As salaamu alaykum, Indiana—
This month, Karim Golding — a Muslim Jamaican immigrant — began his fourth Ramadan in ICE detention.
He's now had COVID-19 twice while in ICE custody and developed severe COVID-19 "long-hauler" symptoms.
Now, after refusing to provide proper medical care, ICE wants to deport him to a country he has not been to since he was a little kid.
Your support, today, could stop Karim's deportation.
Karim's case illustrates the compounding, poisonous effects of the anti-Black Islamophobia rooted in our carceral system:
Back in 2006, Karim was a 21-year-old up-and-coming musician living in NYC when he was targeted and arrested by a federal task force investigating hip-hop performers as part of the federal "War on Drugs." After a mistrial, Karim was sentenced to prison. Karim appealed his sentence, and after a lack of evidence was found to support his conviction, he was re-sentenced to time served: a staggering ten years in prison.
But Karim didn't get to go straight to his family after he was finally released. His ten years in federal prison were immediately followed by a transfer to ICE detention and the threat of deportation to Jamaica — a country he has not known since he was nine years old.
He has now been in ICE detention for over four years — and is currently imprisoned at the Etowah County Detention Center in Gadsden, Alabama, known to many as one of the worst migrant prisons in the country.1
Karim's family and friends need him home. Join us to demand ICE #FreeKarim NOW.
While imprisoned, Karim helped break the story of the lack of proper diagnosis, medical care and treatment that his fellow detainees were receiving as COVID-19 ran rampant through Etowah, blowing the whistle in national outlets like The Intercept,2 NPR3 and Democracy Now.4
In the aftermath, Karim was confined to indefinite solitary confinement for over a month for simply calling on the detention center to supply COVID-19 tests and PPE to ensure safety for everyone at Etowah.5
Karim has now tested positive for COVID-19 twice and — in a short period of time — has gone from healthy to showing signs of "long-hauler" COVID-19, suffering from liver disease, abnormally high blood pressure, depression, and anxiety.
Despite multiple court orders to release detainees at high risk from coronavirus and being granted a stay of removal by the courts, ICE has refused to release Karim, or even ensure he has the medical care he needs as someone with long COVID-19.6
Help us take one step to end it. Join the community effort to #FreeKarim.
The campaign to #FreeKarim is part of our abolitionist vision of safety and justice for all that can only exist outside of carceral systems that are designed to criminalize, incarcerate, and fail our communities.
Earlier this year, you along thousands helped #FreeOusman, #FreeShakoure, and #FreeMrF after years of ICE incarceration. Together, with a group of movement lawyers, journalists, family and community members, and grassroots organizations, we showed up and helped free three people from ICE prisons.
We can bring Karim home.
Karim is a youth advocate, an uncle to five nieces and nephews, a brother to four siblings, and part of a large immigrant family and community who care for him deeply and have fought for him to come home for over 14 years.
Let's fight alongside them.
This Ramadan, it's time for us to show up again. This time, for Karim.
We've done this before, and together, we'll do it again. We won't stop until we #FreeThemAll.
In solidarity,
Lau, Sadaf, Salma and the MPower Change team
Sources:
1. "'The Worst Place Ever' Is ICE's Etowah County Detention Center in Alabama," The Daily Beast, 08 Jun, 2018
2. ""Burials Are Cheaper Than Deportations": Virus Unleashes Terror in a Troubled ICE Detention Center," The Intercept, 12 Apr, 2020
3. "'A Ticking Time Bomb': Advocates Warn COVID-19 Is Spreading Rapidly Behind Bars," NPR, 28 Apr, 2020
4. ""Horrifying Neglect": COVID-19 Deaths in ICE Custody Spark New Calls for Mass Release of Prisoners," Democracy Now, 27 May, 2020
5. "Immigrants Detained by ICE Say They Were Thrown in Solitary for Requesting Covid-19 Tests," In These Times, 02 Dec, 2020
6. "'We're supposed to have rights': Rally held for Etowah County ICE detainee Karim Golding," The Birmingham News, 16 Mar, 2021
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