ICE detainees: Conroe staff ignored health concerns
A dozen women at an immigrant detention center in Conroe said staff mishandled a fire evacuation and ignored health complications they say they suffered.
A small fire — later determined to be arson — broke out July 15 at the privately operated Joe Corley Detention Facility. The women who wrote letters about the situation are being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with three identifying themselves as asylum-seekers.
“In this place we are not safe, we are asking for help because we fear for our lives,” read one letter provided by California-based attorney Bashir Ghazialam, who has clients at the facility.
Managed by the GEO Group, a
Florida-based private corrections and rehabilitative company, the facility also houses detainees apprehended by the U.S. Marshals Service.
ICE and U.S. Marshals Service officials confirmed the fire broke out where the U.S. marshals’ detainees were being held. A Conroe Fire Department official said investigators determined the cause of the fire was arson.
Ghazialam’s office provided copies of handwritten letters it received from 12 female ICE detainees. Most include the writers’ full names and half list their detainee numbers.
Dated between July 17 and 20, the letters detail similar accounts about the fire and the actions of Joe Corley staffers during and after the incident. The authors describe a harrowing experience.
They accuse staffers of putting the women at risk by delaying their evacuation and then returning them to their dormitories before it was safe. The authors of the letters also allege they did not receive proper medical care for smoke-related issues and other health concerns reported to staffers.
“I believe that the officers here at Joe Corley are not well prepared for fire drills,” read a letter. ‘We are going to die’ According to the letters, smoke crept into female ICE detainees’ rooms through the vents on the evening of July 15. Their dorm doors would not open. They began choking from the smoke, with some coughing and vomiting.
“We thought we could no longer resist and that we would die locked up,” read one woman’s letter.
They banged their dorm windows and pushed an intercom button to be freed, but the doors would not open, several of the letters state.
“Many of us kneeled to pray to God to protect us,” one woman wrote about the ordeal.
Some of the women wrote Joe Corley staffers reacted with indifference to their pleas.
“What?” one staffer said as she shrugged her shoulders, a detainee wrote.
A July 16 statement from GEO said “staff immediately responded to the incident and the fire was quickly extinguished.” On Friday, GEO referred questions about the allegations to ICE officials.
Following Joe Corley’s evacuation plan, “all ICE detainees were swiftly and safely escorted from the building,” said ICE spokesman Tim Oberle on Friday.
Staffers shortly returned the detainees to their rooms, some of the women wrote, but they were still smoke-filled.
The women were then removed from their dorms again, nine of the letters state.
Oberle dismissed as false the allegations made about a second July 15 evacuation, saying detainees were only returned inside the facility once the fire department deemed it safe.
Investigators have determined the fire was started using linens in the area where the fire broke out, according to Conroe Fire Department Deputy Chief Steve Cottar. Charges have not been brought and paperwork on the investigation is still being completed, he said.