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Gassed, Stripped, & Thrown in the Hole

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RCJC deputies gassed a man and left him naked in a cell for four days — but can anyone hold the Sheriff’s Office accountable?

There is only one Richmond City entity institution that wields a near-absolute power over people’s lives – only one tasked with clothing, feeding, caging, controlling, and providing medical care for hundreds of people, with no effective governmental oversight. This institution, the Richmond City Sheriff’s Office (RCSO), manages a jail that contains some 700 people. Whether through incompetence or by design, its COVID-19 response has been, effectively, to punish the people whose lives the law has placed in its hands. 

Gilberto Dejesus probably knows this better than anyone. After being tear-gassed and maced on Saturday, August 29th, deputies took him to the “drunk-tank,” ordered him to strip, and locked him in a isolation cell with no sleeping mat, running water, sink or toilet – only “a hole in the floor that smelled from past odors of other people” – according to his account. Someone had covered the window in his door with a mat, preventing him from seeing outside. His skin burned from the mace and tear-gas; his penis burned. He pressed the distress button in his cell repeatedly… No one came. 

Dejesus would spend four more days naked in a cell with no amenities and more than a week in isolation total. “They put me in a cell that they knew I was not supposed to be in,” Dejesus told RVA Mag. “I told one of the highest majors, Major Lawson. I been telling Major Aines, Internal Affairs. But nobody’s trying to talk to me, and every time I write a grievance, my grievance is going straight to the people that did it to me.”

Unchecked Power

Amid recent calls to defund the police and legislative efforts to increase police accountability in Virginia, no clear policy demands have materialized to address the lack of oversight on local sheriffs. The pressures and scrutiny brought on by recent COVID-19 outbreaks in jails, however, reveal just how much power we place in the hands of our sheriffs when we elect them every four years. 

Almost every jail in the Richmond area has experienced a significant outbreak since the pandemic began in March. The Chesterfield County Jail reached a 16 percent infection rate in June; 200 people in Henrico Jail tested positive for the coronavirus in July; RCJC and Pamunkey Regional Jail reported over 100 COVID-positive test results in September, and, in August, RVA Mag received unconfirmed reports that an RCJC inmate contracted COVID and died shortly after being released.

Since then, reported infection-rates in RCJC and Pamunkey have decreased dramatically — zero people in RCJC are now COVID-positive, according to an RCJC spokesperson — but incarcerated people and advocates say containing RCJC’s outbreak came with a high cost. Throughout the jail, people have faced lockdowns intended to combat COVID and address chronic understaffing. Many have been confined to small cells, alone or with a cellmate, 23 hours a day for weeks at a time.

These harsh quarantine measures — some of which may meet the UN critiera for torture — fit into a larger pattern. Reports from incarcerated people and advocates suggest the Richmond City Sheriff’s Office (RSCO) has failed to consistently implement low-risk safety procedures, such as releasing pretrial detainees or sanitizing commons spaces multiple times daily. Instead, RSCO has relied on harmful, even life-threatening, measures to reduce COVID’s spread and maintain order inside RCJC.

“They honestly tried to break me”

Gilberto Dejesus had two reasons for refusing to enter his cell on August 28th. First, he was having problems with his cellmate — he worried they would end up fighting — and, second, he had been moved to pod 5G from a COVID-positive pod and believed he was infectious. Rather than comply with deputies’ orders, Dejesus chose to remain outside his cell for 24 hours, preferring to be charged with misconduct. 

On Saturday evening, over a dozen people joined Dejesus in protest. The protesters refused to lock down and asked to speak with the jail’s management. They were concerned that deputies were transferring exposed individuals on to 5G, which was COVID-negative at the time. In response, the jail cut off the water and ventilation and tear-gassed the entire pod — over 50 people, including bystanders with asthma, bronchitis, and other pre-existing conditions — using gas grenades intended for outdoor use only. Some inmates received medical care shortly after the incident and were allowed to shower within 24 hours. For Dejesus, however, the real nightmare was yet to begin. 

“After a while,” said Dejesus, “they came back, cuffed me alone, and dragged me out of my cell. I couldn’t see nothing but only could remember the Captain Richardson telling me I was never going to get out of the hole for this incident. I sat in a room in medical burning for a while … I cried for so long.”

No nurse ever came to help him, Dejesus says. Instead, deputies allowed him to rinse his eyes with a bottle of Dasani water. He told them his penis burned and his hands were “on fire.” After this, he says, six deputies escorted him to a pod known as the ‘drunk tank’ and locked him in an isolation unit with no mattress, toilet, or sink. His face and eyes had started burning again; he begged for a shower. The deputies ignored, he says, his request and left.

It wasn’t until shift change at 7pm on Sunday, Dejesus says, that a deputy named Mutagh finally took him to the nurse. He told her he was “burning, couldn’t breathe, had shortness of breath and chest pains.” According to Dejesus, a deputy named Woods “cussed [Mutagh] out for taking me to shower, showing obvious reasons for me to believe he had orders to punish me excessively.” The following morning the same Deputy Woods denied him food at breakfast, Dejesus says. After that, Dejesus remained in the cell naked without a sleeping mat or other amenities for two more days, until Tuesday evening. When he emerged from solitary days later, he says, he had lost all his possessions and his $300 of commissary funds had mysteriously disappeared.

In the end, Dejesus’ concerns about spreading COVID to 5G seem to have been justified. While he was in the hole, RCJC employees tested him for COVID-19. Though he has since recovered, the results came back positive.

