Minnesota Star recounts first-hand experience
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Rideback
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Minnesota Star recounts first-hand experience
""The young Muslim woman was shackled at the ankles. For 24 hours, she was locked inside a bathroom with three men at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, she said. They were given no bedding or pillows. Meals consisted of one sandwich a day. The sink faucet did not work, but the single toilet did. When the men pulled down their pants to use it, the woman hid her face."
After 24 hours with the men, the young woman -- a refugee who had completed the rigorous vetting process that all refugees undergo and had legal status to be in the U.S. -- was moved to a different locked bathroom in the building's basement.
Her grueling experience was described in a recent expose by The Minnesota Star Tribune on the inhumane conditions of people being detained by ICE in Minneapolis.
"When she had her period, agents told her to use toilet paper. When she felt dizzy and vomited twice, agents did not grant her request for medical care.... There was an air vent at the door's bottom. When she saw federal agents' footsteps, she banged for help.
On her third night of detention, agents took in two new detainees: an African immigrant and her 7-month-old baby girl. She said the immigrant told her they had been detained as the mother took her baby to a doctor to be treated for influenza.
'When the woman arrived, she was screaming and crying and yelling, 'My baby is already sick!'' she recalled. ''I don't want my baby to die!'' The next morning, she said, the woman and baby were moved from the bathroom.
It wasn't until her fourth day of detention when the young woman was allowed to use a phone at the facility. When she heard her mother's voice, she burst into tears.
On the fifth day, agents drove her and two other recently released detainees to a light-rail station near Whipple. They took off her handcuffs and told her to call an Uber, even though she didn't have a phone. She borrowed one from another detainee.
As they released her into the cold, she recalls their simple words: 'You are good to go.'"
This happened in Minneapolis but these types of abuses are happening at ICE detention facilities all around the country. Yesterday, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland shared a post describing an oversight visit to the ICE facility in Baltimore:
"I just exercised my right as a Member of Congress to conduct an unannounced oversight visit of the ICE field facility in Baltimore. The staff I met with respected my right to visit, but what I saw was disgraceful. Kristi Noem has a budget of $75 billion she could use to ensure humane conditions, but we saw 60 men packed into a room shoulder-to-shoulder, 24-hours-a-day, with a single toilet in the room and no shower facilities. They sleep like sardines with aluminum foil blankets. Whether it's for three days or seven days, nobody would want a member of their family warehoused there. The room set aside for dangerous criminals and violent offenders was empty. We're demanding immediate answers and action."
Even children are being treated like this. A Russian family, who has been imprisoned at ICE's detention camp for children in Dilley, Texas for over four months, detailed the horrendous conditions. As recounted by NBC News, they experienced: "Worms in their food. Guards shouting orders and snatching toys from small hands. Restless nights under fluorescent lights that never fully go dark. Hours in line for a single pill."
Nikita, an engineer, and Oksana, a nurse, and their three children are legally in the U.S. with a pending asylum case. They say that they never imagined that their children would be subjected to such conditions in the United States. "We left one tyranny and came to another kind of tyranny," Nikita said. "Even in Russia, they don't treat children like this."
This is Trump's America. Not the one he promised -- the one he's building. A nation of detention camps and bathroom cells, of shackled ankles and confiscated phones, of children crying themselves to sleep in facilities that a Russian dissident says are worse than Putin's Russia.
Every day this continues without mass outcry, we become more complicit. Every day we look away, we decide this is acceptable. It is not. This is a moral emergency, and history will judge us by what we did -- or failed to do -- to stop it.
And if the Trump administration has their way, things are about to get a lot worse.
Right now -- as you read this -- ICE is quietly attempting to buy at least 24 massive warehouses across the country and convert them into mega-detention centers -- industrial-scale facilities designed to hold 8,000 to 10,000 human beings at once.
The largest federal prison in America holds 4,000. These would dwarf it. The plan calls for 16 "processing sites" feeding into eight enormous detention complexes, with billions in taxpayer dollars flowing to private prison contractors who profit from every filled bed.
Deals are being signed this month. Warehouses in Arizona, Maryland, Texas, and Pennsylvania have already been purchased. Many more are in the pipeline. They've been doing these deals in secret -- ignoring health and safety concerns, actively hiding their plans from local communities -- because they know this cannot survive public scrutiny and outrage.
To fill facilities of this size, ICE cannot limit itself to "the worst of the worst," no matter what the administration claims. The math is simple: they will have to keep doing exactly what they're doing in Minnesota -- sweeping up families, workers, asylum seekers, and taxpayers. People whose only crime was living their lives until armed, masked men showed up at their door.
