“I felt that, that my world had ended. Everything was over. I have my daughter here. What is my daughter going to do?”

Cesar (37) lived undocumented in the US for over 20 years. He has a 10-yr-old daughter who is a US citizen.

He was detained in Seneca Co. Jail in Tiffin, OH for seven months.

“I got into my car and drove on the 71 north. I managed to get out of Cincinnati driving out on the highway and I thought about my daughter, my wife and my stepson and I thought, I’m not going. If you go, they are going to arrest you. I got off the highway, stopped at a gas station and I was crying. Then I got back on the 71 south back home. That’s when they started looking for me.”

For years, the 38-year-old drove from Cincinnati to Columbus, OH for his regular check in with ICE.  In 2004, he fled ethnic cleansing in his home country of Mauritania in western Africa. While in the US, he got married and had a family.  He built up a 401K, drove Uber on the side to make extra money, participated in drives to raise money for cancer. But his asylum claims were denied. Deportation orders were issued. During the Obama years, ICE didn’t consider him and others from his community a priority. He was permitted to remain in the US as long as he checked in with ICE. This changed in 2017 when ICE in the Columbus, OH office began arresting men from his community during their regular check ins.

 While much was focused on Trump’s assault on immigrants along the US southern border, immigrants living in the country’s interior were experiencing a trauma largely hidden from the headlines.  ICE showed no mercy during the Trump years, even in the smallest communities. A minor traffic violation, a DUI, working undocumented, having a past record for a non-violent crime, belonging to a vulnerable community no longer protected by the US government, were all triggers that resulted in tens of thousands of ICE arrests in the middle of America. Families consisting of immigrant parents with US-born children who were US citizens were being torn apart.  Communities were being paralyzed with fear and lives and families were being ruined.   

 Unlike the massive, privately owned detention prisons along the US southern border, the primary apparatus ICE uses to detain immigrants throughout the Midwestern states are county jails.  Local law enforcement in counties scattered across America collaborate with ICE by holding immigrants (called a detainer) before ICE then takes custody. County Commissioners and Sheriffs sign lucrative contracts with ICE to detain immigrants in their jails, and with these contracts, counties earn millions of dollars in revenue.

 From 2017 until the end of 2020, over 150 county jails and state correctional facilities cooperated with ICE by detaining immigrants. By mid-2022, around 70 county jails and state correctional facilities continue to detain immigrants for ICE.

This third chapter of the photo-testimonial essay, American Gulag, explores the trauma faced by immigrants across the interior of the country and how immigration detention contributed to this trauma. Over the course of multiple cross-country road trips from 2018 to 2022, the project also photographed 35 county jails across 15 different Midwestern states with the aim of exposing this enormous component of the US immigration detention system most people have never seen before.

“One day I got tired. I was working. It was 8 in the morning. I was like, I’m tired. I’m not doing Uber today. I’m going home.

“It was in May. They were on the block waiting on me. Once I pulled up, they came up right behind me. The guy came and said I’m not in danger because I had a clean record. He said he was ICE. He took my divers license and put me in cuffs and then they took me somewhere. That’s when I said goodbye to Cincinnati.

“They took me to Butler County Jail and then to Morrow County Jail…Sometimes someone would get released and you would watch them walk out. Someone would pick them up and you’d watch them leave. You wish it was you.

“I miss my family a lot. I missed my daughter’s first day at school. Her first day at school. I lost everything.”

 “I’ve lived in Salem and worked at Fresh Mark for 16 years. I was one of the first to be arrested. When ICE arrived the guy who arrested me was a Mexican/American guy who spoke Spanish. I asked him, Can I talk with my family? He actually let me call them on my phone before he arrested me. I told them Immigration had arrested all of us. I said, They might detain me for two weeks if they don’t find a good reason to deport me.  If they find something, I’ll be sent back to Guatemala.

 “Immigration came for the wrong people in this community in Salem. We spend a lot and do a lot for this town. Now, people are afraid to go out. I was released and now wait for my asylum case. But, like a lot of Guatemalans who have lived here in Salem for a long time, we’re leaving soon and moving away from here. We can’t live here anymore.”

48-yr-old man from Guatemala arrested during Fresh Mark raid.

“I wasn’t working that day. My friend called me and said immigration was raiding Corso and that ICE planned to come to the trailer park too. I went and hid in the church. We stayed at the church all day long and until later at night. We were so scared ICE would come and knock down the doors. 

 “I came back home and everything was silent. Since then, some people have sold their trailers. Others have just left. Now it feels a bit dead. Before, there would be people sitting around and kids running around. After, it seems dead to me. We don’t know if it will happen again.

