A social worker formerly employed at a for-profit family immigrant detention center in Texas blew the whistle this week on the prison’s inhumane conditions—from solitary confinement to medical neglect—that she said amount to child abuse and torture.
The Karnes County Residential Center is operated by GEO Group—the second largest private prison company in the country that has faced numerous accusations of atrocities and civil rights violations. It is also the site of recent—and repeated—hunger strikes led by mothers incarcerated with their children, in protest of their conditions, detentions, and in many cases, their looming deportations.
Social worker Oliva López corroborated the accounts of people on the inside when she conducted an exclusive interview with McClatchy DC, published Monday, in which she countered federal and local authorities’ narratives which cast the detention center as a safe and tolerable place for families to reside during asylum application processes. López said that, in fact, Karnes is a prison, and its atrocities include: