#ICE #cruelty #RümeysaÖztürk
Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk opens up for the first time about her shocking arrest and 45 days in a South Louisiana processing facility. She recalls the generous and compassionate women who helped her through this harrowing ordeal.
"On a Tuesday in March, I had spent most of my day working on my dissertation proposal and started to feel exhausted and hungry. It was the holy month of Ramadan, and I was fasting. Once finished, I quickly got ready to attend an iftar dinner, throwing on my hoodie, sweatpants, and a jersey headscarf—definitely not a day for being fancy. I was looking forward to taking a short walk and catching up with friends at the interfaith center, when I was suddenly surrounded and grabbed by a swarm of masked individuals, who handcuffed me and shoved me into an unmarked car.
Suddenly, I was thrust into a nightmare. Thousands of questions crept up in the hours that passed. It felt like an eternity as my shackled body was jostled from one location to another. Who were these people? Had I been a good enough person if today was my final day? I was relieved to have finished filing my taxes, but I couldn’t shake the thought of a book I needed to return to the library. I regretted not calling my grandparents and friends that day. My mom had heard my scream on the phone when they were taking me. She didn’t know where I was, and I could only imagine how many times she tried to reach me from oceans away, or who my father had attempted to contact. As my body shook with fear, I found myself drowning in thoughts. I began my final prayers, communicating with God that I had tried my best every day.
I was shuttled from Somerville to another city in Massachusetts, then to New Hampshire and Vermont, followed by Georgia and Louisiana. I experienced countless changes in agents, cars, planes, and handcuffs. In Vermont, I was required to take a DNA test for the first time. I hadn’t yet been permitted to contact my parents, friends, or lawyer. I asked numerous questions, but I received few answers; those I did get were inconsistent with each other.
Throughout, I was disoriented, hungry, and nauseous. In Georgia, after suffering a severe asthma attack without my primary inhaler and having a hard cry, I was feeling completely hopeless. In Louisiana, I found myself in a cramped, cagelike bus, waiting for hours. I watched as countless people arrived from a nearby plane, all shackled—hands, feet, and waists. Some were taken inside a building, while others were loaded onto a bus, where I was left behind. I asked for water but was given none. I sat with others in uncomfortable seats, all of us feeling the weight of our situations, and me intensely feeling the strain on my body, which was about to collapse.
(. . .)
It wasn’t until late afternoon on March 26 that we arrived at a 'detention center,' roughly 24 hours since I had been grabbed off the street. While waiting to be processed alongside dozens of other women in a stark white cell, I felt utterly exhausted, lying on the hard floor from time to time. As someone who learned English later in life, the lines between prison and detention centers blurred in my mind. I had a lot of questions: Who are the people staying here? How many are there? What are the living conditions like? What kinds of offenses have brought them here? How long have they been here?
The cramped room was filled with women, some lying on the cold floor, others looking scared or simply sad, all in desperate need of food and water. The bathrooms were just curtained stalls. The room itself was frustratingly bright, with hard, uncomfortable benches that added to the tension of the situation. Later in the night, we were finally given some dinner. My request for halal or vegetarian food was rejected.
Still, despite these awful circumstances, I clung to my belief in humanity. I took a moment to collect my thoughts. I then began engaging in conversations with the women around me. Over the 14 hours I spent in processing, I connected with many of them. Through a sometimes-challenging language barrier, we talked—about how we’d gotten there, where we’d been, and what was waiting for us on the inside. I discovered that another woman there also had asthma, as she carried her inhaler. I learned that several women were separated from their children.
I soon learned the color coding used in the detention center. Orange indicated 'low crime,' meaning those individuals were asylum seekers, their 'crime' being the act of legally seeking asylum or crossing the border without authorization. Women kept asking me, 'Did you cross the border?' I answered: 'I hadn’t.' 'I had a ticket.' 'I had F-1 visa one day before.' 'I am a doctoral student.’' The red uniforms denoted more serious offenses. I came to understand that this facility serves as an immigration detention center where asylum seekers, refugees, and immigrants—people escaping conflict, war, oppression, and violence—are taken and find themselves stuck for months or years. I was given orange. I wondered which border I had crossed without my knowledge.
Around 6 a.m. on Thursday, March 27, having gone two nights without sleep and little food, I was finally processed in the for-profit ICE prison. My request for a space for my morning prayer was rejected by an intake officer. Instead, I was directed to the medical center for my first evaluation, which primarily consisted of me listing my health issues to the nurse and trying to remember the names of the medications I was taking. I spent hours waiting there under extremely loud TV sounds. Later, when I was directed to where I was to stay in the afternoon, I was bewildered to find 23 other women crowded into a small cell. They greeted me with warmth and smiles, which only added to my confusion. The questions I initially had about who they were and why they were there continued to fade. I opened the plastic bag of 'essentials' that the officers had given us, which contained two to three changes of clothes, flip-flops, a small bottle of shampoo, a comb, one thin blanket and sheet, toothpaste, a cheap toothbrush, and a handbook.
Always the student, I wanted to dive into the handbook, but it was written in Spanish. I asked a few of the other women if they had an English version; they did, and they were eager to help me understand everything. I read the handbook and instructions multiple times, but some parts were confusing.They walked me through the setup of the phone, which felt outdated and challenging to operate. They showed me how to use the old tablets in the room, explained how to set up my account, and guided me through the commissary process—the weekly food ordering system that often failed to deliver—along with a few other limited features. After that, utterly miserable and drained, I turned my attention to the blue metal bunk bed."
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/rumeysa-ozturk-what-i-witnessed-inside-an-ice-womens-prison
