Disabled people detained by Ice sound alarm over overcrowded jails

[cbabe]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/25/ice-immigration-detention

Disabled people detained by Ice sound alarm over overcrowded jails

Rodney Taylor, whose legs were amputated as a toddler, just one of many people with disabilities at risk from detention

Timothy Pratt
Fri 25 Apr 2025 07.00 EDT

In his three months locked up at Stewart detention center in Lumpkin, Georgia, Rodney Taylor has missed meals and showers, lived with increasing pain in his hips, developed a swollen thumb on his right hand and blisters on the stumps where his two legs were amputated when he was a toddler.

Taylor’s mother brought him to the US from Liberia on a medical visa as a small child. He went through 16 operations and is a double amputee. He has two fingers on his right hand. Now 46, he has lived in the US nearly his entire life, works as a barber, is active in promoting cancer awareness in his community, and recently got engaged.

…

But when the current administration closed the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman (Oido) last month, detainees such as Taylor were left with less protection than ever – at a time when nearly 48,000 detainees are locked up nationwide, the highest number since October, 2019.

“It’s all happening in the dark,” said Sarah Owings, Taylor’s attorney, speaking of conditions facing her client and others like him.

Taylor spoke to the Guardian from Stewart. When he was detained in front of his house, he was only days away from picking up new prosthetic legs; the ones he was using were too tight. Then the detention center gave him shoes that didn’t fit the legs and trying to walk “felt like walking on concrete on my knees”, he said.

In addition, the prosthetic legs have batteries that require eight hours of charging a day. But after being locked up at Stewart, he didn’t even see a doctor for three days, and in the ensuing months, the facility has never been able to arrange for eight hours of charging, allowing only several hours at a time. The result: the batteries die and the legs don’t bend, creating more pain in Taylor’s hips.

…

“Unless you’re dying or bleeding out … they’re not going to come,” he said a guard told him and several others. “They think, ‘Everybody is getting deported soon … and fixing your issue is not our concern – getting you outta here is our concern. Why spend all this extra money?’” said Taylor.

… more …

[orangecrush]

1. There should have been consequences for this crap

After his first term.

There were none.

Now they're letting them do it again.

Some are even voting for his nominees.

Consequences are for poor people.