1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

When injustice is rampant, where to focus? ICE continues to cause misery. Fueled by an administration determined to punish even those who live and work and pursue the American dream through our established laws. People are continuing to be arrested, detained, subjected to inhumane treatment, and denied due process of the law. And just because it’s not in the current headlines, doesn’t make it go away. We must not be led to believe all is fine on that front just because it isn’t the current outrage du jour. It absolutely is not fine. Just this week ICE pepper-sprayed Sen. Andy Kim along with demonstrators outside Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed detention center in Newark. In February 2025 the Trump administration signed a 15-year, $1B contract with the GEO Group, which operates private prisons, to expand the Delaney Hall facility dramatically as an ICE prison. New Jersey officials have argued in federal court that GEO Group does not have the required permits to operate the expanded facility, yet the facility opened about a year ago. In February, 25 detainees at Delaney Hall signed a letter distributed by the national advocacy group for undocumented immigrants, Cosecha, as “Our Cry: A Letter from Inside Delaney Hall.” In the letter, they apologized “for the way we entered the United States,” explaining that “we were experiencing safety circumstances that endangered our lives and the lives of some members of our family.” They emphasized that they had surrendered to border authorities and continued to work within the system, attending check-ins, getting work permits, and paying taxes, before being seized by ICE agents. They explained that they have not been afforded the legal hearings guaranteed by the US Constitution and are being pressured to self-deport under threats of being sent not back to their country of origin, but rather to third countries like Uganda. They noted that ICE agents have arrested children, the elderly, and people with medical issues and that the facility is overcrowded. In a second letter, Delaney Hall detainees expanded their picture of their circumstances, noting that some of them have lived in the country for more than a decade, have citizen children, and were complying with legal requirements. They noted that detainees with HIV, cancer, diabetes, and heart conditions are not receiving proper medical attention. In the second letter, signed by nearly 300 people, the detainees pleaded with “Senators, Congress members, foundations, and organizations that collaborate with immigrants” for help. In big letters at the bottom of the document they wrote: “S.O.S.,” the international distress call. On Monday, NJ governor Mikie Sherrill was denied entry to the facility. She said that refusal raised “serious questions about what they are trying to hide from public view.” A spokesperson for DHS said that Sherrill’s visit was “nothing more than a political stunt on Memorial Day when visitation is currently suspended due to riots outside in the facility.” Rep. Maxwell Frost posted yesterday that he had just visited “Alligator Alcatraz,” which appears to be in the process of shutting down. He suggested that FL governor DeSantis and Trump haven’t wanted to admit it was closing because they have spent a BILLION dollars of taxpayer money on the site in less than a year. But, Frost said, “we can’t allow this place to just shut down and then not talk about it anymore. That’s what they want because they used a billion of our dollars to enrich private contractors that built and operated the place. They want us to move on because they don’t want us to talk about the human rights abuses and civil rights abuses that happened there and in other facilities as well…. We have to continue to push for accountability and consequences for people who broke the law and misused our…money, meant for hurricane preparedness, to kidnap and cage our neighbors.” History teaches us of instances where good people turned a blind eye because it wasn’t happening to them. Or they didn’t believe the evidence of their own eyes and ears. We can’t imagine the experiences being told to us by people on the inside…because it hasn’t happened to us. Or anyone we know. Or we just don’t really care. And that is what history will say about America if we don’t stay outraged about injustice committed by our government in the name of we the people. What happens to a justice system when prosecutors stop asking what crimes need to be prosecuted and starts asking who the president wants punished? “Be outraged ... [I]n the face of the impulse to normalize, it is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock.”