As if I needed to read any more horror stories about the actions of the Trump Administration, I succumbed to reading the testimony of Jasmine Mooney about her ICE experience.
Jasmine is a Canadian actress best known for her role in America Pie Presents: The Book of Love. She spent 12 days in detention in different ICE facilities, never understanding why, although she kept asking again and again. I dont intend to say much more about her experience. You can read about it for yourself. Just google her name.
But one thing about her experience I want to emphasize. Most of her experience in different cells in different detention facilities was spent with Spanish language prisoners. She began to realize that they were likely in far worse circumstances than she was, as some had already been detained for weeks or even months, with no knowledge of when they might be deported or released. Their family members were often in the dark about their situation as well, with no way to contact them.
One can understand why so many arrested and deported are from Latin America. They are a different color, and this administration is hellbent on keeping its core constituency of racists satisfied. But Jasmine is Canadian and has white skin. There are also incidents where others have been ICE detained from other countries, where skin color is not so obvious. So one suspects there is also some other motivation at work that allows for a persons arrest and detention.
Im convinced Jasmine has identified another reason, when she speaks of the for-profit companies maintaining the detention centers.
The government pays $152 a day to the centers for each person detained. You can stay in a nice hotel for that much, with blankets on the bed and an actual bathroom with a shower, not one toilet and sink in a cell for 30 people.
CoreCivic and GEO Group, primary keepers of the detention centers, are paid by the federal government based on how many people they detain. GEO Group made $763 million from ICE contracts in 2024. And CoreCivic has made as much as $560 million in a single year. (The CoreCivic CEO makes over $7 million each year.) Since deportation processes can take months, even years, one should be able to expect prisoner profits for a long time, especially with the proposed goal as Trump took office, of 75 detainees per day, from 20 different ICE centers across the country.
The president has supported his efforts at stemming the invasion of migrants by identifying them with a broad brush, as: criminals, killers, gang members, rapists, and drug runners. They are stealing public benefits and jobs, causing crime in sanctuary cities and eating pets. He repeats these claims at every opportunity, calling them criminals in his speeches at least 575 times.
Since there is little or no opportunity for those arrested or detained to prove their innocence, the words of the president vacate the compassion people might otherwise feel for the hard-working field hand, picking their lettuce, or the waitress and neighbor who disappears overnight.
And probably the most despicable part of the whole detainment and deportation process is the Gestapo tactics of ICE. We have fallen into a point of acceptance as a country, where many believe there is little if any recourse to their tactics.
They can break a car window to get access to their target person, or grab them in a court house hallway, or simply pull up in their vehicle and grab someone off the street, only to have them disappear to who knows where. Increasingly, as they shackle and detain a Jasmine Mooney or a congressperson, we begin to recognize in this new America it could happen to anyone.
What kind of country allows this to happen without any judicial review? What kind of country allows bullies wearing masks to throw you to the ground, tie you up and whisk you off to unknown prisons? What kind of country pays their bullies twice as much as their teachers, in fact, offers them a signing bonus that would pay a teacher for a year? What kind of country professing respect for human rights denies them to so many?
I leave you with a final comment from Jasmine Mooney about her experience of the women with whom she was incarcerated.
This is not just my story. It is the story of thousands and thousands of people still trapped in a system that profits from their suffering. I am writing in the hope that someone out there someone with the power to change any of this can help do something.
The strength I witnessed in those women, the love they gave despite their suffering, is what gives me faith. Faith that no matter how flawed the system, how cruel the circumstances, humanity will always shine through. Even in the darkest places, within the most broken systems, humanity persists. Sometimes, it reveals itself in the smallest, most unexpected acts of kindness: a shared meal, a whispered prayer, a hand reaching out in the dark. We are defined by the love we extend, the courage we summon and the truths we are willing to tell.
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