'Suddenly they started gassing us': Cuban migrants tell of shocking attack at Ice prison

Refugees say protest against risk of Covid-19 was violently suppressed at New Mexico facility run by private firm CoreCivic

• This story is published in collaboration with Searchlight New Mexico

Ike Swetlitz of Searchlight in Estancia, New Mexico
Thu 2 Jul 2020 11.00 BST
Last modified on Thu 2 Jul 2020 18.29 BST

The migrants were on a days-long hunger strike when guards entered their prison dormitory in full riot gear of gas masks, shields and canisters of pepper spray. The officers corralled the two dozen or so inmates into a huddled mass. Two men fell to their knees, begging them not to attack.

“Suddenly, they just started gassing us,” said Yandy Bacallao, a 34-year-old asylum seeker from Cuba. “You could just hear everyone screaming for help.”

At least one person collapsed. Others shouted for air. Bacallao tried to grab a shirt from his bed to put over the mouth of a man who was struggling to breathe. “The officer sprayed me directly on my face and on my body, and I ran,” Bacallao said. “I felt like I was going to drown.”

The 14 May “attack”, in the words of Bacallao and other migrants, took place at Torrance county detention facility, a sprawling complex located about an hour south-east of Albuquerque. Set off from the desert scrub by a tall chain-link fence draped in rolls of razor wire, it is run by CoreCivic, a private prison company, and mostly houses migrants under the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A CoreCivic spokesman, Ryan Gustin, confirmed the incident and said, in a written statement, that guards “responded to a protest” and used pepper spray “on a group of detainees who became disruptive by refusing to comply with verbal directives provided by staff”.

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