Journal of Christopher Columbus, 1492

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 Summary

“Columbus assumed indigenous people could be converted and serve economic interests, exchanging trinkets for goods. He judged them simple, capable servants and planned to take six to learn language. He sought gold and spices, noting possible southern sources.

​

Introduction to Primary Source:

Europeans formed assumptions and biases concerning the indigenous people they encountered in North and South America. In these journalaccounts of Christopher Columbus, it is evident he made assumptions about Native American’s culture and immediately began assessing the potential ofthese people to serve European economic interests. He also predicted easy success for missionaries seeking to convert these people to Christianity.

Document:

Thursday, October 11

…Presently many inhabitants of the island assembled. What follows is in the actual words of the Admiral in his book of the first navigation and discovery of the Indies. “I,” he says, ” that we might form great friendship, for I knew that they were a people who could be more easily freed and converted to our holy faith by love than by force, gave to some of them red caps, and glass beads to put round their necks, and many other things of little value, which gave them great pleasure, and made them so much our friends that it was a marvel to see. They afterwards came to the ship’s boats where we were, swimming and bringing us parrots, cotton threads in skeins, darts, and many other things; and we exchanged them for other things that we gave them, such as glass beads and small bells. In fine, they took all, and gave what they had with good will. It appeared to me to be a race of people very poor in everything. They go as naked as when their mothers bore them, and so do the women, although I did not see more than one young girl. All I saw were youths, none more than thirty years of age. They are very well made, with very handsome bodies, and very good countenances. Their hair is short and coarse, almost like the hairs of a horse’s tail. They wear the hairs brought down to the eyebrows, except a few locks behind, which they wear long and never cut. They paint themselves black, and they are the color of the Canarians, neither black nor white. Some paint themselves white, others red, and others of what color they find. Some paint their faces, others the whole body, some only round the eyes, others only on the nose. They neither carry nor know anything of arms, for I showed them swords, and they took them by the blade and cut themselves through ignorance. They have no iron, their darts being wands without iron, some of them having a fish’s tooth at the end, and others being pointed in various ways. They are all of fair stature and size, with good laces, and well made. I saw some with marks of wounds on their bodies, and I made signs to ask what it was, and they gave me to understand that people from other adjacent islands came with the intention of seizing them, and that they defended themselves. I believed, and still believe, that they come here from the mainland to take them prisoners. They should be good servants and intelligent, for I observed that they quickly took in what was said to them, and I believe that they would easily be made Christians, as it appeared to me that they had no religion, our Lord being pleased, will take hence, at the time of my departure, six natives for your Highnesses that they may learn to speak. I saw no beast of any kind except parrots, on this island.” The above is in the words of the admiral….

..As soon as dawn broke many of these people came to the beach, al! youths, as I have said, and all of good stature, a very handsome people. Their hair is not curly, but loose and coarse, like horse hair. In all the forehead is broad, more so than in any other people I have hitherto seen. Their eyes are very beautiful and not small, and themselves far from black, but the color of the Canarians. Nor should anything; else be expected, as this island is in a line east and west from the island of Hierro in the Canaries. Their legs are very straight, all in one line,’ and no belly, but very well formed. They came to the ship in small canoes, made out of the trunk of a tree like a long boat, and all of one piece, and wonderfully worked, considering the country. They are large, some of them holding 40 to 45 men, others smaller, and some only large enough to hold one man. They are propelled with a paddle like a baker’s shovel, and go at a marvelous rate. If the canoe capsizes they all promptly begin to swim, and to bale it out with calabashes that they take with them. They brought skeins of cotton thread, parrots, darts, and other small things, which it would be tedious to recount, and they give all in exchange for anything that may be given to them. I was attentive, and took trouble to ascertain if there was gold. I saw that some of them had a small piece fastened in a hole they have in the nose, and by signs I was able to make out that to the south, or going from the island to the south, there was a king who had great cups full, and who possessed a great quantity. I tried to get them to go there, but afterwards I saw that they had no inclination. I resolved to wait until to-morrow in the afternoon and then to depart, shaping a course to the S.W.

