From Crosses that Kill to Crosses that Condemn... Have We Learned Nothing?

Kuvaus

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 [https://substack.com/profile/26472022-rita-cantu] and the Border Community Alliance [https://bordercommunityalliance.org/]. 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 [http://www.sarahtowle.com], 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 Brutal Bill (what I call the MAGA Murder Mandate), which handed 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 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 ♡ to 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 🙏🏼. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe [https://sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Divest Now! Say NO! to ICE Impunity, For-Profit Human Trafficking, and Enslavement by Prison Profiteers Hiding in Your Pension Plan, Mutual Fund, or Retirement Portfolio

About 20 minutes as the crow flies from the Statue of Liberty and her promise of welcome sits Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed prison for people who’ve committed no crime. A prison for those whom the Trump regime wishes to exclude and expel. You’ve likely seen the recent news about Delaney Hall. But the horrors being exposed (and downplayed by mainstream media) are not new. Last November, I joined nonviolent resistance members from Pax Christi [https://paxchristiusa.org/tag/pax-christi-new-jersey/], Cosecha [https://www.lahuelga.com/], New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice [http://New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice], Eyes on ICE New Jersey, and other area organizations. They have been providing radical care and mutual aid for the family members of those unlawfully imprisoned there since it reopened in May 2025. I say “unlawfully detained” because in 2021, New Jersey passed legislation prohibiting local jails and private facilities from incarcerating our immigrant neighbors. But for Trump’s Department of Homeland “Security” goons, the facility’s location was too good to be true. A nation cannot eject millions of its inhabitants if it cannot hunt, kidnap, corral, and incarcerate them first. Situated steps from the Newark Liberty International Airport, yet hidden from public view in one of the most industrialized corners of New Jersey, Delaney Hall would enable their mass deportation fever dream perfectly. So, despite the New Jersey state prohibition — and human rights — ICE gifted to private prison profiteer GEO Group a cool one billion of our taxpayer dollars to operate the Newark immigrant concentration camp for fifteen years, until 2040. Delaney Hall serves the 225+ facility — and counting — ICE immigrant gulag, 90% of which is now operated for profit. The night I bore witness to the banality of evil that is the daily diet at Delaney Hall, it was so cold I lost all feeling in my toes. But even in the chill and damp, the place reeked. There are multiple reasons for this: At the southern end of Delaney Hall’s Doremus Avenue address is one of the largest sewage treatment plants in the state, possibly in the northeast. Across the street from the Hall’s concertina-laden gates is a waste transfer station served by a dedicated railway line, known colloquially as “the garbage train.” When the garbage train gets stuck, which happens often, it blocks the constant traffic of 18-wheelers and other commercial trucks, adding heavy fumes of gas exhaust to the stench of rotting refuse. There’s also a natural-gas plant in the vicinity, as well as a plastics incinerator, which produces an odor so powerful that, once settled inside your mouth and nose, it will not be washed away. Lucky me, the one thing I didn’t perceive that winter evening as I stood vigil outside Delaney Hall was the noxious perfume of the animal-fat rendering plant, which in warmer weather, I’m told, makes the whole place smell like death. Delaney Hall’s surroundings symbolize the lengths to which US Department of Homeland “Security” agencies and contractors will go to dehumanize newcomers and safety seekers, as well as the humanitarians determined to support them per Lady Liberty’s wishes. Even in blue states like New Jersey. Even in blue cities like Newark. Indeed, the horror show that is Delaney Hall did not begin with Trump & Co. GEO Group operated the facility as an immigrant detention and transfer depot under Obama, from 2011 to 2017, when it was finally shuttered due to sub-standard, inhumane, and condemnable conditions. On May 22, 2026, roughly 300 of our neighbors unlawfully locked up inside Delaney Hall launched a hunger and labor strike. In three consecutive letters smuggled out of the lockup and leaked to the public, the strikers cited the same abysmal conditions that closed the place in 2017: * Inedible food that is either too frozen or too maggot-infested to eat; * Physical, emotional, and psychological abuse on the part of ICE deportation officers and GEO Group guards; * Undrinkable water; * Denial of medical care; * Denial of access to attorneys and case workers; * Denial of due process; * Limited access to families; and * A fundamental lack of humanity, including forced labor — cleaning, food prep, mopping up blood, etc. — for only $1 a day in pay. Despite GEO Group’s $60 million per year windfall, there is only one doctor at