2 women in Chicago say husbands detained by ICE have gone on hunger strikes
Two women in Chicago have been separated from their husbands for nearly a year after they were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Fighting for their freedom, and saying they cannot get a fair hearing or a hearing at all, their husbands have now joined ongoing hunger strikes at the detention facilities where they're being held in Texas and Georgia.
Amaliia Gilmutfinova's husband, Shokhrokh Abdullaev, has been in ICE detention since last November. She said he was working as a truck driver when he was pulled over by Border Patrol agents. He had a pending asylum case when he was detained.
"When I did hear from him in three days, because we had our paperwork and had everything in order, we believed that he would not be sent to detention and he'd be let go," she said through an interpreter.
That didn't happen. He's been held at the El Valle Detention Center in Texas ever since.
"The length of stay at this detention center, there is literally no way out," Gilmutfinova said.
He's joined other detainees who have chosen to go on a hunger strike as a last resort – the only way they say they can push for their own due process.
"Everybody there on this strike, and most of the people that they know there have no criminal record," Gilmutfinova said.
What's happening at that Texas facility mirrors another facility, the Folkston ICE Processing Center, in Georgia, where Kseniia Volkova's husband, Andrei Mikhailov, has been detained for eight months.
They're originally from Russia and sought political asylum in the U.S. She and her husband were arrested together on a trip to Miami. She was released on electronic monitoring, but he has remained detained ever since.
"We did everything legally, and he's locked up. My husband, he had no criminal history. He doesn't break any law, and we just live here, work here, pay taxes," Volkova said. "We are the same documents, the same asylum case, but this system treat us differently."
Her husband and others detained at the Folkston processing center also have gone on hunger strike.
"Threatened to force feed them through tubes in their noses, and they also threatened to deport them to Africa," Volkova said.
Both women said they're speaking out because their husbands cannot. They are asking that ICE transfer them to another facility where a judge will hear their case.
ICE did not acknowledge the hunger strikes when asked, nor did they comment on either of these families. They referred questions to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
