Today, April 16, 2026, I join Moms4Good, MomsforTexas, Mother Forward, and the Blue Bunny Brigade, who have organized to get 10,000 of us moms across the country — and world, if you count me over in London — to make our national and state lawmakers face the brutal inhumanity of locking up children, and to turn up the heat until they #ShutDownDilley, #CloseTheCamps, and #ReuniteFamilies.

To do that, we’re counting on you to call your state and federal elected officials today. Demand the immediate end to family internment in the USA, and the shutdown of the concentration camp in Dilley, Texas, operated by prison profiteer CoreCivic, by Mother’s Day.

Find the toolkit here. Read on to learn more…

It’s called the South Texas Family Residential Center. But don’t be fooled by the name. It’s a jail. A jail run by jailers. A jail that locks up immigrant children and youth FOR PROFIT, including Minnesota resident Liam Conejo Ramos, making a mockery of the party in power’s professed “belief” in family values and the sanctity of life.

They are continuing an unacknowledged US pastime dating back to Bush 43…

They are Locking Up Family Values. And they are making BANK doing it.

Already convinced?

Call your state and federal elected officials today!

Tell them that locking up children and separating families is Not Okay!

Demand that they tell Department of Homeland “Security” Secretary Markwayne Mullin to #ShutDownDilley, #CloseTheCamps, and #ReuniteFamilies by Mother’s Day!

To learn more about CoreCivic, its heinous Dilley ‘Baby Jail,’ and the unacknowledged US pastime of locking up family values, please read on…

I’ve been inside several facilities of the for-profit US immigrant Gulag. I’ve seen with my own eyes the punishing effects such confinement has on people. Fine people. People who are innocent of any real crime. I’m in touch with many who would make incredible contributions to our society were they not locked up and left to languish, sometimes for years, in daily contemplation about how to end their own lives. I can state, therefore, that the so-called “detention” and “processing” centers of the US immigrant Gulag are exactly as described in the testimonies of the directly impacted:

“Torture chambers.” “Hell on Earth.” Places “built to break us.”

“I don’t think they should grab immigrants who are innocent,like instead of grabbing criminals…they lock up children.”

Ender, a 12-year-old kidnapped from Austin, Texas, more than 60 days ago

When the first edition of Crossing the Line came out in June 2024, 80% of of the then-roughly 200-facility ICE Gulag was run by private prison profiteers, with the lion’s share of contracts going to GEO Group, formerly The Wackenhut Corporation, and CoreCivic, once operating as Corrections Corporation of America. Just seven months later, according to a February 21, 2025, analysis by Syracuse University’s Transactional Record Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), 90% of newcomers and asylum seekers to the US were trapped inside prisons run for-profit.

They are black sites, where the mental health and well-being of everyone held hostage inside are being compromised forever.

They are crowded congregant settings, aka concentration camps, where people, good people, are disappeared, and are now dying at a rate of one every six days, according to ICE researcher Austin Kocher.

“I haven’t been happy since I got here. The officers have bad manner of speaking to residents…the workers treat the residents inhumanely…I want to tell you guys how I feel and is hell like…so much sadness and depression of not being able to leave…”

Gaby, a 14-year-old kidnapped from Houston, Texas, more than 20 days ago

The Trump regime is on track to build an infrastructure capable of locking up more than 100,000 people on any given day — people who have largely committed no crime. Most shamefully, this includes children and youth: innocents who should be in school, not threatened with time in the SHU, the notorious “Special Housing Unit,” aka solitary confinement; innocents who should be allowed to play and run and draw and read, not be forced to remain quiet for 24 hours a day without books or toys or laughter or education. The so-called Pro-Life party, what’s more, is right now forcing teenage girls, some potentially impregnated by their US-citizens captors, to bring babies into the world without the benefit of prenatal care.

No one should be locked up in places where they are denied medical attention, adequate nutrition, functional toilets, soap, and water worthy of drinking.

No one should be provided only enough food to be kept from starvation; be made to withstand freezing temperatures day in and day out; and be forced to sleep under lights that blaze bright 24/7.

No one should suffer retribution if they protest these inhumane conditions, file grievances against their captors, or attempt to speak to members of Congress or the press.

But these are the daily realities in the US immigration Gulag. It is no place for anyone. It’s certainly no place for kids.

“Since I got to this Center all I feel is sadness and depression…Not a lot of people know what is happening in the Centers where immigrants are placed…I have been in this country for 7 years…I have never been separated from my siblings…Since the day my mom and I got detained in Manhattan, NY, my life was instantly paused…

All kids are being damaged mentally.”

Ariana, a 14-year-old, formerly of Hicksville, New York,kidnapped at an ICE check-in more than 45 days ago

“It’s unethical. It’s irresponsible. It’s unkind.” It is also well-documented that Children and youth experience confinement as torture. When they are traumatized this way, their bodies and brains stop functioning, a phenomenon known as toxic stress, which leads to life-long negative physical, emotional, and psychological outcomes.

One present offender in the national pastime of terrorizing future generations also happens to be one of the world’s two largest private prison entities: Nashville, Tennessee-based CoreCivic.

CoreCivic is profiting from the pain of school-aged children and babies.

“Being locked up against my will is quite overwhelming, also I feel down about the idea that I couldn’t finish my school year.”

Scarlett, a 17-year-old kidnapped from El Paso, Texas, time imprisoned unknown

CoreCivic owns and operates more than 70 prisons and jails capable of enslaving more than 66,000 people, including immigrant non-offenders held in concentration camps that rely on inmate labor and denial of basic needs, like food and medical care, as a means of maintaining its highly profitable bottom line. Based on the company’s latest financial disclosures for 2025 and 2026, its annual revenue has doubled since the inauguration of the second Trump regime. Board members receive annual compensation packages ranging from $220,000 to $380,000, in cash retainers, meeting fees, and significant awards fueled by a stock buyback spree.

“We’ve had a tremendous, tremendous second quarter,” stated CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger during the latest earnings call, touting financial increases of over 100 percent compared to the same period last year.

“We’re gonna have a very strong year,” he concluded, upon disclsing executive intentions to “lean way far forward” in support of Trump & Co’s ethnic-cleansing campaign. For CoreCivic, mass expulsion, no matter the human right violations, is good for business. They plan to invest five times what they have in the past to build out a transportation fleet of buses and vans to aid local law enforcement working in collaboration with the ICE and Border Patrol Gestapos to “quickly” move those kidnapped from their workplaces and out of their homes into the expanding immigrant Gulag.