As detailed above, conditions in existing facilities are already horrendous. ICE has proven beyond any doubt that it is incapable of running detention facilities humanely. At least 31 people died in ICE custody last year -- nearly triple the toll from 2024. A Senate investigation documented over 1,000 credible reports of human rights abuses in just the first year of Trump's second term. And now they want to massively expand this broken, deadly system.
But here's what the administration doesn't want you to know: opposition is working. Communities are fighting back -- and winning. In Virginia, days of protests and a unanimous county board resolution killed a warehouse deal. In Utah, residents picketed until the property owner publicly refused to sell. In Kansas City, a county official's refusal to stay silent brought national attention that derailed ICE's plans.
Potential sites in five states have already been blocked by local opposition. At least 12 more are being actively contested right now.
The administration wanted to do this quietly. But the secret is out -- and when people show up, these deals fall apart.
If you refuse to let your country torture refugees and imprison children -- and you want to stop the Trump administration from building the infrastructure to do it on an industrial scale -- the time to act is now.
Here's how to take action:
--> Democracy Forward, a national legal organization, is doing tremendous work on litigation against the Trump administration's immigration policies, including multiple lawsuits focused on detainee conditions. To support their critical work, visit https://democracyforward.org/
--> You can learn about the current sites under consideration for 'mega' warehouse detention facilities -- and how communities have been fighting back at https://couriernewsroom.com/news/map-ic ... -warehouse
--> There is also a map of the currently proposed locations at https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer... -- and a detailed new expose about the warehouse plan in The Washington Post at https://wapo.st/3OfarSk
--> The first step is to learn about any plans for your state, and then connect with others to oppose its building. Connect with local immigrant rights groups and/or local Indivisible chapter to see if there are current efforts already underway to support. To find an Indivisible group in your area, visit https://indivisible.org/groups
--> Call your representatives at (202) 224-3121 and demand the immediate release of all children from the Dilley detention camp and an end to child detention.
--> The National Center for Youth Law is suing the federal government over conditions at Dilley. To support their critical work, visit https://youthlaw.org/
--> Haven Watch is a grassroots group providing support to detainees being released from Whipple -- learn more at https://havenwatch.org/
---
To read the full article in The Minnesota Star Tribune about the inhumane conditions in Whipple, visit https://www.startribune.com/no-humanity.../601566788
To read a new expose in The Washington Post about ICE'S warehouse detention plans, visit https://wapo.st/3OfarSk
To read more about the Russian family imprisoned in Dilley, visit https://www.nbcnews.com/.../russian-fam ... -detention...
For an in-depth new article by The New York Times about ICE's detention of children, visit https://www.nytimes.com/.../migrant-children-ice."
The Mighty Girl
After 24 hours with the men, the young woman -- a refugee who had completed the rigorous vetting process that all refugees undergo and had legal status to be in the U.S. -- was moved to a different locked bathroom in the building's basement.
Her grueling experience was described in a recent expose by The Minnesota Star Tribune on the inhumane conditions of people being detained by ICE in Minneapolis.
"When she had her period, agents told her to use toilet paper. When she felt dizzy and vomited twice, agents did not grant her request for medical care.... There was an air vent at the door's bottom. When she saw federal agents' footsteps, she banged for help.
On her third night of detention, agents took in two new detainees: an African immigrant and her 7-month-old baby girl. She said the immigrant told her they had been detained as the mother took her baby to a doctor to be treated for influenza.
'When the woman arrived, she was screaming and crying and yelling, 'My baby is already sick!'' she recalled. ''I don't want my baby to die!'' The next morning, she said, the woman and baby were moved from the bathroom.
It wasn't until her fourth day of detention when the young woman was allowed to use a phone at the facility. When she heard her mother's voice, she burst into tears.
On the fifth day, agents drove her and two other recently released detainees to a light-rail station near Whipple. They took off her handcuffs and told her to call an Uber, even though she didn't have a phone. She borrowed one from another detainee.
As they released her into the cold, she recalls their simple words: 'You are good to go.'"
This happened in Minneapolis but these types of abuses are happening at ICE detention facilities all around the country. Yesterday, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland shared a post describing an oversight visit to the ICE facility in Baltimore:
"I just exercised my right as a Member of Congress to conduct an unannounced oversight visit of the ICE field facility in Baltimore. The staff I met with respected my right to visit, but what I saw was disgraceful. Kristi Noem has a budget of $75 billion she could use to ensure humane conditions, but we saw 60 men packed into a room shoulder-to-shoulder, 24-hours-a-day, with a single toilet in the room and no shower facilities. They sleep like sardines with aluminum foil blankets. Whether it's for three days or seven days, nobody would want a member of their family warehoused there. The room set aside for dangerous criminals and violent offenders was empty. We're demanding immediate answers and action."
