Emma Mclean-Riggs, Part 1: Immigration, The Constitution, & Determination
Unlocking Change: Emma Mclean-Riggs, ACLU of Colorado - Part 1
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Emma Mclean-Riggs: we are seeing some things, in our communities, in our courts that we've never seen before. We're seeing the breaking of norms to a really, really frightening extent. so I really hesitate in this current moment, in this current political climate to say, "It is unlawful so it will not happen." What I can say is that it is unlawful, so it will be met with the full force of resistance from our citizens and also our bar, our civil institutions because that is not a thing that we can lawfully do to folks.
Trevor Jones: Emma, thank you for being here today.
Emma Mclean-Riggs: So excited to be with you both.
Trevor Jones: Yes.
We've been looking forward to this.
Meet Emma Mclean-Riggs and the ACLU of Colorado
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Trevor Jones: Uh, so if you don't mind, could you [00:02:00] kind of tell us who you are and what is the ACLU?
Emma Mclean-Riggs: Yes. My name is Emma McLean Riggs, and I'm a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Colorado, the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado. The American Civil Liberties Union is a very old organization that has defended civil rights and civil liberties.
~Um. ~Of Americans for over a hundred years. We have an affiliate structure. What that means is that we have a national, um, ACLU group and they divide their work into subject specific projects. So we have, for example, the immigrants rights project, the National Prison Project. That's kind of how national is structured.
And then we have various state level affiliates that are working sort of as more general, um, first line responders to civil liberties issues in our states. The ACLU of Colorado is one of them, and that's who I work for.
Trevor Jones: ~Fantastic. Thank you. Emma. Uh, ~I take it the work of the ACLU tends to be more litigation, court-based stuff. Or are you guys bigger than that?
Emma Mclean-Riggs: We are, we do a whole bunch of different stuff. So, um, we do [00:03:00] of course litigation and that's what I work on. I'm on our legal team. We have a policy team that does legislation at the state level. Um, and then we have an organizing team that does Know Your Rights and community organizing and other kinds of stuff.
~So the ACLU and, and, um, we'll see if my national folks feel the need to go on record and correct me.~
~Um, but my memory of our sort of origin story is, I think of it as a bunch of Jewish lawyers defending Nazis. Okay. Um, in terms of defending First Amendment rights, no matter who is trying to invoke their First Amendment rights. We of course have a really long history of doing, um, civil rights issues for black people.~
~So ACLU National and all of our affiliates have been involved in that struggle for a long time. Um, black folks have already always been the heart of the alus work, particularly in our national office. Um, but we have done. Lots of different stuff. Okay. ~
Tiffany McCoy: ~I was just wondering like, why did I think that? So see now, ~
Emma Mclean-Riggs: ~proud tradition in our work.~
Trevor Jones: ~So you mentioned that, uh, the ACLU is involved in immigration rights and other, uh, civil liberties. What, uh, work do you do with the ACLU? ~
Emma Mclean-Riggs: ~So, I'm a generalist. Um, we all are at the sort of state affiliate level, and particularly for smaller affiliates like ours. Um. ACLU Colorado is not on the small, small end of our affiliates, but is definitely not one of our bigger affiliates.~
~Um, and so we all have to do sort of everything. That being said, um, the way that we allocate work in our office is generally based on folks' interests and their previous experience. I was a public defender before I came to the ACLU of Colorado, and so I've done a bunch of criminal legal reform work and that's kind of where my heart is.~
~So I do a bunch of stuff, but cages and policing are a big part of my work. ~
ICE: A Pressing Concern
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Trevor Jones: ~I definitely appreciate that summary. ~As you know, most of us here at the Colorado Radio for Justice have been justice impacted to some level, if not deeply impacted as Tiffany and I have been. Um, what are some of the things that your office or you personally, are working on that are really pressing right now?
Emma Mclean-Riggs: Yeah, so really pressing right now. We are obviously having kind of emergency response in the immigration space as we have seen the Trump administration, um, really radically escalate detention and deportation. Um, we have tried to pivot to the moment and respond to that. Um, the other things that we've been doing are sort of the traditional meat and potatoes of our work ~in an ecosystem like Colorado's, where we are not the Bay, we are not New York.~
~We don't have this sort of, um, rich proliferation of public interest legal orgs where we can have a legal org that does kind of every sliver of work. Um, we have been sort of the traditional guardians in various spaces where other people haven't been. ~So things like policing, prisons, sex offender registration, kind of places where we have been important actors are places where I am [00:04:00] really emphasizing that we need to hold the line, um, as things shift on the national level.
So we've pivoted to immigration, we've pivoted to, um, access rights for medical care, for trans youth, um, for sort of full participation for trans people. Those are both really important and we're trying to hold the line here in Colorado in the areas where we have been kind of the traditional protectors in the space.
Trevor Jones: As immigration has taken, you know, such a heavy place in our society right now and immigration laws, I-C-E, or ICE, ~uh, and we hear about it every day on the news, uh,~ is there any particular case or anything that's Colorado based that has been really monumental or very important for you guys as an office or for you personally?
Emma Mclean-Riggs: Yeah, we've had sort of a, a couple of things, um, come up and, and I wanna talk about kind of our recent litigation, but also what we're seeing now in front of us. ~Um, ~so Colorado is about to see a really rapid expansion in detention bed space. So [00:05:00] we historically have had the one detention facility in Aurora.