RCJC interior. Photo via CGL Companies

“Either you go in your cell or I’m going to put you in your cell”

Not long after Dejesus was released from solitary, RCJC deputies used chemical agents on inmates yet again. Angelo Long, an inmate on pod 6G, says deputies sprayed mace through the slot of his locked cell before taking him to the hole. Skin burning, he sat in isolation for two days before receiving medical attention or a shower, he says — “Two days with whatever that was sitting on my skin. I had these big black spots on my arm. You got to lick your lip because your lip dry or something, you can taste that spray on your lip.”

The trouble in 6G started around 4pm on September 16th, when deputies initiated an unexpected lockdown. Frustrated by this change, a group of inmates refused to enter their cells until jail staff provided an explanation for the order, according to a petition signed by six incarcerated people present. “Me personally, I got an open case right now,” said Emanual Crawford, one of the signatories. “I’m still fighting. Do you think I was able to reach out to my lawyer? No. Then you got some people who’s trying to bond out. Can you bond out? No. Give me a reason so I can understand what’s going on. Show me the routines so I can get on track and know how to call my peoples or call my fam.”

Instead of explaining the order, Crawford said, jail higher-ups sent in dozens of deputies in riot gear, some equipped with glass shields, mace canisters, or bean-bag guns. “Either you go in your cell or I’m going to put you in your cell,” he recalled Major Hunt, a high-ranking RCJC official, telling the inmates. According to Crawford, the pod did not learn the reason for the lockdown — to increase social distancing — until days later. 

Faced with RCJC’s show of force, Crawford and others began returning to their cells. But this didn’t save them from the pepper spray fumes which, Crawford says, spread quickly through the pod. (“Everybody coughing. You could hear coughs come from damn near like twenty cells.”) The water had been turned off in the pod, according to Crawford, so he was unable to drink water or wash his eyes out. Half the people who requested medical attention were seen shortly after the incident, according to Crawford. The other half, Crawford included, never received care.

“I was sick for a month and I didn’t get nothing for nothing,”

Angelo Long, the man put in solitary after the macing, says he was targeted by officers for criticizing the jail’s COVID-19 response. 

Back in July, Long says, he contracted coronavirus while cleaning COVID-positive pods without proper protective equipment: “This ain’t one of them COVID-positive pods, is it?” he recalled asking a deputy jokingly. “The sergeant looked at me and was like, ‘Yes, it actually is.’ I said, ‘Whoa, why the hell you bring us to clean these COVID-positive pods? We don’t have no biohazards suits, no nothing. Why they ain’t call somebody professional from the outside?’ ”

Three days after cleaning that first pod, Long started feeling sick. “All my food, like a honey bun or something, it’d smell like ammonia or bleach,” he said. “I just knew something weren’t right. Sometimes I go and I spit out blood.” Severe headaches, diarrhea, and cold-like symptoms shortly followed. According to Long, he cleaned at least four more pods before being diagnosed with COVID. His janitorial work, he believes, helped spread COVID-19 throughout the jail. “I was sick for a month and I didn’t get nothing for nothing,” Long said. “I got a Tylenol probably like a month later for my back pain that was I was still having.”

During the confrontation on September 16th, as he walked back to his cell, Long criticized the deputies for their irresponsibility. “You put me and a couple more people on those COVID-positive pods, and we cleaned those pods and brought that shit back and got everybody else sick,” he recalls telling them. 

After this exchange, he locked down in his cell. Five or ten minutes later, two deputies came to his cell to take him to “the hole.” While one deputy was speaking to him, the other sprayed a chemical agent, likely mace, through his cell’s tray slot, he says. “Immediately I started coughing. My eyes got real teary, I couldn’t breathe anymore, I had to get up out that room,” Long said. “My chest started hurting like hell. It burnt my skin.” Afterwards, Long says, even the first deputy objected, telling his co-worker that the macing had been “unnecessary.”

With the mace still burning his skin, Long was placed in solitary confinement. Two days went by before he got a shower; he spent a week in isolation but was never charged with any misconduct. Long, who has spent over year in pre-trial detention for a non-violent felony charge, says he feels his actions have turned him into target inside RCJC. “I guess because I’m always speaking up for the whole pod, or I stand up against them -– not even in a violent way, just speaking my mind -– it’s like I’m a threat,” said Long. “Seems like every time they come down on me now, they always come down on me to hurt me, man.”

“All I want now is accountability”

After being released from solitary, Gilberto Dejesus filed a grievance form. It cited the RCJC handbook’s “Conditions and Limitations on Punishment” and described how deputies denied him medical care and locked him naked in a cell for days. When he received a response to the grievance some days later, it came from the very same deputy who dragged him to the ‘drunk tank’ in the first place: Captain Richardson. In his reply, Richardson accused Dejesus of inciting a riot, refusing to lock in, refusing to stand down, and “threatening to go to the Sheriff’s home and harm her.” 

Otherwise, Dejesus says, his complaints have largely been ignored. 

Angelo Dejesus’ mother, Claudette Archer, used to work in corrections at a juvenile facility. After her experience as a corrections officer, she said, she is not surprised by anything that happens in the system. “At the end of the day, they’re going to stick together. They’re going to cover their tracks,” she said. Still, Archer can also see things from the law enforcement perspective: “You have all these riots going on around the city, protesting and everything, and they’re tired,” she said. “But then you have some that’s just point-blank nasty and rude, and they enjoy mistreating the inmates. Some people just enjoy being brutal.”

