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Stories

Detention isn't a statistic. It's a day in someone's life.

The accounts below come from people held in ICE custody and from families torn apart by enforcement. Read them. Share them. Let them sit with you before you pick up the phone.

People — including children — sit behind chain-link fencing inside a U.S. immigration detention center.
The stories begin where these photos do — inside the facilities.

Featured testimony

From people held at Alligator Alcatraz, Krome, Dilley, and CBP custody. Names shortened where the source did so.

I don’t want to be in this place, I want to go to my school.

Mia Valentina Paz Faria, 7 years old, detained 70 days. Reported by ProPublica.

When we asked the guards for more [menstrual] pads, we were denied.

V.R.A., former CBP detainee. Reported by the American Immigration Council.

Someone died. I heard screaming in the night.

Person held at Alligator Alcatraz, Florida. Reported by Amnesty International, December 2025.

I don’t have any words to describe what happened.

Person held in ICE custody. Reported by Amnesty International, December 2025.
People wrapped in mylar blankets sit inside a chain-link enclosure in a U.S. detention facility.
Inside a holding facility
Rows of detained people behind fenced pens in a large indoor processing center.
Mass holding conditions
Silhouettes of vigil attendees placing white flowers into a barbed-wire fence at dusk.
Vigil for people held and lost

Why these stories matter

Abolition stops being abstract when you hear it from someone who lived it. These aren't data points. They're why we organize.

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