Approximately 500 people in a Coastal Georgia immigration detention center are on a hunger strike, protesting conditions at the facility as well as what they say are violations of asylum protocols by U.S. authorities, according to family members and legal representatives.
Samantha Hamilton, senior litigation staff attorney at Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta (AAAJ), said most of the people participating in the civil disobedience came to the United States seeking asylum from authoritarian and repressive national governments. The hunger strikers say they were following the legal process for their immigration claims, yet have been at the privately run Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Folkston for months or years awaiting judicial hearings.
The hunger strike is the latest controversy at the Charlton County facility, which is run by The GEO Group and, despite numerous complaints about unsafe conditions, is expanding to become the largest ICE detention center in the nation.
“There’s nothing illegal about seeking asylum. There’s nothing illegal about seeking sanctuary,” said Hamilton, who represents some of the detainees participating in the strike. “So this is just the natural next step in a long-time struggle of people being detained at this facility.”
Hamilton said that as of Oct. 8, around 372 men confined to Folkston’s F building and K5 pod are participating in the hunger strike, along with an estimated 150 more detainees in other buildings.
The numbers come from numerous sources associated with the Campaign to Shut Down Folkston ICE Processing Center (FIPC), activists who have different lines of communication with detainees there, as well as family members of detainees, according to Hamilton.
The new civil protest among detainees is part of a monthslong struggle for redress, Hamilton said. For months, detainees have been seeking redress from the courts, with an increase in petitions filed in U.S. Federal Court in Waycross asking the U.S. government to show cause for their detention.
In September, 14 Russian-speaking detainees published a letter in which they complained about inadequate conditions at Folkston.
A larger group agreed to join a hunger strike ahead of a planned Oct. 6 inspection of the facility, according to a letter signed by 45 of the protesters and a video explaining the rationale for the mass protest.
“Some of us have been detained for months. Some people have been here for years. We are not serving criminal sentences. We are asking the United States for protection,” one of the detainees said in an audio recording obtained by The Current GA. “We are afraid that what inspectors see will not show how we normally live. We have serious concerns about the food, sleep conditions, medical care, and the length of our detention.”
Polina Chertushkina, the 26-year-old wife of a Russian national who signed the September letter, said her husband deserved a day in court because he never broke the law.
She and her husband Andrei Gerdiukov sought asylum in America after entering the U.S. at the Texas border in February 2024. Immediately afterward, they were allowed to live peacefully as the government processed their file, she said. The couple settled in New York and purchased an apartment and a car. But they were detained in Miami by U.S. border officials. Officials transferred her husband to the D. Ray James facility in Georgia. She was released under an alternate program which requires electronic monitoring, Chertushkina said.
“We didn’t do anything. We didn’t commit any crimes, and we didn’t break any law. We followed all the requirements and all things that the government told us to do,” she said.
Folkston has been the focus of criticism for years by the Department of Homeland Security’s own auditors. The Current GA has previously reported on the 2024 death of 57-year-old Jaspal Singh. That story found that an ICE report said the facility’s medical care “deviated beyond safe limits and directly contributed to his death.”
Despite a checkered track record, the government awarded The GEO Group a new $47 million contract to expand the number of beds to 3,000, a size that would make the center the largest permanent ICE facility in the United States.
In the last two years, conditions have deteriorated, according to Hamilton, who has visited Folkston multiple times. The water is undrinkable, forcing detainees to join the voluntary work program that pays $1 a day so they can afford the water bottles sold at commissary, she said.
“People have reported seeing bugs in the water. People have reported getting rashes, presumably from the water that they never had. Skin rashes that they’ve never had before,” she said ”People have reported their hair falling out as a result of taking showers from the water, and because the water is so disgusting, people really try to avoid it at all costs.”
The GEO Group declined to comment, instead directing The Current to direct questions to ICE. ICE did not respond to requests for comment.
Congressman Earl “Buddy” Carter did not respond to requests for comment. Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock also did not respond to requests for comment.
Chertushkina said that her husband, Andrei Gerdiukov, was placed in solitary confinement for participating in the strike and engaging in a group demonstration.
She hopes that Gerdiukov can be released soon, as she relies on him to support her through her medical issues.
“We came here because America was so welcoming, and we didn’t expect it because nobody informed us that we could go through all these hard things here. I think if we had known about it, maybe we wouldn’t have come,” said Gerdiukov.
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