What Have We Become?
Imagine with me…
I am a missionary in Brazil
I’ve served there for 4 years
I am with my family
I have emigrated legally
Filled out all the paperwork
*
On my way to lunch
One random day
The Brazilian police stop me
They take me: it feels like kidnapping
It takes days before I can contact my family
I am moved from one (what feels like)
Concentration camp to another
(the early days of the camps, not the end days)
18 agonizing days later
I am released
*
Please sit with that
Because many missionaries have
The idea that something like this could happen
*
I sip my tea
In my beautiful house
Knowing that it is my country
That is doing this
My tears fall freely
*
What have we become?
*
From the end of This American Life Episode 882: Give a Little Whistle. The declaration of O:
“1. My name is O. I am a 20-year-old man from Guatemala. I have lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for about four years. I have pending asylum and Special Immigration Juvenile Status applications.
2. I am filing this declaration under my first initial rather than my full name due to fear of retaliation against my family or me for opposing the federal government. My full name is known to plaintiff's counsel.
3. On Saturday, January 10, 2026, I went to work and then got lunch with my father and my cousin. We drove back to my work together after that. On the way back, a car passed me quickly, sped up, and stopped in the middle of the street. A few men got out of the car in front of us and ran towards us. I turned off the car. The men told me if I didn't get out of the car, that they would force me out. I got out of the car. They told me I was under arrest but didn't say why. They handcuffed me. I left my keys and phone in the car. I felt like I was being kidnapped.
4. They took us to the same place, the Whipple building, where the immigration court is located.
5. In the garage, ICE agents checked our belongings and IDs, and then they took us inside and put us in a cell where we waited to be processed. The cell was small but was already holding about 40 people. We were there close to 20 hours in that cell. It was really hot and dirty. There was food scattered on the floor. The floor was sticky with mud, and everything stuck to your shoes.
I was so tired. There was one toilet, but there was no privacy. I worried about viruses and bacteria since there were so many of us in the cramped space. We were only given food two times in that almost 20 hours, both times a sandwich, an apple, and a cookie. I tried to sleep, but there was no space to sit down. When some people got up from the floor, I would sit down, but it was painful to be on the cement floor.
6. On Sunday, January 11, after breakfast, an ICE officer came and got me. He took my fingerprints. I was finally allowed to make one call, one call, no time limit. I wanted to call my attorney, Kim Boche, but I didn't have her number. The ICE officer said I was being moved to Texas as soon as possible and I will face a judge in Texas.
7. Around 11:00 AM on January 11, an officer gathered everyone in the cell, chained our hands and feet, and we were put in trucks. ICE took us to the airport. There were around 120 detainees on the plane.
8. I remained in chains the whole plane ride. I was very hungry. No food or water were offered for a while. I was finally given a snack and water on the plane, about 12 hours since I had last eaten, and had to eat with handcuffs on.
9. I arrived in El Paso, Texas, around 6:00 or 7:00 PM on January 11. When I arrived at the El Paso, Texas, facility, I was given a small bag with two thin blankets, a towel, two T-shirts, and a pair of boxers.
10. I was told by the security official at the prison that the place I was brought to in Texas was supposed to be temporary, but I spent 10 days there.
12. There were about 72 of us in the cell. The cell was the size of a small gym, where they fit about 40 bunk beds. There were only two flip phones for all the detainees in this center to use. Over the 10 days I was in El Paso, the officers probably brought the phones into the cell for our use two to three times for two hours each. We would get together and beg the officer to let us call our family or our attorneys.
If we could get the phone, we could only use it for two minutes. You had to be ready when it was your turn. If you didn't have an attorney's number memorized, you couldn't call them. There were signs everywhere in the detention facility offering us $3,000 each if we agreed to self-deport. The officers would frequently try to get people to sign forms agreeing to self-deport.
15. After five or six days-- I'm not sure exactly-- I was finally allowed to make a two-minute phone call. I was able to obtain my lawyer's phone number from my dad, who I saw through the window in a different room. I asked the security guard to ask the other security guard to get my lawyer's phone number from my dad. I was finally able to talk to my attorney, Kim Boche, for one minute only. She said she was trying to arrange a call with me. The security guard started yelling at me that my time was up, so I couldn't understand much. I don't remember much of the phone call. I was so nervous.
