Downtown ATL holds ICE’s newest hellhole. Cruelty is the point.
It’s hard to keep up with this administration’s outrages, on so many fronts. But the effort to target, humiliate and mistreat immigrants may be its most malignant campaign.
Whether it’s tackling a disconsolate mother in a courthouse hallway or dragging women and kids from their beds in a Rambo-style raid, ICE is living up to its moniker as a cold-hearted wing of a heartless government. It’s like there is no bottom, that each day brings a new affront.
The latest indignity from Immigration and Customs Enforcement is right here in downtown Atlanta. Detainees are being kept overnight — sometimes for days — in abusive conditions in the basement of the agency’s overcrowded field office on Ted Turner Drive. The conditions defy the department’s own written standards.
The basement’s temporary holding area has become a de-facto jail, where detainees often linger for days without beds, showers or a chance to see their family members or attorneys, according to a story last week written by my colleagues Lautaro Grinspan and Stephanie Lamm.
They noted in the 16 months leading up to Donald Trump’s return to office, just eight detainees spent more than 24 hours at the Atlanta ICE field office’s holding rooms. Twelve hours is supposed to be the limit.
But in the six months following the president’s inauguration on Jan. 20, some 1,200 people have been held there more than 24 hours, according to ICE data compiled by the Deportation Data Project.
Trump has said he is targeting the “worst of the worst,” immigrants who wreak havoc in their adopted land. “Bad hombres,” he once put it.
But those being scooped up are regular Josés and Marias, men driving work vans or women trying to get by cleaning American homes.
Nationally, more than 70% of the 57,000 people in detention as of late July had no criminal convictions, data shows. Another third have “pending charges,” although those are often the charge that got them locked up. Usually traffic offenses, immigration attorneys say.
Data shows the same story for the 1,200 people who’ve been held for longer stays at the Atlanta field office: 313 had been convicted of some criminal charge, 442 had “pending” charges and 443 were categorized as “immigration violator.”
So far, the longest basement detention was 89 days. It was a 42-year-old Guatemalan with no felony charges and a pending criminal case. He was deported in June.
One detainee featured by my colleagues was held with 60 others in a cramped holding room. It stank from a lack of showers and a leaking toilet, the man said.
But what stood out to me was the case of a Mexican woman, the mother of two who spent nine days sleeping on the floor of a windowless room in ICE’s Atlanta dungeon.
She was nursing when she arrived, her lawyer, Nicole Kozycki, told my colleagues.
Yes, ICE ripped a nursing mother away from her young children, kept her locked up and forced her to sleep on a concrete floor. Finally, she was moved to the Stewart Detention Center in South Georgia, one of the nation’s largest ICE facilities.
In 2023, government inspectors cited violations at Stewart, saying they threatened the “health, safety, and rights of detainees.”
The facility has been routinely overcrowded since, yet Kozycki said her client found Stewart to be “like the Hilton.” At least she had a bed, shower and change of clothes.
“Why keep her there under such circumstances? Every single day was agony,” the lawyer told the AJC. The field office “is not meant to house people. It’s meant for processing.”
It’s like making people sleep at a dystopian DMV.
Why keep people in conditions like that? Well, because ICE can. Because they are rounding up hordes of people and have nowhere to keep them.
Charles Kuck, an immigration lawyer for 36 years, has seen waves of enforcement strategies through the decades and says such cruel, rough-handed tactics are purposeful.
“It’s outrageous, how do you as a human being do that to a nursing mother?” Kuck asked. “It’s 100% message-sending. If you pressure them enough, scare them and depress them, you’re ready to sign anything.”
That means many will give up and allow deportation. Or others will see such dire reports and leave the country.
“No one is going to get fired for keeping them in crappy conditions; they’re going to get fired for not meeting their goals (to pick up immigrants),” Kuck said. “They are under orders from (Trump adviser) Stephen Miller not to let anyone out for any reason.”
ICE did not get back to me to answer questions, nor did they for the original story.
Carolina Antonini, an immigration lawyer for 30 years, sees such tactics as a “shock and awe” campaign to confuse and intimidate immigrants to diminish their willingness to stay.
“If there is one thing about what is happening is the mask has been taken off,” said Antonini, who was born in Venezuela. “It’s very clear. It’s not legal or illegal immigration. It’s about any immigrant, any person who is not a traditional American.”
She told me she often gets Trump supporters coming to her because a spouse or relative has been picked up.
“They wanted it to be other people,” Antonini said, adding: “There is a disconnect between our morality and our patriotism.
“I wasn’t surprised, because the pretenses are gone,” she said. “I am surprised that there’s not more outrage.”
About the Author
Bill Torpy, who writes about metro Atlanta for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, joined the newspaper in 1990.