Indeed, plied with government contracts aimed at supporting shadow president Stephen Miller’s goal of expelling one million newcomers to the US every year for the next 10-15 years, CoreCivic and its chief rival, GEO Group, are laughing all the way to the bank. They are being enriched with taxpayer money made possible by the 2025 MAGA Murder Mandate — the Big legislative Betrayal the current occupant of the White House calls “beautiful” — which allocated $45 billion to boost bed capacity in the ICE Gulag to incarcerate more than 100,000 people at a time — people who’ve largely committed no crime. That includes children and youth.

That’s an 800% increase in ICE’s budget from FY2024 for facilities alone.

“ICE used me to catch my mom and now I am in jail [for 113 days] and I am sad and I have fainted 2 times here inside. When I arrived every night I cried and now I don’t sleep well, I felt like being here was my fault and I only wanted to be on vacation like a normal family.”

Maria Antonia, a 9-year-old, traveling alone on a valid tourist visa, kidnapped at an international airport on arrival for a visit with her mom more than 113 days ago

Texas has long been a willing contributor to — and benefactor of — the ICE immigrant Gulag. Seventy miles south of San Antonio, at CoreCivic’s Dilley Immigration Processing Center, 5,600 safety seekers, more than half of them children, have been imprisoned since it reopened in early 2025. Euphemistically referred to as the South Texas Family Residential Center, it is currently the nation’s only lock-up for immigrant families. But don’t be fooled by the name. Dilley is a jail. A jail run by jailers. A jail that locks up families, making a mockery of so-called family values.

“I have been here for 70 days in this place. I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to school. I miss my grandparents. I miss my friends. I miss my uncles.”

Mia Valentina, a 9-year-old kidnapped from Austin, Texas, more than 90 days ago

What goes on behind Dilley’s concertina-laden fencing?

That is the topic of Chapter 19 of Crossing the Line, Locking Up Family Values.

Click the PLAY button above to give it a listen. ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼

Then circle back to find out about coming resistance actionsand how YOU can get involved…

“Seeing how people like me, immigrants are treated changes my perspective about the U.S. My mom and I came to The U.S. for a good and safe place to live.”

Susej, a 9-year-old kidnapped from Houston, Texas, more than 50 days ago

Coming Resistance Actions…

If you are in or can get to Texas…

On Saturday, April 18: All Aboard! Caravans of Moms will converge at the Dilley concentration camp to demand the release of children held there. We meet at noon. Join here.

Saturday, April 25: Communities Not Cages National Day of Action to Stop ICE Warehouse Detention, organized by Detention Watch Network. Find out more and propose an action here.

Friday, May 1: May Day Strong! No work, no school, no shopping. Sign the pledge and find or host an action at maydaystrong.org.

Sunday, May 24: Divest from the Immigration Prison Industrial Complex! Join me, Dora Rodriguez, and other members of the Hope Knows No Borders Network for a creative brainstorm and workshop on all the many ways we, the people, can disrupt the ill-gotten gains of CoreCivic and GEO Group through boycotts and divestment. More info and registration link to follow.

Until then… Be persistent. Be nonviolent. Bear Witness.

Call your state and federal elected officials today!

Tell them that locking up children and separating families is Not Okay!

Demand that they tell Department of Homeland “Security” Secretary Markwayne Mullin to #ShutDownDilley, #CloseTheCamps, and #ReuniteFamilies by Mother’s Day!

Stay strong, everybody. The only way through this is…Together,

In solidarity,✊🏼 SarahAnat Shenker-Osorio Michael Podhorzer Andrew Free Pablo Manríquez

#seeyouatdilley #destinationdilley #dillpill #iceout

Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. It will always remain free because not enough people understand our horrible, no good, really deadly immigration system. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Apropos of the final days of Holy Week 2026, the darkest moments in the Christian calendar — that still and scary time just before dawn — I wanted to share this piece from the archives: Alvaro Enciso’s Desert Monument to the Dead.

I was back in Arizona on my latest speaking tour. I went for the Tucson Festival of Books — a guest of Rita Cantu and the Border Community Alliance. While there, I rode south into the desert three times:

* To bear witness to the destruction of the San Rafael Valley by the last several miles of Trump’s boondoggle border wall,

* To aid Humane Borders with a water drop run to Warsaw Canyon,

* To plant crosses with Alvaro Enciso, Peter, and David, the same team featured in the archival podcast episode you access above — the same story that would become the concluding chapter of Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, Buried Dreams. We were joined by a new member to the team, also named David, who was, completely coincidentally, one of my Binghamton, New York, hosts while on tour last fall.

My reunion with Alvaro and his team, and their ceaseless attempt to memorialize the suffering of the great unknown, compelled me to dig up and listen to our audio collaboration, published more than four years ago. As I listened, I was taken with how eerily, hauntingly current it feels. And how appropriate to the season this statement is:

“The cross is also a historical marker that was used by the Roman Empire to kill people. Remember, they used to hang them on crosses — false prophets, enemies of the empire. And they hung them out there for days in the sun without any water until they died, for everyone to see.

“That’s exactly what’s happening here. People die from being exposed to the sun, without any water, on purpose.”

—Alvaro Enciso, 2021

Since 1994, rather than reimagine a US immigration system that respects human rights, lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle have openly leaned on the theory of Prevention through Deterrence, which I prefer to call Deterrence through Cruelty, because all it has ever done is to exact tremendous misery and harm, and to kill. Untold numbers of peace-seeking people, as well as innocent wildlife, have died or disappeared because of it.

The policy epitomizes what happens when walls are erected around nations: They go up around human hearts as well.

Though originally published in January 2022, the only updates to make to this audio-tale are the numbers contained within:

* At least 12,000 people have now died an excruciating death in the Sonoran Desert (up from 10,000), based on the conservative estimate of one person dead per day since the strategy began.

* Alvaro, Peter, and David have now planted 2,300 crosses, up from 1,200 at the time this podcast interview was published four years ago.

* The then-already explosive FY2021 budget of $17.7 billion for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — part of a $48 billion allocation for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under the Biden administration — mushroomed following Trump & Co’s July 2025 passage of the Big Ugly Bill (what I call the MAGA Murder Mandate), which habded DHS $170.7 billion for border militarization and people trafficking, aka immigrant incarceration and expulsion, through September 30, 2029, bequeathing to DHS a purse larger than most national militaries, with

* $51.6 billion earmarked for border wall construction, surveillance systems, and Border Patrol prisons;

* $45 billion for expanding ICE concentration camp capacity; and

* $29.9 billion for kidnapping, imprisoning, and expelling our neighbors, colleagues, family, and friends.