Sunday, October 14

…These people are very simple as regards the use of arms, as your Highnesses will see from the seven that I caused to be taken, to bring home and learn our language and return; unless your Highnesses should order them all to be brought to Castile, or to be kept as captives on the same island; for with fifty men they can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them…

Sunday, November 4

…At sunrise the Admiral again went away- in the boat, and landed to hunt the birds he had seen the day before. After a time, Martin Alonso Pinzon came to him with two pieces of cinnamon, and said that a Portuguese, who was one of his crew, had seen an Indian carrying two very large bundles of it; but he had not bartered for it, because of the penalty imposed by the Admiral on anyone who bartered. He further said that this Indian carried some brown things like nutmegs. The master of the Pinta said that he had found the cinnamon trees. The Admiral went to the place, and found that they were not cinnamon trees. The Admiral showed the Indians some specimens of cinnamon and pepper he had brought from Castillo, and they knew it, and said, by signs, that there was plenty in the vicinity, pointing to the S.E. He also showed them gold and pearls, on which certain old men said that there an infinite quantity in a place called Holito} and that the people wore it on their necks, ears, arms, and legs, as well as pearls. He further understood them to say that there were great ships and much merchandise, all to the S.K. He also understood that, far away, there were men with one eye, and others with dogs’ noses who were cannibals, and that when they captured an enemy they beheaded him and drank his blood…

The Journal of Christopher Columbus (During His First Voyage), andDocuments Relating to the Voyages of John Cabot and Gaspar Corte Real, Clements R. Markham, ed. and trans. (London: 1893), 37- 68.”

Available through the Internet Archive

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Trump Administration Hits International Criminal Court With Severe Sanctions

​

 Summary

“The Trump administration imposed severe financial sanctions on the International Criminal Court, banning transactions after six months. Marco Rubio stated the move would cripple operations and prevent prosecutions of Americans.

​

U.S. officials announced new punishments aimed at the court, just hours after the Nobel Peace Prize committee gave its annual honor to a former court judge.

Oct. 9, 2026, 11:23 a.m. ET

The move is an intensification in the Trump administration’s push to undermine the International Criminal Court.Pool photo by Remko De Waal

By Edward Wong and Jeanna Smialek

Edward Wong reported from Athens, Greece, and Jeanna Smialek reported from Brussels. Both cover diplomacy and international news.

The Trump administration announced on Friday that it was imposing severe financial sanctions on the International Criminal Court, its latest effort to cripple the global body that seeks to prosecutes war crimes, including genocide, and other serious criminal acts.

The new sanctions, unveiled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the State Department, would prohibit transactions with the court after a grace period of six months. Any companies doing business with the court afterward could be subject to punishment by the U.S. government. The threat of that could constrain the institution’s ability to carry out daily operations.

Although the State Department had been preparing the sanctions for months, Mr. Rubio’s announcement came just hours after a committee in Norway said it was awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, a South African lawyer who served for nine years as a judge on the International Criminal Court and worked as the top human rights official at the United Nations.

The sanctions are an intensification of the Trump administration’s push to undermine the court. In February 2025, just weeks after taking office, President Trump issued an executive order directing agencies to come up with sanctions to impose on the court.

At the time, he said the court was trying to violate American sovereignty and undermine “the critical national security and foreign policy work of the United States government and our allies, including Israel.”

Mr. Rubio said in a statement on Friday that Mr. Trump would never allow the court to prosecute Americans. “We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate,” he said.

Mr. Rubio announced in July that the United States planned to “systematically disable” the court, which Mr. Trump has long described as a threat to Americans.

The administration has imposed financial sanctions and visa bans on court judges and prosectors, but the measures announced on Friday are broader.

