This week a coalition of immigrant rights organizations called for the closure of the Baker Immigration Detention Center in Florida as part of a series of complaints about the authorities’ treatment of people arriving from the southern border of the United States. Among the complaints there is sexual abuse, rape of a woman, lack of medical attention.
In the midst of the activists’ complaint, which took place in Orlando, several testimonies of immigrants who were in the retention center were screened. This occurred outside the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Broward County.
According to data compiled by the Shut Down Baker Coalition, the whistleblowing organization, more than 185 cases have already been filed against Baker. Among the complaints of those affected are mainly medical negligence, unsanitary conditions and sexual harassment.
“The conditions there are inhumane (…) The detainees suffer physical abuse to the point that there are people who have been beaten while handcuffed, and others who have had to undergo surgery after being beaten,” said Isabel Ruano, organizer campaign of the organization Immigrant Action Alliance to the news agency EFE.
Recently the state of Florida proposed that you can go to prison for transporting an undocumented immigrant child to school, review of hospital records, prohibition of certain driver’s licenses, extreme vigilance in hiring. These rules are driven by the Republican majority in the state Congress.
The bills sponsored by Gov. Ron DeSantis “seek to severely restrict community IDs and invalidate certain out-of-state driver’s licenses.”
With information from EFE
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