I endured torture inside Georgia’s prison system

Over the past few years, Georgia’s demographics have changed the way this state conducts its politics. A growing coalition of dedicated, compassionate, and united people have repeatedly challenged Georgia’s conservative government, revealing our best-looking side, a more welcoming open-hearted and less-divided state. I am incredibly blessed and thankful to have been part of this march for progress, and part of Georgia’s hard-fought and long-standing legacy for civil, political, and human rights that move Georgians along our best values and our best traditions, reminding us of lessons learned and that spawn new social movements to bring about significant social change, in Georgia, the U.S., and beyond.

After graduating as student body president from North Cobb High School in Kennesaw, I worked hard to build coalitions to fight for universal human rights and immigrant rights in Georgia. In 2014, as a result of my entrepreneurship as a social fighter, I received a scholarship to study at the Hampshire College in Massachusetts. Even then, now president of the student body at the Hampshire College, I continued to support my immigrant communities in Georgia, and those across the US. In this fight that I was waging at my young age, marching, organizing for human rights where many gave me a hand and many more supported my actions, is where I lived and learned the unnumerable systemic problems that my Georgian brothers and sisters survived every day. Eventually I built a social media base with over a million visitors a week to educate others on issues like the unjust and mass incarceration of good people, mass deportation, access to health care and education for all. It was here that my passion and dedication for making Georgia a better state was born.

Georgia’s shift away from conservative government continues to exemplify a shift away from the legacies of Jim Crow but conservative political legacies continue to target the most disenfranchised members of our communities, legally subjecting them to the old forms of discrimination within employment, housing, voting rights, educational opportunities, public benefits, and jury service. These practices are evident throughout Georgia’s criminal and carceral systems today.

For the past three decades, conservative Georgia lawmakers galvanized the state’s prison systems, increasing the number of beds available for Georgian’s caught up in a cycle of unresolved systemic problems. Although this increase started in public prisons, it has ramped up within private prisons like immigrant detention centers throughout the country. As a result, in the past decade alone, immigration offenders – along with individuals affected by state laws targeting unauthorized persons – have consistently equaled or outnumbered drug offenders in the U.S. federal penal systems. Consequentially, elected officials and conservative judges throughout Georgia converted small infractions that previously amounted to a written warning or a small fee into months and even years of imprisonment, too often without being sentenced.

In October of 2018, I experienced the full weight of Georgia’s prison system. I was detained by the Cobb County police for twenty-seven dollars. After ordering a taxi home, I realized, mid-way to my destination, that I did not have my wallet on my person. I immediately notified the taxi driver of my mistake; however, instead of allowing me to pay for my fare once I arrived at my destination, he pulled over, locked me in his vehicle, and proceeded to call the police. After my arrest, I arrived at a detention station in Acworth, Georgia, where I spent several hours detained. The following day, authorities transferred me to the Cobb County prison – or Little Guantanamo as it is known by its inmates.

The police officers drove me to the Cobb County Jail and as if it were a joke, the radio was playing the lyrics “I’ve done my sentence but committed no crime,” I could not yet grasp the extent to which cops could make this prison a hot hell on earth for me. However, I had a clue, this was the same prison where many men and women have died after being admitted for small infractions, where countless prisoners have denounced human rights violations, rape and where now disgraced and voted out, ex-sherif, Neil Warren with his officers (still there) brough on a reign of terror on the towns of Cobb County, where they worked and violated the constitution daily. This little Guantanamo is where my torture began.

What I experienced in body, mind and soul I cannot put it as anything else but escalating, indescribable and full-on physical and psychological torture. I still have a hard time putting together the pieces to help others understand the extent of inhumanities I was put through every day and every waking hour I spent on the Georgia prison system. Cops became my tormenters, with a compulsive obsession on hurting my body and soul.