All Dejesus wants now, he says, is accountability for the brutal treatment he endured. “I’m getting held accountable for what I’m doing, but are you?” said Dejesus, who is incarcerated for failing a drug test in violation of his parole. “I keep coming down here for minor mistakes, as far as my addiction. I don’t ever get no break, just because I’m a young black man with tattoos.”

According to Archer, trouble and racial profiling have plagued Dejesus ever since he was a boy, when officers classified his group of friends as a gang. “Chino has always looked out for people,” Archer said, using his nickname. “But I guess the officers see it as something different. They feel that he’s starting trouble. At the end of the day? You have to stand for something, or you’re gonna fall for anything.”

Top Photo via CGL Companies

The Richmond City Jail’s COVID-19 Response? “Torture.”

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People incarcerated at Richmond City Justice Center say a recent tear-gassing by law enforcement endangered their lives.

On August 29th, Tobias Hill was sitting in his cell at the Richmond City Justice Center (RCJC) when the gas began to creep beneath the door. He didn’t know what was happening outside, but as the tear gas burned his eyes and burrowed into his lungs, he did reach one conclusion. He was going to die.

“I’m screaming, ‘Help! I’m ready to pass out, I’m ready to die! Can you please help?'” said Hill, who has multiple pre-existing conditions and mild claustrophobia. “Three of the deputies look at me and just kept walking. I tell them I have asthma, I can’t breathe, I have bronchitis. They just kept going. Didn’t pay me no attention.”

Hill is one of about fifty people who sheriff’s deputies gassed with weapons intended for outdoor use, after cutting off his ventilation and water. Accounts from eyewitnesses suggest the gassing was an act of excessive and unprovoked aggression, one designed to inflict maximum physical and emotional harm on Pod 5G’s inmate population, many of whom were trapped inside their cells.

“I think the guards feel like, because we in cells that mimic a cage, we supposed to be animals or something,” said Theron Moseley, who authored a petition and letter on behalf his fellow inmates in 5G. “We not. We human just like them. We got nieces, we got nephews, we got kids, we got mothers. We human.”

According to Hill, the gassing was the worst thing that has ever happened to him in his life. “I was stuck in this little-ass cell not knowing what the fuck was going on,” he said. “I’m traumatized, to be honest with you. I thought I was going to die.”

After a moment, he reconsiders: “I knew I was going to die.”

The first page of 5G’s petition, titled “Incarcerated Lives Matter!”

“Legitimate questions”

The conflict that would leave Tobias Hill locked in his cell, screaming for his life, began with a level-headed conversation, says Moseley. At around seven that evening, he and about ten others were asking about the coronavirus protocols at RCJC, where over 100 people (13.5 percent of the jail’s population) have recently tested positive for COVD-19.

The group had two primary concerns. First, they were upset about the handling of recent fever on the pod — the individual with the fever had been moved to quarantine, but his cellmate continued living among the general population, according to Moseley. And, second, they did not understand why people from pods with COVID cases were being transferred to their pod, 5G, which had zero reported cases. Such transfers had occurred multiple times in recent weeks, and at least one of the individuals transferred tested positive for COVID-19 ten days beforehand. He did not test negative until after his arrival in 5G, an anonymous source confirmed.

According to Moseley’s letter, in the lead-up to the gassing, protesters informed Sergeant Brown and Lt. Branch that they would lockdown “as soon as the administration start following proper quarantine protocols” by removing individuals coming from pods already exposed to COVID-19. When Branch and Brown were unable to address these concerns, the group demanded to speak with their superior, Major Hunt. Hunt did come to the pod, but he refused to discuss the jail’s COVID-19 protocols; instead, he ordered the protesters to lockdown in their cells and left. A little while later, a deputy came on the intercom and ordered people to stand by their cells. Everyone complied, according to Moseley.

Then the ventilation cut off.

“Man, we’re going to have to take this now because they don’t want to answer our questions, legitimate questions,” Moseley described thinking as they waited.

A slot beside the door to the sally port opened. A tear-gas grenade flew into the pod, spraying smoke. It was quickly followed by two more, according to Moseley; then Sheriff’s deputies in riot gear entered, and soon it was almost impossible to see.

“The entire pod was smoked out,” Moseley said. “It went from a casual conversation, us asking questions, to all chaos.”

RCJC interior. Photo via CGL Companies

“There was no reason for all that they did”

While Hill banged against the door of his cell, screaming for help, Moseley and the other protesters attempted to comply with the deputies’ orders and enter their cells. (“I’m standing in front of my cell, waving my hands with a couple of other guys that weren’t even protesting,” said Moseley.) When the door did not open, he ran to the second floor of the pod, searching for an open cell where he could evade the gas. Soon after, he found himself crammed into cell #26 with at least five other people. (One of the men in the cell had severe asthma and later went to medical to use an oxygen mask, multiple sources confirm.)

Once in the cell, the men found the water had been shut off. According to Moseley, he and others had to dip their t-shirts in the toilet in order to soothe their stinging eyes, and one person drank water out of the toilet to clear his airways. As if this weren’t enough, a deputy outside also sprayed mace beneath the door, according to both Moseley and Travis Brown, the man assigned to the cell.

“There was definitely no reason for them to come and shoot more gas in there or none of that,” said Brown, who was outside cleaning the pod during the conversation that led up to the gassing. “It wasn’t even no threat inside the jail. Usually when you use tear gas and mace, it’s a problem with a riot. There was no reason for all that they did.”