Edward Wong reports on global affairs, U.S. foreign policy and the State Department for The Times“

Conservatives are lying about wanting a "meritocracy"

 

 

How Trump’s Revenge Campaign Descended Into Turmoil

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 Summary

“Trump’s revenge inquiry into a “grand conspiracy” collapsed after Joseph diGenova and Kurt Olsen quit. Todd Blanche now oversees the effort via Aakash Singh; prosecutors pursue narrower cases amid staffing losses in Florida.

​

The president’s allies have sought to prove a “grand conspiracy” through a sprawling Justice Department inquiry. It has buckled under staffing shake-ups, internal disputes and trouble finding evidence.

Oct. 9, 2026, 5:00 a.m. ET

President Trump’s demands for revenge have divided the Justice Department, diverted resources from other investigations and mingled politics with federal law enforcement.Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times

Joseph diGenova, the man assigned by the White House to lead the investigation into those who investigated President Trump, was walking out of Chuck’s Seafood near the beach in Fort Pierce, Fla., and toward his Tesla last month when his cellphone buzzed.

It was his boss, Attorney General Todd Blanche. And he was spluttering mad.

Mr. Blanche had been cautiously supportive of Mr. Trump’s decision to call Mr. diGenova, 81, out of retirement in April to kick-start the so-called grand conspiracy case, the Justice Department’s most expansive effort to pursue people the president considers his enemies.

Now the attorney general, having soured on Mr. diGenova, was livid that he had lashed out at two prosecutors sent from Washington to help move the case along. Mr. Blanche ordered him to his office on Sept. 11 — or else, according to people briefed on the exchange.

Assuming he would be fired, Mr. diGenova quit, dealing the latest blow to a troubled investigation central to the president’s vengeance agenda. More trouble was to come.

Soon after, a top diGenova deputy, Kurt Olsen, also quit. It turned out he had failed a polygraph test about his contacts with foreigners, which imperiled his security clearance, according to two people familiar with the matter. Mr. Olsen said he complied with all requirements regarding foreign contacts and had not resigned over his clearance, but declined to say more.

Still, the dual departures laid bare months of dysfunction. They also offered fresh evidence that Mr. Trump’s demands for revenge have divided the Justice Department, diverted resources from other investigations and continued the erosion of the principle that politics must be kept strictly separate from federal law enforcement.

A New York Times examination of the inquiry, based on more than 20 interviews with current and former officials, found that it was star-crossed from the outset.

The theory of the grand conspiracy case is a bedrock of Trumpist politics: that the various investigations into Mr. Trump, spanning nearly a decade, were all part of a nefarious scheme to take him down. That is, there was an ongoing plot stretching from the investigation into ties between Russia and his 2016 campaign to the two prosecutions overseen by the special counsel Jack Smith into his mishandling of classified documents and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

To date, Mr. diGenova and others involved in the case have found it difficult, and time-consuming, to meet the standards of evidence and jurisdiction needed to prove anything close to a conspiracy in a court of law.

Still, the pressure has not relented. The dozen prosecutors still pursuing the inquiry are fast-tracking narrower cases against some chief targets that could be brought quickly, according to people briefed on their work. Leadership of the effort has defaulted back to Washington, and is now being directly overseen by one of Mr. Blanche’s top deputies, Aakash Singh, those people said.

A Justice Department official said leaders in Washington had “full confidence” in the prosecutors now working on the case and would act to uphold the law should “evidence of misconduct present itself.”

Even if charges are never filed, Mr. Trump has already instilled fear in — and imposed steep financial costs on — potential targets, in his view giving them a taste of what he experienced when he was under investigation.

Two targets have borne a particular brunt: James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director fired by Mr. Trump in the early stages of the Russia inquiry, and John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director who played a role in instigating that investigation.

John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director, left, and James B. Comey, who was fired as F.B.I. director by Mr. Trump, have both been targeted in investigations by the president.New York Times photographs by Al Drago and Monica Jorge

Inside the Justice Department, another price is being paid.

