Hundreds of people detained at the Alligator Alcatraz immigration processing center west of Miami, Florida, appear to have vanished. They have disappeared from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) online database, and their lawyers and families have been unable to locate them, according to immigrant advocacy groups.
“When searching for people detained there, the ICE locator now says, ‘Call the Florida Department of Corrections for details,’” says Luis Sorto of Sanctuary of the South, a network that offers legal services and participated in a lawsuit against the government over restrictions on access to lawyers for detainees at the infamous immigration jail.
All of the plaintiffs who were being held at the center were transferred to another location after a new lawsuit was filed in August challenging Florida’s authority to detain people there, Sorto added. That lawsuit also noted that the detainees did not appear in ICE’s tracking system.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which filed the lawsuit, described Alligator Alcatraz as a “black hole,” noting that some people were “missing,” effectively “off the radar” of the immigration system, and “their lawyers and families often don’t know where they are or how to contact them.”
You’ve been sentenced to 400 years for multiple murders. It’s been 399 years and your jailers are starting to get nervous.
I was twenty… twenty-five, I think?… when I was sentenced. Four hundred years was a length of time I couldn’t even imagine. It was a length of time I don’t think anyone could imagine, even the judge. It was just a big showy number that let everyone know I’d never see the light of day again. The mages who cast the spells were dramatic about it, practically shouting the part about ‘until death claims you, or four hundred years hath passed, forsooth, thou shalt be imprisoned here’. They don’t waste that kind of magic on most prisoners, but I was special.
The Slayer, they called me then. The Monster of Sentan. I’d killed nineteen people… I remember that number because I was so furious that they stopped me so close to my goal of twenty-one. And I didn’t just kill ordinary people, no, but the Chosen of the Gods. The Great and Good. They were terrified of me. So they locked me away, to die forgotten.
It had been a little less than a hundred years when the king died without heir, and a civil war tore the country apart. When the fighting was all over, the losers were dragged down to the deepest cells under the castle, and the new king and his soldiers stopped and stared at me. “Who… who is this?” he asked, frowning. “Some victim of the usurper?”
People like cooks and jailers and scrubbers don’t change as easily as kings. The same man who’d been bringing me my meals since there was still brown in his hair and beard shuffled forward, hunched and grey now. “No, yer majesty,” he said humbly. “That be a special prisoner, from before the old king died.”
“Special? Special how?” He frowned, moving closer to my cell. “The old king died more than ten years ago. This woman must have been a child then. What could she have done to - “
“Don’t get too close, yer majesty,” the old man said sharply. “That’s the Monster of Sentan… an’ she bites.”
Remember to USians if you’re going to the rally today, you want to bring an American flag. I know it feels cringe; I know a lot of leftists who normally wouldn’t be caught dead with one.
But remember: this is about optics. Donald’s fanclub has been trying to convince the fence-sitters that No Kings is “unamerican” – it’s really fucking hard for that claim to hold up when the rally is full of the standard trappings of patriotism.
Bring a flag, and remind anyone who asks that the original No Kings day was the 4th of July 1776.
Its obvious to me when people who post about canaries in mines have never met a canary. Like yeah the miners had a special device to revive the canary because canaries are one of the most adorable creatures on the planet and they make adorable little chirping sounds and honestly probably loved the sounds of machinery and people talking so it was probably loud and friendly with the workers. Whatever though maybe meet a canary sometime and youd understand
If you see this animal every day at work, and it sings to you during your hardest bouts of labor, you will be distraught if it dies. Even if you know this creature is meant to die in lieu of you, you still hear it when the labor is at its hardest and your muscles are struggling against the weight of your work. It is so small, smaller than your soot-stained hands and louder than the death that follows you. You dont want it to die. The same as a woman does not want her candle to run out ; she knows that is the point, its flame is meant to burn the wick and melt the wax ; but she is not indifferent to its wasting away. She may even save her favorite candle as not to burn it too quickly. Now imagine you are that woman, and there is a way to rebuild your favorite candle that you love the smell of and the way it flickers. Would she rather throw her candle out? Or would she rebuild it? That is a canary to these miners. Would you allow an animal to just die when it has been singing for you? It reminds you that it is alive, and you are too. Its stop of song signifies the lethal danger you are in. Why abandon it? Is the miners’ love for a little bird really that surprising?
Why does this read as though written by a coal miner of the era in which a canary was needed.
I overheard a woman at my job say “Your whole personality revolves around what you hate instead of what you love and thats an awful way to live.” to the resident vocal Maga in the breakroom.
He was stunned into silence for at least 60 seconds so that was nice.
A cat is a small creature in the middle of the food chain that is fully aware that you are a very large thing that could stomp its head in at any moment and yet it chooses to rest its tiny little head on your leg for a nap and spreads out on the floor near you exposing its belly and its most sensitive organs. It brings dead mice and bugs to you to share food.
Don’t you get it? This tiny thing trusts you. It wants to help you too. It licks your leg thinking that it’s helping. It kneads on you to find comfort. It shares its body warmth with you in the cold and gives you your space in the heat. It hisses at other mammals it sees outside including other cats in an effort to protect its family.
Cats love you so so much. But they will keep trying to eat plastic.
the thing is that childhood doesn’t just end when you turn 18 or when you turn 21. it’s going to end dozens of times over. your childhood pet will die. actors you loved in movies you watched as a kid will die. your grandparents will die, and then your parents will die. it’s going to end dozens and dozens of times and all you can do is let it. all you can do is stand in the middle of the grocery store and stare at freezers full of microwave pizza because you’ve suddenly been seized by the memory of what it felt like to have a pizza party on the last day of school before summer break. which is another ending in and of itself
ALT
