NorthJersey.com
HACKENSACK As he peered through a small window inside his cell at the Bergen County Jail, José Suchite Salguero knew something was amiss.
Protesters had been gathering outside the River Street building nightly to support the Newark man and other immigrant detainees who had been on a hunger strike.
But on the evening of Dec. 12, the scene was different, more volatile. There were far more police than normal, many in riot gear. Suchite Salguero said he saw police cars and trucks parked in an adjacent lot, many from outside the city.
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He had planned to address demonstrators by phone, as in the past, to share the story of his 11 months of detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and how desperately he wanted to be free. But as he waited to make the call, a confrontation erupted between police and protesters.
ICE prisoners on hunger strikes
Dozens of immigrants held in detention at both the Essex and Hudson county jails began a hunger strike on Monday Dectember 28, in an attempt to gain their freedom.
The action coincides with a spike in Covid-19 cases at both facilities creating fear, a sense of urgency and exacerbating the already harsh conditions for those inside jails and ICE facilities.
“I had never experienced the suffering, the pain, the agony that is to be locked up there, all the humiliations, all the torture that one goes through in that place. It’s unbelievable, it’s awful,” said one hunger striker, whose anonymity is being protected because he is in ICE detention at the Essex County Jail.