In the midst of the chaos, Moseley and Travis Brown attempted to leave cell #26. On stepping outside, however, they were greeted with a face full of pepper spray by Lieutenant Brown and Sergeant Branch, despite Travis Brown’s attempts to de-escalate the situation.

“As soon as I came out the cell, I tried to go down on my knees like you usually do in any situation in prison to let them know you’ve basically given up or let them know y’all got the authority,” he said. “I tried to go down on one knee but they still maced me anyway.”

“We had to sleep in tear gas and pepper spray”

What angers Tobias Hill even more than the gassing itself, he said, was the way staff abandoned inmates in its aftermath, leaving people gasping and burning in their cells for at least fifteen minutes. (“They literally left us,” he said. “Couldn’t see no one in sight.”) Once staff did return, Hill said the two guards walked right past him, ignoring his cries for help.

After a while, the guards let people access an open-air rec area in order to air out the pod. Though people were given clean sheets to sleep on that night, according to Moseley, they were not allowed to clean the vomit from their cells or take showers for 24 hours afterward. Hill said his wait to shower was even longer — three days — and that his skinned burned the entire time.

“Basically,” he said, “we had to sleep in tear gas and pepper spray.”

Label of the tear-gas grenade model used in the gassing. It was found on the ground afterward and provided by an anonymous source.

After the gassing, someone in 5G found a sticker on the floor with the name of the grenade used. According to a description provided by a retailer, the weapon used — a 5231 Triple Phaser CS Smoke Grenade — is “specifically for outdoor use.”

As many experts have pointed out in the wake of Black Lives Matter uprisings, tear gas is far more dangerous than most law enforcement agencies let on. Even when used outside at protests, chemical agents can have long-term health consequences for anyone in the vicinity, including individuals in nearby houses. In addition, deploying corrosive, inhalable chemicals can raise the risk of coronavirus spread, compromise the body’s resistance to infection, and increase the severity of mild infections. Even outdoors, tear gas and COVID are “a recipe for disaster,” medical researcher Sven Eric Jordt told NPR.

A punitive approach to quarantine

The gassing and medical neglect that Hill, Moseley, Brown, and others experienced are not isolated problems. They are consistent with numerous reports of disorganization, repression, and medical irresponsibility that incarcerated people, activists, and local lawyers have described taking place inside the jail in recent months. Before the outbreak, according to Yohance Whitaker, an organizer with Legal Aid Justice Center, the jail’s COVID-19 protocols were “almost nonexistent.” Now, RCJC’s primary strategy for containing the virus is to put infected or exposed individuals into solitary confinement, often for twenty-three or even twenty-four hours a day. “Just being in isolation is a horrible experience,” Whitaker said. “It’s taxing psychologically and emotionally and physically.”

Those who resist such measures have been subdued by force on multiple occasions. Most recently, on Pod 6G, people were pepper-sprayed for refusing to enter lockdown. The details of the macing incident, according to Julea Seliaviski of RVA26 — an activist in close communication with an eyewitness — are disturbingly similar to the gassing of 5g.

At around 4pm on September 16th, according to Seliaviski, a group of people on 6G refused to enter their cells because they wanted a superior officer to come answer questions about new lockdown procedures, which allowed people to leave their cells for only half the day. Rather than address protesters’ concerns, a team of officers in riot gear entered and sprayed mace from the second story balcony, spreading chemical agents throughout the pod. As in 5G, the water was cut off, according to Seliaviski. People could not wash the pepper spray off their skin until the water was turned on again, at around 10am the following morning.

When asked about recent uses of chemical agents, a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office, Stacey Bagby, told RVA Mag, “It is the policy of the Richmond City Sheriff’s Office to use the methods warranted for gaining compliance of resistant or aggressive inmates, especially during incidents when other inmates and/or staff may be at risk.”

Someone incarcerated in another pod in RCJC, who wished to remain anonymous, informed RVA Mag that the sheriff has implemented the same lockdown procedures used in 6G — half the pod out in the morning, half out in the afternoon. Initially, according to the source, the deputies told people the reduced mobility was a health precaution implemented because of an infection on the pod. Even after the infected individual was quarantined and the entire pod tested negative, however, the half-day lockdown was put back in place — this time for “security reasons,” the source was told by a guard.

“When we go in there at four today, we won’t be back out till four tomorrow,” said the source. “So that’s twenty-four hours straight that we haven’t talked to our families. And there’s a pandemic in the world right now.”

RVA Mag has also received unconfirmed reports that a man recently contracted COVID in RCJC and died. An anonymous source close to the matter said the deceased was about sixty, had pre-existing health conditions, and was a “poster kid” for COVID susceptibility. Though the individual was having difficulty with breathing and speaking, jail officers refused his lawyer’s complaints, according to the source, and later died in a hospital. On August 31st, Sheriff Irving told WTVR CBS 6 news that no one had died from COVID in the jail or while in RCJC custody, leaving open the possibility that someone may have died shortly after being released. According to the anonymous source, the deceased was a pre-trial detainee. This means, if these unconfirmed reports are true, he died without ever getting his day in court.

A spokesperson for the Richmond City Health District said the RCHD is not able to comment about reports of a recent death for confidentiality reasons.

Cameron Fobbs, one of the petition signatories, participating in BLM protest.

Seeking justice for “the voiceless”

A common theme among the people interviewed from 5g was sense of outrage and surprise at the degree of force levelled against them. Moseley, Fobbs, Brown, and Hill all insist the protesters did nothing to instigate violence. “We talk about our situation,” Moseley said, describing his pod’s relationship with RCJC deputies. “We don’t fight each other. We not doing all that. So I’m trying to figure out: If we give all that respect, why can’t we get at least some respect back?”

