The elevator doors slid shut with a soft, metallic sigh. Dylan didn’t know it yet, but it was the last moment of his freedom.
It was May 21st, 2025. He had just stepped out of a Bronx immigration courtroom with his mother, Raiza. It was supposed to be routine a check-in, a status update. No lawyer, no fear. They were on time. Compliant. Respectful. His asylum case, like so many, was moving slow.
But when the judge dismissed his case, something shifted. It wasn’t a victory. Even if it sounds like it may have been. He didn’t know at the time but it was a trapdoor. Under a new May 15th ruling from the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), that "dismissal" stripped him of protection and reclassified him as an "arriving alien," a term that sounds bureaucratic until ICE officers are dragging you into a van.
And in Dylan’s case, they didn’t even wait. ICE agents got on the elevator with him. Like a power play, like they wanted him to feel the breath of the machine before it swallowed him whole.
The second the doors opened, they lunged. One agent grabbed Dylan by the shoulders and slammed him against the wall, his forehead knocking hard into the metal as cuffs clamped down on his wrists. Another seized Raiza, cuffing her wrists as she cried out, frozen in disbelief. They shoved both mother and son against the cold elevator walls like they were criminals. Like they were threats.
Raiza kept pleading, her voice cracking as she begged them to let her go. She told them she had two little girls waiting for her at home. After a tense moment, they relented. They removed the cuffs from her wrists and let her go. But the truth was, they had no legal authority to detain her in the first place. She had no case dismissed that day. She was still under humanitarian parole. She had the right to walk out that door.
Dylan didn’t.
The boy who had once balanced paper bags of takeout on a bicycle to save up for rent. The boy who memorized English flashcards between deliveries. The boy who thought showing up for court meant doing the right thing. Gone.
Humanitarian Parole is A Trap
Dylan fled Venezuela in 2024 with his mother, Raiza, and his two younger sisters. What they left behind wasn’t just a crumbling government. It was a country choking on tear gas and silence. Friends had vanished without a trace. The grocery store shelves were empty. People ate out of trash cans and boiled dirty water. The air itself was stained with smoke and chemicals. It burned your lungs. It lingered in your clothes. It tasted like grief.
They came to the United States through the CBP One app. They waited, followed every rule, and were granted humanitarian parole. On paper, it looked like mercy. In reality, it was a setup. A legal fiction dressed up as compassion.
Humanitarian parole is a trapdoor disguised as a lifeline. It lets you in, lets you breathe, then reminds you that you don’t belong. It does not mean protection. It does not even mean you entered lawfully. It is a thin patch of ice over a deep, freezing lake. It gives you just enough stability to build a life, then threatens to rip it away the second you start to feel safe. It says you are welcome, but only in the most conditional, temporary, reversible way. It is not a path. It is a cliff edge and the moment the system decides it’s done pretending, it pushes you off.
This isn’t just broken policy. This is a system that’s been engineered to fuck you the moment you step onto the welcome mat.
Still, Dylan tried to make it count. He got a job delivering food. Rain or shine, he pedaled through New York streets with a heavy backpack and heavier dreams. Every dollar he earned helped move his mother & sisters out of the homeless shelter and into a small apartment. He enrolled at Ellis Academy, determined to learn English, to go prepare to go college, to become someone new. He carried a work permit in one pocket and a learner’s permit in the other. He had hope. He had momentum.
But none of that mattered that awful day in May.
The System That Oversees Itself
He didn’t know it, but the trap had actually been set six days earlier.
Remember that BIA decision we talked about up there? Yeah. Under this decision, anyone who had entered the United States within the last two years could be labeled an "arriving alien," a term vague enough to mean anything and dangerous enough to mean detention without bond. It stripped thousands of people, many of them asylum seekers like Dylan, of their right to even ask for release.
The system wasted no time using it. On that day, ICE agents executed what can only be described as a nationwide blitz. In city after city, people like Dylan were ambushed as they left courtrooms. Some were arrested outside courthouses, others at their check-in appointments. Different states, different faces, same trap. Immigrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, Ghana, Ukraine. These were families with kids in strollers, workers with pay stubs still warm in their pockets. One by one, they were taken. Mothers separated from children. Fathers vanished from courtroom halls. The decision was barely a week old, and already it had fractured lives across the country like a precision bomb.
