> Ariana and her mother, Stephanie, were detained on Dec. 1, when they went for one of their regular check-ins at an ICE office in New York City’s Federal Plaza, which are required as they wait for a decision on their asylum case. Stephanie had come to the U.S. with experience working as an accountant and, after securing her work permit, she had finally found a job at a local import business where she could put that experience to use. They had been regularly checking in with ICE for years without incident. But after mom and daughter showed up for their 8 a.m. ICE appointment, they were told they couldn’t leave this time and were on a plane to Dilley by 6 that evening, without being given a chance to call their family.

I can see the argument that you shouldn't be in the country illegally, and if you are then you are subject to being deported. But that's clearly not what's happening here. Many of these people did everything right and they followed the laws. Now the laws are suddenly changing and this administration treats them like criminals for it. It's cruel.

"ICE" Kid Prisons

Indefinite immigrant detention beyond 72h should absolutely be prohibited. They should get to see a judge within 24h, then either released with an optional follow-up date, or deported to their native country within 72h.

The current situation highlights mega-scale corruption and conflict-of-interest of detention facilities in cahoots with the government.

Let's look at the facts here:

1) There is, as of today, no country (at least, no country that isn't a failed state) where you may enter, stay within, and exit its borders without having to follow the terms as dictated by that country's government, and aren't subject to removal by law enforcement if you break the terms of that agreement.

2) There are people who are in the US without proper authorization who we would benefit from their removal due to their criminal activity beyond their immigration violations.

3) The people in point 2 are, at this point, not likely to be the bulk of people in government detention for immigration violations. For example, you don't need the ability to detain thousands of criminals in the region around Kansas City, but that's the capacity they're trying to build out for.

4) Point 3 means that there are otherwise peaceful people being shoved into detention with people who are actually violent criminals.

There has to be a better way of handling this then sending God-knows-who out into American cities in tactical gear to grab people off the streets for staying past their visa or for having an unclear status, which is easy to do given how complex some immigration cases can be.

If you need to put them on probation until the system gets through their application, fine, but this is a bad approach on every level.

But this government was just collecting the worst of the worst from the streets.

Or were they lying all along?

(Narrator's voice: they have been lying all along).