Rather than suppress resistance, the jail’s unwarranted aggression may have galvanized it. Moseley, Hill, Brown, and 32 others have all signed a petition accusing RCJC of excessive force and requesting legal representation in a lawsuit against the jail. The petition is entitled “Incarcerated Lives Matter!” and the letter, which describes the gassing as “torture,” is signed: “Theron T. Moseley and the Voiceless.”

“To say that the pain we all felt was excruciating will be an understatement,” the letter says. “The feeling of being helpless and not being able to control your breathing is terrifying. That pain was so unbearable at times that I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

Yasmin Sadrudin was on a call with her partner, Cameron Fobbs — one of the petition’s signatories — during part of the gassing. After the phone cut off, she didn’t hear back from him for 24 hours, and was left to imagine the worst. “It was infuriating because the jail kept acting like nothing happened, so then you’re not even given true information on the well being of someone you love,” Sadrudin said in a text. Fobbs was arrested and incarcerated in late July while protesting at Marcus David-Peters Circle; he was on probation for a prior offense at the time.

“His mistakes do not deserve the risk of catching a deadly disease by force,” she said. “All anyone is asking for is that human lives be valued.”

When asked to comment for this article, the Mayor’s Office referred RVA Mag to the Sheriff’s Office.

Top Photo via CGL Companies

Deadly Greed

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In Farmville, at the immigrant detention center with the nation’s worst COVID outbreak, company higher-ups lead a “double life,” affecting good citizenship while monetizing the abuse of Virginia’s most vulnerable.

Since their relationship began in 2010, Edwin García Rogel had loved María Mayorquín’s four children from a previous marriage as if they were his own. He drove them to school, bought presents for their birthdays, and dressed up like Santa Claus for the family on Christmas day. When Mayorquín’s health deteriorated in 2013, García cared for and supported her, driving her to appointments with her specialist and picking up the slack around the house. Until the early February morning when an ICE Officer entered Mayorquín and García’s Alexandria home and took García away, Mayorquín told me, her husband had always been there for her. Now, however, he is awaiting deportation in ICA-Farmville — an immigrant prison with the highest rates of COVID-19 in the country — and Mayorquín feels powerless to help him.

“He’s experienced fever, vomiting, fainting,” Mayorquín said of her husband, who has tested positive for COVID-19 in a facility where 90 percent of detainees are COVID-positive, and one man with coronavirus recently died. “The guards don’t do anything. All they do is say, ‘Go back to sleep and everything will be fine.'”

Edwin García Rogel and María Mayorquín. Photo via Devuelvanme Edwin/Facebook

“The worst place he’d ever been”

Though Immigration Centers of America’s (ICA) checkered history begins far earlier, the story of ICA-Farmville’s staggeringly poor pandemic response starts in late March, when a detained man with asthma and diabetes first exhibited symptoms of COVID-19. As symptoms spread, over 100 prisoners went on hunger strike to protest the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), testing, and adequate medical care. ICA responded by placing the strike’s organizers in “administrative segregation.” Then, on June 2, ICE transferred 74 people to ICA from hotspot detention facilities in Florida and Arizona, and all hell broke loose.

Throughout June, the virus spread rapidly through the facility. It took until July 2 for staff to test all of ICA’s 366 detainees, and when results were in, only 19 tests came back negative. 22 guards tested positive and a handful of ICA detainees were hospitalized. One of them, an elderly Canadian named James Hill, died in ICA custody on August 6 after testing positive for COVID-19. As a non-violent felon, Hill had spent 14 years in a federal prison, but he told his daughter Verity Hill that ICA-Farmville was “the worst place he’d ever been.”

“I just can’t believe they didn’t isolate the sick people,” Verity Hill told The Vancouver Courier. “I think they just think some people deserve to die.”

Four plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit say their requests for medical assistance at ICA have fallen on deaf ears. ICA staff waited days to test the plaintiffs even though all were experiencing common COVID-19 symptoms, including fever, aches, coughing, and difficulty breathing, according to a court declaration filed by the prosecution. Staff also denied the plaintiffs medical care for days on end. One of them, Perez Garcia, was quarantined in an isolation unit because of his severe symptoms. The others were only given Tylenol as treatment.

“Many folks have expressed fear because they don’t receive care,” said Danny Cendejas from the immigrant rights group La ColectiVA. “Instead, if people are sick and confirmed, they would be placed in the hole, in isolation, which is also psychological violence.”

Court evidence and reports from advocates also suggest an ongoing disregard for COVID-19 precautions and basic sanitation in the facility. Detained individuals eat in dining areas that do not easily accommodate physical distancing, sleep close together in crowded rooms full of stacked bunks, and are sometimes served expired or bug-infested food. When they resist staff, their protests are sometimes met with blasts of pepper spray. One detainee described watching people clean up their own vomit and diarrhea to prevent the stench from lingering in the dormitories.

“It’s amazing to me that this would not have been done in a facility, which, because of the large inmate population, should have been on clear notice that you’ve got to have people distanced in order to prevent spread of the virus,” said Judge Leonie Brinkema during a recent court hearing.