The panel who signed off on it? Garry Malphrus, the chair of the BIA, installed during the Bush administration and known for his far-right affiliations. What most people don’t know is that as chair, Malphrus didn’t just oversee the case. He handpicked the panel himself. He assigned himself, Hugh Mullane, another Bush-era selection, and Deborah Goodwin, appointed by Trump in 2019. This wasn’t random. This was deliberate. This was power arranging its own reflection.
Turns out Garry Malphrus isn’t just any immigration judge: he’s a Trump megadonor, funneling cash to his PACs in both 2020 and 2024 like a man investing in outcomes. And with GEO Group raking in detention dollars under Trump, you’ve got to wonder: is this justice, or just one more rigged game?
It is corruption down to the guts of the government. A rigged bench passing judgment on the vulnerable with no check, no balance, no oversight. This was not a legal interpretation. It was an engineered outcome. A coordinated shift in the balance of power away from fairness and into the hands of cruelty. They knew exactly what they were doing.
The Judiciary Doesn’t Oversee Immigration Court
Most Americans believe immigration court is part of the judicial branch. It is not. The Executive Office for Immigration Review, or EOIR, is not a court in any real sense. It is a branch of the Department of Justice, fully controlled by the executive branch. The judges are not independent. They are not confirmed by Congress. They are not immune from political manipulation. They answer to the Attorney General. In this case, to Pam Bondi. For these immigrants, the trump administration is their judge, jury, and executioner.
That means the same person who sets immigration policy also appoints, removes, and directs the people who are supposed to oversee it. The illusion of checks and balances collapses the moment you realize the referees wear the same jersey as the enforcers.
So, on February 2nd, 2025, Pam Bondi was confirmed as Attorney General. She is not a neutral legal figure. She is a longtime Trump loyalist with a track record of burying the truth when it suits her.
She famously dropped the Trump University fraud case after receiving campaign donations, a move so blatant it barely qualifies as corruption anymore. It is just the way things are done in Trump’s America. I wonder if it was at this point she realized she could be openly corrupt and the U.S. wouldn’t do anything about it. Or maybe she got a taste for evil and has been on a warpath since? Either way..
Bondi was confirmed that day by every single Republican on the senate and one registered Democrat, John Fetterman.
Ten days after her confirmation, she orchestrated one of the most aggressive political purges in the history of the immigration courts.Thirteen Biden-appointed immigration judges were fired with no individual justification. All six appellate judges were removed. Forty assistant chief immigration judges were discarded and nine BIA members who had been appointed by Biden were swept out like trash.
Here's the kicker. We don’t even know if Trump has finished replacing the judges he purged with loyalists like in Project 2025. We don’t know who’s hearing which cases. They do not reveal the names of the judges. Unlike other administrations, this one doesn't hold press briefings or issue public announcements when new judges are installed. Legally, they don't have to. Transparency is optional and this administration has chosen silence.
I submitted a FOIA request in late May 2025 to find out. Whether they’ll answer it? No clue. They already have 39 pages of rejected FOIA requests, most of them citing Exemption D6 of the Freedom of Information Act.
D6 is supposed to protect against “clearly unwarranted invasions of personal privacy.” It was designed to keep private information, like social security numbers or home addresses, out of public reach. But this administration is wielding it like a smokescreen, applying it broadly to shield structural decisions, staffing changes, even job titles.
They're using a privacy rule to cover up a government overhaul. That’s not security. That’s a cover-up with a name tag.
Private Prisons Love the Criminal
GEO Group, one of the largest private prison contractors in the country, watched this crackdown unfold with dollar signs in their eyes. They weren’t just passive beneficiaries. They were investors in cruelty. As raids escalated and detention quotas ballooned, the profits followed.
By April, over 139,000 people had been deported. More than 50,000 sat in ICE custody on any given day. At an average of $175 per head, per day, that’s $8.75 million every 24 hours nearly $3.2 billion a year.
Not for rehabilitation. Not for justice. For incarceration.