“Most of my friends got arrested. Fifteen of them in total. Eight of them were deported. In the mornings, everyone gathers at the office and then they are sent out to work. And that’s when ICE raided. If I had been at work, I’m sure I wouldn’t be here now.”

“So they took him away and I didn’t hear from him until about 3 in the morning.  When he called me, he had like two minutes on the call.  And he was just very frantically saying…

“Take this address down, take this address down. This is where they are taking me. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. Please don’t forget me. Please don’t forget me. 

“They were taking him to Youngstown and he stayed there for about 9 months.”

“I knew this would happen. I knew it would happen…After the election of Donald Trump, I knew that my dad was a goner. I knew that my community would be facing harsh consequences at the hands of Donald Trump…

“I am a US citizen. Me, my older sister and my younger brother we were all born here. We’re all US citizens…everything in my life became about making sure my dad didn’t get deported. Making sure that no matter how hard ICE tried, they didn’t break his spirit in detention. Everything, every part of my life revolved around making sure my dad didn’t go beyond this point of no return in detention.

“I could hear his mental and emotional state steadily decline. There were times when I had to beg him to just hold on. He kept begging me to let him just sign over his rights and be deported. Because he couldn’t take it any more. Detention was getting to him so bad. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t eat. Couldn’t drink…

“If you had seen me. I was losing my hair. I was just like in this state of constant numbness and I feel like (now that I think about it) that actually was how I coped with it. I shut off parts of myself to make it easier to get to the point to where I could bring my dad home.

 “This experience has solidified what I know and that is, it doesn’t matter how much you contribute to this country.  How much you love this country. My dad served in the army, and it doesn’t matter. You can give your life for this country but as long as you are seen as ‘other’, that’s all you’ll ever be.

 “I love this country but it doesn’t love me. It doesn’t like my family. It doesn’t like my community, not even when we are beneficial to the country, and I shouldn’t have to be beneficial to a country to be treated like a human. I shouldn’t have to contribute millions of dollars. I shouldn’t have to give my life to this country to feel like I’m not disposable.

 “It changed how I saw myself in that I could do everything, I could be everything, I could be a model citizen but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re still trying to deport my family. They are still trying to deport my community.”

25-yr-old woman, whose father and family are Iraqi Christians from the Chaldean community in Michigan.

Her father was held in ICE detention for 9 months.

INDIANA

“I was put in a van that had people in it. There were about ten people in the van before me and I was surprised. They were all in working uniforms: people coming from restaurants, people coming from construction sites, people having paint in their clothes and they were all black and brown people. We were parked at a gas station while they were refilling the van so we could keep going. I could see that people in the community, citizens, were very close to us and they could not tell that this van was holding immigrants. 

“The way ICE works is really wicked and they have pretty much the right to do anything they want. They have us in a dark van, in the community and nobody knows who is in the car. I felt like I was kidnapped. I was kidnapped and thrown into the van just like in the movies. Our lives didn’t matter at all. We became numbers. That’s exactly what it is. To them we’re just aliens and we have numbers so they don’t look at you like a person. They look at you like a case.

“When I first got to Clay County, the officers were just laughing. You could just tell by the way they were behaving that they were doing this for the past 10-20 years. I felt like a cow that was fed. They were just keeping me alive until the government decided to do something with me. I felt to them, it’s business. All they have to do is keep me alive. Eat a bologna sandwich, two pieces of ham, one cheese, two pieces of bread and go to bed.

“This county I was in was Republican for sure and racist because of the way they were talking to us and the way they were treating immigrants in jail and the guards were laughing at us, making funny jokes…it wasn’t funny to me to see them joke with our lives.”

“It was very scary to just know that I’m here and I don’t know for how long. These guys just take you, take part of your life, put you in the middle of nowhere, put you there for an undefined period of time and everybody’s just struggling. If you are there for two years, then you are there for two years and your family will be struggling.

“It was traumatic for myself to see my family go through all this because when you are doing time your family is doing time with you. You’re not doing time alone.  Your wife is doing time with you. Your kid is doing time with you. Your parents, your dad, your mom, your sister is doing time with you, everybody is doing time with you. They are all struggling with you, so separating and hurting the whole family just for a documentation issue is not worth it.”

Johannes, 34-yr-old from Benin. Detained 10 months in Clay Co. Jail in Brazil, IN and in Kankakee Co. Jail in Kankakee, IL.

MICHIGAN

“They picked me up at 8 o’clock in the morning. We literally drove all the way to Battle Creek which was about five hours away I would say. I got booked in Battle Creek. (Later) they just called me and said, Hey pack up your stuff. Everybody was like clapping, saying, You’re going home! I was like No, I don’t think so. I’m going somewhere but it’s not home.