16. On Saturday the 17th, I talked to my attorney, and she told me I was supposed to be released the next day or the day after that. She told me a judge had ordered my release. I also received two letters and a list with phone numbers in the mail from one of my teachers. She also sent snacks, clothes, and a notebook. But I wasn't allowed to have any of this, only the papers and letters.
18. ICE did not tell me that my attorney had been trying to call me and contact me while I was in Texas. They didn't tell me my attorney had retained another attorney to file a habeas petition on my behalf or that a court had granted it and ordered my release. They just kept holding me there and occasionally trying to get me to self-deport.
19. I was in detention in El Paso, Texas, for about 10 days. On what I think was the 10th day, I was moved. A transportation officer asked those of us in the cell if we had eaten. And when some people said they hadn't, he told them to shut up.
20. I was moved to a detention center in Torrance, New Mexico. The bus ride to Torrance was scary. The bus swerved a lot because the driver was falling asleep. I thought we would die, for sure, and I wouldn't be able to do anything because I was chained.
After I arrived in Torrance, I had to wait for about 12 hours to be processed. They took our temperature, blood pressure, weight, and height, and I think gave us some type of vaccine against measles. Then I was moved to a room with about 50 other people. The food there was awful. It looked like dog food. I stayed at Torrance for six days.
22. In Torrance, I was able to message and video call with my family, lawyer, and friends. I was only able to do this because teachers at my school had pooled money and put it in my account. You needed to pay to use the tablet. On Sunday the 25th, after dinner, I was moved to a single cell. It was small and cold. I couldn't sleep because it was so cold and because the guard had the TV on all night.
24. On Monday, January 26, I got breakfast around 4:30 AM. Around 10:00 AM, I was told we were going to Cibola jail. Nobody explained why. I was handcuffed and loaded into a car and taken to Cibola jail in New Mexico. 25. The Cibola jail was horrible. It was cramped. I was chained up again. The officers mocked me and called me their enemy. They laughed at me. I wasn't given an explanation for why I was there.
26. Security guards then put me on a bus. I think it was around January 27. I was handcuffed. It was freezing cold in the bus because the driver had the AC on. We had no jackets. The bus eventually took me back to El Paso in the early morning of Tuesday, January 27.
27. I was put in a cold cell where I had to sleep on the bare cement floor. One officer told me that I had no chance of returning to Minnesota and that the best thing for me is self-deportation. She told me that if I fought my case, I would spend two to three more months here in El Paso. She offered me $2,600 to self-deport. I refused. They didn't tell me the judge had already ordered my release and return to Minnesota. If I hadn't managed to talk to my attorney, who told me a while back that I was ordered released, I might have given up at this point and signed the self-deportation forms because the conditions were so unbearable.
28. I was taken to a doctor to check my temperature and blood pressure. I waited at the doctor's office until around 1:30 PM. And then suddenly, an ICE officer came and shouted my name. She told me I might be free, but don't get too excited. They took me to the airport.
29. We arrived at the airport too late and missed the plane.
30. When I was taken back to the detention center from the airport after missing the flight, I overheard an ICE officer saying in English, the judge in Minnesota wants this one back.
31. At around midnight, they took me to another police processing station, 10 to 15 minutes away. At 5:00 AM, they took us to the airport. I was flown to Denver and then to Minneapolis.
32. When I arrived in Minneapolis, I was handed off to ICE agents, handcuffed, and put in jail at the same place where it all started with the same dirty floors. I asked for a phone call. I called my attorney but got no answer. I then called my teacher, and while I was speaking to her, I was told that I was being released.
My teacher came to pick me up. I had to sign lots of papers saying that I wasn't going to be a part of any groups. I didn't know what they meant by groups. They never told me why I was detained.
35. Right now, I am happy that I have been released. I am grateful I have my family and an attorney. When I think of my time in detention, I think of so many ways I could have died there, the way my car was stopped in the middle of the road, the diseases I could have caught at the Whipple, the driver who was falling asleep at the wheel, driving us from El Paso to New Mexico. I declare, under penalty of perjury, that the foregoing is true and correct.”
*
I am still grieving my country
It is a slow process that keeps
Hitting new lows
I am grateful for the reprieve
To be out of the country
This 4th of July
*
Part of me knows
That this is a process
To pull my heart toward
My true citizenship in heaven
It’s just hard
Because I really was
So proud of my country
And I still love it so much
*
What have we become?