And GEO? They’ve received over $1 billion in new ICE contracts in 2025 alone so far . Not proposed. Not speculative. Secured and signed. That money goes to expand detention centers, boost executive salaries, and keep the cycle spinning. Every arrest fills a bed. Every bed fills a ledger.
You’ll never guess who padded Trump’s 2024 campaign coffers? The same GEO Group! They bet on a winner for them. Now they’re collecting. This isn’t policy. It’s profiteering. A detention-industrial complex where human suffering is a revenue stream and the cruelty is the point.
And it’s not just GEO Group. CoreCivic, LaSalle Corrections, and dozens of smaller contractors are cashing in too. Detention is a booming business, and it runs on taxpayer dollars. In early 2025, Republicans celebrated the passage of their so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” also known as H.R.1. This bill has passed the house, and the senate has to vote on it next, so it is NOT law yet.
Hint: This is your daily reminder to go call your senator today and tell them not to vote on it. Even if it feels like you’re yelling into the wind. They must hear our voices and know we will not stand for this. Use the capitol switchboard & ask to be connected: (202) 224-3121. You can also use the 5 Calls app for free, or visit senate.gov to find your reps. They have voicemails. Call at 3 pm or 3 am. Anyone can do it. Teenager. Adult. Child. We are the only voice these people have.
So this bill allocated another 160 billion for immigration enforcement, with 49 billion dollars for detention infrastructurewhile slashing from Medicaid/Medicare and giving billionaires the biggest tax break yet.
Most of that money for immigration & detention is funneled straight into the pockets of these private prison companies. There are over 140 private ICE detention centers. There are only three owned by the state.
These are the same corporations that helped bankroll Trump’s campaign.
We The People Say Fuck This
On May 28th, students in New York took to the streets. They chanted Dylan’s name. They carried signs for the families torn apart. They demanded the system answer for its cruelty.
More than twenty were arrested. There was no violence. Only inconvenience as they formed a blockade outside of an ICE facility.
You can watch the video on my Substack by clicking here
Most mainstream outlets won’t tell you about it. Some ignored it entirely. Others buried it in vague headlines or clipped footage. That is not an accident. That is the point.
See, the thing about most corporate media is that if you look just a little too closely, past the watered-down half-assed protest coverage, past the puff pieces dressed as journalism, you’ll start to see the outline of a machine.
One that is owned by the very billionaires who benefit the most from all of this. The ones whose portfolios swell every time another family is caged. The ones who know that if one person stands up, others will follow. So they work overtime to make it seem like no one is standing at all.
But people are standing.
That protest mattered. They all do. It reminded us that not everyone is evil. That not everyone is asleep. That there are people, young people, brave people, who care. Who still believe this country can be something better. Who are willing to risk their freedom to protect someone else’s.
Sometimes I get nervous telling these stories. Honestly, I get nervous every day. Because I am saying the things they want silenced. I am showing you what they want hidden. But I do it anyway. Because I know the moment we stop speaking is the moment they win.
So if you are reading this, know you are not alone. Know that the silence they sell you is fake and know that even when the headlines lie, the truth still lives. It lives in the streets, in the chants, in the voices refusing to shut up and sit down.
The next major protest on June 14th, the day that the orange supremacist draft dodger is throwing himself a “military” birthday parade akin to North Korea on our tax dollars. You can find more information about your local protest using mobilize.us.
Just Remember:
They followed every rule. Showed up. Sat quietly. Hoped.
And still, the system swallowed them whole.
Because it was never about justice. It was never about safety. It was about pain.
Pain turned into policy. Suffering sold for profit. Sadists run the government.
And somewhere far away, someone smiled.
Not because the system failed but because it worked.
It’s on us to stand up to this.
This piece is not behind a paywall. It never will be. Stories like this should not be locked away for only those who can afford to read them.
If you believe in this kind of reporting the kind that holds power to account and gives voice to the disappeared you can subscribe for free to help it reach more people. And if you're able, you can support this work with a paid subscription. I appreciate you making it this far with me. Let’s meet again.
TRAC is a great Immigration resource.
https://tracreports.org/immigration/quickfacts/eoir.html
In my opinion you are quickly reaching the status of hero. You live the cliche. You truly DO speak truth to power.