Some one hundred immigrant detainees at a private prison in Louisiana, angered by what they say are awful conditions, are engaged in increasingly tense protests.

Beginning in early July, they’ve staged waves of hunger strikes and provided immigrant advocates with testimonies to gain attention for their complaints.

Prison authorities, meanwhile, have been reacting by placing hunger strikers in isolation for days at a time.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency in charge of immigrant detention, has said the solitary confinement isn’t disciplinary, but precautionary “medical isolation.”

At least six inmates remain in solitary confinement as a result of the last hunger strike, which began July 27, according to Saket Soni, of the New Orleans Worker’s Center for Racial Justice.

He spoke to New America Media via cellphone Saturday afternoon.

He was on his way to visit the prison, the Southern Louisiana Correctional Center, a 1,000-bed facility set near rice fields in the town of Basile, a four-hour drive west of New Orleans.

The detainees “are facing a severe sense of isolation and desperation,” he says.

In a report compiled by Soni and other advocates and published on the center’s website July 30, some 100 detainees acting as “human rights monitors” complain of lack of responsible medical attention, even for serious ailments like leukemia, high blood pressure, and asthma.

They also report unreliable, and in some cases nonexistent, phone contact with lawyers and family, a vacuum of information about their deportation cases, and scarcity of soap, toothpaste, toilet paper, and even underwear.

One detainee reports “rats, mosquitoes, flies, and spiders inside the cell,” one of several shared by scores of detainees. A Jewish detainee says he was denied a kosher diet, while another said the detention center’s food routinely made him sick.

These testimonies would put the facility in violation of several standards issued by the Department of Homeland Security for immigrant detainees, according to Soni.

But federal officials responsible for the detainees flatly deny they have been subjected to any mistreatment.

Philip Miller, acting field office director in New Orleans for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE, says he visited the Basile facility on July 16 and found its maintenance and pest control program satisfactory.

In the July 30 report, one detainee claims there was no soap and toothpaste for three weeks in May, but Miller denies that: “That’s not true,” since inmates receive toiletries upon request.

To date, there have been five hunger strikes to protest conditions at the Basile detention center, and they’ve involved some 60 detainees, says Soni.

Prison staff reportedly sought to quell these protests by isolating hunger strikers, sometimes even before they began refusing food, according to testimonials from men who participated in earlier hunger strikes.

In the report, Joaquin López says that on the morning of July 23 he and four other immigrant detainees in a cell called Wolf 3 were put into the “hole” for planning a hunger strike.

The next day, López said, they were brought out of the “hole,” cuffed at the ankles and wrists, and interrogated for two hours, then placed in solitary confinement again, in cells measuring twelve by six feet.

He was brought out of the isolation cell to speak with advocates on July 25.

Another detainee, Fausto Gonzalez, who has asthma, said that on July 28, over 30 people in his cell, Tiger 2, refused food and voiced their complaints. Guards showed up in black riot uniforms, said Gonzalez, and two men were sent to the “hole.”

Soni says he doesn’t know how long the men mentioned in the report remained in solitary, since the limited contact doesn’t allow him to track them.

“Solitary confinement as retaliatory punishment for peaceful protest of conditions is unacceptable,” said the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights in a statement.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency which oversees immigrant detention, denies any hunger strikers would be punished with solitary confinement, or unduly pressured.

Federal detention standards require that a hunger striker be placed in “medical isolation in order to closely monitor the detainee and meet his medical needs,” says Miller, the ICE field officer for detention and removal.

Also, says Miller, hunger strikers undergo a medical review and counseling about the health risks they face.

Seven national advocacy groups, including the Center for Constitutional Rights, sent Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano a letter demanding she investigate the Basile, Louisiana prison and the detainees’ grievances.

Last month, Napolitano denied a court petition asking for bolstered, legally enforceable detention standards at facilities housing immigrant detainees. Instead, DHS opted to stick with “performance-based” standards enforced by private contractors.