From the Borderlands

Sarah Towle
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In her new podcast, Sarah Towle, author of Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, pushes back against the media disinformation machine by offering a narrative that puts people at the center of the immigration discussion. Join Sarah as she provides commentary on current events and speaks to immigration advocates and experts as well as people caught under the system's cruel knee, all while sharing excerpts from Crossing the Line that spotlight the extraordinary efforts of ordinary people working to tear down the walls that divide us.  Sarah implores us to join their "grassroots war of welcome." There is no time for despair, she declares. And all hands are needed urgently on deck. She calls us to collective action, now, to create a bulwark against the worst impulses of nativist governments pedaling in propaganda and lies that vilify, in the UN's terms, the world's most vulnerable people.  Showcasing the folks still flying the tattered flag of values espoused in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Sarah's tales of humanity from the borderlands look to the front-line humanitarian first responders for answers to one of global society's most pressing challenges. "They show us, every day, that there is a better way: that we can welcome with dignity and we'd be a much better people for it," states Sarah.  She reminds us that hope knows no borders. And state-sponsored cruelty as a strategy to deter migration is not okay. sarahtowle.substack.com

  1. 1d ago

    Make Crimes Against Humanity a BAD Investment: ICE's Deadly For-Profit Prison Gulag Is a Bipartisan Shame That Must Be Slain