What started for Alvaro as a dream “to reveal to the world the US government’s responsibility for turning the Sonoran Desert into a graveyard” has resulted in his transforming the desert into a cemetery, an art installation, and a memorial to the needless suffering of the unknown. It’s a work of monumental art, exposing government-sanctioned crimes against humanity. It’s art intended to lift up the memory of those tragically and unnecessarily lost, while informing the living of the atrocities being quietly carried out in our names.

It is art without end, apparently, as it parallels the same cruelty exercised by the Romans approximately 1,993 years ago, when one who preached the gospel of love and caring, of welcome and kindness, was forced to wear a crown of thorns that pierced his head and to carry the implement of his coming torture: a cross.

Have we really learned nothing, people?

Alvaro and I agree: Prevention through Deterrence, aka Deterrence through Cruelty, is exacting a quiet genocide. It is an expression of all that we should not be as a people and a nation. When these dark days are finally behind us, and we have the opportunity to build something new from Trump & Co’s ashes, we must end the policy of Prevention through Deterrence, as we tear down the structures that created it, particularly the Department of Homeland “Security,” which isn’t keeping any of us secure at all.

Stay strong, my friends. The only way through this is… Together.✊🏼 Sarah

Don’t forget to tap the ♡ if you like this podcast, and the 🔄 to share it. Tx!

Tales of Humanity will always remain free because not enough people understand the human costs of an immigration system that privileges cruelty over kindness and “security” over human rights. If you like what I’m offering here — stories about radical care and mutual aid at a time of increasing fearmongering and hate — please consider becoming a paid subscriber. My gratitude in advance 🙏🏼.

On March 22, 2026, the fifth Sunday of the Lenten season, aka Passion Sunday, I had the great honor of addressing the incomparable St. Joan of Arc Catholic Community in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a parish renowned for its progressive stance and its focus on social justice. These folks rose ready, together, in the face of Trump & Co’s domestic terror campaign, “Operation Metro Surge,” to defend and safeguard the human and constitutional rights of their neighbors. For this lapsed Catholic, the daughter of a devout Twin Cities Minnesotan, who was en route to the priesthood when he met my mom, it was the perfect place to be welcomed back into the fold.

Speaking on this topic during the sacred Lenten season of grief and giving, of reflection and renewal — the time of the passion, when we are called upon to express compassion — could not have felt more auspicious, more vital, or more urgent in today’s political climate. The story of Lent is mirrored in real life, right now. We are in that still and scary time just before the light of a new dawn, when folks just living their sweet lives are vilified, declared terrorists, arrested, shackled, imprisoned, denied food and water, and forced to participate in their own destruction, just as one who preached the gospel of love and caring, of welcome and kindness, was forced to wear a crown of thorns that pierced his head and to carry the implement of his coming torture.

This is happening again every minute of every single day, inside the US’s deterrence to detention to deportation pipeline. And the cruelty is not okay.

In the aftermath of ICE’s brutal and criminal tearing apart of more than 3,700 Minnesota families to date that we know of, according to the Deportation Data Project, under Trump & Co’s ethnic cleansing campaign for which they are developing a holocaust-style infrastructure of concentration camps, complete with transportation network, the community of St. Joan of Arc has been engaged in a spiritual centering down. Guided by the wise words of writer Sherman Alexie, as well as Christian theologian, educator, and civil rights leader, Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman, they have been preparing their heads, hands, and hearts for the ongoing struggle for social justice, that they may rise ready, together, when called upon again to do so.

I am one more citizen marching against hatred.Alone, we are defenseless. Collected, we are sacred.We will march by the millions. We will tremble and grieve.We will praise and weep and laugh. We will believe.We will be courageous with our love. We will risk dangerAs we sing and sing and sing to welcome strangers.

Sherman Alexie, 2017

The community asked that I focus my remarks on where I find strength in these deeply dark and challenging times; about how I quiet my soul and my mind when there is so much to do and so many needs to meet, Every. Single. Moment. of. Every. Single. Day.

About how I center down.

But I had to admit that I am none too good at the practice myself. Indeed, I had to learn the hard way that working to straighten the bent arc of justice is not a marathon. It’s not even a sprint. It’s a relay. That’s why it’s so important to know who your allies are, and to hold them dear, because we all need to pass the baton at times, to step back and center down so that we may again lead. In fact, in the most tragic moments of last winter’s occupation, I was looking to folks like my St Joan of Arc hosts for answers.

When under siege, when the worst of humanity’s worst impulses were unleashed upon them, it was Minnesotans such as these, like Chicagoans and Angelenos and Portlanders before them, who showed us that…

When we live together as brothers and sisters, we rise together, too.

Minnesota showed us that we can create a more inclusive world, where the stranger is welcomed and embraced, rather than shackled and expelled. And that we would be a much better people and nation for it.

They are to be thanked for standing against government violence and for everyone’s human right to dignity, safety, and due process under the law, for being the light in our collective hour of darkness. And for giving me my mojo back!

In this Easter and Passover season, and with Ramadan just behind us, I hope you appreciate my pre-Mass remarks offered to the St Joan of Arc Catholic Community on March 22, 2026.

Please, listen to the audio or watch the video above, then circle back to let us know, in the comments below, where you find hope when an ethnic cleansing, a genocide, is unfolding right in front of your eyes?

Don’t forget to tap the ♡ if you like this video, and the 🔄 to share it.

Until next time, stay strong, my friends. The only way through this is…Together.✊🏼 Sarah

How good it is to center down!

To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by! The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic; Our spirits resound with clashing, with noisy silences, While something deep within hungers and thirstsfor the still moment and the resting lull.

With full intensity we seek, ere thicket passes, a fresh sense of order in our living;A direction, a strong sure purpose that will structure our confusion and bring meaning in our chaos. We look at ourselves in this waiting moment — the kinds of people we are.

The questions persist: What are we doing with our lives? What are the motives that order our days? What is the end of our doings? Where are we trying to go? Where do we put the emphasis and where are our values focused? For what end do we make sacrifices? Where is my treasure and what do I love most in life? What do I hate most in life and to what am I true? Over and over the questions beat upon the waiting moment.As we listen, floating up through all of the jangling echoes of our turbulence,there is a sound of another kind —A deeper note which only the stillness of the heart makes clear.It moves directly to the core of our being. Our questions are answered,Our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of our daily roundWith the peace of the Eternal in our step.How good it is to center down!

Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman, 1999

Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Where were you on No Kings Day 3, dear subscribers? Let me know in the comments below.

I was in the Twin Cities, hosted by the amazing St. Joan of Arc Catholic Community, and its Welcome the Stranger ministry, which put together a busy week of service, public speaking, networking, and story capturing for me. It was the perfect conclusion of another exhausting — but extremely fulfilling — leg on my now 20-month speaking tour following the launch of Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands (and the reason you haven’t heard from me in a while).

It was also my birthday! And I was honored to celebrate in the company of 200,000+ Minnesotans, in person and in spirit, including members of my own extended family. You are all heroes to me.

Surrounded by the peaceful vibes of ordinary folks moved to extraordinary kindness in resistance to the demented whims of a warmongering man-child and would-be king, we were serenaded by Bruce Springsteen, Maggie Rogers, and Joan Baez…

We rocked to the Brass Solidarity band. Founded in 2021, in response to the murder of George Floyd, Brass Solidarity’s every tune expresses that Black Lives Matter…

And we were roused to participation by Singing Resistance, a grassroots movement born of the violent federal occupation of Minneapolis that harnesses collective song-making as a form of nonviolent protest against ICE, injustice, and rising fear.

During the pre-event gathering, Singing Resistance could be heard in the distance, performing the song I gifted to the movement for this auspicious day:

From the steps of the gold-domed Minnesota state capitol in St.Paul, we enjoyed inspirational speeches by Indivisible’s co-founders, Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg; state and congressional lawmakers, including Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT); local grassroots leaders, many of whom I met and trained with during my time in the area; the incomparable Jane Fonda; and steadfast Robert DeNiro, who beamed in from the No Kings Day 3 rally in New York City — all of it deftly moderated by Lizz Winstead.

Chilly temps and strong winds made for a nippy day, but the sun shone bright, with nary a cloud in sight, and the crowd exuded only warmth and solidarity. I saw no evidence of counter-protest by members of the MAGA cult. There was not even a hint, not a whiff, of the “left-wing violence” that the Trump regime’s propaganda machine tries to inculcate its supporters to believe is a thing.

It isn’t.

The only violence is MAGA violence, ICE violence, Border Patrol violence, Trump / Miller / Homan / Noem / Hegseth / Rubio / Vought / etc. violence. And their cruelty is not okay!

They are the Worst of the Worst. Not us.

We are peaceful. We are non-violent. Minnesota proved that. Plus…

We make protest signs great again!

Estimates to date state that we were more than 8 million in the streets for No Kings Day 3. And for every person who showed up to march and sing and chant and dream, there were three who could not make it due to work commitments or health concerns.

That’s 24 million — more than the magical 3.5% of the population needed to throw off the yoke of rising authoritarianism. So, we cannot stop resisting now!

Trump’s popularity has hit rock bottom. His base is crumbling. His madness spiraling. When pushed into a corner, he goes on the attack. And we already know what one of his next victims is: the upcoming 2026 midterm elections. He and his minions know they cannot win without cheating. So we must ensure that they cannot.

But this week we celebrate. Wins are good. We continue to reimagine the world we wish to live in. And next week, we get back to the work of saving our democracy.

To aid the effort, I’ll be back in your inbox soon with stories from the Minnesota and Arizona resistance communities.

Stay strong, my friends. The only way through this is…Together!

✊🏻 Sarah

Where were you on No Kings Day 3? Let me know in the comments below. And please tap the ❤️ and “restack” emojis to get this post circulating. THANK YOU!

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“Bella Ciao“ is best remembered as an anti-Nazi and anti-fascist Italian folk song dedicated to the partisans of the Italian resistance, who fought against the occupying troops of Nazi Germany and the collaborationist fascist forces during the liberation of Italy during WWII. The exact origins of the song are not known, but female workers of the Northern Italy paddy fields set lyrics to the tune in the late 19th century to protest their harsh working conditions.

A hymn of resistance against Nazism, fascism, injustice, and oppression, versions of “Bella Ciao” have continued to be sung worldwide since WWII. This inspired me to create new lyrics to the tune, representing the 21st-century US context under Trumpism.

It is my gift to you, as well as to Indivisible and The 50501 Movement leadership and chapters nationwide for No Kings Day, March 28, 2026. I invite you to learn it, sing it, share it, and bring it to the streets wherever you happen to be that day.

I will be marching in Minneapolis. Please contact me if that’s where you’ll be, too.

Let’s sing ICE OUT! together…

ICE OUT!A Resistance Anthem for the 21st Century USA

Tempo: 88 BPMKey: A minorTime Signature: 4/4

VERSE IAmWe feel their presenceWe see them stalkingOh Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Am7Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao

CHORUS I DmThey will not stop us AmFrom our protesting E7 AmWe raise our voice as one in song.

VERSE IIThey want our silence,For us to fear them,To look away, go away,Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao.

CHORUS IIThey hide their faces.They leave dark traces.But we won’t let them steal our power.

VERSE IIIFor we the people,We keep it peacefulReject their tyrannyThen as Now, Now, Now.

CHORUS IIIWe’ll have no kings here.We hold our rights dearTo live in liberty and freedom

VERSE IVThey will not stop usFrom our protesting.We raise our voices as one in song: ICE OUT!

CHORUS IVThey want our silence,For us to fear them.But we’re all Minnesota now — ICE OUT!

REPRISE IWe’ll have no kings here.We hold our rights dear.And we won’t let them steal our power

REPRISE IIThey want our silence.For us to fear them.But we’re all Minnesota now!

Lyrics by Sarah Towle © 2026Recording produced by Ben Meyers with vocals by Sarah Towle.

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Resistance Strategy #1: Remain Focused.

There’s nothing like a “war” abroad to divert public attention from the atrocities taking place right now in our own backyards. The Trump kakistocracy* is now waging a bombing campaign against Iran on behalf of International Criminal Court defendant, Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, whose arrest warrant was issued on 21 November 2024 for starving and directly attacking civilians as a method of warfare; for the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts. Soon, it will be Trump, Hegseth, and Rubio’s turn.

In the meantime, while everyone’s eyes are trained on Trump & Co’s illegal actions in the Middle East, the build-up of the ICE detention-to-deportation Gulag continues unabated. New concentration camps are coming to a distribution warehouse near you — even as Congress debates whether the ICE Gestapo should wear masks.

