On Tuesday, July 21st, one day after people around the country participated in a historic #StrikeForBlackLives, a group of nine predominantly Black men held in the Special Housing Unit (or SHU) at the North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin are entering the fifth day of a new hunger strike to protest intolerable conditions. One of them, Carlington Cruickshank, urgently needs medical attention. Carlington has been experiencing worsening chest pain, stomach pain, and blurred vision for over a month and a half, and he has been told that he won’t be able to see a doctor until the end of August. He is afraid for his life.

The men in the SHU are also demanding adequate food (after months of nothing but rice and beans every day), an end to vindictive incident reports from staff, more regular access to clean laundry and hygiene supplies, and a transfer out of this restricted unit. This is their fourth hunger strike since March, and the fifth strike to our knowledge in the facility. Please join us and take a few minutes on Tuesday to make sure prison staff know we’re watching and to demand that Carlington receive medical care immediately.

CALL:
North Lake Correctional Facility: 231-745-9711
Federal Bureau of Prisons, North Central Region Office: 913-621-3939

SCRIPT:
“I’m calling in support of the men who have been on hunger strike since Friday in the Special Housing Unit at the North Lake Correctional Facility, and to demand medical care for Carlington Cruickshank, inmate number 70473-004. By law prisoners must receive adequate nutrition and healthcare. This strike is sending a clear message that after months in the SHU, these men’s basic needs are still not being met and their basic rights are being violated. You have an obligation to cooperate with their demands, and Carlington needs medical attention right away.”

TIPS:
Try to get someone—anyone—on the other end. But even if you can’t, leaving a voicemail is helpful. Add your own thoughts to the script if you want. Try not to be flustered if the person on the other end attempts to derail your message by arguing small points. Remember the big point: People are putting their bodies on the line and we’re here to voice our support for their demands.

Please feel free to leave a comment letting us know how your call went or reach out with any questions.

For immediate release: 6/23/2020

On Sunday, June 21st and Monday the 22nd, as rebellions against anti-Black state violence and campaigns for police and prison abolition continued around the country, two members of a group of primarily Black men isolated within a restricted unit at the North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin, Michigan reported that longstanding dangerous conditions in the unit had been getting worse, and that prison staff had withheld necessary hygiene products for over five days despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

“For a month and a half now, they haven’t been switching out our blankets or giving us new sheets,” one person in the Special Housing Unit (or SHU) said on Sunday night. “Since Thursday, they haven’t been giving us any hygiene products. We’re just trying to get basic hygiene materials.”

North Lake is a private facility owned and managed by the GEO Group on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, holding non-U.S. citizens convicted of federal crimes. The group of Black men confined to the SHU have been there since March, following a fight in which they were not involved. They have launched three separate hunger strikes over the last three months in response to racist repression and religious discrimination.

“Since Thursday, we been up here asking for soap, we can’t get soap,” one of them confirmed on Monday afternoon. “We been here asking for toothbrushes, we can’t get no toothbrushes. We been asking for toothpaste, we can’t get no toothpaste. We been asking for toilet paper, we can’t get no toilet paper. We been asking for deodorant, we can’t get no deodorant.”

This denial of essential sanitary supplies comes at a moment when the COVID-19 pandemic shows no signs of decline or effective containment at North Lake or elsewhere in the U.S. prison system. Even with its lack of comprehensive testing, North Lake has had one of the highest counts of coronavirus cases throughout the Bureau of Prisons, more than any other private facility appearing on the BOP’s COVID-19 resource page. Two incarcerated people are confirmed to have died after contracting the virus there, more than at any other private federal prison listed on the site.

Immigrants incarcerated in Baldwin over the last several months have described a climate of denial, cruelty and negligence which allowed the virus to spread unchecked throughout the prison. A new report from The Intercept details the BOP’s pattern of transferring incarcerated non-citizens across state lines well into the so-called lockdown period, with many ending up at North Lake and suddenly exposed to grave new health risks. But while many new people have been shipped into the prison, few appear to have gone out. The men in the SHU state that since April they have repeatedly been promised transfers to other facilities which have never materialized. “There was rumors that we were going to be shipped, but it never happened,” one of them said on Sunday. “We’re all still here.”

