AMOR - Statement against conditions at the Wyatt Detention Center

New reports of medical neglect, unsanitary conditions, racism & a culture of intimidation and abuse at the Wyatt Detention Center during a time of unprecedented ICE transfers to the facility

A press release from AMOR [Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance]:

On December 18, 2024, AMOR received reports from immigrants imprisoned and organizing around conditions inside the Wyatt Detention Facility. People detained reported medical neglect in the form of denial of necessary medications and first aid. Reports of persistent unhygienic conditions, for example, sheets that for months go unchanged, produce circumstances for new medical issues to develop which will go unattended.  

The implications of abuse and neglect were made tragically evident in the 2008 death of Hiu Lui “Jason” Ng, a migrant from China who was killed by ICE at the Wyatt Detention Facility due to medical neglect. Public pressure and investigation into that case led ICE to end its contract that same year, and the contract was not renewed until 2019. These December 2024 reports make it chillingly obvious that the conditions that led to Ng's death are still present today.

In December 2024, forty people were forcibly transported from the Plymouth County Correctional Facility to Wyatt Detention Facility. This type of mass transfer by ICE is one way that detention is being weaponized in Rhode Island and across the country to generate intentional chaos, which impedes immigrants from maintaining contact with those who support them.

People imprisoned at Wyatt report a prison administration that inhibits communication between those detained through recreation times reduced to one hour per day and divided into non-overlapping schedules. Recreation times are also weaponized to occur at times of the day when working family members are less likely to be able to receive phone calls, causing people detained to wait a week or more to speak to a spouse or other sources of support. 

Upon expressing grievances, people detained have reported abuse through racist and anti-immigrant ridicule and dismissed complaints. Others reported fear of reprisals, which further limit communication between people detained and with people outside the prison, including in the form of 24-hour lockdowns. Punitive responses to those calling attention to abuses in ICE detention have been persistent. In 2020, sixty hunger strikers suffered from retaliation through phone access cut off and people put in isolation.

The conditions faced by people imprisoned in immigration detention in Rhode Island make clear the ways in which so-called “administrative” detention is weaponized daily as a form of racialized punishment.