Campaign is under way to close Alabama facility routinely identified by advocates and detainees as one of the worst in US

During his detention in Gadsden, Alabama, Alex Matheus started losing his hair.

It wasn’t just that he was getting older, his hair was falling out in clumps from the stress and frustration of long-term detention in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).

“That’s very common in Etowah,” the 44-year-old Venezuelan said by telephone from his new, temporary home in Italy, where he is living as he seeks to return to the US.

Housed in the Gadsden county jail since the late 1990s, the gray slab of concrete that is the Etowah Detention Center, is routinely identified by lawyers, advocates and detainees as one of the worst Ice facilities in the United States. It has one of the longest detention times of all Ice facilities.

The all-male facility, housing on average 300 detainees according to Ice data, ranks sixth in the highest number of calls made to the Ice Detention Reporting and Information Line related to sexual and/or physical abuse incidents, according to a study from Freedom for Immigrants. Human Rights Watch documented the “spotty access to healthcare” at Etowah. There is a campaign run by civil, immigrant, and human rights organizations to shut down Etowah.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alex Matheus the day he left Etowah. Photograph: The Guardian

Sitting next to the sheriff’s office in Gadsden, the detention facility stands out because of the barbed wire wrapped around the wall. There’s not much else around. The average income in town is just under $19,000 and more than a quarter of the community lives in poverty. This decade alone, the population has decreased 4%. So it makes sense the county would like to keep a multimillion dollar endeavor going.

Matheus spent 17 months in Etowah enduring the bare bones facilities. “They don’t have a yard. They don’t have recreational facilities. They don’t have libraries. They don’t have big common areas to hold people.” He wasn’t allowed outside its concrete walls, even for a short walk, for more than 500 days – until his deportation.

A Venezuelan asylum seeker, who had lived in the United States since 2000, Matheus broke commercial laws by shipping gas masks to the government opposition in his home country. He spent time in federal prison and on the day of his release, was taken straight to Ice custody, first at Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, and then to Etowah.

Kenyan asylum seeker Sylvester Owino arrived at Etowah in 2013, after being in Ice custody for more than seven years in California and Arizona. As a “prolonged detainee”, little should have surprised the Kenyan asylum seeker about his latest detention center.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protesters at Etowah. There is a campaign run by civil, immigrant, and human rights organizations to shut down the facility. Photograph: Adelante Alabama

But things were done differently in rural Alabama.

In his first weeks, he noticed officers manning the detention facility were selling contraband to detainees. Vodka in plastic water bottles for $50. Weed in letter-sized white envelopes for $400. Cell phones went for $300. Officers sold a pack of cigarettes for $100.

Then there were the bribes.

One day, an officer approached Owino, telling him he didn’t have lunch and asking Owino to make him something to eat. So the detainee used the ramen noodles he had bought through the commissary, and mixed it with tuna for the officer.

“You share the food so they gave you privileges. So instead of being locked down, they let you out. You give him honey buns, you make him coffee,” he said.

With his budget noodle offering, Owino said he was able to watch a soccer game.

The Guardian spoke with a number of detainees – and reviewed a number of lawsuits – who had spent recent months and years in the facility. All complained about the standard of nutrition. In March, Alabama’s al.com reported now-outgoing sheriff Todd Entrekin legally – through a loophole in state law – pocketed nearly $750,000 allocated for food provisions in the jail.

Months later, after national coverage and backlash, Governor Kay Ivey sent a memorandum to the state comptroller rescinding the validity of the law, no longer allowing food services allowances to be made to sheriff’s accounts directly.

A 2016 report from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Detention Oversight Compliance Inspection logged similar instances they called “deficiencies” in food and medical standards.

Ice said Etowah operates in accordance with its standards. “As far as facility conditions, all Ice facilities are subject to regular inspections, both announced and unannounced, and those inspections have repeatedly found the Etowah County Detention Center to operate in compliance with Ice’s rigorous national detention standards. The facility was most-recently inspected in July,” Ice spokesman Bryan Cox told the Guardian in an email.

The almost two years Owino spent in Etowah were the worst years of his detention, Owino said.

Matheus agreed. “When you are anyone in the US, you start to fight your case hard and they send you to Alabama to wear you out,” he said. “I spoke to one [officer] and the guy said, my job is basically to make your life miserable. He told me that straight to my face”

The Etowah County Sheriff’s Office would probably like to change that perception. On a recent Guardian visit to the facility, Captain Mike O’Bryant introduced Jose Alfredo Reyes, 40, who has been in the facility for more than 18 months and had already agreed to an interview.

Reyes had nothing bad to say about the facility, except the lack of sunlight and mediocre food. “I told the captain, don’t worry, I won’t say nothing bad about you!” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest According to Christina Mansfield, the co-executive director of Freedom for Immigrants, ‘Etowah is one of the worst immigrant jails in the country.’ Photograph: Adelante Alabama

According to Christina Mansfield, the co-executive director of Freedom for Immigrants, “Etowah County Detention Center is one of the worst immigrant jails in the country. For years we have been documenting and drawing attention to abuses – such as physical assault and medical neglect – at the hands of the sheriff’s office and Ice. Several detained individuals and our volunteers have even been retaliated against for speaking out against these intolerable conditions. It’s time for Etowah to be shut down.”

Cox, in response to the allegations outlined in this story, said: “The allegations you’ve received are contradicted by the inspection findings of numerous entities that include independent third-party inspectors.”

Etowah sheriff’s office did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comments on the allegations put forth by former detainees and activists.

Matheus never had his wife visit from Florida because he said it didn’t make sense for her to visit for 20 minutes and still only talk through a video link.

He was deported in May 2017, back to Venezuela, where he was immediately detained. “They knew everything about me. They had a full folder against me. The US government provided everything to them. I had to pay [a bribe of] thousands of dollars to be released.”

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Owino had the same experience as Kenyan authorities have also received his asylum application and related documents. He is out on bond in California, with a hearing coming up in the coming months for his asylum case.

Matheus left Venezuela in early October to seek citizenship in Italy, the home of his grandparents. Now he lives alone, holding onto receding hope he may be able to return to the United States as his case is fought in court. He lives alone, in a small apartment in Calabria, away from his wife in Florida – whom he hasn’t seen in nearly a year. The impact of his time in Etowah remains with him.

“People forget you were a real person, a family guy, a regular person. Basically, you are going back to society and you are supposed to function as a normal person again. The problem with these places is that they dehumanize you so much. They hinder everything. They screw your life,” he said.