“We don’t have access to do anything on our own,” another added on Monday, “so we need the assistance of a case manager. And the case manager’s supposed to be here once a week. We haven’t seen the case manager in over a month and a half. None of us even know who our case manager is right now.”

“The anti-Black violence and neglect experienced by these men in the SHU is a reminder for us that struggles for the abolition of police, immigrant detention, and prisons are all connected,” said JR Martin, a member of No Detention Centers in Michigan. “This facility is not a safe place for anyone. And the GEO Group’s specific anti-Black repression is part of the same machinery of state terror that killed Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade, and countless others, leading to the uprisings we’re witnessing right now. This fight will not be over until the whole system of policing, detention, and incarceration is abolished.”

“From day one, North Lake has been a nightmare and should be shut down,” said Kara, the wife of one of the men in the SHU, on Monday. “My husband has been incarcerated there for about six months, and the entire time he has been denied basic healthcare, nutrition and sanitation. At times they cut the water off on his room, and the staff attempted to interfere with his religious practices. The discrimination, outright racism, and mistreatment my husband has suffered at the hands of North Lake should not be tolerated and is another strand in the national dialogue about injustice.”

For immediate release: 5/18/2020

On Friday, May 15th, a group of around a dozen predominantly Black men who have been confined since March to the Special Housing Unit at the North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin launched a new hunger strike. The strikers cited multiple instances of prison staff denying access to legal mail, continued religious discrimination, and a pattern of staff ignoring complaint forms or even throwing them away. North Lake is a federal prison privately owned and managed by the GEO Group to hold non-U.S. citizens convicted of federal crimes. This is the fourth such strike to have been confirmed at the facility since March, and the third in the Special Housing Unit (or SHU).

“It’s a lot of stuff going on in here right now,” a member of the group said on Friday in a statement to No Detention Centers in Michigan, describing a consistently chaotic and unsafe environment in which GEO staff had entered cells during recreation time to remove incarcerated people’s complaint forms, had withheld one person’s legal mail from a court outside Michigan which required a response within 30 days, and had chosen to restrict access to kosher meals for some of the men whose religious practice includes a strict diet. “These people have not been answering the grievances.”

This new strike reflects both the continuation of alarming conditions at the North Lake Correctional Facility and an ongoing commitment to organizing for justice among incarcerated and detained people across the state of Michigan and beyond in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier this month, more than a hundred people from at least one unit in the general population at North Lake participated in a days-long hunger strike to demand COVID-19 testing and adequate medical care for everyone held in the facility, where more than 80 staff members and incarcerated people are now confirmed to have tested positive for the virus. This action at North Lake, which appears to have ended after four of its alleged organizers were thrown into the SHU, mirrors a reported hunger strike initiated last week among people detained by ICE at the St. Clair County Jail in Port Huron.

The men who have been in the SHU at North Lake since March had previously launched two separate hunger strikes of their own, demanding adequate food and healthcare, renewed access to phone time and showers, and an explanation for their continued confinement to the restricted unit. “Right now we have already refused two meals—tomorrow, to the next day, to the next day, to the next day,” one of them said on Friday. “The wrongdoing, everything that’s going on here—it’s gonna be a long hunger strike.”

On the evening of Friday, May 15th, we got word that the group of around a dozen predominantly Black men who have been unjustly confined for over two months to the Special Housing Unit at the North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin would be launching another hunger strike. The strikers are demanding full access to legal mail which the GEO Group has denied them, an end to religious discrimination, and a response to their complaint forms which have continued to be ignored or thrown out.

To our knowledge, this is the fourth separate hunger strike to have taken place at the North Lake Correctional Facility within the last two months.

