President-elect Donald Trump has made mass detention of immigrant communities a central part of his political platform. Trump’s cabinet nominees are reportedly laying the groundwork to expand detention capacity in cities around the country. The Trump administration's proposed plans include making detention mandatory, which would trap immigrants in abusive, inhumane conditions for years as they fight deportation. Immigration detention, or civil detention for those awaiting a determination of their immigration status or deportation, must be limited. Right now President Joe Biden can act to limit mass detention of immigrants by closing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities with egregious records of human rights violations and abuses and halt further detention expansion. The Facts During the last Trump presidency, ICE opened more than 40 new detention facilities, with the vast majority owned or operated by private prison corporations, whose business m
Twenty minutes from where I grew up, in Owasso, Oklahoma, Nex Benedict was relentlessly bullied for being trans. This bigoted aggression continued for more than a year and, last March, Nex died after being physically beaten in a school bathroom. Nex is far from alone. According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention one in four transgender youth missed school because they knew they were unsafe. A Department of Education (ED) investigation found that Nex’s experience was part of a routine negligence to prevent sex-based harassment in their school district. Trans Day of Remembrance is an annual ceremony of mourning for the trans and gender non-conforming people whose lives were lost to anti-trans violence this year. In 2024, four of those lost were teenagers , like Nex. The youngest, Pauly Likens, was murdered at just 14. Memorializing our trans kindred we lost in the previous year started with the 1998 death of Rita Hester and, for 26 years, this day