Dying in the Promiseland
Horror Stories from the ICE Gulag
“An abandoned, run-down prison just outside of Tucson has sat untouched for years,” reports Cronkite News. “Now, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security plans to fill the former Marana prison with a new kind of inmate: immigrants in the country illegally.”
The Marana facility will join other internment camps – that’s what they are – around the country. “Thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill,” wrote ICE Public Affairs Officer Fernando X. Burgos in an email to Cronkite News, “ICE now has historic funding to secure enough detention capacity to maintain an average daily population of 100,000 illegal aliens and 80,000 new ICE beds.”
The camps will be repositories of misery. The Arizona Daily Star, over Memorial Day weekend, published two exposés regarding conditions at a camp in Eloy, Arizona. The first article addressed the expansive use of solitary confinement, describing the experience of detainees from Russia, Iran, and Afghanistan. “The three immigrants — none of whom have criminal records — said their time in isolation at Eloy Detention Center in Arizona this year and last still lingers in their minds, causing nightmares, depression and hopelessness,” wrote the Star.
“At least two detainees have already died in solitary confinement this year,” the article continued, “one in Texas and one in Georgia. Another detainee, who was being interviewed for this story, attempted suicide in Arizona in late April, days after he said he was sent to solitary as ‘punishment’ for demanding medical care.”
The Star’s second article explained how “ICE uses solitary confinement as a ‘quick fix’ for vulnerable, suicidal detainees.” A victim of sexual assault in Iran, Narges Dehghani, met with a psychologist who asked about her mental state. She “let herself be honest: She admitted she’d thought about hurting herself.”
The response by prison officials: “Before long, two guards appeared and handcuffed Dehghani, who has no criminal record. She was led to another building, uncuffed, and left alone in a cold room the size of a parking space, containing nothing but a toilet and a plastic box to sleep in.”
“For those three days isolated on ‘suicide watch,’” added the Star, “Dehghani existed in a state of delirious pain, both psychological and physical, as she also had excruciating cramps from untreated ulcerative colitis, she said.”
Mistreatment is not confined to Eloy or to Arizona. NBC News analyzed the rise of suicides and serious cases of self-harm in ICE internment camps, noting “more than 1,000 emergency requests over the last year made from six immigration detention centers around the country,” including “28 involving serious incidents of self-harm.”
My country is abusing and killing people in my name. I didn’t vote for our current national leadership, but the President represents all Americans domestically and internationally. What he does, he does on our behalf – in our names. I am ashamed of what he is doing in my name.
July 4th is a time of remembrance and celebration; a holiday we set aside to honor the Founders and their progeny who collectively raised the torch for the last two and a half centuries to light the way for us. This year’s holiday is not like the others.
Historically, America’s message has been “join us.” Throw aside your shackles, your rivalries, your limits. Open your minds, hearts and souls to an evolving human experiment rooted in the Enlightenment and sculpted by events the way a river carves a canyon.
“America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers,” declared James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams. “It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again.”
July 4, 2026 – the United States of America’s semi-quincentennial – should be a day of baseball, picnics, music, fireworks, barbecues, and reflection. We should honor American’s evolution, forged in rebellion’s cauldron, scarred by slavery, bloodied by Civil War, roiled by currents of exclusion, hatred, and greed, yet strong enough to rise above those things. We should proclaim our national story, warts and all, and remember those who paved the road to the land we live in. I want to celebrate it that way. Sadly, I cannot.
I am shamed by what my country is doing in my name. “Join us” has been replaced by “leave us.” Instead of sharing opportunity, our national leadership tries to hoard it. Those who are disfavored by the Trump administration are shunned, bullied, chased, injured, and increasingly imprisoned. Trump’s followers find the abasement of human dignity alluring; he gives his mob what it wants.
Trump’s deportation brutality offends the American ethos. There are ways to address unauthorized residents without abusing them psychologically and physically. Without solitary confinement.
Last Saturday, I started a new playlist with Willie Nelson’s recording of “Living in the Promiseland.” He sang,
Give us your tired and weak
And we will make them strong
Bring us your foreign songs
And we will sing along
Leave us your broken dreams
We’ll give them time to mend
There’s still a lot of love
Living in the promiseland
In “Ellis Island,” Marc Cohn sings of:
Mothers and bewildered wives
That sailed across the raging sea
Others running for their lives
To the land of opportunity
Oh, down on Ellis Island
Where has it gone, the Promiseland? What happened to the land of opportunity? Where is the America that cries with Woody Guthrie’s lament, “Deportee?”
Goodbye to my Juan, farewell Roselita
Adios mes amigos, Jesus e Maria
You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane
All they will call you will be deportees
I miss that America and deplore the current iteration with its false prophets and charlatans at the helm. But we will rise above these things as we always do.
Until then, I can find America in song and that’s where I’ll look for it on the 4th of July.