The strike in the general population from the last week, which saw at least a hundred people demanding COVID-19 testing and adequate medical care for everyone in the facility, may have ended after the warden retaliated by throwing four people allegedly involved in organizing it into the SHU. More details on this new hunger strike will be included in a press release coming soon.

#FreeThemAll

TRANSCRIPT:

“We’re about to get back on hunger strike. We’re not coming off. As far as the nine meals, ten, eleven—I don’t think we’re coming off.

Because, let me start with one. Legal mail—we are not getting our mails. Even just like when you’re sending your mails to me and all that, they’ve been taking our mails and they’re not giving our mails. We sent mail to the court, and I know the court’s been sending us back, because they have to send back certain stuff, right? These people, instead of giving his legal mail to him, they actually hid his mail inside the property room. And he found out, and now they’re trying not to do what is right by making a statement that, you know, they did wrong by him. Because the judge has wrote back to him that he has 30 days to send back another mail to them, to the court system, about certain stuff. And by them doing what they did, by having our mails in the property room down there … it’s a lot of stuff going on in here right now.

Our grievances—we’ve been sending our grievances back and forth. These people have been not answering the grievances, and they’ve been—they be throwing away our grievances. They come in and steal it, when we go outside for rec—’cause we have an hour rec—they come in the room and took their papers. That’s another thing.

Religious food. You know, it’s Ramadan, right? The kosher meals—they have actually said they’re limiting the kosher meals. They’re actually discriminating against them. So this has been an ongoing problem in here.

As far as us going and getting designated to the other prisons, they were saying that they’re in fear of their life, in fear of retaliation ’cause we’ve been taking action against GEO. And they just fear that, because of what’s going on—like, people are saying they’re going to go to another GEO—and they’re gonna be, you know what I’m saying? Targeted. So they are really trying not to go back to no GEO. They want to actually go back to the BOP, instead of this. ‘Cause it’s basically the same environment. The same people, the same thing, you know? It’s just going to a different state.

The chaplain is part of the religious food, and been lying, and all this. The Assistant Warden Gray—he came and been lying and do not want to come and deal with the situation that they have actually put us back into now again. So now we’re going back through the whole system, and it’s just crazy. Miss Kramer, who had the signature for the mailing of the legal mail that we’re supposed to get—when you get legal mail, you’re supposed to bring our mail, and they have not done that. She was the one that signed off, they ended up giving it to somebody else, and that’s how our mail has been—you know, just crazy. And as you can see yourself, when you even send us mail, we’re not getting it. And we sent you mail, and you’re not getting it. So it’s obvious they’re opening our mail, throwing it away, taking and doing whatever they’re doing, which is against rights, like you cannot do that. We’re entitled to our frickin’ mail.

So right now we have already refused two meals—tomorrow, to the next day, to the next day, to the next day, to the next day, until all this shit is resolved. I mean, it is ham. It is going crazy over here. The wrongdoing, everything that’s going on here—it’s gonna be a long hunger strike.”

For immediate release: 5/9/2020

On Friday, May 8th, amid news of countless sick people going without treatment and multiple reports of deaths at the facility due to COVID-19, immigrants incarcerated in the general population at the North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin, Michigan confirmed that everyone held in at least one unit would be launching a coordinated hunger strike. The strikers, potentially numbering in the hundreds, are demanding that all those incarcerated at the facility be tested immediately for the virus and receive adequate medical attention. Michigan’s only private prison, North Lake is owned and managed by the GEO Group and holds non-U.S. citizens convicted of federal crimes.

Also on Friday, more than a month after the first knowledge of COVID-19 cases among GEO staff in Baldwin, the Federal Bureau of Prisons released limited data on coronavirus cases among incarcerated people in contract prisons such as North Lake. While private facilities still do not appear on the BOP’s online map of cases, a new subsection on their COVID-19 resource page documents 120 “lab-confirmed positive tests” in these facilities, including 54 people said to have recovered (their location unspecified), and 18 of the 66 remaining positives situated at the North Lake Correctional Facility. This puts North Lake second on the list of such infections among private federal prisons nationwide, following the Great Plains Correctional Facility in Oklahoma, also operated by the GEO Group.

