Originally published on https://nodetentioncentersmi.org/2026/05/18/press-release-in-wake-of-mass-hunger-strike-conditions-at-north-lake-processing-center-draw-international-condemnation-and-concern/
For Immediate Release: Monday, May 18th, 2026
Contact: No Detention Centers in Michigan, info@nodetentioncentersmi.org
Baldwin, MI — A month after hundreds of people held in immigration detention at the North Lake Processing Center launched rolling hunger and work strikes across multiple units in response to inhumane conditions, inadequate medical care, and legal delays, new reports and organizing have continued to highlight the urgency of their unmet demands.
Owned and operated by the Florida-based GEO Group since its construction as a for-profit youth prison in the late 1990s, North Lake is currently the largest detention center in the Midwest. The strikes beginning last month—which spread without formal leadership and were met with threats of retaliation from GEO staff—echo earlier chapters in the facility’s history. Extensively documented hunger strikes at North Lake in 2020 led to blanket denials from the GEO Group, just as Immigration and Customs Enforcement attempted to deny recent actions despite participants’ testimony to attorneys, family members, and reporters.
The partnership between GEO and ICE has faced new scrutiny in the past week following the announcement that David Venturella, a former GEO executive, will lead the federal agency.
“People suffering in detention in Baldwin launched these strikes at great risk to their own health, and held on as long as possible despite GEO employees threatening them with transfer to other facilities,” said Ale Rojas of No Detention Centers in Michigan. “This act of bravery was a plea for connection. By denying themselves a human need, they hoped we would listen to the message they sent—we are in pain, suffering, being killed, underfed, untreated, isolated, and our humanity is being ignored; please do not look away. In response, people around the state, the country, and the world have expressed solidarity with those who undertook this action, as well as horror at the conditions that prompted it.”
Those conditions received further attention in a letter regarding North Lake sent last week to the Detroit ICE Field Office by the ACLU of Michigan and the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center. The letter details numerous instances of “the denial of adequate medical care, which threatens the health and lives of all individuals held there; restrictions on attorney access, which severely limit the ability of individuals to exercise their fundamental rights to seek release from detention and pursue legal relief; and interference with access to immigration proceedings.” Responding to another example of denial of medical care, on Monday advocates called North Lake en masse to demand that an immigrant with mental health challenges receive his prescribed psychiatric medication.
In a related decision likely to affect thousands of immigration cases in Michigan and three other states, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals joined two other federal appeals courts last week in declaring the Trump administration’s “mandatory detention” policy unconstitutional and affirming the right to bond hearings. Even with such hearings, however, many immigrants like Byron Martinez of Grand Rapids—whose violent detention by ICE in conjunction with the Grand Rapids Police Department inspired a support campaign led by Movimiento Cosecha Grand Rapids and GR Rapid Response to ICE—have ultimately seen their requests for bond rejected. Martinez, who has been detained at North Lake for over 100 days, was denied asylum on Friday, May 15th.
On Sunday, around 50 protesters gathered outside the prison in Baldwin to amplify the still-unmet demands of the strikes. Statements were shared from a woman who had recently been released from North Lake, from organizers working against ICE’s plans to open a new warehouse detention facility in Romulus, and from Amu Gib, an incarcerated UK activist and member of Palestine Action who took part in a 50-day hunger strike last year, stressing intersections among global struggles against detention, border regimes, and militarism.
“In December 2025, Nenko Stanev Gantchev was killed in North Lake,” Gib observed in their statement, recorded on April 27th, “the same way Jimmy Mubenga was killed by G4S. This is not the only way. Migration is life.” Acknowledging the hundreds of participants in the strikes in Michigan, Gib added: “We must take seriously their urgent call for liberation—not just of their individual bodies, but of the borders that cage the face of the earth. The deadly logic of the empire, of the nation-state, becomes: ‘Live for me, die for me, or kill for me’’; and the hunger striker replies, in simple terms, ‘We do not belong to you. We refuse your borders. In our hearts we will be free; in our bodies we will wake up and ache for our lives.’”