These are concentration camps, paid for by us, the US taxpayer, thanks to a $45 billion allocation from the MAGA Murder Mandate (aka, the Biggest, Ugliest Bill), which is destined to go down in the history books as the payment system for Trump & Co’s genocide against the stateless.

Kakistocracy: v. derived from Greek for “worst rule,” or “rule by idiots,” a government not by the people for the people, but by the least qualified, most unscrupulous, sycophantic bullies for the billionaire (and now trillionaire) class. Rule by the Worst of the Worst.

Resistance Strategy #2: Don’t Look Away.

As I reported on February 21, 2026, ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland “Security” (DHS), has earmarked $38 Billion to buy 24 empty shipping depots to scale up its for-profit prison Gulag to 92,000 beds or more by the end of FY 2026. These warehouses will each cost roughly $100 million to purchase, then another $150 million to retrofit with toileting facilities, dorms, mess halls, plumbing, electrical wiring, sally ports, and double “no-man’s-land” styled fortifications, as well as coils and coils of razor wire.

They are not a pretty sight. And until now, DHS has kept its Gulag well away from public view, in the deserts of Texas, Arizona, and California, and the rural countryside of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi.

Now, the build-up of Trump & Co’s human trafficking network, fashioned on Amazon’s shipping model, is happening right in front of our faces, in empty warehouses located near population centers and large flight hubs. Case in point: the concentration camp currently underway near Williamsport, Maryland, equidistant from the Dulles and Baltimore-Washington International Airports. Plans show that it will imprison 1,500 people on any given day, and cycle thousands through each year.

But to expel people, ICE must fill its Gulag first. And according to Project Salt Box, the goon-squad is about to move on Baltimore, which only fuels my already boiling anger because that is my OG hometown.

Resistance Strategy #3: Get In the Way!

Like the former civil servant in Hagerstown, Maryland, who was DOGEd and is now filling her days by filing petitions against the regime for violating the National Environmental Policy Act, thus slowing down development of the Williamsport Concentration Camp, it is time to get hyperlocal and get in the way!

And who better to teach us how than the original Rio Grande Valley resisters, whose work to mitigate the worst of humanity’s impulses under the first Trump regime, I spotlight in my book, Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands.

We held a hybrid reunion on January 26, 2026, to check in with one another, offer mutual comfort, and prepare hearts and hands for another year of standing up to injustice and jamming the machinery of misery.

In this podcast, you will learn how to join the frontlines while remaining resilient, with strategies of resistance that include:

* Resistance Strategy #4: Think Hyperlocally.

* Resistance Strategy #5: Know Your Rights and Your Allies.

* Resistance Strategy #6: Know When and to Whom to Pass the Baton.

CLICK THE PLAY BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR FROM THE OG RGV RESISTERS THEMSELVES ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼.

There is incredible talent in all of our states, localities, communities, neighborhoods, and blocks. So, get to know your local allies. Find out what is needed and join, or put together, teams to meet those needs, from experts in water management to folks with a driver’s license willing to ferry the kids of impacted families to school.

Most importantly…

Resistance Strategy #7: Get Mad and Get Going.

Write this message on your bathroom mirror, as Mark McDonald has:

“Hope is presence, instead of paralysis; action instead of despair; and saying I will not let cruelty be the loudest voice.”

Never forget that we are the hope. And the Cruelty is NOT Okay.

Stay strong, everyone. The only way through this is…Together, ✊🏼✊🏼✊🏼 Sarah

Featured Voices from Crossing the Line:

* Cindy Candia, Joyce Hamilton, Jennifer Harbury & Madeleine Sandefur: Angry Tías & Abuelas of the Rio Grande Valley

* Kathy Harrington & Andrea Rudnik: Madrinas de Justicia and former members of Team Brownsville

* Cindy Andrade Johnson, Deaconess, United Methodist Women in Faith and La Posada Providencia Board Member

* Jodi Godwin, Esq.

* Helen Perry & Mark McDonald, formerly of Global Response Medicine

* Gaby Zavala, Asylum Seeker Network of Support, and former Director of Resource Center Matamoros

Additional Contributors:

* Karen Sturnick, Green Valley Samaritans

* Maree McHugh, Silver City, New Mexico

* Rev. Ali Lopez-Valcarcel, United Church of Christ, Rio Grande Valley

* Pastor Mark Redwine, RGV

* Esmeralda Lozano, City Commissioner, La Feria, TX

[Full list of Strategies of Resistance to follow.]

SAVE THE DATE: March 8, 2026The next meetup of the Hope Knows No Borders Network

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Finally, everyone sees it, and everyone is talking about it, whether to decry it or to justify it. But it is not hiding in plain sight any longer…

I speak of the lawless impunity of the entire, rotten Department of Homeland so-called “Security” apparatus and its paramilitary Gestapo forces posing as law-enforcement agencies: ICE and CBP, Customs and Border Protection, which includes the Border Patrol — an early 20th-century rebranding of the pre-Civil War era Slave Patrols and the Ku Klux Klan.

I speak of the racism and deliberate cruelty that were baked into the US immigration system from its earliest incarnation and allowed to take root and fester even before 9/11 gave legislators an excuse to shift the Cold War-era iron-triangle funding obsession that brought us the Military-Industrial Complex armageddon machine to building up the now global Border Industrial Complex, instead.

Today, the Border Industrial Complex encircles the globe like a second equator, cleaving the wealthy, predominantly white world from the less-wealthy, less-white one, creating a global apartheid where borders are becoming deeper, taller, angrier, more militarized, and more violent all the time. Built on the theory that if we make crossing borders as painful and perilous and as dangerous and potentially deadly as possible, the Border Industrial Complex is inherently cruel. And for the last 40-plus years, US Border Industrial Complex adherents have chosen to crank the cruelty, year upon year, rather than seek humane responses to the fact that it is our forever wars, the environment-destroying practices of our transnational extraction corporations, and the climate change fallout from our fossil-fuel addictions that cause the very human displacement and migration the Border Industrial Complex aims to thwart.

Unable to stop the largest human migration in recorded history, the world’s wealthiest nations have spent the last 40-plus years determined to lock up and expel it instead, keeping it out of our sight and therefore out of our minds. I chart the evolution of this detention-to-deportation pipeline in my book, Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands. And nowhere is the cruelty of deterrence applied more ruthlessly and more visciously than within its opaque and now rapidly expanding concentration camp-styled prisons and the transportation network of charter airlines, buses, and armored jails on wheels that connect them, especially in Trump’s USA.

