Former Bakersfield dispensary owner Joe Fortt was recently deported to Canada, following a difficult stay at an ICE detention center in Arizona. In the letter below, penned for the press, he details some of the hardships he suffered during his incarceration.
Dear Readers,
My name is Joe Fortt. Until just two weeks ago, I was a political prisoner at the Florence Detention Center in Arizona. I took a plea bargain to get deported to Canada, rather than fight my case in California. I was being prosecuted by the federal government for running a non-profit corporation for medical marijuana patients who designated me as their caregiver under California law. We all believed we had rights under the U.S. Constitution. Well, we were wrong. Now we can see that we have no rights, and that the will of the voters means nothing to the administration.
I was legally deported in March of this year, but then I was held in Arizona for several months before actually being taken to Canada. In fact, the detention center where I was tortured is a converted concentration camp that was used to intern Japanese Americans back in World War II. That was the war that my father fought so that we could all have basic rights and freedoms.
The ICE and AKAL Security who run Florence Detention Center believe they are above the law. They make illegal aliens work in the kitchen and clean the jail for just a dollar a day, or sometimes just in exchange for food. I told one of the AKAL guards that they would lose their business license over this practice, but they just laughed and said that the jail administration must not have gotten notice back when slavery was abolished.
The term “sick building syndrome” describes the living conditions at Florence Detention Center. Many of the prisoners, including me, would become very ill without explanation, only to have symptoms vanish once outside of the building. The worst part is the cleaning chemicals that inmates are forced to breathe everyday, which cause headaches, eye and nose and throat irritation, dry cough, itchy skin, dizziness, nausea, difficulty concentrating and fatigue. Under those conditions, it is very hard to represent yourself in court or fight back against the sadists who are torturing people there. The victims have no rights whatsoever, especially not to adequate medical care or safe living conditions.
I firmly believe that Florence Detention Center is conducting a large-scale human experiment, and that it is doing so through the chemicals it forces upon inmates. People who have isopropyl alcohol and benzene in their bodies develop cancer, AIDS, and many other health problems. Great bodily damage will come from the experiments being conducted at that facility, and the end result will be that the detention center will be forced to pay reparations to its victims.
This is just another form of the exploitation of the under-class, by which I mean the illegal alien. As usual, this exploitation is being done by those who claim to enforce the law, and who are therefore operating above the law.
The war on drugs is a civil war that’s being waged by the government against its own people. The inmates in our prisons for drug crimes are hostages, and the way they are being treated is immoral and fundamentally unethical. It needs to stop as soon as possible, and the perpetrators must be brought to justice for their war crimes against the people.
Sincerely,
Joseph William Fortt
To read more about Joe Fortt's case, go to the Court Reports section.
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