Refugee rights groups have filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights demanding the agency investigate violent and discriminatory practices against Black refugees imprisoned at the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center in Louisiana. Forty-eight Cameroonian refugees held at the jail have launched another hunger strike protesting their indefinite detention, inhumane conditions during the pandemic and racist treatment by prison staff. They’ve been reportedly retaliated against with solitary confinement after demanding that their asylum claims be heard. This is video testimony of the Cameroonian hunger strikers published online in June. 

Asylum Seeker 1: “But the judge keeps saying that we are criminals. He doesn’t believe what we are saying.”

Asylum Seeker 2: “So we are pleading with the people outside, all the NGOs, all the NGOs, Southern Poverty [Law Center], the congresspeople, please, the United States as a whole. We beg you people to help us in here. Help us in here. We are dying. We are dying, for real.”