The community cost of criminalizing immigrants

About six years ago, Maria Mayorquín’s health began deteriorating. Her platelet levels dropped, her hands changed color, and it became difficult to breathe. While hospitalized in Alexandria, she underwent a splenectomy and a blood transfusion — “15 bags of blood,” Mayorquín told me. Around three years later, a doctor diagnosed Mayorquín with Lupus, an autoimmune illness that causes the body to attack its own organs. She was unable to work with her condition, making García the breadwinner for the family. Six months into his incarceration, Mayorquín’s anger and grief are compounded by her ever-growing debts.

“What am I supposed to do without him?” she asked, her voice breaking. “I am not going to be able to live without him in this country, paying so many bills, paying so much rent. I won’t be able to pay all of it. I want them to give me my husband back. Please, I am begging ICE to free my husband.”

Mayorquín, a US citizen, does not know what she will do if her husband is deported to El Salvador. She fears the violence there — violence seeded by U.S. foreign policy — and doubts she will find the medical care she needs if she moves abroad. In the meantime, she has started a Facebook campaign to free her husband called Devuelvánme Edwin.

Rev. Arismendi at a protest in Northern Virginia. Photo via NIJC

According to Reverend Leonina Arismendi Zarkovic, a co-founder and organizer for Santos en Virginia, stories like Mayorquín’s are heartbreakingly common. “It leaves you in a space of utter desperation,” said Arismendi, whose partner was incarcerated for a non-immigration-related offense for three years.

As people watch their neighbors taken away, fear spreads through immigrant communities. “[People] are afraid to go to work, they’re afraid to go to the doctor,” said Arismendi, who also has lived experience as an undocumented person. “There have been times in my life where I didn’t call the police when I was having domestic abuse being done to me by my ex-husband. Because I knew that if the police came, they will put me in handcuffs quicker than him, because I didn’t have papers.”

A Long History of Abuse

Most of ICA’s failures in response to the pandemic did not begin with the coronavirus. As ICE reports recently acquired by the Advancement Project corroborate, ICA has a long history of medical neglect and abuse. In 2011, a staff person was crushed to death by guards during a training simulation. Later that same year, a detained man died after nurses failed to take his vital signs. In addition, the recently released reports describe several incidents where guards used pepper-spray or restrained prisoners without justification, including an incident where a guard pepper-sprayed a detainee in the face “while he was in full restraints and confined to a medical isolation cell.”

When I emailed ICE to ask about current and past issues at ICA, Acting Field Office Director Matthew Munroe replied with a statement: “The agency provides comprehensive medical care to all individuals in ICE custody and uses a multi-layered inspections and oversight program to ensure its facilities meet a threshold of care, in addition to abiding by standards set forth in the National Detention Standards and the Performance-Based National Detention Standards,” it read, in part. “ICA Farmville has never failed an inspection.”

But according to Jesse Franzblau from the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), ICE reports are highly unreliable. An NIJC analysis of 2017 data found that every ICE jail and prison has passed every inspection since 2012, “even at facilities where multiple people had died, some as a result of medical neglect.” A 2018 Inspector General report, informatively titled “ICE’s Inspections and Monitoring of Detention Facilities Do Not Lead to Sustained Compliance or Systemic Improvements,” confirms that ICE inspections more often serve to obscure and perpetuate abuse than to address it. By ICE employees’ own admission, inspections were “useless” and “very, very, very difficult to fail.”

The sign at ICA-Farmville’s front entrance. Photo via ICA-Farmville.com

The immigrant-detention complex

Though most people associate the for-profit detention boom with state and federal prisons, immigrant prisons are a fast-growing sector of the country’s private-prison market. Currently, around 70 percent of ICE detention centers are operated by for-profit companies like ICA. Many ICE-operated detention centers also have concerning infection rates, but of the ICE facilities with over 150 COVID cases, every single one is privately operated.

Like other for-profit prison enterprises, Immigration Centers of America targets economically struggling communities for possible detention centers. In 2008, when ICA opened for business, the company promised to bring jobs to Farmville, a community left reeling by the recession and a decline in manufacturing jobs. In the decade that followed, ICA created over 100 local jobs and brought in around $200,000 in yearly income for the town.

Through their contract with ICE, ICA and the Town of Farmville profit handsomely — together they billed ICE for around $24 million dollars in 2019, according to Franzblau — but a number of sub-contractors, lobbyists, and sympathetic politicians also get their share of the pie. In the twelve years since the company started, ICA and its subcontractors have invested considerable sums of money in candidates and lobbying consultants on both sides of the aisle. Former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli received thousands of dollars directly from both ICA and its current CEO. Democratic state delegate Alfonso Lopez received wages from ICA from 2013 to 2016, and Armor Correctional Health Services, an ICA subcontractor, contributed $25,000 to Governor Ralph Northam’s Inaugural Committee in 2018.

Until recently, it seems, Farmville residents and elected officials have mostly been content to watch ICA and its subcontractors make a killing while the Town collects its share through its agreement with ICE and ICA. “It’s been a quiet place out on the outskirts of Farmville that you really don’t hear much about,” Town Councilperson Greg Cole said.

Coronavirus fears, however, may have disturbed this equilibrium. Jacqueline James Hamlette, a Cumberland County resident who lives 20 minutes from the prison, told me her humanitarian concerns are compounded by her fears of employees spreading COVID in the community. She no longer drives into Farmville to shop, she said, because she worries about her immuno-compromised son. “I would like for the Center to be held accountable for their actions and to stop downplaying that severity of this,” said Hamlette. “That’s extremely important to me.”