The investigation has upended the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of Florida, one of the most important in the country, which has been plagued by staff departures and low morale under its Trump-appointed leader, Jason A. Reding Quiñones, according to current and former prosecutors. The problems with the grand conspiracy case have exacerbated what officials in Washington have described as a growing lack of confidence in Mr. Reding Quiñones by his superiors.

The office once had more than 200 lawyers. It is now slightly more than half that size, after a spate of firings and resignations.

Prosecutors have watched the case play out with embarrassment and horror. Many have been so unwilling to join the investigation that Mr. Reding Quiñones, an Army reservist, was forced to bring in military lawyers to backfill the ranks.

The chief of the office’s criminal division has been sidelined. The office’s health care fraud unit has been decimated. Many prosecutors say the office feels leaderless, and are worried that a place once known for big drug and white-collar cases has pivoted to politics.

Even furniture has been repurposed to equip the inquiry’s two work spaces, one on the fifth floor of the main Miami office and the other up the coast in Fort Pierce.

A Winding Path

It is not clear who coined the term “grand conspiracy,” or when it became shorthand for the catchall investigation. July 2025 is as good a place to start as any.

That is when John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, issued a criminal referral of Mr. Brennan to the F.B.I., accusing him of lying to Congress about an intelligence assessment in early 2017 that determined Russia had interfered in the 2016 election.

The case was sent to David Metcalf, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Philadelphia, but it quickly stalled as prosecutors struggled to make headway. Career prosecutors threatened to revolt if the office went forward.

By fall, Mr. Blanche, then the department’s second-in-command, plucked the case from Mr. Metcalf and gave it to Mr. Reding Quiñones, who was close to the right-wing influencers clamoring for a wide-ranging prosecution of the president’s opponents.

Loudest among them: Mike Davis, a media-savvy lawyer who has relentlessly promoted the case as the best way to prove that Mr. Trump has been undermined by the establishment from the moment he took office.

Mr. Davis, a former Senate aide adept at hurling social media thunderbolts that catch Mr. Trump’s eye, aimed high. He pushed the idea that the inquiry should expand to include targets like former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Davis was among those arguing to steer the case to Mr. Reding Quiñones in the president’s home state. The move made tactical sense. Prosecutors could avail themselves of a grand jury in the Fort Pierce courthouse where the only sitting judge is Aileen M. Cannon, a Trump appointee who issued several rulings favorable to the president, especially in the classified documents case against him.

Mr. Trump, impatient to see splashy results, cheered and coached from the sidelines, even posting a fake video showing Mr. Obama being arrested in the Oval Office.

But the move to Florida did not translate into immediate success.

One big problem, in the view of Mr. Blanche’s aides, was Mr. Reding Quiñones, whom they viewed as a feckless and inexperienced manager not capable of running the day-to-day operations of his office, let alone the grand conspiracy case.

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Moreover, they felt that Mr. Reding Quiñones spent too much time in Washington and too little in Florida. To address that concern, Mr. Singh recently removed him from the attorney general’s advisory committee, which meets at department headquarters, to refocus his energies on Miami, according to two people with knowledge of the move.

But he was hardly the only problem.

By early 2026, the case had landed on the desk of Maria Medetis Long, a respected national security prosecutor in Miami, who approached the inquiry with an open mind. She eventually determined that the evidence did not support indicting Mr. Brennan, according to people familiar with her account. In April, she put her findings in writing. She was suddenly removed from the case.

Since then, the investigation has expanded beyond Mr. Brennan. The flurry of grand jury subpoenas issued since last year, hailed as bombshells by Trump-friendly news outlets, hints at its breadth.

Prosecutors have demanded documents from other officials connected to the Russia investigation, including James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence; Andrew G. McCabe, the former deputy director of the F.B.I.; Peter Strzok, a former F.B.I. counterintelligence agent; and Lisa Page, a former lawyer at the bureau.

