Many of us have seen the videos posted on Instagram and other social media outlets: people dragged away by masked ICE agents after a judge dismisses their case telling them that (a) they have no case as the government attorneys allege, or (b) they can go home now. In New York, they’ve been thrown onto a so-called “temporary” holding facility at 26 Federal Plaza on the 10th floor.
Through his attorney, a Peruvian immigrant filed a class action lawsuit regarding the unsanitary conditions: overcrowded cells for elderly, children, and disabled at horrific temperatures creating a “horrific stench” of urine, feces, sweat, food described as “slop.” U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan issued an order requiring ICE to immediately clean up the mess and provide clean mats for sleeping and medications for those who need it.
What is it about our national policy that puts people into such places, like cattle herded for slaughter? Granted, we don’t line them up and shoot them, but apart from that, the conditions are beyond the pale. There’s no excuse for it. Members of Congress are being denied access to detention facilities. What is it that ICE and our so-called leaders want to keep from the rest of us?
Prayer for the Day
Gracious God, who made a covenant with our ancestors,
We confess that we have not kept our end of the bargain;
We have forgotten who we are and what we promised to you,
And we turn aside from abuses committed in our name.
Forgive us our inability to live up to your demand of justice.
And embolden us to be a new people for your name’s sake.
In the name of the One who enables us to act for justice,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Today’s order sends a clear message: ICE cannot hold people in abusive conditions and deny them their Constitutional rights to due process and legal representation.
Eunice Cho, ACLU
My conclusion here is that there is a very serious threat of continuing irreparable injury, given the conditions that I’ve been told about.
Judge Lewis Kaplan, noting that a government lawyer agreed
We did not always get enough water. There was one guard who would sometimes hold a bottle of water up and people would wait to have him squirt some into our mouths, like we were animals. – Barco Mercado, detainee
O God, do not keep silence; do not hold your peace or be still, O God!
Psalm 83: 1