Joseph Estrade spent just three nights in the Etowah County Detention Center, but the 29-year-old New Orleans man considers that long weekend in April 2016 one of the worst experiences he has ever endured.

He describes the county jail as a "nightmare" plagued by a host of problems including poor food, unsanitary conditions and severe overcrowding that made him feel like he was "going insane" within a few hours of his booking into the Gadsden facility.

"That jail is like a prison; it's not a common jail. You walk in and it's very surreal how intense it is inside," Estrade, who was held in the detention center after being arrested by the Etowah County Sheriff's Office on marijuana charges two weeks before his wedding, said in a Friday phone interview.

"I know jail is not supposed to be Disneyland, I get that. It's a punishment place - great. But people still need to be treated like human beings."

Chains used to restrain detainees hang in the Etowah County Detention center on Dec. 4, 2012. (Eric Schultz / eschultz@al.com)

'The worst food I've ever had'

Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin has come under scrutiny for the way he manages the jail following an AL.com report last week that revealed that he personally pocketed more than $750,000 in public funds allocated to feed its prisoners.

"In regards to feeding of inmates, we utilize a registered dietitian to ensure adequate meals are provided daily," he said via email earlier this month.

On Wednesday Entrekin declined to answer detailed questions about how he feeds the inmates, complaints about the food, or how he manages the inmate-feeding funds. He instead stated via email that "[a]ll questions concerning the feeding of inmates will be answered at a news conference on Friday for you and your media colleagues."

A litany of current and former inmates, civil rights advocates and lawyers have repeatedly alleged over the past five years that the food served in the facility - known as either the Etowah County Detention Center or simply the Etowah County jail - is subpar, portions are inadequate and the conditions in the facility are inhumane.

Even an inspection report drafted by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Office of Detention Oversight following a three-day tour of the facility in December 2016 identified deficiencies in a range of areas including food service, health care and environmental health and safety.

As of 2016, an average of about 300 ICE detainees were incarcerated in the Etowah County facility at any given time under a federal contract that allows ICE to house detainees there in exchange for a per diem of $45 per inmate per day.

"Seventeen (17) detainees stated the food was bland and the portion sizes are too small. Some also stated they are frequently served the same food," the inspection report states.

That's in keeping with years of testimonials by inmates, some of whom claim that they lost weight, suffered repeated bouts of food poisoning, and often went hungry while incarcerated in the detention center.

In November 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) published a study called "Shadow Prisons: Immigrant Detention in the South" that includes insights gleaned from conversations with 67 immigrant inmates in the Etowah County Detention Center.

"This investigation found evidence of significant problems with the quality and quantity of food served to detainees," the report states. "Detainees reported very small portion sizes. Many detainees have lost weight during their time at the detention center. One man reported losing 25 pounds since his arrival at Etowah."

For about three months in 2015, Suzanne Riley was incarcerated in the jail, where her son is currently locked up. The 51-year-old Selma resident said the detention center served "outdated cereal from local stores" for dessert, that she got severe food poisoning after eating a particularly bad dinner, and that she lost more than 20 pounds over the relatively short period she was incarcerated.

"It was bad. The salads were made with rotten lettuce, we had beans every day and noodles with no taste," she said Tuesday. "Same s**t over and over."

Estrade described the provisions in the jail as woefully inadequate, with a typical dinner consisting of unseasoned beans and vegetables, a bland cookie and Kool-Aid powder mixed with water but no sugar.

"It was the worst food I've ever had in my life," he said. "Imagine the food version of old, warm water. It was tasteless but it had kind of like a musky taste. It was really, really bad."

Joseph Estrade spent three nights in the Etowah County Detention Center in 2016. (Facebook)

A perverse incentive

For years, inmate rights advocates, legal experts and other observers have made the case that allowing Alabama sheriffs to personally keep "excess" funds allocated to feed inmates establishes a perverse incentive.

The question is whether a system that allows sheriffs to line their pockets with any inmate-feeding funds they do not use for that purpose leads to people incarcerated in county jails being fed lower-quality and less plentiful food.

The SPLC report explicitly considers that question as it pertains to the jail overseen by Entrekin.

"It is worth noting that under Alabama law, sheriffs can keep as personal income any money not used by jail kitchens," the report states. "While it is not clear why the food portions are so small at the Etowah County Detention Center, researchers for this report are concerned about the law's potential to create an incentive for sheriffs to skimp on meals and cut corners."

