Addicted to ICE

[Nevilledog]

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-addicted-to-ice-immigrant-detention-centers/

No paywall link
https://archive.li/wCwGe

The sun is still beating down on the scrubby New Mexico dirt when an army-green bus pulls into the parking lot of the Torrance County Detention Facility in the small town of Estancia. Behind barred windows, the silhouettes of dozens of men are just visible. Many of them have never been to New Mexico before. It’s March, and New Mexico is cooler, drier, browner than Florida, where they were this morning before being forced onto a plane, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, and flown here.

They’re in New Mexico because US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is running out of space. In the wake of President Donald Trump’s promise to pursue the biggest immigration crackdown in US history, men such as the ones on this bus are being targeted by ICE and local law enforcement in unprecedented ways. The detention facilities closer to home are overflowing. So ICE brings them here, to an ICE town.

John, who’s from the Tampa area, sits on the other side of those bars, watching the bus crawl closer to the sand-colored detention compound jutting out of the flat earth. His vision isn’t good right now; someone fell on him and broke his glasses while he was sleeping on the floor at an ICE facility in Miami. John, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym because he fears retaliation for talking to the press, was picked up at a regular check-in for a special program typically reserved for first-time offenders of nonviolent crimes. Now he’s almost 2,000 miles from home, from his grandmother, from his two dogs. He knew it was a bad sign when he overheard ICE officers talking about his impending transfer, but he didn’t know where he was going until the plane was ready for takeoff.

Over the next few weeks, John will spend sleepless nights shivering in his cell. He’ll join an impromptu Bible study with other guys in his unit and watch the younger ones share their coats with older men during recreation time. He’ll eat in a room with a floor covered in feces. He’ll ask, many times, for supplies to clean it up. He’ll see a nurse for his back and his vision and his climbing blood pressure. He’ll receive nothing but Tylenol. He’ll participate in a hunger strike. He’ll watch men drink water out of a trash can brought in when the facility’s water is shut off. And he’ll gradually start to long to be deported to El Salvador, a country he barely knows, where he hasn’t lived since he was a child. He’ll want this but won’t get it, because this is an ICE jail with hardly any ICE officers.

*snip*

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R