Activists hold 24-hr Capitol hunger strike for ICE detainees

Meanwhile, happening today, activists and community members are holding a 24-hour hunger strike. They're doing this outside of the Georgia Capitol in solidarity with the immigrant detainees at the Fulton ICE Processing Center here in Georgia. Our Kim Leffler joins us live this morning to talk more about this. And, Kim, they are set to hold a press conference as well this morning. Hey, Jasmine. Yeah, good morning for you. It actually looks like some of the organizers are just speaking to different media outlets individually. And so I have some sound from them coming up a little bit later on. But I'm going to give you a look at what we are seeing right now. We have a group that is protesting outside of the state capitol right now. They are doing this in solidarity with the immigrant detainees at the Fulton ICE Processing Center that is down in South Georgia. But, again, I spoke with some of the organizers a little bit earlier. Take a listen to what they had to say about why they are out here doing this. Yeah. So this is a we're doing a solidarity hunger strike with the over 500 detained people at Fulton ICE Processing Center who initiated a hunger strike 11 days ago in protest against the brutal conditions there and the retaliation against those that are in in Fulton, as as well as the elimination of access to a lot of medical care that is needed for immigrants that are treated so poorly in those detention centers. Can you talk a little bit about the stakeout? Absolutely. So the reality is because, you know, the detainees are in there, they're organizing day in, day out under brutal conditions, and they're trying to get their message out here, including, like, the demands, which is no retaliation against those that are carrying out the hunger strike, demanding access to this medical care but also eliminating ICE processing center entirely. I mean every single one of the immigrants has been stripped of their rights and they should all be released and we also demand ICE out of Georgia. These are demands that are being made there. These are demands that are being made here. We want to basically spread their demands to more people who are actually not maybe aware of like for example your viewership might not be aware yet of what's going on in the processing center there. A processing center which has murdered people because of inaccess to medical care and a system under which ICE has killed 28 people so far this year. So the brutality in immigrant communities outside of the processing centers is excruciating. The brutality inside them is excruciating and they're connected. And so we want to basically uplift those voices and spread the demands that the hunger strikers are on right now. And if people are interested in getting involved, how can they do that? I understand you guys are going to be out here until tomorrow. Is that right? That's right. Yeah. So we're going to be out here in solidarity doing our own hunger strike. We encourage people to come out if they can with us and participate for as long as they can. We'll be here for 24 hours. But for people that aren't able to make it, we also encourage you to just participate in the hunger strike and basically spread the word of the demands that we have expelled in our own like Instagram. So you can check out our social media to kind of see what the demands are of those that are detained in the ICE processing center. Along that, we encourage people to make videos and, you know, spread that word through social media. They can tag us on that so we can uplift those voices, too. The reality is just like more awareness of what's happening and solidarity with those who are under the most excruciating conditions in the processing center. And so, as you heard there, this group is going to be out here until tomorrow. so still time to come out here if you would like to get involved and then of course as you heard there you can also take part in your own home and post on social media as well but again this group is going to be out here until tomorrow jasmine talk about this i will see you later