Human rights abuses have gone unchecked inside this abomination of modern enslavement since well before he and his evil minions invaded US groupthink and the White House the first time. But under Trump’s white supremacist cabal, the steadily deteriorating conditions resulting from institutionalized cruelty and misery forced upon folks who’ve largely committed no crime have been unmasked.

Today, February 18, 2026, we mark the seventh recorded death of an imprisoned immigrant just this year, and it could be the eighth as the fate of ICE’s youngest prisoner, 2-month-old Juan Nicolás, remains unknown. It is nearly the 40th death since the Trump regime’s second inauguration. And while I mourn for each life lost, and for every person whose human rights to freedom, safety, and a dignified life have been denied them by this wretched system, it is imperative that we unmask the crimes against humanity committed in our name and with our money by our detention-to- deportation pipeline so that we might abolish it — the sooner the better.

The atrocities taking place inside the 200+ US detention gulag are hard to uncover. The atrocities taking place under Trump & Co’s mass deportation campaign, however, are even harder to perceive and document.

On ICE Air’s Boxcars in the Sky, evidence of Department of Homeland “Security” impunity is whisked away with the individuals its agency operators shackle and return to harm. Indeed, it was purely by accident that I managed to track down and interview nearly five-dozen passengers refouled during Trump & Co’s first mass deportation campaign — the one few people knew about; the one they attempted as practice for the genocide unfolding in our name and with our money.

From Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, Chapter 32, “Locked In,” this is what mass deportation looks, feels, sounds, and smells like. And with stakes like these, nobody wins.

Please listen and share. Click the playbutton above ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼because we all need to know what happens on an ICE Air mass deportation flight, on an in-air Abu Ghraib, on today’s boxcars, though in the sky.

Trump and his evil minions have weaponized immigration to drive democracy into crisis. They have harnessed that weapon to drive the US toward genocide against the stateless. Though they have corrupted the US Department of Homeland so-called “Security” apparatus to unleash the worst of humanity’s worst impulses again, we must understand that the cruelty of the system did not begin with them. We must, therefore, never go back to a previous era in immigration policies and practices, for that will only bring us back to this wretched place again. The only answer is abolition. But first, we must unseat Trump, Miller, Bondi, Noem, Homan, Bovino, Vought, et al., then build a more humane system and world from their ashes.

Stay strong, everyone. The only way through this is…Together.

✊🏼 Sarah

PS: Mark your calendars! I’ll be LIVE on Substack this Saturday, February 21, with a new feature: This Week in Immigration. Notification to follow…

PPS: If you haven’t called your Members of Congress yet, do so today. Tell them, no more money for Trump & Co’s Gestapo:

NOT ONE MORE DOLLAR FOR ICE. NOT ONE MORE DOLLAR FOR CBP.

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EMERGENCY FACT SHEET

* PASTOR STEVEN TENDO, Applicant for Political Asylum

* Originally from Uganda

* Date of birth: November 24, 1984

* A-number: 201-520-012

* Kidnapped by ICE, Wednesday, February 4, 2026, Burlington, VT

* Imprisoned at Stafford County Detention Center, Dover, NH

SUMMARY:

Steven Tendo is a respected Pastor from Uganda who suffered grave political persecution and repeated torture at the hands of government officials of his birth nation. In 2018, he presented himself legally at the United States Port of Entry in Brownsville, Texas, to request political asylum. As set forth below, he then suffered more than two years in an ICE detention facility without adequate medical care, resulting in grave harm to his health. (For details, listen to the audio of Crossing the Line, Chapter 29, Locked Up.)

Steven was released in 2021 and moved to Vermont, where he resumed his work as a pastor. Despite substantial errors by the Immigration Judge, his initial petition for asylum was denied, and his appeal was unsuccessful. In November 2025, he filed a Motion to Reopen, now pending before the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), based on the grim changes of circumstances in Uganda and his own continuing activism. He has attended all required hearings and appearances since his release. He was nevertheless apprehended by ICE at his place of work and detained on February 4, 2026.

Returning Pastor Steven to Uganda shocks the conscience and violates the Convention Against Torture. We ask that Pastor Steven Tendo not be deported until the BIA has ruled upon his Motion to Reopen. We also ask that he be released from detention to guarantee his medical well-being.

BACKGROUND:

Pastor Stephen Tendo was born to a powerful family in Uganda and raised with the belief that he must serve his people. He received an excellent education and became a pastor, founding the very popular Eternal Life Organization International Ministries church. Steven organized community support projects, providing food, health services, and educational assistance to the needy. As the government repression and corruption grew in his homeland, he began a human rights campaign as well, assisting political prisoners and leading a voting rights effort.

His work intersected with reform efforts by presidential candidate Bobi Wine, who has also been subjected to extreme persecution by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. Museveni has ruled the country with an increasingly iron fist for 40 years.

The first time Museveni’s goons apprehended Pastor Steven, they tortured him, severing two of his fingers. He was arrested, beaten, and tortured as many as twelve more times. He was also repeatedly subjected to false charges of fraud, but was acquitted by the Ugandan courts of each and every claim. After attacks on him and his relatives intensified, he was forced to flee Uganda in 2018.

Upon arrival in the United States, Pastor Tendo was promptly detained at ICE’s notoriously brutal Port Isabel Detention Center (PIDC) in Los Fresnos, Texas. Like so many single African men, he was denied bail despite being a lifelong sufferer of diabetes, having no criminal record, and enjoying many offers of support. His medications and glucometer were immediately taken away, and he went without adequate checks or treatment throughout his two years incarcerated at PIDC. This led to dangerously high blood sugar levels and blindness in one eye from diabetic related cataracts. He also became extremely dizzy and ill and began to suffer from very high blood pressure and repeated and painful boils across his body. Even when COVID broke out and swiftly spread to the detention facility, he was denied release despite his medical vulnerability. At this point, there was a strong outcry from the human rights community, and Amnesty International initiated a campaign for his release. On August 18, 2020, some 44 members of Congress signed a letter to the Director of DHS protesting his mistreatment and continued confinement.

In 2020, ICE sought to deport Pastor Tendo regardless of his pending appeal to the Fifth Circuit of the denial of asylum. Although former ICE Director Pham agreed in September 2020 to stay the removal of Pastor Steven until such an appellate ruling, efforts were made to deport him in the middle of the night nonetheless.

