Roberto Blanco Gonzalez, who was held at the ICE facility earlier this year, said that he started to feel unwell in April after he had been detained there a month.

He became concerned that he had contracted Covid-19 and submitted requests for medical assistance repeatedly over the following two weeks, but Mr Gonzalez said that his pleas were ignored, according to The Intercept.

At least one person has died after contracting Covid-19 in the Stewart Detention Centre and 116 more have been diagnosed with the virus in the last few months.

Following the requests, Mr Gonzalez staged a protest at the ICE facility, by sitting on the table in his unit and refusing the orders of the guards to go back to his cell.

He said that one of the guards came up to him during the protest and told him to return to his cell, “or go die with the sick ones in the hole.”

That guard wrote him up for “refusing to obey staff,” according to disciplinary records obtained by The Intercept, but Mr Gonzalez was taken to the clinic and given the medical attention he asked for and received treatment for his stomach pain.

Four guards then arrived at the clinic 30 minutes later and told him that he was going to be moved to solitary confinement as punishment for his protest.

Mr Gonzalez refused, and according to the records, “force was used to secure the detainee after he charged in an attempt to break away from the emergency response team.”

He disputes that account of the incident, and said: “They grabbed me, they hugged me, and they slammed me to the ground,” and added that one of the guards pressed his head to the floor.

Mr Gonzalez claims that the impact damaged his right eye, and says that he still has a blood clot and blurry vision more than two months after the incident, following his deportation to El Salvador.

He is not alone in reporting excessive force used by staff at the centre and two other detainees who both use wheelchairs told the Intercept that they were thrown from them when they asked for medical help.

One of the men, Hugh Tinarwo, from Zimbabwe, was shot by pepper-ball ammunition more than 60 times by guards, and was later thrown to the ground out of his wheelchair and pinned up against a wall.

He says that after he was thrown out of his wheelchair, a guard attempted to drag him away to solitary confinement and his colleague pushed his head onto the ground, while another pressed on his neck.

Mr Tinarwo uses a wheelchair due to an injury to his back sustained before arriving in the US, but he told The Intercept that the pain became much worse after the incident.

He said that he now gets other people to push his wheelchair for him, and added: “Every time I push myself, I can feel the disc, like it’s ripping.”

Mr Tinarwo, alongside other former detainees at the Stewart Detention Centre, has filed a lawsuit with the Southern Poverty Law Centre and Asian Americans Advancing Justice, that asks for medically vulnerable immigrants at the facility to be released, so that they are not denied necessary medical help.

CoreCivic spokesperson Ryan Gustin sent a statement to the Intercept, where he wrote that the company is “committed to providing high-quality healthcare to all of those entrusted to our care at Stewart Detention Centre,” but said he could not comment on specific reports.

He added that “the claim that detainees are forced to wait to receive medical attention is patently false,” and added that “all persons in ICE custody receive all appropriate medical treatment.”