the Empathy List #162: The Cruelty is the Point

A Visit to a Colorado Detention Center Reminded Me (Yet Again!) that Our Immigration Policy is Less About Laws, and More about Dehumanization.

Dec 16, 2025

Hello friends, Liz here.

This past Saturday, the morning of the protest, I felt nervous. I didn’t know what to expect, so I packed for the worst: medicine, toiletries, a waterproof notebook, whatever I thought I could need for an overnight stay in jail, if I happened to be arrested.

A small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk in front of Aurora’s detention center. A few held signs (the largest said, “God Loves Everyone”). Most bundled in winter coats, hats, gloves, scarves. The woman at the head of the group—a retired pastor with a shock of bobbed purple hair—wore a knitted beanie. We were white, middle-aged or older, and a few parents had brought their children, around 25 of us in all. The leader handed out song sheets: Silent Night, O Little Town of Bethlehem, Joy to the World. We had come to carol sing near the gated entrance. I belted as loud as I could, hoping the wind might carry the tune to the hundreds of men held within the concrete block facility.

As we sang, we watched men and women walk up the sidewalk toward the closed gated entrance. We began to notice a glut near the gate, a few people on each side, talking urgently. The purple-haired song leader went to investigate.

As it turned out, our group had arrived at one of the three times per week designated for visitation. Family members, lawyers, and advocates had arrived at the scheduled time to see those inside. But, apparently, the guards in the facility had deemed our presence—the presence of protestors—as a security threat. They had shut down the entire facility to do a head-count of the men inside, and they were not allowing those who had entered already or those who had arrived for appointments to leave or enter.

The song leader had asked, urgently, what if we moved backward? What if we sang from across the street? She was polite, eager to comply.

But it was too little, too late. We had occupied the sidewalk with our sheet music for twenty minutes before dispersing. And our brief, peaceful occupation of the public sidewalk had resulted in ICE officers closing the center to all visitation for the entire day.

The organizers of this carol sing (not me, not my church, but an entirely different organization) had made real mistakes. They had failed to claim a permit for the event. (!!) They had also failed to check the times for appointments, so they hadn’t known that Saturday was one of only three visitation days per week. And they hadn’t realized that ICE officers within our own community could be so cruel, so capricious.

Because visitation hadn’t always been on Saturday. The administrators frequently changed the times.

I later tried to reason with the guards myself—"Listen, we’ve gone. Can’t you let these people in now?”—the ICE officers declined and cited “policy.” When I asked who I could talk to about the policy, they said the organization that ran the facility, Geo. They referred me to Corporate.

These officers did not mention the facility’s warden. They also didn’t mention what I found out later—that the policy of this very facility had a way of shifting daily based on the whims of the officers.

And, of course, we were no threat. Not one person in our group touched the fence, yelled at a guard, or even held an aggressive poster. We handed out snacks to people coming and going. We were polite to officers. We even offered hugs and support to a woman who came up to us, asking for rent assistance (we connected her to a neighborhood nonprofit and to a local church’s aid fund).

Despite seeing ICE in the news do such dramatic harm to migrants, I still found myself surprised and angry when I realized the way they had hoped to manipulate us.

ICE was making us—the “protestors”—the bad guys. We had messed up the visitation schedule. Our presence had hurt the very migrants we wanted to help. Blame the allies. They hoped to dissuade us from staying, and to discourage us from ever returning.