He was finally released from detention in 2021 and was able to move to Vermont. With the help of friends and supporters there, he began to heal and resumed work as a chaplain. He attended nursing classes, becoming a Licensed Nursing Assistant, and was working toward a Registered Nurse qualification when abducted by ICE. He has also worked with local youth to help them combat substance abuse and addiction. He is a genuinely fine human being and should be celebrated as an asset to any nation. He enjoys a network of very close community ties in Burlington. Yet, he has not forgotten his homeland. He remains outspoken about the situation in Uganda, and recently gave testimony to attorneys working on a case before the International Criminal Court.

We are gravely concerned that, given the current turbulent political situation in the US, Pastor Steven Tendo could be whisked back to Uganda with little or no notice if he remains detained by ICE. A Ugandan official has made it clear that if this happens, he will be seized as he leaves the plane and killed. He will never arrive at customs.

CALL TO ACTION:

* Please contact your members of Congress today. The Congressional Switchboard operator, (202) 224-3121, will connect you to your Senate and House Representatives.

* Tell them that Pastor Steven Tendo is at great risk of torture and extrajudicial execution if he is returned to Uganda. This is a violation of his human rights and an international crime known as refoulement.

* Tell them he is also at great risk of medical harm and improper processing while in ICE detention. And that we urgently seek their assistance to demand his release.

FOR ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

Listen to Steven and my story collaboration. Click the play button above ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼.

FOR ADDITIONAL LEGAL INFORMATION:

Contact: Brett Stokes, Center for Justice Reform Clinic, Vermont Law and Graduate School, 802-831-1104; Chrispher Worth, Center for Justice Reform Clinic, Vermont Law and Graduate School, 802-831-1104; Elizabeth Velez, Orr & Reno, 603-223-9171; Christina Thomas, Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton,404-815-6531; Fatma Marouf, Texas A&M Legal Clinic, 817-212-4123

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Dear Subscribers, I’m writing this to you as I watch Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show. “We are all America,” reads the football he carries throughout a performance that pulses with the best of the country and culture I grew up in, the place my heart will always call home. His final statement — naming all the countries that comprise America, from Argentina to Canada, as he dances back and forth across the Levi’s Stadium 50th yard line, accompanied by flagbearers from each nation — resonated deeply with me. This is precisely why I never refer to the United States as “America.” Even my book’s subtitle defies expectation, for it uses America not refer to a place, but to express a double-entendre: It is code for the mentality that allows this linguistic legacy of Manifest Destiny, of the era of enslavement and genocide and stolen lands, to still linger unconsciously in our speech; it is also a celebration of the rich diversity encountered in borderlands, where Americans from throughout the Western hemisphere meet and mingle in creative exchange.

Referring to one country by the name of two continents, an isthmus, and numerous island nations perpetuates the US’s original white supremacy project, helping to keep it alive in the age of Trumpism. I urge you to call the place by its rightfulname: the United States of America, easily shortened to the USA, the US, or the States.

Words matter because they form thought, which is apropos of this week’s podcast episode about the power of art and activism, like Bad Bunny’s, to tear down the walls that oppress and divide us…

On December 7, 2025, I hosted a virtual book launch for two new must-read books poised to bring a potent, first-hand view of the walling-off of the US Southwest borderlands to audiences nationwide:

Borderlings, a book of poetry and pictures by nature advocate Russ McSpadden, juxtaposes the extraordinary natural beauty and unique biodiversity of the US borderlands against the ecological devastation being caused by Trump & Co’s boondoggle and ecocidal border wall. Bearing witness from the front lines of border militarization in Southern Arizona, Russ pays homage to the resilience and interdependence of human and wildlife habitats, while revealing how walls serve only to fracture, divide, and destroy. ORDER BORDERLINGS HERE.

Yo’Oko Roars, an art and storybook for children and youth by Kate Scott (author) and Virginia Maria Romero (illustrator), joins Borderlings as well as Crossing the Line in sounding the alarm that the act of erecting “an immense metal fence that makes no sense” cuts nations and cultures off from on another, making it impossible for people and wildlife to find their ways “home” again. Walls create loss, longing, exile, danger, and endangerment. The story of young Iris putting her body in front of the “monsters of metal” illustrates how we should be addressing our collective problems: by building bridges, privileging friendships, and acting in solidarity through mutual aid so that we may all roar again. ORDER YO’OKO ROARS HERE.

So, why the delay in getting this important podcast episode to you? Mauerkrankheit.

The book launch event coincided with one of my sisters, her daughter, son-in-law, and three grandchildren passing through London, where I currently live with my daughter, husband, and our dear canine companion, Gryffindog. They were traveling in celebration of my sister’s birthday, just as we were about to ring in my daughter’s milestone 30th year of life. Living abroad as we do, it’s a rare treat for us to get quality time with close relatives. We were thrilled, therefore, to extend an invitation to host them. We were looking forward to introducing them to our London, to breaking bread with them, to clinking glasses of bubbly at our home or pints of craft brew at our local Pub, and to showering our two birthday girls in song.

But they refused to see us, erecting an emotional wall.

They ghosted us, adding a secondary communications wall that left us in a state of unknowing for weeks.

When they did reach out, they did so by proxy and through text messaging, hiding behind a technological wall and fracturing our family ties even further with a lie: The children had a bucket list of “touristy things” they wanted to do in London, evidently (FYI: The kids are 4, 6, and 8 🤷🏼‍♀️).

None of these fences made any bloody sense. We are not above “touristy things.” And besides, who wouldn’t want to party with this guy?

A wall of dishonesty wove, like concertina wire, into the double fortification of emotional and communications walls erected using a technology wall, leaving a “no-man’s land” of cold silence and conjecture between us. We could only conclude that they are Trump supporters. And knowing that we are most definitely not, choose to hold up the political wall he has weaponized to tear families, literally and (in our case) figuratively, apart.

My heart exploded into a billion tiny pieces. I fell into a deep, dark malaise, which I’ve come to understand is a kind of Wall Disease, aka Mauerkrankheit:

A psychological condition first identified in Cold War Berlin, which had particularly devastating effects on the residents of the walled-off Eastern Zone of the city, and is characterized by a combination of depression, rage, anxiety, and apathy caused by the oppressive presence of divisive and deadly fortifications.

Then, coarse salt was rubbed into open wounds, with Trump & Co’s December putsch as their paramilitary goons marched into Minnesota’s Twin Cities, from which the Towle family hails.

