An uprising broke out at an immigrant jail in southern Texas on Saturday, with around 1,000 immigrants detained in the facility — many of them children — chanting “Libertad” and “Let us go,” according to an attorney who witnessed the event.
The protest took place at South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, which closed in 2024 but was reopened by the Trump administration this year to detain immigrant families.
On Saturday, facility personnel abruptly ordered immigration attorneys who were present to leave, saying “an incident” had taken place. Michigan-based immigration attorney Eric Lee, who was among those forced to leave, said he could hear shouting that sounded “high-pitched” and “urgent,” indicating that he believed there were “hundreds of children” taking part in the uprising.
Lee later said his clients told him the protest began in response to the treatment of Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old from Minnesota who was abducted, along with his father, by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents last week. The two were transferred to the jail, more than 1,300 miles from home, shortly after being detained.
School officials familiar with the incident say that an adult living in Liam’s home had begged for ICE agents to let Liam stay after his father was taken into custody.
Those immigrants kids have more courage than our elected Democrats.
Democrats have none of the levers of power, they can do nothing. I still think a good few who greenlit more ICE funding need to be replaced but by and large even if every democrat had the backbone of Harriet Tubman, they could do nothing. Republicans have majority everywhere.
The Dems have the most important power of all, the overwhelming support of an overwhelming portion of the population. MAGA wants to pretend they have all the power, but as time goes on, we are seeing that even the military and local and state law enforcement are starting to distance themselves.
The Dems have the numbers, by a LOT. And MAGA knows it.
I’ll give you that Dems are great at shooting themselves in the foot but in recent elections Russian propaganda has had a real effect and it would be dangerous to pretend otherwise. That being said I think Mamdani has shown the real progressives win. So let’s hope this gets through but I won’t hold my breath. Look forward to another four years of them trying to win over ‘middle America’
Tl;dr: Democrats are controlled opposition.
When they do have any leverage, they find plenty of reasons not to use it. The Republican party has put on a decades-long master class on being obstructionist little twats, yet most Democrats fail to learn and the few that have often seem more like pressure release valves than actual agents of change.
I’d agree with that, they’ve been running right if center for a long time and their intentional stifling of real progressives have been a large reason for voter apathy. I am happy that AOC and Mamdani show that real change is possible but I won’t hold my breath that the party will change their tune any time soon.
I can’t defend the democrats who crossed over, but I don’t believe that the republicans wouldn’t be able to whip up votes if they hadn’t, and I’d rather a quisling Democrat in a seat over another Republican.
I can agree with that.