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
