A Cuban immigrant held in a New Mexico immigration detention facility alleges federal immigration authorities subjected him to an abrupt, grueling transfer spanning multiple states during an ongoing hunger strike.
Rogelio Bolufé, 44, has been held in the Torrance County Detention Facility in Estancia since August. While incarcerated, he has repeatedly raised concerns about conditions at the facility, mobilizing dozens of fellow immigrant detainees in protests about legal library access, water quality, tablets and alleged constitutional abuses.
Bolufé said he started a hunger strike about 10 days ago, shortly after he alleges employees of CoreCivic, the private prison operator, seized his legal documents and other materials, including draft complaints against CoreCivic and the immigration court in Chaparral, N.M.
Brian Todd, a CoreCivic spokesperson, told Source NM on Friday that Bolufe’s claims about stolen records are “patently false.”
CoreCivic and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency recently announced their intent to contract directly to continue holding roughly 325 detainees at the facility, following a new state law that prohibits public entities from participating in ICE contracts. The U.S. Justice Department on Friday afternoon announced it had filed a lawsuit and request for a preliminary injunction against the state over that law, the Immigrant Safety Act, as well as against an Albuquerque ordinance that prohibits federal immigration officers from using certain public spaces.
On Tuesday, Bolufé told Source NM that he was rousted from his cell and transferred to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s Albuquerque field office.
Over the course of the next 48 hours, he was transferred to Camp East Montana, an ICE facility at Fort Bliss in Texas, then to Alabama, then to Mesa, Arizona then to a detention facility in Washington, he told Source NM in a phone call from the facility Thursday.
Through the multiple transfers, he said he was denied medical care, including for splitting migraines for which he has a prescription, and forced to sleep on cold floors with other ICE detainees.
The Mesa airport’s temporary ICE holding facility has been under increasing pressure from members of Congress due to overcrowding, which three members of Congress described after a surprise visit as “shocking,” with the estimated 250 people being detained being housed “like sardines” and unable to even lie down.
“We’re all lying on the floor. There are people who’ve been here — imagine — for three days. It’s an incredible thing,” he told Source NM in Spanish on Wednesday evening before being transferred to Washington. “I don’t have any medical attention. They didn’t let me see any doctor. They didn’t give me any medication for migraines or pain.”
“This is a reprisal for complaints, a reprisal for the First Amendment,” he said.
In Mesa, Bolufé said he was forced to sleep on the floor along with dozens of other detainees who were facing imminent deportation to Venezuela and Ecuador. He was handcuffed and sent to Washington, where he was admitted as a detainee and assigned a cell, he said.
On Thursday, Bolufé said he was unsure where exactly in the state of Washington he was being held. Ian Philabaum, a program director for Innovation Law Lab, which conducts weekly legal visits at the jail, said he suspects the facility is the Northwest ICE Facility in Tacoma.
“He is very clear that they are torturing him to try to get him to do what they want — stop his hunger strike and shut up,” Philabaum told Source NM after speaking Thursday to Bolufé.
Todd, the CoreCivic spokesperson, did not address Rogelio’s hunger strike but said the facility offers “high-quality medical and mental health care for all residents.” He referred questions to ICE about the transfer. ICE spokesperson Leticia Zamarripa did not respond to Source NM’s Thursday request for comment prior to publication on Friday afternoon.
Bolufé is seeking a Green Card under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, which allows Cubans a streamlined path to permanent residency. He is appealing a deportation order and also working on a habeas corpus petition to challenge his alleged unlawful detention.
He was initially arrested in Miami, accused of possessing a small amount of cocaine in charges that were later dropped. He arrived in Torrance County, along with several dozen other detainees, from “Alligator Alcatraz,” a notorious temporary ICE facility in the Florida Everglades.
Bolufè said he’s lost 25 pounds over the course of the hunger strike. He said he will not end it until he sees CoreCivic in court and ICE ends its “racist, illegal manhunt.”
“This hunger strike is not for me. It is for everyone,” he said. “This is a racist hunt, driven by religious, ethnic and racial motives. It is time for every person of conscience to stop these indignities.”