But the SPLC is far from the only outfit raising such questions. An assemblage of more than 10 civil rights, social justice and immigrant advocacy groups have joined forces in support of a campaign called Shut Down Etowah. Founded in 2015, the effort is aimed at exposing alleged abuses inside the Etowah County Detention Center and eventually getting the facility shuttered.

Last week, Lucia Hermo, public advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama - a Shut Down Etowah campaign member - called for a federal investigation into the way inmate-feeding funds are used in Etowah County.

Hermo said the campaign has "received countless reports from people detained by ICE in Etowah about meager, rotten, expired and insect-infested food" that serve as anecdotal evidence that Entrekin may be saving money at the expense of properly feeding inmates.

"Given these deeply troubling, unethical and possibly illegal actions by Sheriff Entrekin, we call on the Department of Homeland Security to terminate its contract with Etowah County and launch an investigation into how the county has misspent these funds and violated detained people's human rights," Hermo said.

An inmate prepares food in the kitchen at the Etowah County jail. (Etowah County Sheriff's Office)

'I was going insane'

When Estrade thinks back to his stint in the Etowah County jail, bad food is not the first thing that comes to mind. Numerous unnerving stories from his time there are burned into his memory.

There's his recollection that when the detention center is overcrowded, some inmates are forced to sleep in hard-plastic sleeves referred to as "boats" on the floors of the tiny, windowless cells he describes as far too small even for the two people that usually occupy them. There are the sleepless nights spent listening to the loud freestyle rap battles of two inmates in a neighboring cell.

And then there's the pure, maddening boredom.

"You can't expect a consciousness to sit in a cell with no windows, no books, no music, with no form of experience whatsoever other than staring at a wall," Estrade said. "I was going nuts, man. I can't explain the way it was the first night I was there. I was going insane. I didn't know if the sun was going up yet or what."

The SPLC study provides further evidence of the dire state of the jail lamented by Estrade, Riley and many other current and former inmates.

"At Etowah County Detention Center in Alabama, detainees go months - even years - without feeling the sun on their skin because the detention center lacks an outdoor recreation area," the study states.

Entrekin said via email that "[t]he ECDC meets all criteria concerning recreation space according to federal detention standards and our accreditation through the American Correctional Association."

Riley said "they freeze you to death" night after night in the jail, and that inmates are often denied so much as a blanket to insulate them from the cold. She said the water in her cell was undrinkable and that she yearned for a glimpse of the outside world.

She also remembers the unsanitary condition of her cell, which she shared with three other inmates.

"My toilet stopped up for days and was full of s**t from four people," she said. "They wouldn't let us out to use the toilet in the rec room so we had to keep using ours. They finally fixed it after constantly complaining."

Asked about such sanitation issues, Entrekin said via email that "[a]ll inmates have access to clean drinking water at all times. Maintenance workers are in the detention center on a daily basis repairing items that are broken to ensure a safe and sanitary condition for all."

The medical area at the Etowah County Detention Center as photographed on Dec. 4, 2012. (Eric Schultz / eschultz@al.com)

Back to a cell

In July 2015, a national advocacy group called Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC) - which has since changed its name to Freedom for Immigrants - filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office for Civil Rights & Civil Liberties. The complaint, filed on behalf of 20 then-current and former ICE detainees in the Etowah County Detention Center, details a string of abuses that allegedly took place in the facility.

A particularly striking section of the complaint states that the facility's staff and ICE officers there "routinely violate medical and mental health care standards, and failed to appropriately respond to an extreme medical emergency."

The SPLC report and ICE's own inspection of the facility also detail a range of serious concerns about access to medical care in the Etowah County Detention Center, sometimes referred to as the ECDC.

The 2015 CIVIC complaint recounts the plight of an ICE detainee named Miguel Williamson.

"Mr. Williamson was in the custody of ICE at ECDC and his repeated requests for medical attention were dismissed, misdiagnosed, and denied," the complaint states.

Entrekin said via email that the complaint's claims about Williamson's treatment "were never substantiated. The case has been resolved."

According to the complaint, after being repeatedly denied medical care, Williamson had a massive heart attack inside the detention center in May 2014 that led to both of his kidneys failing. At the hospital, the complaint says, he went into septic shock caused by a staph infection that had gone "undiagnosed and untreated" at the jail.

Though doctors predicted he would die, Williamson managed to pull through in the end, only to be sent from the hospital straight back to a cell in the Etowah County Detention Center.