At a recent City Council meting, Cole expressed similar frustrations, and said he feared for the safety of residents at The Woodland, a local retirement home at which he is President and CEO. ICA-Farmville’s Director Jeffrey Crawford tried to calm such fears, telling the Council that recent media accounts were overblown.”We understand the claims of the detainees on their face seem horrible,” he said, “but I can tell you that I have been present at the facility through the entire ordeal, and it was not a dire situation.”

Free Them All protesters outside Ken Newsome’s house, July 31. Photo by Alex Matzke

Pharisees of the first order

Since its inception, a series of prominent Richmond-area businesspeople have rotated through leadership positions at ICA. Many of these individuals are involved in the philanthropic or faith community in central Virginia. Current CEO Russell Harper lives in Henrico and serves on the boards of various local non-profits, while Warren Coleman — former CFO and current CEO of an ICA transportation subcontractor — is President and CEO of the JMU Foundation. Jeffrey Crawford, ICA’s Director, is a pastor and podcast contributor for All Peoples Church in Lynchburg. On All Peoples’ biweekly podcast, you can hear the man who described ICA’s 90% infection as “not dire” discussing “The Love of God.”

“They’re at church listening to the same sermon and the same scriptures that here at Santos we heard,” Arismendi said of ICA’s investors. “And Jesus said, ‘We have to set the captives free, we have to bring good news to the poor, we have to bind the brokenhearted.'”

On Tuesday morning, two local activists groups, Free Them All Virginia and Drop The Charges RVA, launched a social media campaign asking people to contact organizations affiliated with major ICA investors. The campaign’s targets are Harper, Coleman, and original ICA minority investor Ken Newsome, who allegedly divested his shares of the company in January.

“These are people in our community that are living a double life,” Arismendi said of ICA executives like Coleman and Harper. “You seen their homes? They nice. They’re comfortable. They don’t have to give a second thought about people eating food with maggots in it, or choking to death because they can’t breathe. They just go home and they extract themselves from that with the luxury that this for-profit flesh machine has created.”

From the quaint downtown of Farmville, with its town clock and prim red-brick storefronts, to the scenic luxury of Harper and Newsome’s million-dollar waterfront vacation homes overlooking the mouth of the Rappahanock River in White Stone, the double-life Arismendi is describing is hard to fathom. It feels like something out of a David Lynch film, where grotesque violence and cheery suburban affluence live side by side. In White Stone, VA, the Chesapeake Bay glistens, deep and green, along the shore where the Harpers and the Newsomes pose for photo-ops. Meanwhile, María Mayorquín and thousands like her don’t know if they will ever see their loved ones again.

RVA Mag reached out to the Farmville Town Manager for comment but was informed by the Town’s communications office that he was on vacation. We contacted ICA and were referred to ICE’s media spokesperson.

Top Photo via CAIR Coalition April Lawsuit

Prison Reform Advocates Call for Change to Solitary Confinement in Virginia 

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David Smith doesn’t cut the figure of a man who’s been to prison, let alone one who spent more than a year in solitary confinement.

Dressed in a button-up white shirt, with tan khakis and a blue blazer, the impression Smith gives is more of a white collar worker. This impression isn’t out of place in the homely lower level of the Bethlehem Lutheran Church, which served as the setting for a forum on Virginia solitary confinement on October 27. For Smith, this misconception is one of many aspects of a long-standing issue that prison-reform advocates want the state to address. 

“When I meet with a Senator or Delegate, and I say ‘Yeah, hey, my name’s David, I spent sixteen-and-a-half months in solitary,’ the jaws drop,” Smith said. “And all of a sudden, it’s no longer that guy from the bad side — it’s ‘This could be my son, this could be my brother right here.’ So that begins to change the conversation.” 

For Virginia, one of the most recent shifts in that conversation came in May with a 67-page report from the ACLU of Virginia. The report detailed the extent of “the negative impacts of solitary confinement as practiced in Virginia, the systemic difficulties prisoners have in escaping it and returning to the general population, and the State’s failure to exclude individuals with serious mental health problems from solitary confinement.” 

The report was preceded by a letter to Governor Ralph Northam calling on him to sign an executive order that would limit the practice in Virginia. This request was joined by more, urging for state action from multiple advocacy and religious groups in the weeks following the report’s publication. These came largely through the Interfaith Action for Human Rights (IAHR), a coalition whose member organizations reside in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, and for which Smith serves as a representative. 

As detailed by Kimberly Jenkins-Snodgrass, Vice-chairperson of the IAHR, the lack of forward movement on this matter from state officials leaves many prisoners subject to a system of incarceration that includes “putting inmates in a cell that’s basically the size of a parking space.” 

“When an individual is put into solitary confinement, they are participating in an illegal court,” Snodgrass said. “You have security guards with a high-school education looking at inmates, giving them time — in some instances, more time than a judge gives them in a courtroom. And this is the issue.” 

On October 27, Smith moderated a panel of speakers that included former inmate, author, and community advocate Tommy Cox; Jenkins-Snodgrass; and Bill Farrar and Mateo Gasparotto of ACLU-VA. Jenkins-Snodgrass was open about effects that “the United States’ best-kept secret” had for her son, Kevin D. Snodgrass Jr., his health, and a loving family. 

“When we say ‘stop solitary confinement,’ we’re not saying open the floodgates and let everybody out of jail,” Snodgrass said. “We’re just saying to treat them like human beings while they’re in there.” 

