Rafael Alambarrio fled political persecution in Venezuela in 2024, married a U.S. citizen, and was working toward his green card when immigration officers detained him at a routine check-in and sent him to the Adams County Detention Center in Natchez, Mississippi. He is one of roughly 2,000 people held at the CoreCivic-operated facility, one of the largest immigration detention centers in the country.

Detainees have described overcrowding, inadequate food, limited medical care, and lingering fumes inside the facility. Last month, about a hundred detainees protested these conditions. Facility staff responded with pepper and gas sprays, then placed most of the group in solitary confinement; those accused of organizing the protest, including Alambarrio, spent a month in isolation.

"We are human beings and we deserve respect and, above all, the right to be treated humanely," Alambarrio said, according to Mississippi Today.

CoreCivic disputes that solitary confinement exists at its facilities, calling the practice "restrictive housing" instead, and attributes the gas disruption that sparked the protest to an equipment failure rather than a staff decision. Whatever the practice is called, detainees describe monthslong isolation as punishment for speaking up about conditions inside a taxpayer-funded facility.

Attorneys representing detainees say habeas corpus petitions, the legal tool meant to force the government to justify continued detention, have gone unanswered or sat backlogged for months. Families like the Alambarrios are left covering private attorney fees while waiting for answers that may never come.

No one held in civil immigration detention should face retaliation for reporting unsafe conditions. Sign the petition to demand an independent investigation into conditions at the Adams County Detention Center and accountability for the use of force against detainees who protested peacefully.