“That’s when I found out I was going to Chippewa County, Hell County. That’s what I call it…Hell County.”

“It was a seven-hour drive from Battle Creek. It was during a winter blizzard. It was snowing so bad. It took us seven hours in a van with other immigrants. I was in Chippewa for 18 months…

“When I got booked in they gave me used underwear. They’d wash em and bleach the underwear over and over and hand them over to the inmates as they would come in. You know…using prison underwear that was years and years old cause they had holes in them.  She gave me the underwear and I said, Ma’am, these are used. They are dirty. She said, They are clean. They’re bleached. Are exactly her words. The day I arrived…used bra, used socks, used underwear. I said, I don’t want these. She said, That’s all you have.

“There are so many people around you but you were so lonely on the inside. I mean they were everywhere. There were always different girls in and out. I couldn’t get close to any of them. They were always leaving, coming back, bonded out.

“I had to accept the fact that I was going to be there to make it easier on me. I’m not going so breathe. One day you’re going to get out…Being controlled like that mentally, like sitting in a room all day with the same people it was like a 12x12 cell I would say. It messed with my head big time.

“Then COVID hit and everybody was gone, except for me and the girls that couldn’t bond out. I was there by myself for like three months in my own cell. Didn’t come. Didn’t go. Didn’t do anything. Just sat there. Gained weight. Ate myself away. Watched TV. Mentally going crazy pretending to be OK on the phone and I’m really not.”

35-year old woman from Iraq. Immigrated to the US with her family when she was 9-yrs-old.

Transferred into ICE custody while serving a sentence for a probation violation.

“I really view that my responsibility primarily when I answer the phone as trying to offer a very compassionate ear…I think of individuals who I have spoken of and who have been detained for months, a year, two years, someone I know who basically has been in detention for close to four years now, and they still find ways to persist, to make meaning as best as they can, to try to connect with the exterior world, with family…there’s no doubt these people struggle at any moment and it’s only worse now.

“…one of the ways I witness peoples’ isolation or perhaps get a sense of how….little humanity…little comfort, little warmth exists in these detention facilities or in the whole detention process is the genuine kindness and thanks that people express to me for simply just asking them questions and listening to them and when I express sorrow when they recount their multitude of tragedies they’ve experienced…So, the fact that people will thank me at the end of the call for just hearing them, for just acknowledging their existence, indicates the degree of emotional and physical distance that is in large part placed at the center of why detention facilities will be constructed so far from population centers.

“Chippewa Co jail is the closest thing I can think of to like a Gulag…The people that I talk to there, on a whole, are the folks who have been in detention for the longest period of time. Those are the people that we just hear in their voices the frustration, desperation. The conditions there are also really really really bad…People are aware there, they are so far away from anything. And I think that takes a psychological toll…

“I mean there’s one person that has…on the phone has begged me to try and help try to get her transferred out of Chippewa to another detention facility that is known for having very bad food.  So, she wants to go from Chippewa to another one of the three (jails in Michigan that detain for ICE) and the one she wanted to get to is known for having terrible food and she does this just because she could not tolerate Chippewa.” 

26-yr-old Detention Hotline and Immigration Service Paralegal

“Detention became a business. We need to shut down these detention facilities and take the profit out of misery...”

Alexandria - Immigration Lawyer

County jails across the country sign lucrative contracts with ICE/DHS/US Marshals to hold and detain immigrants.

Below are some sample pages of ICE contracts for county jails in KY, KS, WI, NE, OH, MN & IL

(Source: National Immigrant Justice Center)

“I was out because I play golf for my high school. I was on the golf course and we were practicing, and my mom sends me a text that says, ICE is here! I felt like it was not really going on. It seemed really quiet, cause the golf course is just down the street and the tomato plant is just down the street too. I had three missed calls and that’s when I realized, maybe it’s real. One of the last text message she sent me said, I love you. Go and get your brother from day care and go home.

“That night was one of the hardest nights ever. I’m like, I’m still a kid you know and how am I supposed to be taking care of my brothers with all this going on? Around midnight she calls me. She’s crying and she says, I’m not coming back. I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”

“A lot of people just don’t know what was going on with me. I would be in school and my mom would call me. It would not be from her phone. She would say, You need to do something now. You know, I was a 17-yr-old. I’m worried about school and I have my brothers to take care of and she’s telling me I have to do all of this stuff and I just don’t know what to do.

“They moved her four times. This was all in four months. I didn’t know where she was and when I would call, she’s not there anymore. Then they moved her to Grand Island.”

