A private security officer stands accused of putting his hands around a handcuffed detainee's neck and slamming him against walls at an immigrant detention center in Conroe, Texas.
The officer, Charles Siringi, was criminally charged last week. The detainee was taken to the medical unit at the Montgomery Processing Center. The 66-year-old Siringi was charged in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas with deprivation of rights while acting under the government’s authority, resulting in bodily injury, The Washington Post noted. On Tuesday, Siringi posted $10,000 bail.
The company that employed Siringi, the GEO Group, operates the detention center. The firm told The Independent that Siringi no longer worked for the group. Following an internal review, the company referred the incident to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of Professional Responsibility.
“We are committed to respecting the human rights and dignity of all individuals in our care, and we have a zero-tolerance policy with respect to staff misconduct,” the GEO Group told The Independent.
The detainee claimed that Siringi handcuffed him outside his housing unit and took him into a small room alongside other officers, according to the criminal complaint. In the room, Siringi is alleged to have told the officers, “You better get him before I do.”
The complaint added that Siringi subsequently grabbed the detainee by the neck and slammed his face into a wall. As the detainee turned around, Siringi is alleged to have put enough force on his throat that he “tucked his chin down to his chest because he was gasping for air.”
The detainee said Siringi “did not remove his hands from his throat” and “used the choke hold to move him across the room and slam him into the wall near the doorway,” court documents state.
One of the two officers in the room, Elbert Griffin, backed up the detainee’s version of events and took him to the medical unit for treatment.
“Griffin stated he did not believe it was an appropriate use of force, nor did he believe [the detainee] had been resisting in any manner,” the complaint notes.
The Post noted that experts said the incident was a rare moment when an officer at a detention facility was being held criminally accountable for alleged abuse. It’s more common for detainees to file civil lawsuits.
American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project senior staff attorney Eunice Hyunhye Cho told the paper that detainees don’t have much power to reveal abuses.
“The power dynamic is so significant that people are either afraid to come forth [or] they are not believed when they raise complaints about abusive treatment,” she told The Post. “And facilities have all sorts of incentives to keep those types of incidents under wraps.”
A spokesperson for the nonprofit Freedom for Immigrants, Jeff Migliozzi, told the outlet that the allegations of abuse against Siringi were “unfortunately characteristic” of similar altercations.
“A lot of people don’t realize how common that actually is,” he said. “But again, in the vast majority of those cases, nothing results, in terms of an oversight process or some sort of lawsuit or investigation.”
Five years later: How the murder of George Floyd changed America
Apple has had few incentives in the past to start making iPhones in US
Golf pro sues family friend after face ‘permanently disfigured’ by ‘careless’ swing
Pentagon is sending more than 1,100 extra troops to the southern border
Apple stocks sink after Trump’s 25 percent tariffs threats
Trump threatens 25% tariff on Apple iPhones and 50% on EU products starting June 1
