Thread by @matt_cam

I just met a client in ICE custody whose story will be with me for the rest of my life.

She's the strongest person I've ever met in detention, a victim of injustice at the hands of state & federal authorities clearly proven from the record.

She's been in 9 months w/o a lawyer.

All she wanted was for someone to listen & understand the truth of her situation. Cops, ICE, the immigration judge--they all got it wrong. No one would listen to a homeless woman without a lawyer, & she has no right to one in deportation proceedings.

She fought like hell anyway

I look at these people in these cold visiting rooms sometimes, and I have ask myself:

Could I do this? Could I survive in here, with so much against me? So little hope? Such horrifically dehumanizing conditions, designed to destroy your will? Would I keep fighting?

Could you?

She could have accepted deportation within a week of being taken in. But she learned the law, organized hundreds of pages of supporting documentation, obtained a pile of evidence, and (most impressively) extensively and professionally briefed her own appeal in her 2nd language.

But the judge simply wouldn't listen. No matter how much you try to control your emotions and make your own case, it is nearly impossible to be taken seriously in deportation proceedings without counsel. And more than 90% of ICE detainees *never* have an attorney.

This is as much detail as I can tell you for now, & she'll be more than capable of telling her own story once she's released. She has been doing little more than reading ("I'm going through books like the Cookie Monster!") & writing for 9 months, and there has to be a book there

I would never have even known this living model of strength and dignity under fire existed if not for a couple of committed friends who told me what was happening and asked me to visit.

There are tens of thousands like her in ICE custody around the US with no one on the outside

Earlier this month, the Globe reported that the sheriff of the jail she has suffered extreme mental & physical torture in for 9 months has spent more time licking Stephen Miller's boots than concerning himself w/cleanliness of his own facility. Pathetic.

bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/12/…