(RNS) — It was early in Ramadan, and a group of Muslim detainees in a Folkston, Georgia, immigrant detention center set up a makeshift dinner table. Using clean trash bags as a tablecloth and prayer mats as seats, they broke their fast on small portions of ramen noodles and brown rice, microwaved with water and sardine sauce, topped with fish and spice packets.

“We gathered our leftovers to see what we can put together,” said Yaakub Ira Vijandre, a Muslim Filipino American who has been in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody for five months. Sometimes the guards don’t pass out enough pre-dawn breakfasts, and the detainees share that too. Only by befriending Muslim cooks at the center who share extra food after their shifts does Vijandre feel fed after his 14-hour fast. 

The iftar meal that breaks the Ramadan fast is traditionally an occasion for abundance and communal gathering. But Muslim detainees, such as Vijandre, are struggling to observe the holy month with inadequate access to nutritious halal food, no Qurans in their language and limited visits from chaplains. 

In one Michigan facility, detainees reported using bedsheets as prayer mats. “In ICE facilities, a lot of how you observe Ramadan just depends entirely on the goodwill of individual officers,” said Maria Kari, a lawyer who represents Vijandre and other Muslim detainees. “You are basically at the mercy of staff.”

ICE is legally required to accommodate religious practice, as long as it doesn’t threaten the “safety, security and orderly operation” of the facility. That includes accommodations for a special diet as well as access to religious garments and books. But in detention centers in Georgia, Michigan and Texas, many Muslim detainees report it isn’t happening.

In a written statement, an ​​ICE spokesperson said, “Every ICE facility that holds individuals for more than 72 hours is required to have a chaplain or religious services coordinator responsible for coordinating worship, prayer, and spiritual support.” The agency did not respond to the specific allegations of religious accommodations violations.

“Being a practicing Muslim in ICE detention is one of the most humiliating experiences,” said Kari.

 There are no official statistics on the number of Muslims held in detention facilities, but the Austin chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, estimates that 5% of detainees in Texas facilities are Muslim. (Texas has about 18,600 detainees, the highest number of any U.S. state.) 

At the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan, about 200 of the estimated 1,400 detainees are Muslim. Bouha Abderrahmane, who immigrated to the U.S. from Mauritania a year ago, was detained there in mid-February when he came home from prayer in a Detroit mosque. Abderrahmane said only detainees who signed up for accommodations before Ramadan have been able to receive them, according to an interview conducted by Jad Salamey, an attorney at the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations who represents him. With 11 Muslims in Abderrahmane’s unit, they will take turns eating the halal food so “everyone gets to eat once in a while,” he reported to his lawyer. (RNS sent questions to Abderrahmane via his lawyer.) 

All of North Lake’s detainees are awakened around 5 a.m., but they sometimes get breakfast after 6 a.m. — past the pre-dawn meal time for Ramadan at the beginning of the holy month. “I missed my first suhoor because of this,” he told his attorney, using the Arabic word for the meal. (Suhoor now ends around 6:45 a.m. in Michigan.)

For the iftar meal after sunset, detainees receive two meals: a plate of warm food and a frozen meal to eat later. Salamey, Abderrahmane’s attorney, speculated that the frozen meal is compensation for the lunch Muslim detainees miss because they are fasting. Abderrahmane said that even with the frozen meal, the food is not enough to sustain them. “If we ask for more food than the two plates provided, we are not given anything,” he reported, adding he lost “6 or 7 pounds” in his first two weeks of detention. 

Detainees may purchase more frozen food, snacks or ramen; however, many detainees do not have money in their commissary accounts, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit advocating for criminal justice reform.

In December, U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan serving on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, visited the North Lake Processing Center and blasted the “dehumanizing conditions.” The Department of Homeland Security spokesperson responded by saying, “When radical members of Congress like Rashida Tlaib visit ICE facilities, they never talk about the monsters that are detained.”

At the Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas, Nosayba Mahmoud, a community chaplain, said Muslim detainees there receive their morning meals minutes before the day’s first prayer — forcing them to scramble to eat — and iftar arrives 45 minutes to an hour after sunset. They also aren’t receiving halal food, despite signing up for it, she said. “They make them sign that they are getting halal meals, but they are, in fact, getting a kosher dried food bag that they put water in and warm it up for them,” she said, which they believe was nutritionally inadequate and “made several of them actually sick.” She said the regular food often contains pork or is cooked with lard, preventing Muslims from eating it without compromising their religious practices.

ICE’s religious accommodations handbook says that detention centers can purchase prepackaged kosher and halal foods from a list of vendors, and Muslim detainees may request kosher foods if halal is not an option. Otherwise, a “common fare” meal — a “no-flesh” option that doesn’t violate kosher or halal diets — should be provided. “Hot entrées should be available to accommodate detainee’s religious dietary needs and should be purchased, prepared and served in a manner that does not violate the religious requirements of any faith group,” the handbook states. 