    Dear Subscribers, Apologies for the radio silence. It has not been without reason… As soon as I started working on the above ☝🏼 Divestment Case Study and Call to Action, based on interviews I conducted while volunteering at New Jersey’s Delaney Hall in November 2025, nearly 300 of our neighbors, family members, colleagues, and friends went on hunger and labor strikes to protest the horrific conditions of their illegal and inhumane incarceration at the infamous ICE blacksite. That was May 22, 2026. Then, literal hell broke loose. It’s been nothing but ICE violence and Trump & Co corruption ever since.* June brought day after day of atrocious news and dreadful SCOTUS decisions, rendering each successive podcast edit obsolete within hours. Sadly, this final draft ☝🏼 is no different: As soon as I declared the episode “done,” ICE murdered again. I therefore dedicate this podcast to Jesús Manuel Arenas Silva. Jesús is the 22nd person to die, tragically and unnecessarily, while in ICE custody just this year, and the 53rd person since inauguration day 2025. Jesús died in shackles on an ICE transport, while being shuffled from one notoriously cruel ICE blacksite to another. ICE kidnappers and for-profit prison profiteers, GEO Group and LaSalle Corrections, killed Jesús with dehumanizing indifference and criminal neglect. They denied him access to his life-saving prescription medications. “We implored ICE not to take him due to his medical needs, but they didn’t listen to our pleas. They also ignored our request to at least allow him to take the medication with him . . . Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva was a loving son and brother, a hard-working man who came to this country to seek better opportunities. His tragic death has left our family with an immense void and deep sorrow.” — Sonimar, Jesús’s sister Following the Hope Knows No Borders Network May 24th divestment webinar and workshop… …and in the face of escalating ICE impunity, interest in how to find and divest from the US for-profit immigrant gulag has mushroomed. The webinar panelists and I have since coalesced around growing a coalition of for-profit prison abolitionists to campaign around both gulag divestment and values-based re-investment. I’ll have more news about that for you soon. Until then… Brew a pot of iced tea or coffee and find a comfortable spot in the shade (it’s too hot for anything else). Then kick back for what my editor tells me is “an important listen.” We hope you’ll agree, if you don’t already: Crimes Against Humanity are a BAD business model and a worse investment. ICE’s deadly for-profit prison gulag is a bipartisan shame that must be slain. Don’t forget to heart, restack, and… And if you find this podcast worthy,please share it with your neighbors, family members, colleagues, and friends: Stay strong, everyone. Know your allies and keep them close. The only way through this…Together. ✊🏼 Sarah Please sign the Petition toFree Martin Soto! Critical Resources Mentioned in the Podcast: The administration has detained 400,000 immigrants: What do we know about their children? Maria Cancian, Nissi Cantu, Lanikque Howard, and Tara Watson, May 18, 2026, Brookings. Banished by Bargain - Third Country Deportation Watch: Monitoring the human cost of the U.S. government’s forced third-country transfer agreements. Refugees International & Human Rights First. Biden Administration Sides With Private Prison Company CoreCivic to Keep Immigrant Detention in New Jersey. Michelle Ancil, June 29, 2023, New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice. Central African Republic Latest ‘Third Country’ for US Deportees: Don’t Forcibly Repatriate People to Iran, Afghanistan, and Other High-Risk Countries. Lauren Seibert, June 29, 2026, Human Rights Watch. Data on “Mega Masters” Show EOIR is Targeting Individual Judges and Courts with a Flood of Hearings. Austin Kocher, July 9, 2026. The Deportation Machine Kills Again: Justice for Lorenzo. July 8, 2026, Eyes On Ice Due Process Vindicated: The Fifth Circuit Rejects Categorical Detention for Longtime Undocumented Residents. In a 2-1 decision, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals establishes a 90-day bond hearing requirement, striking a blow against the administration’s mandatory immigration detention policy. Pedro Chavez, July 4, 2026, The Migra(N)ation. HOLY SH*T! ICE Arrests 10,000 in FIVE DAYS. JT Cestkowski, July 2, 2026, Status Coup News and MeidasTouch. “I was shot six times”: A military veteran protesting outside Delaney Hall says police and private security fired rubber bullets and paintball rounds at demonstrators, hitting him multiple times. June 5, 2026, MiddleEastEye. ICE eyes 1,000-bed detention facilities in foreign countries: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is looking for private contractors that could help set up “international staging areas” abroad. Charles R. Davis, 13 July 2026, The Redoubt. ICE Flight Monitor: A data-driven initiative that systematically tracks and documents U.S. immigration enforcement flights, providing detailed insights into government operations often hidden from public view. Human Rights First. Letters from Inside an ICE Gulag Jail: Delaney Hall. Movimiento Cosecha. El Grito de Nosotros: Our Cry. “We feel vulnerable, in a way, kidnapped or detained without justification.” A Second Letter From Delaney Hall. Signed by nearly 300 people, including over 50 women Don’t Give Up: A Demand for Freedom. Written during the hunger and labor strike, the authors describe the horrific conditions inside the facility, but the strike is not only about the conditions. It is a demand for freedom. A Cry for Freedom, Justice, Human, and Constitutional Rights. “We demand freedom, a fair trial, and for our rights to be respected.” “We Demand Justice”: A letter from the women detained at Delaney Hall. “We are from different cultures, nationalities, and religions, but at the end of the day, we all pray to the same God [for] help with our process, for our families, for other detainees that we don’t know their names but are here, women that are vulnerable without attorneys, without families, completely alone.” MASS DEPORTATION OF NON-AFRICAN MIGRANTS FROM THE U.S.: THE CENTRAL AFRICAN GOVERNMENT MUST IMMEDIATELY STOP “HUMAN TRAFFICKING”! Press Release: July 11, 2026, Mandela Center International, an international NGO with Special Consultative Status with the United Nations. Mass De-Legalization: Supreme Court lets Trump take aim at humanitarian immigration law. César García Hernández, June 25, 2026, Immigration Law Unhinged. Mega Masters: The Data Behind the Latest Scheme to Manufacture Removal Orders, (Part I). Austin Kocher, June 25, 2026. Mega Masters: Docket Politics and the Immigration Courts, Why Mega Masters Are Only New-ish (Part 2): The Trump administration is forcing over a hundred people to show up in immigration court at once—but manipulating judges’ dockets is nothing new. Austin Kocher, June 25, 2026. Mullin v. Doe: Blessing a Race-Neutral Cover for Racial Animus. Cyrus D Mehta and Damira Zhanatova, June 25, 2026, The Insightful Immigration Blog: Commentaries on Immigration Policy, Cases, and Trends. A new ICE facility could speed up deportations for families and kids. Jack Brook, July 6, 2026, Associated Press. Private Prison Company Sells Two CA Immigrant Detention Centers to Feds. Wendy Fry and Nigel Duara, July 6, 2026, San Jose Inside. SCOTUS Guts Asylum and TPS in Sweeping 6–3 Rulings: On the same day it blocked 356,000 people from legal status, the Supreme Court ruled that standing in Mexico means you don’t exist. Pablo Manríquez, June 25, 2026, Migrant Insider. “Subversion of Law and Order”: ICE Violence Escalates at Newark’s GEO-Run Jail, Delaney Hall. May 29, 2026, Democracy Now! Supreme Court Allows Trump to Block Asylum Seekers at Border: A policy of turning back asylum seekers at the border was rescinded in 2021, but the Trump administration wants the flexibility to reinstate it as a tool for border control. Ann E. Marimow, June 25, 2026, New York Times. This Week by the {Immigration} Numbers (July 11, 2026). Austin Kocher, July 11, 2026. Welcome With Dignity Denounces SCOTUS Decisions Greenlighting Asylum Turnback Policy, Gutting TPS. Press Release: June 25, 2026, Welcome with Dignity Coalition. Which air carriers are positioned to benefit from increased deportations? Indy Scholtens, May 12, 2025, Open Secrets. Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. If you value the work you find here, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