They have also issued subpoenas demanding testimony from Daniel C. Richman, who is a longtime confidant of Mr. Comey’s, and several F.B.I. agents who took part in the August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Palm Beach club and residence, a key investigative step in the classified documents case.

The prosecutors also want testimony from Mr. Brennan. But amid the recent turmoil, they pushed back his appearance from its initial date on Oct. 15 to at least early December.

Fumbling for Evidence

Enter Mr. diGenova, who as U.S. attorney in Washington four decades ago led investigations of the Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard and Marion Barry, the city’s mayor.

He was a familiar presence in the capital, known as one of the more dulcet crooners to perform in musical skits at the annual Gridiron Club dinner.

But in recent years, Mr. diGenova has established himself as a stalwart and aggressive Trump defender who embraced unsubstantiated claims about the 2020 election championed by his close friend Rudolph W. Giuliani.

In early 2025, with the help of Mr. Davis, he secured an assignment in Miami as the head of that office’s civil rights division, where he intended to investigate Mr. Trump’s adversaries.

But Pam Bondi, the attorney general at the time, vetoed his hiring, according to two former department officials. Department officials thought he was too old for such a demanding job when his name came up a year later. Ms. Bondi, on the verge of being fired, argued that he had not been in a courtroom for many years.

Mr. Trump, then 79, thought otherwise.

He instructed Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, and Mr. Blanche to sign him on.

Mr. diGenova showed up for his first day at work with a 190-page memo on how to proceed, listing more than 50 “overt acts” in the conspiracy he wanted to investigate. They started with what he saw as the original deep-state sin — a December 2016 meeting in the White House that he believed to be the linchpin of the conspiracy against Mr. Trump.

At that meeting, Mr. Obama and his aides authorized the intelligence assessment that eventually showed Russia had interfered in the election Mr. Trump had just won. The participants have denied that anything illegal took place.

One of Mr. diGenova’s first moves reflected an understanding of the daunting challenges of proving his theory. He asked his predecessor, Ms. Medetis Long, to rejoin the investigation. She turned him down, according to the people familiar with her account. He also made it known that he was looking for cooperating witnesses among the targets of the inquiry, even though Mr. Brennan and Mr. Comey were unlikely to help him.

By May, he had begun hiring staff, including his wife, Victoria Toensing.  He immediately encountered problems securing volunteers from either Miami or Washington.

Few career agents or attorneys wanted anything to do with it. As of now, most of the prosecutors on the team are military lawyers or were dispatched from other offices.

Among those who signed on: An F.B.I. agent who had investigated a conspiracy theory that the 2020 election had been hacked by Italian satellites and who was part of a special team assembled by Kash Patel, the bureau’s director. There were a largely unknown prosecutor from Fargo, N.D., and a Stanford law professor best known for having written memos justifying the use of torture during the global war on terrorism.

There was a young Justice Department official sent to Florida from Washington who had served as a clerk to Judge Cannon. And then there was Mr. Olsen, a longtime election denier who had no experience in working on criminal cases.

The case that Mr. diGenova hoped to build involved a wide array of targets — not only Mr. Brennan, Mr. Comey and others from the Russia inquiry, but also the prosecutors led by Mr. Smith, the special counsel.

He quickly confronted hurdles. The first: Any crimes arising from the Russia investigation, which ended in 2019, already fell outside the five-year statute of limitations, and had no obvious connection to South Florida. Other problems emerged.

Just as Mr. diGenova was settling in, Jack Eckenrode, an F.B.I. veteran best known for having gone after Mr. Brennan and Mr. Comey during the Russia inquiry, questioned a central premise of the investigation — that the court-approved search of Mr. Trump’s residence was a politically motivated intrusion that tainted everything that followed.

Mr. Eckenrode, part of a special squad assembled by F.B.I. leaders, told Mr. diGenova that Judge Cannon had already ruled that the search of Mar-a-Lago was lawful. That finding, he said, made it difficult to use the search as evidence of a conspiracy connecting Washington to Florida, according to people briefed on the exchange.