Because only a portion of incarcerated people with symptoms have so far been tested, the true number of infections is likely much higher. “There’s a lot of people sick in here,” an immigrant imprisoned at North Lake stated on May 5th, adding that staff had been testing only those who exhibited a high fever (one of many possible symptoms of the virus), and that one person who needed emergency medical care on the previous day had been forced to wait five hours before passing out on the floor foaming at the mouth and being carried out by a cellmate. “So the guy went to the emergency room and we haven’t heard since then,” he said. “Things have been horrible here.”

“My husband let staff know that he had been feeling the chills a few days ago,” said Leasha, the wife of one person incarcerated at North Lake, “and then his eye got super red and now he’s lost his sense of smell and he has burning pain in his back near his lungs. A doctor screened him and said he was fine because he didn’t have a fever. He said a guy in the cell next to him had similar symptoms and they haven’t been quarantined, just given Tylenol and threatened that they’ll be moved if they keep claiming they’re sick.”

“I am so fearful for his life,” said the spouse of another incarcerated person on Friday. “The conditions in this facility are deplorable and not once since this global pandemic began has my husband ever seen anyone clean. I am very worried for these men. They were told ‘everyone is going to be locked back up.’ All of the men said no, and now they are all on a hunger strike. The inmates in this facility are human beings and they have people on the outside who love them. I wish the facility would value these men’s lives more because they are not just inmates, they are someone else’s whole world.”

On Tuesday afternoon, May 5th, an immigrant incarcerated at the North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin described an incident from the day before, when another prisoner had needed emergency medical attention and was not seen for five hours. No one yesterday knew what had happened to him.

The conversation also touched on medical neglect throughout the facility: “Things have been horrible here. They just don’t care. Some people start feeling the symptoms and I don’t know if it’s really—you know what I mean? Me, I got red eyes today, and I have a little fever going on.”

Despite knowing of confirmed COVID-19 cases among staff at North Lake for over a month, the GEO Group has still not released any information on positive test results among incarcerated people at the prison.

#FreeThemAll

TRANSCRIPT:

“Listen, yesterday an incident happened. This guy was complaining to somebody that he was sick. They ended up coming to get him later, later on, like 4:00. By the time they come and get him, the guy was on the floor, with yellow stuff coming out of his mouth and stuff, you know what I’m saying? One of the COs told me that they didn’t have communication. So the guy went to the emergency room—they take him to the emergency room—and we haven’t heard since then. They really don’t—we don’t have any information.

I also wanted to mention that the medical system here is horrible. They don’t even know, like, the guy was on the floor and all they did was staring at him. They didn’t even know what to do. It take like five hours from he asked to be seen to they seeing him. So he was already on the floor. They say his heart was going a little bit too fast, beating too hard or too fast, I don’t know, something like that.

Things have been horrible here. They just don’t care. Some people start feeling the symptoms and I don’t know if it’s really—you know what I mean? Me, I got red eyes today, and I have a little fever going on. The one nurse come over here and she’s, like, being a lot more nicer than everybody else. But they not really like paying attention to this, you know what I’m saying? And they not really trying to help. I don’t know if you guys do something to let the world know that we’re here, and like, there’s a lot of people sick in here too. And they’re not releasing the information. That’s the problem.”

For immediate release: 5/4/2020

By the time of its mailing on Monday, May 4th, more than 45 relatives and loved ones of people incarcerated at the North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin, Michigan had signed a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Prisons regarding the COVID-19 outbreak at North Lake. The GEO Group, which owns and manages this private prison holding non-U.S. citizens convicted of federal crimes, has refused to release any information on positive test results for COVID-19 among incarcerated people, despite knowing of cases among staff since the first week of April. On Monday, April 20th, the Michigan Advance reported that the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services had confirmed nine diagnoses of the virus among incarcerated people at North Lake.

