Thread by @TornilloWitness

WITNESS JOSHUA RUBIN reports-It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Homestead prison for children is not ready to fold up its tents & steal away into the night of history. In fact, it is growing. Children arrive in the dark of night, and witnesses see them as they are marched...1/10

...dazed & confused we imagine, into their overcrowded, regimented new lives. They are issued clothing, shirts in various shades, underwear, pants. Sweatshirts to keep them warm in case their bunk is close to the roaring air conditioners that blow all day and night.2/10

Also useful during their brief outside periods in the sun, since hats to shield them from the South Florida rays are not necessary for the kids, but only the staff who all wear them. The children wrap their heads in the sweatshirts.3/10

They are clearing out one of the barracks/dorms that somehow did not crumble like other buildings did from the one-two punch of Hurricanes Andrew and Irma, only got moldy, so they’ll do for prison quarters for refugee children. The offices that the barracks were housing...4/10

...will go to portables brought in towed on tractor trailers for the purpose. Bathroom trailers have been seen coming in, as well.
The accommodations, the sleeping quarters where the children are packed like sardines (so described by NPR...5/10

...months ago during the first of the big expansions) will now be in search of a metaphor that means even more crowded. And in these quarters, in the dark, cautioned to silence, new arrivals will spend nights without love or embrace or sympathy, because those are forbidden.6/10

Nights that end in the dark of early morning, sun not yet up, 5:30 am, they dress & are walked single file to the chilled tents, to wait for their breakfast of, invariably, egg & potato, which does not arrive until well after light.7/10

Employees, reluctant to walk the distance to camp from their parking lots, have been encouraged to line their cars in the swales where protesters set up, in an effort to drive away any who would witness & report on the outrage of a prison for refugee children.8/10

Security forces of Arma Global Services & Response Force One wage a determined campaign of harassment of these witnesses, calling MDPD multiple times/day 2 enlist their aid in protecting their atrocity from exposure. Occasionally it works enough 2 get a witness cuffed (me!). 9/10

But. It is a marathon, not a sprint. Witnesses will be at their ladders, waving to the children, reminding them that although we are so far not wielding enough power to free them, we are not abandoning them, that we love them, that they are #OurKids

That we will press on. 10/10