22 women who refused meals to protest their indefinite detention at the Berks County Residential Center in Pennsylvania say officials ‘pushed’ them to eat

Female asylum seekers held with their children at the Berks County Residential Center in Pennsylvania say they have been “pushed to suspend” a two-week long hunger strike “due to threats from immigration officials”.

In a letter to reporters, 22 mothers who refused meals to protest their indefinite detention said they were told: “If our health is weak, the government can take our children from us and send us to jails for adults.”

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The women are now eating one meal a day, but say they will resume the strike within a week if they have not been released. Lawyers who visited their clients during the hunger strike said some had lost significant amounts of weight, about 10lbs in some cases.

“Their faces looked sunken and gaunt,” said attorney Carol Anne Donohoe.

All of the women have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement since they arrived with their children at the US-Mexico border seeking asylum from violence in El Salvador and Honduras. Their protest has raised questions about whether ICE is flouting a federal judge’s mandate that puts a 20-day limit on the time children can be detained.

This week, four of the families will mark a full year in custody, including one from El Salvador that includes two girls who are 14 and 16. The teens have missed school while detained, and reportedly have depression and suicidal thoughts.

“They have this attitude that ‘either we’re going to die here or die there’, and it terrifies me,” said the family’s lawyer, Bridget Cambria.

In January, the World Bank ranked El Salvador as the world’s deadliest country outside a war zone.

Immigration officials told the Guardian the “safety, well-being and housing conditions” of those in its custody “are of utmost importance to the agency”. They added that the length of time a family is detained at Berks may be related to the current status of their immigration cases.

The majority of the families are blocked from deportation while a civil rights lawsuit they are part of winds through the courts. In the meantime, Donohoe argues they should be allowed to live with family members who live in the US.

“We have sent all the requested documents about their sponsors to show they are not a flight risk, but have been categorically denied,” Donohoe said.

This week, Human Rights First released an updated report on conditions at Berks based on a 25 July visit by a delegation of psychologists and pediatricians, as well as the facility’s own health reports. It includes a description of a 10-year-old girl detained for eight months at Berks who “suffers from nocturnal enuresis (urinary incontinence) and must wear a diaper at night”. A facility psychologist wrote: “The impression she left on me and the interpreter was that her enuresis was related to nothing more than laziness.” But an independent psychological evaluation concluded she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and should be seen by a specialist.

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Dr Michelle Silva, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine who participated in the tour, said the extended detention of families was “very concerning” because it “compromises a child’s developing sense of identity and security in the world around them”.

On Tuesday, state representative Leslie Acosta held a press conference about the hunger strike and called on Barack Obama and federal officials “to put a plan in place to release the families in a dignified human way”. She also requested a meeting with Pennsylvania’s governor “to create a plan that ensures new families are not admitted or transferred to Berks” since the state revoked its license last year to operate a child residential facility because it was also holding adults. The county is appealing that decision.

Next month, Obama will host a United Nations summit on refugees and migrants in New York City, where he is expected to face calls to end family detention.

“He placed it on steroids and turned it into the monster that it’s become,” Donahoe said, calling the practice a “stain on his legacy”.