  2. Jun 5

    Reimagining Immigration with Yael Schacher, Ph.D., Refugees International Director for the Americas and Europe

    Big Thanks to Yael Schacher for these very full and fruitful 30 minutes! We covered a lot in very little time, including: * The real reasons why Trump & Co are targeting refugees for third-country expulsions. * How third-country expulsions undermine the modern Refugee Resettlement Program, while contributing to ethnic-cleansing in the so-called Land of Immigrants. * Why we need to rebuild from scratch — rather than attempt to reform — the kind of refugee protection system we wish to see in relation to immigration more broadly, both at home and abroad. * And what Democrats can and should be focusing on to win back control of Congress this November, for the good of all humanity. Yael elucidates how Trump & Co have repurposed money heretofore allocated for use by the US State Department to provide humanitarian aid in support of refugees overseas to spearhead a program of “reverse migration” instead, which I had not thought of before. Not only does this lead to chain refoulement, an international crime causing great misery and harm, but as Yael points out, this foreign policy shift undermines post-WWII human rights commitments as well as transnational collaboration and solidarity, which Yael contends is deliberate. It has unleashed an “every country for itself” paradigm that prioritizes self-interest and corruption over the needs of people. It is, furthermore, driving democracies worldwide into crisis as it promotes collaboration with the worst of the world’s worst autocratic leaders. We discuss, too, how the post-9/11 global obsession with “security” enabled the trend toward dehumanizing and criminalizing Black and Brown people on the move, resulting in a cruelty-for-cruelty’s-sake system that has been weaponized by Trump. And how he and his acolytes are motivated, fundamentally, by a belief that refugees aren’t really a thing; that no one on earth deserves protection — unless, of course, you’re a White Afrikaner. In other words, for power brokers fomenting endless wars and in denial about fossil-fuel-created climate change — the primary causes of human displacement and mass migration — real refugees are “fake news." Fake refugees, meanwhile, are accepted as long as they hew to an ideological belief in white supremacy. “It’s not subtle,” states Yael. In contrast to their first tour through the White House, “they are now saying the quiet part out loud.” We have no choice but to listen to their words and to take their aims seriously. Especially when the US Senate just approved more money for ICE! Another $70 billion of our taxpayer dollars for an agency turned paramilitary army gone rogue and shielded from accountability. Yikes! Yael’s analysis is a Call to Action to Democratic leadership, candidates, and voters alike to stop appeasing the right to court the middle, because there is no middle anymore. There is only MAGA, aka right-wing extremism, aka fascist authoritarianism. With so much at stake, what should Democratic talking points be heading into the November midterms? Listen to my conversation with Yael to find out. Her prescriptions include developing “paths to permanency,” bringing the definition of asylum into the modern world, and pressure-testing political assumptions on immigration with the public and with asylum-seekers themselves, once these dark days are behind us. But first, we need a new Democratic Congress willing to “grow some balls” (my words) and save government by the people for the people, not safeguard government by the bullies for the billionaires. Thank you again, Yael! It was a wonderful conversation. We hope you agree, and look forward to your thoughts in the comments below. Please also heart and restack the post for the benefit of your friends and followers. I’ll be back next week with another 30-minute conversation on Reimagining Immigration. 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. Thanks, too, to all y’all who tuned into my live conversation with Yael!Join me for my next live video in the Substack app. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Jun 3

    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, Cosecha, 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 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 in Baldwin, Michigan, as well as at the 1,900-bed Moshannon Valley Processing Center 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. “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, Jim