The details of the years Snodgrass says her son spent in solitary confinement are a far cry from the statements that the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) has given in the past. They also contrast heavily with VADOC’s recent attempts to better the treatment of its prisoners. These include a 21-month initiative started in early 2017 with the Vera Institute of Justice, focused on reducing the use of what officials call “restrictive housing,” among other efforts. 

“When it comes to state prisons, Virginia stands out for operating a corrections system without the use of solitary confinement,” VADOC wrote in a press release posted the same day the ACLU report documenting widespread use of the practice was released. VADOC’s press release noted the praise it’s received from Governor Ralph Northam and the U.S. Department of Justice. “The Virginia Department of Corrections serves as a national model for the limited use of restrictive housing.” 

These statements and measures constitute some of the few pieces of public information available about the experiences of Virginia’s prisoners, something the panel repeatedly emphasized during the discussion. 

“This is a completely unregulated practice,” said Farrar, who serves as ACLU-VA’s communications director. “There’s nothing in the Virginia Code that even says what solitary confinement is, and that allows the Department of Corrections to lie about it.” 

“They say they don’t do it. They do.” 

In the absence of more accessible research or data on the state of Virginia’s prisons and their treatment of offenders, groups like ACLU-VA & IAHR and individuals like Tommy Cox are more than willing to fill in the gaps. 

“The people that came to the cell were nasty. They talk to you any kind of way, you took one shower once a week, and it was living hell,” said Cox, who described the physical degradation he suffered as the result of the conditions in solitary across two incarcerations, totaling almost 40 years. Cox’s time included one confinement which lasted three consecutive years during a stint in a New Mexico prison as a Virginia offender, which made him the very first inmate in the Commonwealth to be shipped out of state. 

Other testimonies and criticisms ranged from the withholding of food by guards to the mental effects solitary confinement has on inmates and the lack of accountability present in the VADOC and other agencies. Even the measures taken by the VADOC to create easier pathways out of “restrictive housing,” namely the Administrative Step-Down Program instituted in 2012, were sharply criticized for resulting in harsher treatments for Hispanic and African-American inmates. 

“Their treatment is completely arbitrary, there’s no sense of cohesion, and there’s no sense of fairness or justice,” said Gasparotto, who has spoken with several inmates at the Wallens Ridge and Red Onion State Prisons. The latter was the focus of a hunger strike by prisoners in 2012 as well as an HBO documentary released in February. It is part of an investigation into prison abuse by Attorney General Claude Walker of the Virgin Islands. 

“Ultimately, their goal is institutional control,” said Gasparotto, who works in ACLU-VA’s Legal and Public Policy departments, of the VADOC. “It’s not about rehabilitation, it’s not about building you back as a human being, it’s about you serving your time, keeping quiet, and getting out the door. And when you step out of line… solitary confinement is used.” 

The solutions the panel recommended to help in solving this problem proved to be the same method that defined much of the discussion — speaking up against solitary confinement, and championing the humanity of those incarcerated. 

Audience members were asked to call their representatives. Lobbying by the ACLU-VA has already led to the introduction of a “reporting bill” into the Virginia House of Delegates ahead of the 2019 General Assembly by Patrick Hope, D-Arlington, that would, according to Farrar, “help us understand who is being held in solitary confinement, why, for what reason, for how long,” and lead to further legislative action. Efforts are underway to introduce similar a similar bill in the Senate, in addition to continued advocacy work focused on the Northam Administration. 

Delegate Hope was one of several people the speakers mentioned as “interested” in tackling the issue of solitary confinement — including legislators in both the Democrat and Republican parties — who “are waiting to see who will move first,” said Snodgrass. 

“Not everybody in the state government is turning a blind eye to this. There are advocates within the system,” Smith said. 

One of those advocates, Peter Wells, who ran as a Libertarian against A. Donald McEachin and Ryan McAdams in Virginia’s 4th District, was present to share his thoughts. Touting the prominence of criminal justice reform as part of his platform, Wells impressed on the audience the potential attention this issue would receive if his campaign made a strong impact in the midterms. 

While McEachin eventually claimed a sizable victory in last Tuesday’s midterms elections, with Wells pulling in around 1% of the overall vote, the then-Senatorial candidate was optimistic he would have the chance to bring the topic into a wider spotlight. 

“I’ve already had one offer to sit down after the election and talk about some issues,” Wells said. “So I’m going to get some logging time with whoever wins just by coming out of this.”

As for Smith, he and other advocates are already looking ahead to next year’s local elections to establish connections with politicians sympathetic to their goals, regardless of party affiliation. 

“Because you need to have that across the board,” Smith said. “It’s not a left issue, it’s not a right issue. This is a human rights issue.” 

Photos by George Copeland

RVA Shows You Must See This Week 8/5-8/11

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FEATURE SHOW
Swamp Fest
Day 1: Saturday August 8, 5 PM
Swan Of Tuonela, Gillian Carter, Swells, Marcy, Kaoru Nagisa, Amygdala, Gas Up Yr Hearse, Mothlight, Facility, Truman, Vivian K, Ephraim Nuit @ Strange Matter – $10
Day 2: Sunday, August 9, 6 PM
Ostraca, The Heads Are Zeros, Coma Regalia, Caust, Lyed, Under A Sky So Blue, People’s Temple Project, Bad Dinner, Eyelet @ 25 Watt – $10
The variety and vitality of the RVA music scene never ceases to amaze me. The inaugural edition of Swamp Fest is just the latest example of these factors, highlighting a segment of the RVA hardcore scene that has mostly flown under the radar before now.
[Read more…] about RVA Shows You Must See This Week 8/5-8/11