Seven congressional Democrats sent a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and acting ICE Director David Venturella demanding answers about conditions at the El Valle detention facility in Raymondville, Texas, where detained immigrants have been on hunger strike for nearly three weeks. Led by Illinois representative Delia Ramirez and co-signed by Texas's Greg Casar and Jasmine Crockett among others, the letter calls conditions a violation of DHS and ICE's own documented detention standards. The hunger strikers — originally more than two dozen people from Russia, Cameroon, and other countries — have dwindled to four women and 10 to 20 men. Their demands are not radical: adequate medical care, drinkable water, faster case processing, and transfers closer to family. One striker, Russian asylum seeker Inna Eremeeva, reports serious leg and hip pain and a growth in her private areas, with all medical care requests denied. She has been detained since November 2025 after being stopped at a Texas border checkpoint during a trucking job. The facility is owned by the Willacy County Local Government Corporation and operated by Management and Training Corporation, a private prison company. MTC referred all questions to ICE. ICE flatly denies any threats of force feeding, stating "allegations that detainees are being threatened are FALSE." Family members of hunger strikers tell a different story: women were told they would be transferred to another ICE facility for force feeding. Other Texas ICE facilities have previously been used for that purpose. DHS responded to the congressional letter not with substantive answers but with a political counter-punch, calling the detainees "dangerous criminals" and saying the representatives "should be thanking our law enforcement." DHS provided no evidence of criminal history for any of the hunger strikers whose families spoke to the Guardian. The agency also characterized Eremeeva's entry via the CBP One app as having been "released in the country completely unvetted" under the Biden administration. The El Valle situation is not isolated. Senators from Georgia have raised similar concerns about a hunger strike at the Folkston ICE detention center, where a detained man recently died amid allegations of force feeding threats. A recent Fifth Circuit court decision ruled that ICE detainees in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi do not have the right to seek release on bond — eliminating the judicial pressure valve that might otherwise force the system to process cases rather than warehouse people. The structural logic is plain. Private operators are paid per detainee per day. Case processing is slow by design, not accident. Bond hearings are now foreclosed in three states by circuit court ruling. Medical care denial and harsh conditions function as coercive pressure to accept deportation rather than pursue legal claims. The congressional letter is an oversight mechanism with no enforcement power writing to an executive agency with no institutional incentive to comply. Savannah Kumar of the ACLU of Texas described the dynamic precisely: "People are feeling hopeless and desperate in the black hole of ICE detention. People in immigration detention centers across the country have had to resort to hunger strikes because they are caged in conditions that feel unsurvivable." The 63-year-old man whose daughter guides him through panic attacks over the phone captures the human residue of this system: "Why am I here? I didn't do anything."