“My loved one is 64 and sick,” said Elsa, a signatory to the letter, on Friday. “All they do is take their temperature. He always tells me he loves me like it’s goodbye.”

No Detention Centers in Michigan joins over 35 other organizations from around the state and the country who have also signed the letter, demanding transparency, a commitment to protect public health by releasing more people throughout the federal prison system, and a recognition of how the GEO Group has mishandled the crisis.

Limited information coming from the prison in recent days has continued to reflect rapidly worsening conditions. “We don’t know if there are 20 or 200 people or more infected,” said Richard Kessler, an immigration attorney in Grand Rapids. “There is simply no transparency. We’ve heard from people on the inside of possible unconfirmed deaths from COVID-19. We have also heard that many of the people detained there were just given face masks within the last couple of days, and are forced to live and eat in very confined areas. We do not want this to turn into a situation like many of the other federal prisons where there are estimates that over 70% of persons are infected.”

“They go around and just take names like they’re doing something,” said Candy, another signatory to the letter, on Friday. “All they say is ‘We’ll see what we can do.’ I just talked to my boyfriend and he’s been complaining for two or three days about getting something because he’s having trouble breathing. They do nothing.”

“This prison is a nightmare and the GEO Group can’t keep anyone safe,” said JR Martin, a member of No Detention Centers in Michigan. “When we organize in solidarity and talk about hearing from people who are distraught because their loved ones are at risk and they can’t find any information on what’s happening, GEO accuses us of introducing a political agenda into a neutral situation. But we know that GEO’s own agenda is to profit from incarceration, and the company donated thousands of dollars to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. When we note their complicity in this suffering, GEO falls back on the reminder that COVID-19 is a terrible crisis throughout public prisons as well as their private facilities. We think that’s exactly the point. The fight against shadow prisons like North Lake is just one part of a broad, critical struggle for abolition. We’re focused on GEO because they’re making money from locking up immigrants in Baldwin, they’re keeping the COVID-19 cases secret, and people need to know about it.”

George Zoley, the founder and CEO of the GEO Group, expressed financial optimism during the company’s quarterly earnings call on April 30th, a transcript of which is available online: “Despite this quarter’s many challenges our revenues and cash flows remained resilient and continue to support our dividend payments.”

“They were still moving people from other places, like especially California. And then when we tell them what was going on, they thought it was a joke. They would laugh about it. The major told us not to listen to the news. That it wasn’t really happening. […] They didn’t take it seriously. They laughed when we told them they could wear gloves, wear masks.”

No one outside the North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin, Michigan has been able to get official information on COVID-19 diagnoses at the facility since Monday, April 20th, when the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services confirmed that nine people incarcerated at North Lake had tested positive, in addition to five guards. A spokesperson for the GEO Group has stopped responding to requests for information.

In a phone call from Monday the 20th, an immigrant incarcerated in the general population at North Lake spoke about the climate of indifference, dishonesty, and extreme negligence that led to the mounting cases of the virus within North Lake’s walls: constant transfers from around the country, well into the period of the Bureau of Prisons’ so-called lockdown, with people being shipped thousands of miles from low-security facilities and ending up in rural Michigan at a prison effectively running as a maximum-security facility or U.S. Penitentiary. Staff members telling incarcerated people not to listen to the news about the pandemic, and laughing at their requests for sanitary measures to keep themselves protected.

The actions of the GEO Group and Warden Donald Emerson have been catastrophic for the safety of everyone at North Lake, for the people of Lake County whose need for jobs GEO has ruthlessly exploited, and far beyond. We will continue to demand answers and to fight for the freedom of people held at this prison, which should never have been built in the first place, and should never have reopened.

#FreeThemAll