In December of 2017, ICE officials put 92 Somali detainees on a plane back to their home country, in shackles and chained to their seats. The plane mysteriously turned around in Senegal and came back to Miami, and during this time were allegedly brutally beaten, verbally abused, and forced to relieve themselves in their seats. These detainees described the hellish trip as having “slave ship” conditions.
They have been held in ICE detention centers ever since, where they have been subject to physical abuse, racial slurs, unsanitary conditions and medical neglect, according to their lawyers, who have filed a lawsuit on their behalf, asking that their deportation cases be reopened or dismissed. The lawsuit remains open. Local community members and activists are demanding that these ICE agents be taken to account for their actions.
We stand with these detainees who have had their human rights so grievously violated. We demand that the ICE agents who committed these crimes be brought to justice. These abuses clearly exist because of and within the larger context of anti-black and anti-Muslim rhetoric and policy that has allowed such state violence to carry on unchecked for far long already. It is especially distressing that these black Africans were chained and shipped overseas in such a brutal and horrific manner that echoes the stories we know of the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade, a sin that has haunted and poisoned this country’s institutional and societal structures since before its birth. We ask that you call your federal representatives and demand that they stand up for human rights, for accountability, and against these horrible crimes that are happening under the supervision of a federal agency.
Please call and email your federal NC representatives:
Congressman David Price
Washington, DC Office
2108 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone DC: 202.225.1784
Phone Raleigh: 919.859.5999
Senator Thom Tillis
DC: (202) 224-6342
Charlotte: 704-509-9087
Greenville: (252) 329-0371
Hendersonville: (828) 693-8750
High Point: (336) 885-0685
Raleigh: (919) 856-4630
Senator Richard Burr
DC: (202) 224-3154
Winston-Salem: (800) 685-8916
Rocky Mount: (252) 977-9522
Wilmington: (888) 848-1833, (336) 631-5125
Asheville: (828) 350-2437
If you live outside North Carolina, you can look up your representatives here:
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members