“My dream has always been to go to college. Nobody in my family has gone. I tell myself all the time, I’m going to go to college. But, I’m still going to have to deal with all of this stuff. It’s never going to go away. I know it’s always going to be there…I can’t drop out of college because I’ve worked really hard to get where I am.”

Stephanie, 18-yr-old whose mother was arrested during ICE raid in O’Neill, Nebraska.

“Everybody was working in the tomato greenhouse. We all thought it was some kind of inspection. But then we realized it was ICE. My wife and I were inside and arrested. They took us away in a bus and they drove us to Grand Island. They gave all of us different colored wristbands. We had blue bands. If you had a red band, it meant you were for deportation only.

“My 12-yr-old daughter was at school. My wife and I had no idea what was going to happen. A teacher took my daughter in for the day. She spent the night at the teacher’s house, and the teacher took her to school the next day. My wife was released later and returned to O’Neill around 2:00am that next day.

 “Everybody deported were my friends. My wife is safe now because she has papers, but I am still waiting. My daughter is scared we will get separated again or I’ll get deported to Mexico.

 “People here are leaving. They’re going to different states because they are scared. No one walks in the park anymore or on the streets anymore. Before the businesses were full and people were happy. How sad. It feels like there are no Hispanics around anymore. It doesn’t feel like a community anymore. The people released and waiting on their cases who have stayed, cannot find work now. Businesses have closed because of the raids. How are we going to pay rent? Pay bills?

“Before the raid, families lived in their own homes. After the raid, you now have three, four, five families all sharing the same house so they can combine their income to pay rent. At our church, it is so sad. Once it was full, now half the people have gone.” 

Miguel (43) was arrested during an ICE workplace raid in O’Neill, Nebraska.

“That day my mom said, You have to take your dad to work. We were about to drive to the highway, and they put the lights on me. There were three or four cars. The cops pulled me over and I said, Why are you pulling me over?  What’s the reason? They said, We’re looking for someone. Can I have your ID? I said, No, not until you tell me why you pulled me over. I locked the door on my dad’s side of the car. They asked for my dad’s ID and I said, No, because you pulled me over so why are you asking for his ID? I was the one driving. They had a piece of paper and they didn’t want to show me, but I could see my dad’s photo on it.

“He did not have a criminal record, nothing like that. No DUI or nothing like that. The only thing is that he’s not from here. One month earlier, he got a speeding ticket for going like three miles over the speed limit. We went to court and we paid the ticket. Exactly a week later, they pulled us over.

“The man on my Dad’s side had one of those sticks and he was hitting the door and window saying, Open it. If you don’t open it, we are going to use force against you. I was all shaky and panicking and I didn’t know what to do because this has never happened to us before. My dad, he opened the door because he didn’t want them to do something to me. My dad gave me his wallet and everything he had on him. They took him and I said, Where are you going to take him? They just ignored me and didn’t tell me where.

“They took him to Chase County Jail…When he was detained, I thought I would be able to hug him physically, but no. It was through the window. The conditions looked really bad. My dad…he was trying to smile. It was like he was saying, Don’t come. Don’t come. But I was wanting to see my dad and see how he was doing.”

 “My Dad has always been my biggest supporter and my brother as well.  He’s always warmed us up in soccer. He would get off work early to go to my games and support me. He’s done everything for my brother as well. He’s made a lot of sacrifices for us.”

18-yr-old daughter and US citizen. (Wichita, KS)

“At that time, life was perfect. It was nice. We were starting something. We were very happy, healthy and working.

“My husband didn’t have a drivers license. His uncle normally drove them around. One day when he couldn’t drive, he got in the car and drove to work. I said goodbye to him and he left. He drove around the block and ICE stopped him. It was 5:30am in the morning.

 “It was difficult for my family to tell me and I couldn’t describe what was going on in my head. I was also eight months pregnant. I knew it would be hard for him to be locked away. But then they told him he would be deported without seeing the baby.

“But, she was born early. There was one time I could go and see him, but there was no time.” 

“He was so happy just being able to see her through the glass. We only had 15 minutes. I dressed her in a bright pink one zee. She was really beautiful and she looked at him.”

 “After the visit, he called and said he would call later that night. He didn’t call.  He was moved to Arizona. Then he was deported. I didn’t hear from him for five days. When he called, he was back in Guatemala.”

33-yr-old woman asylum seeker from Guatemala.

“It was a small flight. There were eight people on the flight. There were a bunch of people being sent back to Mali and some of us to Mauritania. We were chained up the whole time. The trip was like 15-18 hours and we were chained up the whole time.

“I was just trying to be strong. But I was saying, Life is over now. I just don’t know. What’s next? How am I going to see my family again? How am I going to survive? There was another guy on the plane and he was crying too.