11/07/2025
At the Hands Off Rally on the Barton County Square earlier this year, I was interrupted by a Heckler when I stated all people were entitled to due process under the fifth amendment of the United States Constitution. When the Heckler began yelling loudly illegal, illegal and illegal. My response was that if the Executive Branch could deny due process to any group, no one was safe.
BREAKING: Federal judge slams ICE over “disturbing” treatment of migrants after detainee blows the whistle on conditions: “It smelled like excrement.”
In a Chicago courtroom, the ugly truth about America’s immigration detention machine burst into the open — and no amount of government spin could hide the stench from U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman.
Literally. Witness after witness described ICE’s Broadview, Illinois facility as a warehouse of human misery, where men slept on floors they could barely lie down on, shoulder-to-shoulder like cattle, choking on the smell of excrement and fear.
One father, torn from his 16-year-old daughter who is battling cancer, told the judge he had to tiptoe through bodies just to avoid stepping on someone’s hand on the way to the bathroom. His “bed” was not a sofa, but — in his own words — “a small space where you can sit down.” And when there wasn’t room to sit? The floor. No blankets. No room. No dignity.
Hot meals? Forget it. Detainees were fed the same sad, refrigerator-cold “Subway sandwich” — one slice of ham, one piece of lettuce — three times a day. Water? One bottle in the morning, and then whatever you could manage from a sink. Human beings — many here legally, many seeking due process — punished with starvation rations like they committed a crime for daring to exist.
And here's the kicker: desperate immigrants were signing deportation papers not because they were guilty or afraid of the law — but because they wanted to escape ICE’s hellish concrete box. That’s not “immigration enforcement.” That’s coercion under conditions so grotesque that ANYONE would break just to get out.
When another detainee tried to get sleep in a freezing cell, he risked losing the only seat he had — because if you stood up to use the bathroom, someone else would take it. Oh, and if you needed medical care? One pregnant girl cried for medicine. Who knows if she ever got it. The DOJ sure didn’t bother to find out.
But the most extraordinary moment came from the bench — when even a federal judge, hardened by decades of seeing the worst government has to offer, cut through the excuses. Judge Gettleman called the government’s story “contradicted pretty thoroughly.” He said the record was “disturbing.” And he made it clear: America cannot pretend these conditions reflect any shred of values we claim to hold. “I haven't heard one person say they got a hot meal,” he said — a sentence that should shame every official responsible.
Even ICE’s own security footage — the only objective record of these conditions — is being taped over daily. You don’t erase video you’re proud to show the world.
This is what cruelty-as-policy looks like. Families shattered. Sick children left fatherless. Cold floors. Rotting food. People forced into deportation because detention is too brutal to survive. And through it all, DOJ lawyers shrug and warn the court not to “interfere with the executive branch.”
Translation: let us keep abusing people in the dark.
But now, sunlight is pouring in. A judge is watching. The public is watching. And the government — the same one that lectures the world on human rights — has been caught red-handed running a detention regime that treats human beings like disposable garbage.
This isn’t “border security.” This is state-sanctioned cruelty. And every American who believes in decency has a moral obligation to demand better than this. No more hiding behind bureaucratic jargon. No more excuses. Because when a nation starts throwing vulnerable families into cold cement rooms and feeding them scraps until they break — history doesn’t remember the bystanders kindly.
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