Editor’s note: The views and opinions presented by guest contributors to The Barbed Wire do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the company, the newsroom, its staff, advisers, or advertisers. Emmanuel Gonzalez, a 15-year-old who has a serious intellectual disability, walked away from his mom’s fruit stand in Houston in October. His mother […]
Tag: ICE
Posted inNews
‘They Tricked Me’: A Father Was Chained After He Went to ICE to Reunite With His Kids
This piece was originally published by KFF Health News and written and reported by Claudia Boyd-Barrett, Renuka Rayasam, and Amanda Seitz. Carlos arrived at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in New Mexico in December, believing he was one step closer to reuniting with his children. By that point, his 14-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter had been in […]
Posted inCulture
Musician Carter St. Hogan Honed His Trans Identity in Texas Honky-Tonks Before Fighting ICE in Minneapolis
Artist Carter St. Hogan starts all of his performances with an unexpected bit: asking the audience to choose between two mustaches. “I’m a trans person who still cannot grow a mustache. It’s not in me. I don’t have the genetics,” Hogan explained during an unofficial SXSW showcase last week at the White Horse, a historic […]
Posted inImmigration
‘Something’s Different’: LGBTQ+ Texans Are Organizing in Defense of Immigrants
It’s hard to ignore Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents when they come crashing into your neighborhood. It’s become the topic of conversation in Austin’s North Loop, Reilly, a 42-year-old transgender resident, told The Barbed Wire one February evening from a graffiti-covered picnic table in the grass behind Epoch, the neighborhood’s beloved 24-hour coffee shop. “I […]
Posted inNews
ICE Has Considered Adding 20,000 Detention Center Beds in Secretive Expansion Across Texas, Reports Say
A group of buildings in El Paso, next to apartment complexes and a pediatrician’s office. A towering office building in the Woodlands, across from a preschool. A sprawling, vacant warehouse South of Dallas. Each could be transformed into mega detention centers or headquarters for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, according to an investigation by Wired. […]
Posted inImmigration
Texas Lawmakers Say They’re Demanding Major ICE Reforms Because ‘Families and Children Are Terrified’
EXCLUSIVE “Families and children are terrified” of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents breaking into homes without warrants, Democratic state Rep. Josey Garcia, of San Antonio, told The Barbed Wire this week. That’s one of the reasons Garcia and 20 other Texas state representatives say they’ve signed a letter demanding that Congress enact serious agency reforms […]
Posted inImmigration
‘Political Prisoner’ Leqaa Kordia Has Been Hospitalized, DHS Says. After Calling 16 Hospitals, Her Lawyers Say They Can’t Find Her.
A Columbia University protester who has been deemed a political prisoner by Texas Democrats who’ve called for her release from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center was hospitalized over the weekend due to a seizure, according to The Dallas Morning News. Leqaa Kordia, a 33-year-old Palestinian woman, was taken to Prairieland Detention Center in […]
Posted inCrime
45-Year-Old Man Beaten Up By High Schoolers After Allegedly Attacking Them During ICE Walkout
A 45-year-old man has been charged with two counts of assault after getting into a fistfight with a group of Texas teenagers who were protesting Immigration Customs and Enforcement. On Monday, as the group of high schoolers carried signs and walked out of school in Buda to protest ICE, a man in his truck began […]
Posted inImmigration
Hundreds of Kids, Including Infants, Are Still at the ICE Facility That Released Liam Ramos. Now There’s a Measles Outbreak.
Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old who was pictured in a blue bunny-eared hat being taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, has been released from a Texas immigration facility. But the conditions at Dilley Immigration Processing Center near San Antonio — and the health of the hundreds of children, including infants, being detained there — […]
Posted inImmigration
Texas Democrats Demand Release of ‘Political Prisoner’ Leqaa Kordia, Compare ICE Facility to ‘Internment Camps’
Texas Democrats are accusing President Donald Trump of holding 33-year-old Columbia University protester Leqaa Kordia as a political prisoner, and on Friday called for her release in a frigid press conference outside of Prairieland Detention Center in North Texas. Kordia, a Palestinian Muslim woman who had lived in Paterson, New Jersey since 2016, has been […]