My thanks to Www.condron.us for this outlet for true information. Excerpts below supplemented with what I witnessed in this jail, where I was incarcerated from May 15, 09 – July 7, then moved to a ‘Better’ jail’ when I shouldnt have been in jail at all….
‘He was taken from his home in Des Plaines, Ill., where he lived with his wife and 7-year-old daughter, and languished in detention facilities for close to four years, according to Heeren’. Hussain’s extended detention represents a recent trend, Heeren said, in which detainees are being kept longer and longer in the jails. They have to worry about the possibility of years of incarceration on top of the fear of deportation.
Immigrants who are detained for years are the exception rather than the rule, according to ICE statistics. In 2007, the average time ICE detainees spent in prison was 37.5 days. In a phone interview in May while still detained, Hussain described McHenry as the least effective facility in meeting his religious needs. He repeatedly requested the Kosher diet, he said, because it was the closest option to the Halal diet of the Muslim faith. He was repeatedly denied, he said, despite filing more than 50 complaints.
SO THE FOOD SERVED TO IMMIGRATION ‘ADMINISTRATIVE DETAINEES’ (non criminal, ordinary ‘just not born in USA’ and in fact, some who were born in USA but have been put in Immigration jail anyway, destroying their lives, careers and mental and physical health.)
THERE WERE NO FAT PEOPLE IN IMMIGRATION JAIL – IMMIGRANTS TEND NOT TO DO THAT TO THEMSELVES, THEY WERE MOSTLY CIVILISED EDUCATED SKINNY CITIZENS…..
YET TO THOSE THAT ‘OBJECT TO PROVIDING CARE FOR ‘ILLEGAL ALIENS’ –
I CAN ATTEST THAT THE FOOD IS NOT FIT FOR ANIMALS – there are not enough vegetables to cover the center of your palm, everything is boiled in water, it is high calorie but absolutely no vitamins, people’s hair is falling out, fingernails thin and ridged, skin flaking, all of the signs of deprivation and malnutrition are evident.
THE SIGNAGE ON THE WALLS STATE THAT YOU SHOULD EXPECT TO LOSE 15-20LBS DURING YOUR INCARCERATION -
IF THE TYPICAL TIME IN DETENTION IS 37.5 DAYS,
So, here you are working at the bank, a twenty year legitimate tax payer, then six guys in black unforms drag you away, and you are dumped in this jail. You are then locked up for, say 108 DAYS like I was, should be expected to lose, 108/37.5 x 17lb, = 50.4lb,
I was a healthy 118lb and 5.3.5 inches when locked up; so I would be, 118-50.4= So I would be DEAD by now if I had not had someone send me money for commissary,
which is all chocolate and garbage like pepperoni….
There was a pakistani girl released because after 18 mths, she said she thinks she was released because she was so thin, and she just wanted to die….but she had won her case, and so was released………and then they told her to come in to Immigration offices to pick up her work permission, her Asylum had been approved, yet when she went to meet them, she was re-arrested and put back in McHenry, and her lawyer had to refight her case to get her released again…..
“The food was horrible and the officials were ignorant,” Hussain said. He opted for the vegetarian diet because he was refused the Kosher, he said, which usually meant leftover mashed potatoes and sweet beans on a tray. Though ICE’s policy regarding religious dietary needs states that facilities are required to provide detainees “reasonable and equitable opportunity to observe their religious dietary practice,” Montenegro said in an email response, the Kosher meals are provided only to Jewish detainees.
A Muslim detainee’s dietary options are the regular meals, which are pork-free, she said, and vegetarian.“They already have the Kosher meal that they give to Jewish inmates,” said Heeren, who works for the Legal Assistance Foundation for Metropolitan Chicago. “Why not give it to the Muslims who have similar dietary beliefs?” The food was not Hussain’s only qualm. He also had difficulty obtaining an Arabic Koran, he said, until a humanitarian aid worker from Chicago brought him one. Though Muslims were allowed to have congregational prayers once a week, there were no visiting Imams for religious counseling. As a result, his time at McHenry was, by far, the worst of his recent years of incarceration, he said.“My religion is all I have in here,” Hussain said, while locked up in Dodge. “It is what sustains me.”
