The appeal is dated September 14 and was drafted by detainees Alexei Kovalko and Alexander Borovkov. Four people familiar with the situation confirmed its authenticity, Agentstvo reported. Five of the signatories have been behind bars for more than two years, and the shortest period of detention is five months.
The authors complain of being denied medical assistance. By their account, a doctor has to be waited for weeks, and at best they are given painkillers. One detainee has spent nearly two years unsuccessfully seeking an appointment with a dentist. The appeal cites a remark by one of the doctors: that his task is not to treat the patient, but above all to keep him from dying.
Kovalko said that in January 2025 he lost consciousness while having blood drawn. When he came to and asked permission to lie down because of dizziness, immigration service staff took him to an empty concrete room with a steel toilet and no mattress and kept him there for several hours. Another detainee, after a conversation with a psychologist, was stripped naked, given a hospital gown and placed for three days in a concrete room with the light constantly on, where he had to sleep on the floor.
The detainees complain about the quality of food and water: they are given mostly canned or frozen products, spoiled food is passed off as fresh, and the drinking water has an unpleasant smell. The list of complaints also includes a ban on receiving hygiene items, including toothpaste and a toothbrush, because of which detainees suffer dental problems on a mass scale. Staff arbitrarily ban walks, and the lighting in the rooms is so dim that those held there lose their eyesight. The daily schedule provides for only five hours of nighttime rest, during which silence is not observed, and earplugs are banned.
The report describes cases of guards using weapons. One guard accidentally fired a gas gun in the cafeteria during dinner, forcing about 200 people to be evacuated, with some left without their evening meal. The next day the same guard was again carrying the gun.
The Russians accuse the center's director of xenophobia. By their account, in early 2026 he told the Russians: "Don't worry, we'll send you to your cozy GULAG." Shortly before Donald Trump's inauguration, he told one of the authors that they were currently being "coddled" because of interference from "the guy we didn't vote for," but that soon there would be "our man" and then they would feel "a real American roller coaster." He is also credited with the phrase: "None of you will go free in America — you will all be deported."
The detainees cannot defend their rights because of their isolation: letters do not arrive, appeals are thrown in the trash, there is no access to email, and calls are restricted and cost several times more than the usual rate. According to the document's authors, the administration is certain that the detainees will not go free in the US, and that what happens in the jail will therefore remain unknown beyond its walls.
Relatives of the detainees have appealed to the rights organization Project South, the US Department of Homeland Security, the DHS Office of Inspector General and the American Correctional Association. The hunger strike is planned ahead of an expected inspection of the jail; nearly all the Russians in the center intend to take part, joined by Latin Americans, Iranians, Afghans, Chinese and citizens of other countries — about 50 detainees in all. The wife of one of the signatories said that conditions began improving on the eve of the inspection: food got better and changes in living conditions were taking shape. The detainees were threatened with solitary confinement — after three stints in the punishment cell a detainee is given offender status, complicating the fight for the right to remain in the US.
Over the past year, 300 to 400 Russians may have been deported from the US to Russia, according to an estimate by Dmitry Valuev, president of the organization Russian America for Democracy in Russia. On the eve of the report it emerged that a Russian activist expelled from the US was given six years in a penal colony in a case over the "justification of terrorism."