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