While detained at the Cobb County prison, correctional officers dehumanized me and denied me basic amenities like toilet paper and bar soap. In addition, prison personnel prohibited me from going outside for a simple breath of fresh air with the rest of the inmates. I was forced inside freezing cold showers and later into boiling showers that burned my skin and left me with blisters throughout my body. On several occasions, I was stripped of all clothing and left with nothing but underwear in the middle of a raging freezing winter. When I protested my inhumane treatment, correctional officers took me into the coldest and darkest room my mind and soul has ever experienced; I still shiver at the thought of it today, it was “the dark hole,” solitary confinement. “Correctional” officers were my torturers in solitary confinement. Throughout my days inside the Cobb County prison, there were things done to me I dare not share today and that perhaps I will never be ready to share. It was in solitary confinement where I screamed and yelled for my freedom, where I asked for water and food, where I became hungry, thirsty and desperate. Too often they threw my food on the floors and offered nothing more than a cup of ice after days of thirst. In there I was stripped of my humanity.  I often prayed to God, asking him to bring these walls down and to deliver a beating heart to these cops and ICE personnel.

I was later sent to Irwin Detention Center, one of the most infamous prisons in Georgia with a track record for human rights violations. There, I remained in solitary confinement for weeks, punished and stripped of all clothes for an extended period after vociferously protesting when I witnessed Central American children in cages next to our “isolation chambers.” The sight of children imprisoned was unbearable, and I remember hurting my legs and knees banging on the doors demanding the children be set free.

Community support by my friends and allies for my release was challenged by immigration officials’ who took the decision to transfer me between different detention facilities throughout Georgia as a tactic to prevent the building of a movement. Ultimately, immigration officials placed me in five different Georgia prisons. Even after several prominent United States Senators and congressmen and congresswomen across the country signed letters demanding my release, I decided to sign my voluntary departure to escape the torture I could no longer bear. As I signed my voluntary departure, the words of ex-candidate for President Mitt Romney ringed on my ears, “We’re going to make life so difficult for immigrants, they will have no choice but to self deport.”

It does not escape me for a second that what officers in Cobb County did to me had the full intention of silencing me, of stripping me of my voice and my power, and of making me suffer so horribly I would forget who I was then and what they had done to me. Despite their efforts, I have forgotten nothing. I still remember the officials and officers at the Cobb County prison, their badges, their faces, even their words and gestures, including all the immigration and customs enforcement collaborators, those who were part of this torturous journey I remember with photographic memory. Indeed, amidst the inhumane carceral systems that I endured, I am still here today, I still have a voice, and I want to continue to use my voice for good. I want to make Georgia and every place I call home a more dignified place for all people.

Today, I want to continue to use this voice to inform you that Georgia Senate Democrat candidate Raphael Warnock is a serious leader in the fight against mass incarceration. Against this torturous and dystopian reality happening inside Georgia prisons. “Reverend Warnock believes that in the Land of the Free, it is a scandal and a scar on the soul of America to imprison more people at a higher rate than any other country in the world. With our country containing only 5 percent of the world’s population while warehousing nearly 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. He knows that real and immediate change is needed because he has walked in our streets, he has worked to feed the poor throughout our communities and he not only preaches but lives and encourages others to live the gospel every day.” If elected Senator, Reverend Raphael Warnock has compromised to increase accountability on police officers, ensuring our communities can support critical services outside of the criminal justice system. He has a plan to reform the bail system so that no one is sitting in jail simply for being poor. Most importantly he has worked to end mass incarceration for decades and has pledged to end the use of privatized prisons and ensure freed citizens can reenter society with access to adequate resources and support.

This is the champion we need in Georgia if we want to bring about justice to those unjustly incarcerated, to those sitting in jail without conviction, to those who cannot afford bail. Reverend Raphael Warnock is a serious champion who will put forth specific policies to set free good people in Georgia.

I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat, I am not casting my voice-vote based on party loyalty but on the issues of this moment. In this moment, the choice is clear, hand in hand Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff can help deliver the Georgia we deserve, a state that is more united, with a working economy with more jobs and a safer more prosperous future for our sons and daughters and all who call the good and great state of Georgia home.

If you hear my words and feel my story and you have the power to vote, please elect Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff as our next Georgia Senators by voting now and until January 5^th.

Eduardo Samaniego Amaya is a strategist and political organizer who fights for universal human rights. He is currently awaiting a response to his appeal of his deportation. You can find him on social media as @EddyComunica