Etowah: the Ice detention center with the goal to ‘make your life miserable’

Campaign is under way to close Alabama facility routinely identified by advocates and detainees as one of the worst in US

Khushbu Shah in Gadsden, Alabama
Sun 2 Dec 2018 11.00 GMT

During his detention in Gadsden, Alabama, Alex Matheus started losing his hair.

It wasn’t just that he was getting older, his hair was falling out in clumps from the stress and frustration of long-term detention in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).

“That’s very common in Etowah,” the 44-year-old Venezuelan said by telephone from his new, temporary home in Italy, where he is living as he seeks to return to the US.

Housed in the Gadsden county jail since the late 1990s, the gray slab of concrete that is the Etowah Detention Center, is routinely identified by lawyers, advocates and detainees as one of the worst Ice facilities in the United States. It has one of the longest detention times of all Ice facilities.

The all-male facility, housing on average 300 detainees according to Ice data, ranks sixth in the highest number of calls made to the Ice Detention Reporting and Information Line related to sexual and/or physical abuse incidents, according to a study from Freedom for Immigrants. Human Rights Watch documented the “spotty access to healthcare” at Etowah. There is a campaign run by civil, immigrant, and human rights organizations to shut down Etowah.

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