New FOIA Record Shows Atlanta ICE Officials Lied About Deadly Conditions at Stewart Detention Center
Plus, an invitation to join small group FOIA Skill-up sessions, starting April 4.
What’s it called when you’ve got your FOIA Friday substack all drafted and get completely sidetracked? ‘Secrecy Saturday’? Well, whatever it is, I appreciate your readership and engagement.
Today I’m focusing on Stewart Detention Center, operated by CoreCivic for the ICE Atlanta Field Office. Stewart’s been in the news a lot recently. It’s where ICE sent 60 year-old Filipino Irwin survivor Alma Bowman after she voluntarily showed up for an appointment. Read more about that here in the excellent and essential 285 South. It’s where ICE is caging beloved Atlanta barber and double amputee Rodney Taylor. And it’s where ICE stashed the estranged husband of a Real Housewives of Atlanta star.
Stewart, like nearly every other ICE detention center I study, is severely overcrowded. People are sleeping on mattresses on the floor, and folks who need additional medical help cannot get it because the staffing patterns were not created to account for population numbers of this size.
I recently saw a statement from ICE about Krome in which they told a reporter they don’t disclose facility populations for security purposes. Trouble is, they’re actually obligated by federal appropriations laws to publish these statistics, precisely because overcrowding has led to so many deaths in DHS detention. In fact, the very people in charge now are the ones responsible for the fatal overpopulation then.
As media coverage surrounding Stewart and ICE detention more generally heats up, it seems vital to help folks—especially journalists unfamiliar with immigration detention—understand just how easily Atlanta ICE officials lie about the place. But showing is better than telling, so, thanks to a recently fulfilled FOIA request, here goes.
“Meeting All Standards”
Atlanta ICE officials misled the agency’s press office about the findings of inspections and conditions inside Georgia’s notorious, deadly, for-profit Stewart Detention Center, according records recently obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Responding to questions from Tyche Hendricks, senior immigration reporter at KQED, in November 2022, the Chief of Staff of the Atlanta ICE ERO Field Office provided false information ICE’s Office of Public Affairs about the results of inspections at Stewart:
I am checking through all the inspections for Stewart, so from 2020 to date we have been inspected by the following, meeting all Standards as required under PBNDS 2011 with 2016 revisions: Nakamoto annually, ODO annually and with follow-up inspections totaling 4 in 3 years, PREA inspection in 2021, CRCL and OIDO in July of 2021 based on a directive of the Secretary of DHS, OPR in 2021, and OIG recently in 2022.
That statement was demonstrably untrue.
In July 2021, the ICE Office of Detention Oversight (ODO) performed a follow-up inspection of Stewart. It did not find the facility meet all standards as required under the PBNDS. That inspection found five separate standards deficiencies, including in the areas of use-of-force, solitary confinement, and medical sign-offs prior to placement in solitary.
As noted in the July 2021 ODO report, the previous inspection also found 8 deficiencies in 3 different standards categories.
ODO’s next inspection of Stewart, in October 2021, found the 9 deficiencies in six separate standards areas — twice the number of PBNDS violations previously documented.
An April 2022 ODO inspection similarly found Stewart noncompliant with more than a half-dozen PBNDS standards, including 3 “repeat deficiencies.”
And how about the inspection by “OIG recently in 2022” that the ICE ERO Atlanta Chief of Staff told his press liaison resulted in Stewart “meeting all standards”? OIG ultimately concluded in July 2023 that Stewart violated at least 6 PBNDS standards.
Okay, so how about CRCL inspections since 2020?
Here is what Jean Jimenez’s family spent years extracting from that agency.
It’s dated in 2020. Perhaps the ICE ERO Atlanta Chief of Staff didn’t get this memo?
During the three-year period covered in the ICE Atlanta Chief of Staff’s email, Stewart was the site of at least four in-custody deaths:
Santiago Baten Oxlaj (34), died May 25, 2020
Jose Guillen Vega (70), died August 10, 2020
Cipriano Chavez Alvarez (61), died September 21, 2020
Felipe Montes (57), died January 30, 2021.
Two more people, Cambric Dennis and Salvador Rosales Vargas, have died since the Chief of Staff told the lie this FOIA response just uncovered.
It’s Not Just ICE that Lies to the Press
CoreCivic’s leadership is just as willing to lie to media about its operations. Here’s what Brian Todd recently had the temerity to say on-record to a media outlet:
You read that right: “Solitary confinement, whether as a term or in practice, does not exist in any of the facilities we operate.” Here’s a photo the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took of the cell Jean Jimenez died inside at Stewart:
And here’s Jose Olivares’s piece for The Intercept with Travis Mannon about Efrain Romero’s death in solitary at Stewart, which was nearly identical to Jean’s.
No self-respecting journalist should print these lies without noting that they’ve been proved false by records the liars themselves create.
Invitation to Join April FOIA Friday Small Group Training Sessions
If you’re interested in leveling up your freedom of information game, I’ve put together a four-part series of FOIA Friday sessions that will walk folks of all experience levels through the processes of: (1) formulating and filing FOIA and state public records requests, (2) dealing strategically with the broad array of responses we see from public records custodians, (3) enforcing our requests using lawsuits and other means, and (4) using the information we’ve worked so hard to liberate. If you’re a paid subscriber to this substack or Media Requestor (my non-immigration-centric FOIA journal), these sessions are free. I’ll also record them and make them available in case you’re unable to join on Fridays at 3 east.
If you’d like to join live and submit questions in advance, feel free to register using the links below:
Friday, April 4 at 3PM EDT: FOIA Friday Session 1: What do we even request? Register here.
Friday, April 11, at 3PM EDT: FOIA Friday Session 2: Cracks in the Stonewalls: Responses (and Non-Responses). Register here.
Friday, April 18, at 3PM EDT: FOIA Friday Session 3: Enforcing Our Requests. Register here.
Friday, April 25, at 3PM EDT: FOIA Friday Session 4: How freeing Information frees People. Register here.
I do hope you’ll join if you’re interested!
Thought this could help