Even children are being treated like this. A Russian family, who has been imprisoned at ICE's detention camp for children in Dilley, Texas for over four months, detailed the horrendous conditions. As recounted by NBC News, they experienced: "Worms in their food. Guards shouting orders and snatching toys from small hands. Restless nights under fluorescent lights that never fully go dark. Hours in line for a single pill."
Nikita, an engineer, and Oksana, a nurse, and their three children are legally in the U.S. with a pending asylum case. They say that they never imagined that their children would be subjected to such conditions in the United States. "We left one tyranny and came to another kind of tyranny," Nikita said. "Even in Russia, they don't treat children like this."
This is Trump's America. Not the one he promised -- the one he's building. A nation of detention camps and bathroom cells, of shackled ankles and confiscated phones, of children crying themselves to sleep in facilities that a Russian dissident says are worse than Putin's Russia.
Every day this continues without mass outcry, we become more complicit. Every day we look away, we decide this is acceptable. It is not. This is a moral emergency, and history will judge us by what we did -- or failed to do -- to stop it.
And if the Trump administration has their way, things are about to get a lot worse.
Right now -- as you read this -- ICE is quietly attempting to buy at least 24 massive warehouses across the country and convert them into mega-detention centers -- industrial-scale facilities designed to hold 8,000 to 10,000 human beings at once.
The largest federal prison in America holds 4,000. These would dwarf it. The plan calls for 16 "processing sites" feeding into eight enormous detention complexes, with billions in taxpayer dollars flowing to private prison contractors who profit from every filled bed.
Deals are being signed this month. Warehouses in Arizona, Maryland, Texas, and Pennsylvania have already been purchased. Many more are in the pipeline. They've been doing these deals in secret -- ignoring health and safety concerns, actively hiding their plans from local communities -- because they know this cannot survive public scrutiny and outrage.
To fill facilities of this size, ICE cannot limit itself to "the worst of the worst," no matter what the administration claims. The math is simple: they will have to keep doing exactly what they're doing in Minnesota -- sweeping up families, workers, asylum seekers, and taxpayers. People whose only crime was living their lives until armed, masked men showed up at their door.
As detailed above, conditions in existing facilities are already horrendous. ICE has proven beyond any doubt that it is incapable of running detention facilities humanely. At least 31 people died in ICE custody last year -- nearly triple the toll from 2024. A Senate investigation documented over 1,000 credible reports of human rights abuses in just the first year of Trump's second term. And now they want to massively expand this broken, deadly system.
But here's what the administration doesn't want you to know: opposition is working. Communities are fighting back -- and winning. In Virginia, days of protests and a unanimous county board resolution killed a warehouse deal. In Utah, residents picketed until the property owner publicly refused to sell. In Kansas City, a county official's refusal to stay silent brought national attention that derailed ICE's plans.
Potential sites in five states have already been blocked by local opposition. At least 12 more are being actively contested right now.
The administration wanted to do this quietly. But the secret is out -- and when people show up, these deals fall apart.
If you refuse to let your country torture refugees and imprison children -- and you want to stop the Trump administration from building the infrastructure to do it on an industrial scale -- the time to act is now.
Here's how to take action:
--> Democracy Forward, a national legal organization, is doing tremendous work on litigation against the Trump administration's immigration policies, including multiple lawsuits focused on detainee conditions. To support their critical work, visit https://democracyforward.org/
--> You can learn about the current sites under consideration for 'mega' warehouse detention facilities -- and how communities have been fighting back at https://couriernewsroom.com/news/map-ic ... -warehouse
--> There is also a map of the currently proposed locations at https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer... -- and a detailed new expose about the warehouse plan in The Washington Post at https://wapo.st/3OfarSk
--> The first step is to learn about any plans for your state, and then connect with others to oppose its building. Connect with local immigrant rights groups and/or local Indivisible chapter to see if there are current efforts already underway to support. To find an Indivisible group in your area, visit https://indivisible.org/groups
--> Call your representatives at (202) 224-3121 and demand the immediate release of all children from the Dilley detention camp and an end to child detention.
--> The National Center for Youth Law is suing the federal government over conditions at Dilley. To support their critical work, visit https://youthlaw.org/
--> Haven Watch is a grassroots group providing support to detainees being released from Whipple -- learn more at https://havenwatch.org/
---
To read the full article in The Minnesota Star Tribune about the inhumane conditions in Whipple, visit https://www.startribune.com/no-humanity.../601566788
To read a new expose in The Washington Post about ICE'S warehouse detention plans, visit https://wapo.st/3OfarSk
To read more about the Russian family imprisoned in Dilley, visit https://www.nbcnews.com/.../russian-fam ... -detention...
For an in-depth new article by The New York Times about ICE's detention of children, visit https://www.nytimes.com/.../migrant-children-ice."
The Mighty Girl