Hunger-Striking ICE Detainees Sue Over Conditions at NY’s Orange County Jail

According to ICE’s detention management tool, 55 immigrants are detained at the upstate New York jail. Nahum Ortiz, one of the plaintiffs, says ICE is only renting one of the jail’s wings. “The ICE wing shouldn’t be treating us the same way as criminals. We’re not waiting for our sentencing, but we get the same treatment.”

On Tuesday morning, three legal organizations filed a lawsuit on behalf of six immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at New York’s Orange County Jail, who say they were retaliated against after carrying out a hunger strike last year.

The suit was filed by Bronx Defenders, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the plaintiffs, against ICE as well as the current and former Orange County sheriffs, a staff member at the sheriff’s office,  and the U.S. Department Of Homeland Security (DHS).

Nahum Ortiz, one of the plaintiffs, said the hunger strike he and other detainees launched in February of 2022 was to protest poor conditions, mistreatment, and the quality of the food at the upstate facility, which ICE contracts with to incarcerate detainees while their immigration cases work through the court system.

“It was pasta, most of the days,” Ortiz told City Limits over the phone, describing the meals they received daily in the Apha 1 unit where he was held. Other ICE detainees were held in another wing of the jail, called Apha 3. Detainees in both units joined the hunger strike hoping that conditions would change, but “we literally went from bad to worse after that,” explained Ortiz, 40.

Guards searched detainees’ cells and confiscated their belongings, the suit alleges, including commissary food and personal items like blankets, towels, clothing, and toothpaste. It accuses the jail of using solitary confinement, racial epithets, lack of timely medical attention, and the sudden transfer of dozens of detainees as retribution against the hunger strikers. Those actions, the lawsuit claims, constituted a violation of  their first amendment rights.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Office, which oversees the jail, denied the allegations. “The County categorically denies that it acted in an unconstitutional or otherwise illegal manner,” Orange County Attorney Richard Golden said in a statement. “The County Jail is a highly credentialed and model facility. The Plaintiffs’ lack of merit in their allegations will be proven in court.”

ICE spokesperson Marie Ferguson said the agency doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

Kshithij Shrinath, of Bronx Defenders, said ICE “was clearly aware of what was going on,” at the facility at the time. “Conversations were geared to break the hunger strike,” he said.

For years, immigrants held at the facility in Goshen, New York, have complained about conditions there, alleging abusive and racist treatment and delayed medical attention. In May, New York City Councilmembers visited the facility after a possible COVID-19 outbreak, followed by the hunger strike, and later held an immigration committee hearing focused on conditions at the jail.

Advocates and lawmakers have also pushed for an end to local contracts with ICE through the NY Dignity Not Detention bill, which would essentially prohibit New York from housing ICE detainees at its corrections facilities, following a similar ban in neighboring New Jersey in 2021.

In July, five months after the strike, more than 60 detainees were transferred from Orange County unannounced to other facilities, some as far away as Mississippi—where two of the plaintiffs still remain—and to the Buffalo (Batavia) Federal Detention Facility further upstate.

The remaining detainees in Orange County jail were moved to Delta 1, which used a different communications system they said made it harder for them to stay in touch with both attorneys and families.

“What took you so long to call?” Ortiz recalls his family asking  after he was finally able to call them for the first time in months. “I remember my brother was: ‘Where’ve you been?’”

Ortiz was released from detention last month, following a November data breach in which ICE erroneously posted identifiable information on its website about approximately 6,000 non-citizens in its custody. ICE then released thousands of detainees named in the leak from custody.

According to ICE’s detention management tool, 55 immigrants are currently detained in Orange County. Plaintiffs like Ortiz who have been released are calling for the release of those remaining, and the return to New York of those plaintiffs who were transferred to Mississippi.

The lawsuit also requests monetary compensation for damages caused. The defendants will have 60 days to respond.

“ICE is just renting there,” Ortiz said of the New York jail site. “The ICE wing shouldn’t be treating us the same way as criminals. We’re not waiting for our sentencing, but we get the same treatment.”