Delaney Hall to support the needs of 800+ inmates, including pregnant women and folks with chronic, but treatable, health issues, like diabetes. When such common ailments as the flu rip through the facility, they have been known to turn life-threatening. But there is plenty of concertina wire as well as loads of surveillance cameras and GEO Group guards, like this guy, whom resisters have nicknamed “Mr. Sunshine.” By denying its captives medical attention, by forcing them to work in place of paid staff, and by providing them only rotten, moldy, worm-infested food, GEO Group routinely puts its profits over people in violation of their legal and human rights. It’s the business model. And it’s a crime against humanity. Delaney Hall is not unique. Also in May 2026, our immigrant neighbors imprisoned at the 750-bed Desert View Annex [https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-05-21/immigrants-hunger-strike-inhumane-conditions-southern-california-detention-facility] in Adelanto, California, launched a hunger strike to call attention to similar substandard conditions, including a lack of medical attention, unsafe drinking water, and mold. In April, hunger strikes erupted at the 1,800-bed North Lake Processing Center [https://michiganadvance.com/2026/04/22/protestors-gather-outside-baldwin-facility-as-immigrant-detainees-held-by-ice-launch-hunger-strike/] in Baldwin, Michigan, as well as at the 1,900-bed Moshannon Valley Processing Center [https://www.pennlive.com/news/2026/04/after-ice-detainees-in-pa-went-on-a-hunger-strike-officials-put-them-in-solitary-confinement.html] in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, the largest ICE immigrant gulag lockups in the US Midwest and the US Northeast, respectively. Q: What do Delaney Hall, Desert View Annex, North Lake, and Moshannon Valley immigration concentration camps have in common, besides the egregious conditions? A: They are all operated by the GEO Group under ICE contracts paid for by us. GEO Group is the largest — but not the only — ICE prison profiteer making bank off human enslavement. There is also CoreCivic, which counts among its prisoners infants, children, and youth incarcerated at the infamous family lockup in Dilley, Texas, also reopened by Trump & Co after being condemned and shuttered, we thought, for good. CoreCivic reported $2.2 billion in annual revenue in 2025. GEO Group’s profits topped that at $2.63 billion. Both companies anticipate doubling their annual earnings in 2026 as they take on new contracts and open more facilities for ICE. Let’s Make Crimes Against Humanity a Bad Investment. Another thing the two companies have in common is that they are publicly traded. They have long been considered “no-brainer investments” by mutual fund managers, like Vanguard, BlackRock, and Fidelity. As a result, they are likely hiding in your pension plan or retirement portfolio. But the private prison industry is a bad bet, notes former Fortune 500 company software engineering manager John Fricker. If beds are filled, leadership and shareholders make a lot of money. If the beds aren’t filled, the model fails. “The single revenue strategy is also dependent on the political winds…Plus, both companies are commiting crimes against humanity.” The companies and the fund managers that trade their serial dehumanization and acts of ethnic-cleansing, what’s more, are passing their amorality on to us, states attorney and Executive Director of Abolish Private Prisons John Dacey: “When judges, prosecutors, and public defenders are invested in private prison companies through their pension and retirement fund managers, how does that square with the integrity of the legal system and judicial and legal ethics?” Dacey and Fricker joined faith leader and immigration justice advocate Jennifer Nelson, as well as Amnesty International Chapter Coordinator and career educator Diana Zuckerman, on May 24, 2026, for a webinar on Learning How to Divest From the ICE Immigrant Gulag sponsored by the Hope Knows No Borders Network [https://sarahtowle.com/hknb-registration]. “They are making us all complicit,” states Diana. By “us,” she’s including the educators of the children who are now traumatized because their parents have been taken away. “But we can all take control over our own investments,” adds Jennifer. She explains to us what motivated her to do so and how she did it. Learn How to Divest from the Prison ProfiteersHiding in Your Financial Portfolio Click PLAY Above☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼 There were no “clashes.” ICE attacked. Our webinar concluded just hours before Delaney Hall strikers, family members, and advocates made national news. On Doremus Avenue that evening, peaceful protestors and vulnerable hunger strikers alike were attacked by goons from ICE, HSI, and other DHS agencies. Fox News and other legacy media can characterize what happened as “clashes” all they want. But the only violence was federal “law enforcement” violence. Against protesters wearing N95 masks and brandishing signs, ICE showed up with tear gas, flash bangs, pepper spray, tasers, guns, an armored vehicle, and horses. As the last week of May stretched into June, the violence only escalated when Newark police officers and New Jersey State Troopers joined the fray on the side of the feds. Even US Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) was pepper-sprayed. Humanitarians were criminalized and arrested. Hunger and labor strikers were beaten, shackled, and transferred away from their families, advocates, and friends. We can stop this. We can refuse to be complicit in theirCrimes Against Humanity. We can divest our financial holdings from the private prison profiteers working on behalf of ICE. Click PLAY Above.☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼 Divestment Works We need only recall the global efforts to bring down South Africa’s Apartheid regime. We need only look at what happened when Disney bent the knee to Trump, as he tried to tank Jimmy Kimmel’s career. We unsubscribed from Disney’s streaming services en masse, and in 24 hours, the company lost billions. In 48 hours, Jimmy was back on the air. We can do the same to GEO Group and CoreCivic. We can aim where it hurts them most: at the corporate purse. Call to Action For the sake of the strikers, to honor their bravery and self-sacrifice, we must not just demand that GEO Group do better. We must demand that all immigrant inmates be set free today. Then, we must abolish the heinous and highly undemocratic concentration camp and transportation network that has been weaponized to unleash a genocide against the stateless — a system that grew up all around us, hiding in plain sight, which purports to be keeping us “secure,” but which is now a full-on domestic terror apparatus making money by trafficking traumatized human beings. DIVEST from the private prison profiteers who control 90% of ICE’s detention to deportation machine dedicated to making money by trafficking human beings; SUPPORT AND VOTE only for elected officials campaigning for abolition. Then hold their feet to the fire. JOIN the peaceful protests at an ICE lockup near you. Because there is an ICE lockup near you. DOCUMENT AND SHARE the abuses to which you bear witness. Such evidence will be essential when the future tribunals begin. KEEP the human and legal rights of the strikers — and of you — top of mind. SAY NO! to ICE impunity, human trafficking, and modern for-profit enslavement of our immigrant neighbors, family members, and friends. LISTEN to our divestment webinar without delay ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼. Share it with your colleagues, family members, and friends. JOIN OUR EFFORTS to grow this into a nationwide divestment campaign. Become part of the Hope Knows No Borders and Abolish Private Prisons Networks today. In the meantime, stay strong, everyone. Find your allies and keep them close. The only way through this is . . . together. ✊🏼 Sarah Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support the work you find here, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Divestment Resources Abolish Private Prisons [https://www.abolishprivateprisons.org/]: The Issue, The Movement, Our Take American Bar Association [https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/news/2024/am-res/518.pdf], Criminal Justice Section Report to the House of Delegates Resolution As We Sow [https://www.asyousow.org/], Empowering Shareholders to Change Corporations for Good Boycott Citizens Bank [https://www.boycottcitizens.org/the-geo-group-corecivic], the only major bank still funding CoreCivic and GEO Group De-ICE Citizens Bank [https://www.de-icecitizensbank.org/], Citizens is banking on our neighbors’ suffering by fundingICE detention companies Drop Vanguard [https://www.dropvanguard.org/], Helping values-based institutions ensure that working for justice doesn’t fund injustice Fossil Free Funds [https://fossilfreefunds.org/], Rid your retirement savings of fossil fuel investments Invest Your Values [https://www.asyousow.org/invest-your-values], Search to find what’s hidden inside your 401(k) or personal investments, and how to reinvest Investigate [https://investigate.afsc.org/], American Friends Service Committee Corporate (ir)Responsbility Tracker New York City Comptroller 2017 Statement [https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/comptroller-stringer-and-trustees-new-york-city-pension-funds-complete-first-in-the-nation-divestment-from-private-prison-companies/] on Divestment from Private Prison Companies People Over Profits [https://popaz.org/coalition], A powerful alliance of organizations united in removing profit from Arizon’a criminal legal system Unitarian Universalist Commitment to Socially Responsible Investing [https://www.uua.org/finance/investing-endowments/sri], ensuring that our investments are aligned with our values Unitarian Universalist Common Endowment Fund [https://uucef.org/2026/05/stewardship-update-selling-private-prisons-in-the-cef-advocacy-portfolio/], reviewing the alignment of its Advocacy Portfolio with the values and policy commitments of the Association Wardens from Wall Street: Prison Privatization [https://abolishprivate.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Wardens_Wall_Street_Prison_Privatization.pdf], the second in a series of six pastoral statements by Catholic Bishops of the South on the Criminal Justice process and a gospel response. Worth Rises [https://worthrises.org/], Dismantling the Prison Industry Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe [https://sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Eilen1 h 25 min