With “Operation Metro Surge,” the 2025-26 holiday season was turned upside-down by the very ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) walls of impunity we experienced in the summer of 2020, now on steroids. These were the walls of masked agents bearing armaments, rather than judicial warrants, that I warned in Crossing the Line could become an oppressive social reality if Trump & Co were allowed to invade the White House once more.

The walls of militarized Department of Homeland “Security” (DHS) agents occupy Minneapolis to this day. Their walls of clubs and harassment tactics and tear gas canisters and rubber bullets and flash bangs and automatic weapons and belief in their immunity from legal accountability (they are not) have resulted in the execution-style deaths of two US citizens, Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti (may they rest in peace), as well as the kidnapping, incarceration, and expulsion of thousands of decent people just living their lives.

The Reign of Terror unleashed by a “mad” (in the British sense) wanna-be king has rained economic devastation on the lives, futures, and businesses of Twin Cities inhabitants, who are still reeling from the unexpected erection of physical, militaristic, and extrajudicial walls.

“The b******s are everywhere, patrolling in their SUVs with the blacked out windows, even in my very white neighborhood,” states one of my Minneapolis-based family members.

“I live blocks away from the murders by DHS, and have been very involved in protests, observing and providing community support,” reports another who, untilthe rise in Trump fascism, had never been touched by ICE or Border Patrol impunity before.

They are new to protesting, which illustrates yet another result of Wall Disease, the very thing that drove everyday Berliners to grab pick axes and tear the Cold War monstrosity down with their bare hands: activism fueled by anger at oppression that seeks to divide us and take away our right to roar…

History shows us that in the face of state-led violence, some will succumb — like my sister, her daughter, and son-in-law, potentially (I can’t be sure, since they won’t talk to us) — choosing to turn away from the truth, much like the “good Germans” who allowed the Holocaust to happen. They will take others along with them, as my sister and her progeny did, when they walled off their hearts to me, and I crashed, overcome by Mauerkrankheit.

Which is my way of explaining to you, Dear Subscribers, why it has taken me two whole months to produce and publish this important podcast episode. But thanks to Russ, Kate, Virginia, and the hundreds of thousands of heroic Minnesotans who are taking to the streets every day, I have found hope and my voice again. I am back and ready to ROAR once more!

With the border now everywhere, we are all suffering from Mauerkrankheit. In this conversation with Kate, Virginia, and Russ, we discuss how we can and must overcome it. I hope you’ll draw inspiration and energy from our discussion, as I have

Just click the play button in the image above to get started ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼

Then, be sure to buy and review these beautiful books. Help us to get them into the hands and hearts of those who, if they only knew, would be outraged too and compelled to say “no!” to Wall Disease and tear down all the barriers that divide us!

CLICK HERE TO ORDERYO’OKO ROARS BORDERLINGS

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Additional resources and content referenced in the podcast:

Hello subscribers, I’m writing to you from my first vacation in six years, since I started writing Crossing the Line in January 2020. As much as I’d like to remain unplugged, the news continues to move too fast. And in times like these, it’s impossible not speak out. I hope you learn something from this latest episode of From the Borderlands to fuel your efforts in support of the resistance. I’m wishing you strength. The only way through this is… Together. ✊🏼 Sarah

Like anyone who has studied the cruel practices of US immigration authorities, I’ve not been terribly surprised by the outrageous and arbitrary violence perpetrated by the goons patrolling the streets of Minneapolis — and other major US cities. Which is why I was puzzled by this recent the recent New York Times piece, written by some of the more trustworthy immigration reporters, too, that ICE and the Border Patrol suddenly, somehow, seem to have gone rogue; that before Noem, Homan, and Bovino (and of course Steven Miller), there were more law-enforcement heroes among the ranks who cherished the rule of law and were only interested in public safety.

What a load of hooey.

The Times account seems to request that we feel sympathy for the officers who look and act, and are armed just like a paramilitary army: Public disapproval and their mean bosses have hurt their morale. Boo hoo.

Democrats, who we should have been able to trust to stand in the way of bequeathing ICE and CBP a budget to rival the largest global militaries, are now apologizing for their latest vote, just last week, to give Trump’s Gestapo forces even MORE money. Republicans, who bent over one after another to cast a yea vote in support of Trump’s MAGA Murder Mandate (aka the Big Ugly Bill), have finally blinked, disturbed by the violence that has beset the streets of Minneapolis. But that evil genie will not soon be wrestled back into its bottle.

Here are the facts few elected officials seem willing to face or admit and have been unwilling to face or admit for several decades: The violence and the cruelty are baked into the DNA of the CBP’s Border Patrol and ICE. The roots of the Border Patrol can be traced all the way back to the slave patrols. They were the KKK and Texas Rangers, rebranded in 1924 as the Border Patrol. The Department of Homeland Security was built on those rotten foundations. ICE endorsed Trump for president all the way back in 2016, a historic first, proving they were infiltrated by white supremacists even then. And no amount of so-called “fair and balanced” reporting from any legacy media outlet is going to change that. Nor is grandstanding such as NY Representative Tom Suozzi’s, that “I failed to view the DHS funding vote as a referendum on the illegal and immoral conduct of ICE in Minneapolis.”

Suozzi should read my book, Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands. I sent him a copy. I sent a copy to many MOCs that continue to stand on the wrong side of history by funding it.

In Chapter 16, The Border Hardens, I shine a light on the 2010 murder of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas. Seventeen agents of ICE, CBP, and Border Patrol tortured him to death in broad daylight. The execution was captured on a passerby’s camera. All 17 agents were identified and named. None of the 17, nor their bosses, were ever held accountible.

Anastasio left a widow, five kids, a large extended and loving family, and a community that adored him. The only difference between Anastasio and Alex Pretti or Renee Good was that he was undocumented, which is why you may never heard of his death. But they were all murdered. They were all murdered by the same forces and the same hapless mentality that had blinded our leadership for too long.

ICE and the Border Patrol cannot be reformed. The rot is too great.

May Alex, Renee, and Anastasio not have died in vain. May this be the moment when we realize how much the post-9/11 security-first paradigm has compromised all our values and tear this horrorshow — the reason we have a fascist in the White House today — all the way down to its racist foundations.

Enough is enough! ¡Basta!

☝🏼 Scroll back up☝🏼 to the top of this post ☝🏼 to listen to the full podcast episode:

Slave, Border & ICE Patrols “Shoot First and Ask Questions Later”

Featuring Chapter 16 of Crossing the Line, The Border Hardens,

with shout outs to Todd Miller, Jenn Budd, Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now!, and The Border Chronicle.

Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.