Mr. diGenova disagreed — he thought that point was legally irrelevant — and he called Mr. Patel, who pulled Mr. Eckenrode off the case, one of those people said.

By this time, Mr. diGenova was also becoming frustrated with the resources given to his inquiry. There were never enough lawyers, he told Washington, and the ones he had were so young that he had to block off time to teach them the basics, like grand jury presentations.

In late summer, Mr. Reding Quiñones agreed to set aside $1 million from the office’s allocated budget to build a secure facility in Fort Pierce to review classified materials.

Mr. Blanche’s staff rejected the idea.

Why waste money? There was already a facility nearby run by the F.B.I., they said, according to people with knowledge of the exchange.

Escalating Pressure to Indict

Under the clash of personalities was a deeper divide on how best to move forward.

Mr. diGenova, who wanted to take aim at big-name targets, told one associate he believed that Mr. Blanche was less interested in proving the conspiracy to destroy the president than in securing rapid box-checking indictments of low-level players to keep Mr. Trump happy.

Mr. Blanche, he told that person, was so anxious to maintain his position that he did not want to tell Mr. Trump the truth: A successful investigation needed time.

The attorney general acknowledged the inquiry’s complexities on a podcast earlier this year. “I’m not suggesting that we don’t have that evidence,” he told Sean Hannity of Fox News. “I’m saying when you talk about the challenges, that’s the challenge.”

Mr. Blanche had his own complaints. His team thought Mr. diGenova was too scattered, too combative and too slow, according to three current and former officials. It did not help that around this time Mr. diGenova and Ms. Toensing left for a long-planned vacation to France.

By early September, Mr. Blanche dispatched two prosecutors from Washington to Florida to move things forward. During a heated meeting, they peppered Mr. diGenova’s staff with questions about its work before the grand jury.

The coda came when members of Mr. diGenova’s team offered him a readout of their closed-door meeting with the two prosecutors: Washington would now be running things.

Mr. diGenova, infuriated, said he would instruct U.S. marshals to remove the prosecutors from the grand jury room if they showed up there to interfere, the officials said.

Mr. Blanche responded with a profanity-laced phone call and summoned Mr. diGenova to Washington. The attorney general wanted to recount his grievances in person, but never actually planned to fire Mr. diGenova, according to a person close to Mr. Blanche.

He never got that chance.

Alan Feuer is a reporter for The Times who covers the effects President Trump has had on the courts, the Justice Department and the broader rule of law.

Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.“

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Detained immigrants at Georgia ICE facility launch mass hunger strike

​

 Summary

“At least 73 detainees at the Folkston ICE facility launched a hunger strike protesting prolonged detention and alleged conditions. An open letter requests release during asylum cases; Idris Makhmudov reportedly entered solitary confinement.

​

At least 73 people estimated to have joined protest against prolonged detention and Folkston facility’s ‘violations’

José Olivares

Detainees behind concertina wire inside the Folkston facility in September last year. Photograph: Erik S Lesser/EPA

A group of people detained inside a privately run Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) jail in Georgia have launched a mass hunger strike this week to protest against their prolonged detention and the facility’s conditions, according to advocates and family members.

Advocates estimate at least 73 detained immigrants are participating in the hunger strike inside the Folkston D Ray James ICE processing center in south-east Georgia. The Folkston facility, a former state prison, is run by the private prison company GEO Group under a contract with ICE.

Some of the men participating in the hunger strike released a video and an open letter, requesting they be released while they continue pursuing their asylum and immigration cases. Two Russian asylum seekers detained in Folkston also released a document they wrote, outlining what they claim to be “violations” inside, including allegations of substandard medical care, threats by GEO Group guards, moldy food and a lack of due process.

“Many of us have been separated from our families,” reads the open letter, which was signed this summer by 45 detained immigrants and published this week, as dozens joined in to stage the hunger strike. “We have missed births, funerals, years of our lives while sitting behind fences without having committed any crime.”