  4. May 14

    Immigration Reimagined with Kate Scott, Artist & Wildlife Conservation Activist, Plus News about the Binational Border Happening II, May 16 & 17, Lochiel, Arizona

    Join Kate Scott & Tony Heath and many, many other borderlands conservationists, allies, artists, and activists this weekend to wrap the natural world in love and kindness, with prayer, drumming, poetry, music, and dance, to co-create communities of compassion and care and energetically BRING DOWN THE BORDER WALL. It’s about registering our outrage. It’s about looking the workers in the eye. It’s about manifesting the world we would rather live in as we celebrate community and the interconnectedness of the human and natural worlds. Here is all the info you’ll likely need. But if you have any further questions, visit Kate of the Madrean Archipelago Wildlife Center, which she co-founded with her husband, Tony. Scroll to the bottom of the page for contact details: Thank you to everyone who tuned into my Substack Live with Kate Scott! Please share this link with your friends and followers. I’ll be back in your inbox next week for another Substack Live on the topic of reimagining immigration. In the meantime… * Stay strong and connected because the only way through this is… Together. * Remember the wise words of our dear friend, Magdeleno Rose-Avila (magdeleno.org), who schooled us to “Continue to dream and to do.” We’ll miss you, Leno. Big gratitude for all the jalapeño love. * And don’t miss this wonderful film by Tony Heath. It’ll take you to the first Binational Border Happening, where you’ll experience the beautiful vistas of the San Rafael Valley. Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. 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

  5. May 7

    Immigration Reimagined, with Dan Kowalski, Esq., Because Reform is No Longer an Option

    Thank you, Judith McQuistion, Lisa Seifert, and many others, for tuning into my live conversation with Dan Kowalski! We discussed, among other things, that: * Immigration is always a net positive for the host nation. * The current statute is something we built, so we can unbuild it in keeping with popular values and current historical context. We are not stuck with it, nor should we be, since it dates to an openly white supremacist past. * Our economy requires people to contribute to it to survive. * Authoritarians are masters at manipulating the limbic brain. But we can overcome fear through raising awareness and creating encounters with our immigration neighbors as well as our immigrant past. * We should be reimagining the system in every corner of the nation now, so that when these dark days are behind us, we’ll be ready to build something more realistic and humane from the ashes. * The focus on law enforcement, expanding the Gestapo, and its for-profit gulag will be our own undoing, bankrupting the nation as more people fall into vulnerability. Join me for my next live video in the app. Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. 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

  6. Apr 16

    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, MomsforTexas, Mother Forward, and the Blue Bunny Brigade, 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. 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.” “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 Crossing the Line 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 (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. “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. 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.” 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 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. 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 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, 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 t

  7. Apr 4

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

    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 and the Border Community Alliance. 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, 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

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

  8. Apr 2

    "Alone, We Are Defenseless. Together, We Are Sacred."

