Dozens of protesters descended on Nashville, Tennessee Monday to block the entrance of CoreCivic, a private prison company that contracts with the federal government to detain immigrants.
According to some media reports, the group plans to stay there for days, some members chaining themselves to large metal barrels weighted with concrete. They are calling for the abolition of the multi-billion dollar company.
"We have no intention of leaving," said the Rev. Jeannie Alexander. "It's a nonviolent, peaceful resistance." Look closely and you'll see a person dangling and taking photos from a very tall tripod if they made. That person is up there to stay, Jeannie said. pic.twitter.com/XZTvpTjkwP
— Natalie Allison (@natalie_allison) August 6, 2018
“CoreCivic is a human rights disaster in our own backyard,” Rev. Jeannie Alexander, director of No Exceptions Prison Collective, said in a statement. “Today we move to abolish CoreCivic.”
Alexander was later detained by officers, carried away, and loaded into a police truck by her hands and feet.
According to the Tennessean, several other protesters have also been detained.
One of the demonstrators in attendance is a former CoreCivic employee, who arrived to the protest wearing her old uniform. She quit eight months earlier, after two individuals died at the facility due to lack of proper medical care.
Ashley Dixon is a former CoreCivic guard who worked at Trousdale Turner in Hartsville, TN. She left around eight months ago. "I quit because I witnessed two people die due to medical neglect," she said. Two of the tombstone signs are for them, Jonathan Salada and Jeff Mihm. pic.twitter.com/PR20BS918W
— Natalie Allison (@natalie_allison) August 6, 2018
Pressure on CoreCivic has increased in recent days following reports that a migrant toddler died after being released from the Dilley South Texas Family Residential Center, a facility managed by CoreCivic.
Authorities have not yet confirmed whether the child died explicitly because of the conditions at Dilley, but advocates say it’s possible, considering the company’s history of reported abuses.
Numerous pregnant women detained at CoreCivic facilities have complained of improper medical treatment and poor nutrition during their detention. Another CoreCivic detainee failed to receive the proper medical treatment and was placed in solitary confinement despite being previously diagnosed with schizophrenia. (He killed himself shortly after his release from solitary.) And at the same CoreCivic facility, a Cuban national died from pneumonia complications in early January.
A transgender woman who arrived with a Central American caravan earlier this spring also died from pneumonia while in ICE custody, shortly after crossing into the United States. Roxsana Hernandez, 33, had requested asylum at the San Ysidro port of entry on May 9 according to BuzzFeed News and Pueblo Sin Fronteras, which organized the caravan. She said she was fleeing violence in her home country of Honduras.
“Trans people in my neighborhood are killed and chopped into pieces, then dumped inside potato bags,” Hernandez told Buzzfeed News, before her death. “I didn’t want to come to Mexico; I wanted to stay in Honduras, but I couldn’t.”
Pueblo Sin Fronteras claimed Hernandez died due to the horrific conditions of her detainment. When she reached the United States, she was placed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) into one of the holding cells colloquially known as “iceboxes” because of their frigid temperatures. While there, Hernandez allegedly failed to receive adequate food and medical care and was held in a cell where the lights were turned on 24 hours a day. Nine days before her death, she was transferred to the transgender unit at the Cibola County Correctional Center, a CoreCivic-run facility that contracts with ICE.
She only lasted one day there before being admitted to a hospital, where she remained in intensive care until her death. ICE maintains her primary cause of death was cardiac arrest.