The hunger strike appears to transcend nationality, language and race, according to the detainees’ video, letter and report. The majority of the men who signed the letter are asylum seekers from a wide range of countries, including Russia, China, Sudan, Afghanistan, Nepal and others.

One of the lead organizers of the hunger strike, a Russian asylum seeker named Idris Makhmudov, has reportedly been placed in solitary confinement this week, according to Monica Whatley, an organizer in Georgia from the Campaign to Shut Down the Folkston ICE processing center.

The letter further reads: “We come from different countries, races, believes [sic], and background, but we share one thing in common: we came to the United States seeking protection and have been detained since then.”

The men say in their letter that they have been locked up for a long time, between 16 months and almost three years, from the moment each arrived in the US “yet have never been accused of any crime”. They argue they should be free while their legal cases go through the immigration court system.

“Many of us have tried every available legal path to seek release from detention” but without success, they say, adding that their letter is for those who believe in “fairness and human dignity”.

“Innocent people can remain in detention for very long periods, without any individualized finding that they are dangerous or likely to flee,” the signatories complain.

The Folkston ICE facility, which is run by GEO Group under a contract with ICE. Photograph: Mike Stewart/AP

One of the men participating in the hunger strike is an asylum seeker from Yemen who is suffering from lung cancer and has a US citizen child, advocates told the Guardian.

The reports of the hunger strike at the Folkston facility represent the latest protest inside an ICE detention center, as the Trump administration continues with its aggressive anti-immigrant crackdown.

GEO Group referred all questions to ICE. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE’s parent agency, did not respond to detailed questions about the allegations or requests for comment.

ICE, along with other federal agencies and local officials deputized to carry out immigration arrests, have been quietly increasing their arrests nationwide.

As a result, rising numbers of immigrants and asylum seekers are detained in federal facilities like Folkston.

The Folkston facility opened in 1997 but began detaining people in ICE custody in 2018. Last year, the Florida-based, for-profit company GEO Group extended its contract with ICE to expand the facility’s capacity. The latest ICE data from July of this year shows there were about 2,200 people detained there.

The majority of the detainees in Folkston who signed the letter are requesting asylum.

The open letter includes the names, government-issued alien numbers, countries of origin and time in detention for the 45 men who signed it. All have been in ICE detention for at least one year. A Chinese man named Liang Sonji, who signed the letter, came to the US and requested asylum in October 2023 and has been detained since.

“We understand that temporary detention may sometimes be necessary to verify identity or conduct background checks,” the open letter, drafted by Makhmudov, reads. “But detention lasting one year, two years, or longer without a clear individual justification raises serious questions about fairness and reasonableness.”

The two Russian men who also sent out a document about conditions – Alexei Kovalko and Alexander Borovkov – accused an unnamed medical staffer at the facility of telling one of them: “I have no obligation to treat you; the only thing that matters to me is that you don’t drop dead.”

Kovalko and Borovkov also write describing moldy food, foul-smelling water, and other allegedly deficient conditions in the detention center, including leaky ceilings and problems with plumbing. The document also says that some GEO Group employees at the Folkston facility are “xenophobic” and rude, and frequently threaten detained immigrants with solitary confinement.

GEO Group and ICE did not respond to questions about these allegations.

There have been a series of hunger strikes inside ICE detention centers since the Trump administration took office again last year, some of which have received widespread attention. Earlier this year, a group of detainees inside the Delaney Hall facility in New Jersey, which is also operated by GEO Group, launched a hunger strike. Protesters outside the facility, demonstrating in solidarity with the hunger strikers, were met with force by ICE and local officials, making international headlines.

Similarly, the Guardian has reported on individual cases of hunger strikes throughout the ICE detention network and the secretive response by ICE officials, including finding that ICE has quietly sought court orders to provide “involuntary medical procedures” on 19 hunger strikers since January 2025, including force feeding, a practice widely seen as torture.“