    On March 22, 2026, the fifth Sunday of the Lenten season, aka Passion Sunday, I had the great honor of addressing the incomparable St. Joan of Arc Catholic Community in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a parish renowned for its progressive stance and its focus on social justice. These folks rose ready, together, in the face of Trump & Co’s domestic terror campaign, “Operation Metro Surge,” to defend and safeguard the human and constitutional rights of their neighbors. For this lapsed Catholic, the daughter of a devout Twin Cities Minnesotan, who was en route to the priesthood when he met my mom, it was the perfect place to be welcomed back into the fold. Speaking on this topic during the sacred Lenten season of grief and giving, of reflection and renewal — the time of the passion, when we are called upon to express compassion — could not have felt more auspicious, more vital, or more urgent in today’s political climate. The story of Lent is mirrored in real life, right now. We are in that still and scary time just before the light of a new dawn, when folks just living their sweet lives are vilified, declared terrorists, arrested, shackled, imprisoned, denied food and water, and forced to participate in their own destruction, just as 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. This is happening again every minute of every single day, inside the US’s deterrence to detention to deportation pipeline. And the cruelty is not okay. In the aftermath of ICE’s brutal and criminal tearing apart of more than 3,700 Minnesota families to date that we know of, according to the Deportation Data Project, under Trump & Co’s ethnic cleansing campaign for which they are developing a holocaust-style infrastructure of concentration camps, complete with transportation network, the community of St. Joan of Arc has been engaged in a spiritual centering down. Guided by the wise words of writer Sherman Alexie, as well as Christian theologian, educator, and civil rights leader, Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman, they have been preparing their heads, hands, and hearts for the ongoing struggle for social justice, that they may rise ready, together, when called upon again to do so. I am one more citizen marching against hatred.Alone, we are defenseless. Collected, we are sacred.We will march by the millions. We will tremble and grieve.We will praise and weep and laugh. We will believe.We will be courageous with our love. We will risk dangerAs we sing and sing and sing to welcome strangers. Sherman Alexie, 2017 The community asked that I focus my remarks on where I find strength in these deeply dark and challenging times; about how I quiet my soul and my mind when there is so much to do and so many needs to meet, Every. Single. Moment. of. Every. Single. Day. About how I center down. But I had to admit that I am none too good at the practice myself. Indeed, I had to learn the hard way that working to straighten the bent arc of justice is not a marathon. It’s not even a sprint. It’s a relay. That’s why it’s so important to know who your allies are, and to hold them dear, because we all need to pass the baton at times, to step back and center down so that we may again lead. In fact, in the most tragic moments of last winter’s occupation, I was looking to folks like my St Joan of Arc hosts for answers. When under siege, when the worst of humanity’s worst impulses were unleashed upon them, it was Minnesotans such as these, like Chicagoans and Angelenos and Portlanders before them, who showed us that… When we live together as brothers and sisters, we rise together, too. Minnesota showed us that we can create a more inclusive world, where the stranger is welcomed and embraced, rather than shackled and expelled. And that we would be a much better people and nation for it. They are to be thanked for standing against government violence and for everyone’s human right to dignity, safety, and due process under the law, for being the light in our collective hour of darkness. And for giving me my mojo back! In this Easter and Passover season, and with Ramadan just behind us, I hope you appreciate my pre-Mass remarks offered to the St Joan of Arc Catholic Community on March 22, 2026. Please, listen to the audio or watch the video above, then circle back to let us know, in the comments below, where you find hope when an ethnic cleansing, a genocide, is unfolding right in front of your eyes? Don’t forget to tap the ♡ if you like this video, and the 🔄 to share it. Until next time, stay strong, my friends. The only way through this is…Together.✊🏼 Sarah How good it is to center down! To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by! The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic; Our spirits resound with clashing, with noisy silences, While something deep within hungers and thirstsfor the still moment and the resting lull. With full intensity we seek, ere thicket passes, a fresh sense of order in our living;A direction, a strong sure purpose that will structure our confusion and bring meaning in our chaos. We look at ourselves in this waiting moment — the kinds of people we are. The questions persist: What are we doing with our lives? What are the motives that order our days? What is the end of our doings? Where are we trying to go? Where do we put the emphasis and where are our values focused? For what end do we make sacrifices? Where is my treasure and what do I love most in life? What do I hate most in life and to what am I true? Over and over the questions beat upon the waiting moment.As we listen, floating up through all of the jangling echoes of our turbulence,there is a sound of another kind —A deeper note which only the stillness of the heart makes clear.It moves directly to the core of our being. Our questions are answered,Our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of our daily roundWith the peace of the Eternal in our step.How good it is to center down! Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman, 1999 Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. 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

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About

In her new podcast, Sarah Towle, author of Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, pushes back against the media disinformation machine by offering a narrative that puts people at the center of the immigration discussion. Join Sarah as she provides commentary on current events and speaks to immigration advocates and experts as well as people caught under the system's cruel knee, all while sharing excerpts from Crossing the Line that spotlight the extraordinary efforts of ordinary people working to tear down the walls that divide us.  Sarah implores us to join their "grassroots war of welcome." There is no time for despair, she declares. And all hands are needed urgently on deck. She calls us to collective action, now, to create a bulwark against the worst impulses of nativist governments pedaling in propaganda and lies that vilify, in the UN's terms, the world's most vulnerable people.  Showcasing the folks still flying the tattered flag of values espoused in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Sarah's tales of humanity from the borderlands look to the front-line humanitarian first responders for answers to one of global society's most pressing challenges. "They show us, every day, that there is a better way: that we can welcome with dignity and we'd be a much better people for it," states Sarah.  She reminds us that hope knows no borders. And state-sponsored cruelty as a strategy to deter migration is not okay. sarahtowle.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Sarah Towle
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    51
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Sarah Towle
  • Show Website
    From the Borderlands