Among the 64 Muslim detainees at Prairieland is Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman spending her second Ramadan there, recently back after being hospitalized for a seizure. An immigration judge has twice determined Kordia should be released. Kordia, whose lawyers argue she is being punished for her advocacy for Palestinians in Gaza, said she is fasting despite poor health. “Ramadan is a time to heal my soul, to heal my health, everything,” she said in a statement.

Mahmoud provides spiritual care specifically to those in vulnerable situations caused by systemic harm, including those held in ICE detention. She is used to facing hurdles, such as late confirmations or cancellations of appointments, shortened visits and monitoring by ICE chaplains during visits. Christian faith groups also have claimed violations of their religious rights, suing DHS for allegedly denying them access to immigrant detainees at a local federal building. In a written response, an ICE spokesperson said “clergy and faith volunteers are welcomed and encouraged” to reach out to facilities if they want to provide pastoral visits, counseling and religious services and must meet “standard clearance requirements, including advance notice, valid ID, and a background check.”

Detainees from out of state rarely get visitors, according to Shaimaa Zayan, an operations manager for the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Austin, Texas, chapter. Even Texan detainees’ families  are often four to five hours away, making it difficult for local people to commute.

Many Muslim families also are too afraid to visit. “There’s a safety concern of even visiting detention centers, especially if you look immigrant,” she said.

Inside North Lake, the isolation extends to worship. Tarawih, the nightly Ramadan prayer, is customarily performed in large congregations. North Lake detainees pray in small groups of 10 or 11 before curfew in a larger gathering space within their dorm. When they do pray together, Abderrahmane told his attorney, other detainees look at them as if “disgusted by us for praying together.” He reports he has watched 300 to 400 Christians gather freely on Sundays. “I am not sure why the Muslims have to be separated,” he said.

If they do not finish praying together before curfew, they return to pray alone in their individual units, where they pray next to the toilet — a constant complaint, Salamey said, that the facility has yet to resolve. 

On Fridays, with no clergy visiting, detainees lead prayers themselves, translating sermons into multiple languages as they go. Salamey said Abderrahmane reports Muslim detainees are required to pray in two groups of about 80 to 100 people at a time.

At the Folkston, Georgia, facility, noise is an obstacle. Vijandre said 16 men take turns leading evening prayers in their pod, lined up on prayer mats near their beds. They each recite verses from the Quran with their distinctive voices. In the background of the melodic recitation are loud conversations, songs and curse words from fellow detainees.

“You can never control anyone, especially in here, where you’re restricted and there’s not much you can do,” he said. “And some take refuge in singing and playing music and dancing and just being loud.”

Vijandre has asked the facility’s chaplain for a quieter place and permission to pray with the dozens of other Muslim detainees in their housing unit. The chaplain tried to help, but Vijandre said he learned the warden denied the request.

At Prairieland Detention Center in Texas, there are other difficulties but just as grinding. Prayer rugs sit in the chaplain’s office, detainees believe, yet none have been distributed, according to Mahmoud. A detainee filed a grievance. Qurans are scarce and rarely available in detainees’ languages.

Men are permitted to pray Friday jumah together. Women pray separately in dorms shared with about 50 detainees.  Zayan said some detainees do not have clean clothes for prayer, which Islam requires for prayers to be accepted. 

Vijandre said he asked the Christian chaplain for a small watering can to be used for purification after using the bathroom. The chaplain was sympathetic, but the request was denied, he said. “He would always tell me, ‘I try my best, then they (higher ups) just keep shutting me down,’” Vijandre said.

Zayan said they encourage chaplains to reach out to them for religious accommodations in Texas. “So, if they don’t reach out to us with specific numbers and requests, we will not know how many Muslims are there and what the needs are, or whether they have accommodations or not,” she said. 

Salamey said that spending Ramadan in a detention center is taking a toll on his client: “He seems saddened and kind of alone.”

For many detainees, the prospect of perhaps spending months in a detention center is debilitating. “Maybe Ramadan brought some easiness, but it’s still a very hard situation,” Zayan said. “I think people will need, even if they get out today, years of counseling to recover from such a horrible experience.”

Despite the hurdles, many detainees are continuing to fast, hoping the month’s spiritual activities can offer them hope in captivity. “They are fasting because they have such an amount of resilience and holding on to parts of their faith that they can have control of, or holding on to,” Mahmoud said.

Vijandre, an avid writer and reader, has been writing daily notes about his captivity during the month, passing the reflections to friends so they can post them on Instagram. For him, Ramadan in detention is a lesson in patience and trust in God while facing injustice.

“In here if you don’t have a purpose, and you don’t have a higher being to turn to, an avenue or a medium to remain calm, you’re going to break apart,” he said. “It’s designed for you to break down.”