1. United States
2. Va.
3. Letter

We are going to use a word. Concentration camps. Because that is what they are. The Trump regime is detaining human beings — most charged with no crime — in overcrowded facilities with spoiled food, worm-infested water, inadequate medical care, and documented psychological and physical torture. Fifty people, that we are aware of, have died in ICE custody since this administration took office. A sitting U.S. senator was tear-gassed for trying to bear witness. And now, thanks to an investigation by The Guardian, we know what the regime does when the people in its concentration camps stop eating to protest their conditions. It force-feeds them. DHS officials have quietly subjected at least ten hunger-striking detainees to involuntary force-feeding — a procedure in which a person is physically restrained, their head held still, while a plastic tube is forced through their nostril, down their throat, and into their stomach, pumping liquid nutrition into their body against their will. Dr. Chanelle Diaz of Columbia University called it one of the most uncomfortable medical procedures that exists. The World Medical Association calls it “the most unsuitable approach to save lives.” The United Nations considers it torture. Five more detainees ended their hunger strikes rather than undergo the procedure. They chose to keep eating — not because conditions improved, but because they were too afraid of what would be done to their bodies if they didn’t. This is what torture looks like. This is what it looks like when a regime breaks people. And Congress has been largely silent. We are demanding emergency oversight hearings into force-feeding practices in all ICE detention facilities, immediate independent medical inspections of every facility where hunger strikes have occurred, legislation explicitly prohibiting non-consensual medical procedures on detainees, and the closure of facilities that cannot meet basic humane standards. History will record what happened in these concentration camps. It will also record who stayed silent. Do not be silent. Respectfully — and with righteous fury,