Shut Down Dilley Family Internment! Prison is No Place for Kids. Tell DHS and Prison Profiteer CoreCivic that Making $$$ off Children's Misery IS NOT OKAY!

Today, April 16, 2026, I join Moms4Good [https://www.instagram.com/moms4good/], MomsforTexas [https://www.instagram.com/momsfortexas/], Mother Forward [https://www.instagram.com/motherforward/], and the Blue Bunny Brigade [https://www.instagram.com/bluebunnybrigade/], 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 [https://www.canva.com/design/DAHGGvRug34/ULjgJV2LWycThLK8M8FblQ/view?utm_content=DAHGGvRug34&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=uniquelinks&utlId=h66d7bc2566#7]. 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. [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/27/immigrants-california-detention-facility]” “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 http://www.sarahtowle.comCrossing the Line [http://www.sarahtowle.com] 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 [https://tracreports.org/reports/753/] (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 [https://substack.com/profile/20912231-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 [https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/04/ice-dilley-family-detention-center-texas-punished-protest-media-toothache-santa-claus/]. 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 [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/27/immigrants-california-detention-facility].” 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 [https://investigate.afsc.org/company/corecivic] 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 [https://prospect.org/2025/08/08/2025-08-08-private-prisons-cash-in-trumps-mass-deportations/]. 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 [https://immigrationforum.org/article/one-big-beautiful-bill-act-immigration-provisions/] 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 [https://humanrightsfirst.org/library/human-rights-first-and-raices-release-new-report-exposing-systemic-due-process-violations-and-cruelty-at-dilley-ice-family-prison/], 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 [http://sarahtowle.com], 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 [https://www.canva.com/design/DAHGGvRug34/ULjgJV2LWycThLK8M8FblQ/view?utm_content=DAHGGvRug34&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=uniquelinks&utlId=h66d7bc2566#7]. 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 [https://www.instagram.com/p/DWmW7B5j1gf/?img_index=1&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email]. Friday, May 1: May Day Strong! No work, no school, no shopping. Sign the pledge and find or host an action at maydaystrong.org [https://substack.com/redirect/2af0f415-2e13-4f91-ac7d-ede32cc1b24a?j=eyJ1IjoiNDY0cGQifQ.JCMKNMPqnD8bz5YwQdsSXgjoIxoTFT3fPiNbK60dQ6I]. Sunday, May 24: Divest from the Immigration Prison Industrial Complex! Join me, Dora Rodriguez [https://substack.com/profile/104004669-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 [https://substack.com/profile/671652-anat-shenker-osorio] Michael Podhorzer [https://substack.com/profile/1683920-michael-podhorzer] Andrew Free [https://substack.com/profile/89825979-andrew-free] Pablo Manríquez [https://substack.com/profile/21387176-pablo-manriquez] #seeyouatdilley [https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/seeyouatdilley/] #destinationdilley [https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/destinationdilley/] #dillpill [https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/dillpill/] #iceout [https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/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. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe [https://sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

16. huhti 202622 min

From Crosses that Kill to Crosses that Condemn... Have We Learned Nothing?

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