You'll hear folks call it Geo. That's the name of the private company that operates it. That detention center has a max capacity, I think, of around 1500. Um, historically it hasn't been maintained at that mass max capacity as far as we know. Um, it's been around 1200, 1300 people lately. Um, we've seen rapid increase in what they call bed space, which I always think is a little Orwellian in language.
I'm a little bit like, it's not a bed, it's a cage. But you know-- for the sake of the data, they call it bed space. We've seen, um, more people placed into that facility. But we are, we believe about to see a new facility open up at Hudson, in a disused correctional facility. We also believe we're about to see expansion of bed space In Walsenburg, and what that expansion of bed space means.
~Um, ~I think for our work and for kind of where [00:06:00] we're situated is: A), we expect to see a corresponding, um, increase in detentions because when they have those beds, they will fill them. Particularly when we're talking about, um, private profit, which we're really talking about in the detention space. Um, but we are also kind of an interesting geography in the immigration space.
So we are roughly in the middle of the country, north, south and east west, and we are sort of a gateway to Texas and Louisiana and other kind of big deportation hubs where they run flights actually out of the country. So we expect to see lots of people transferred through these facilities. ICE runs, um, facilities all over the country and they, they transfer people very frequently, much more than you'll see even in the federal prison system.
~Um, ~so we'll expect people to kind of come through our facilities, um, in a way that is gonna, I think, impact the way that we think about dealing with conditions in those facilities. We're not expecting the conditions to get better. We're expecting them to get worse.
DBU v. Trump, ACLU of Colorado's Lawsuit
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Emma Mclean-Riggs: So that's sort of [00:07:00] what we're-- what we're dealing with right now is, is looking at this expansion.
And then another place where we've been kind of at the center of this fight is of course the Alien Enemies Act, and our case DBU v. Trump.
Trevor Jones: Would you care to elaborate on the DBU versus Trump and the Alien Enemies [Act]?
Emma Mclean-Riggs: Yes. ~This case, um, was very, is very, very important to us. So, um, Donald Trump issued an executive order purporting to apply the Alien Enemies Act, which is a very old law, um, to all Venezuelans over 14 years old with an affiliation with Trend ua, which is a Venezuelan gang that began, um, operating in prisons.~
Ryan Conarro: ~You know, what Could I interrupt and ask you Start that again ~
Emma Mclean-Riggs: ~from all that? Yeah. ~
Ryan Conarro: ~We have like embedded. Sound effects. It's, it's not inappropriate. ~
Emma Mclean-Riggs: ~Yeah. It's our situational siren alarm. Yeah. Right. Yeah. ~
Trevor Jones: ~Might use that. ~
Emma Mclean-Riggs: ~Uh, ~DBU v. Trump is our Alien Enemies Act case. So it is
About an executive order, um, that Donald Trump issued purporting to apply the Alien Enemies Act, which allows very, very swift deportation without, um, particular types of notice, to all Venezuelan men over the age of 14.
So really, I wanna emphasize that we're talking about Venezuelan men and Venezuelan boys, um, affiliated with Tren de Aragua, which is a gang originating from Venezuela. Um. I, I wanna be really clear when I say affiliation, that we're talking about the government's allegation that these men and boys are affiliated with Tren [00:08:00] de Aragua.
In the cases that we've seen, we have seen that affiliation linked to a small and indicator as a crown tattoo, um, which might be for a person's partner. We have lots of crown tattoos for a reina, right? Like a, a wife or a girlfriend. Um, they are traditional in some parts of Venezuelan villages for various, um, religious holidays.
So that's the kind of evidence that we're looking at when we say the word "affiliated," right? ~Um, ~and we were seeing these really rapid, um. Uh, deportations and attempted deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, where Venezuelan men would be, for example, woken up in the middle of the night and told they were being removed and loaded on a plane and taken to El Salvador to a place called CECOT, which is one of the most infamous mega prisons in the world.
CECOT is in, uh, like I said, El Salvador and not Venezuela and El Salvador has a very [00:09:00] complicated, um, political situation going on right now. Due process has been suspended in El Salvador for many years. Um, based on Bukele's, uh-- and, and Bukele is the head of the regime in El Salvador right now-- based on his sort of anti-gang agenda.
So folks have not been having trials, they have not had access to process, and CECOT is a prison where the regime openly boasts, um, that people who enter will never leave. They will never see lawyers, they will never see, um, NGO workers, non-governmental organization workers, which is what they call, um, nonprofit organizations, kind of in the rest of the world.
~Um, ~so we were seeing people sent to CECOT with very, very little notice. Um, and we're very, very worried we couldn't get them back. And so we in Colorado have a very high percentage of Venezuelan new arrivals. So we knew that our community was super vulnerable. Um, we also had this Operation [00:10:00] Aurora, um, sort of political theater around Tren de Aragua where there were allegations in the national media that Tren de Aragua had taken over apartment buildings in Aurora and was, um, running the streets in Aurora.
~Um, ~very thin evidence for those claims, but they, they were there and they were in the national media. So we kind of knew as we started to see deportations coming out of DC and Texas, that we were gonna be on the list of targets for that. And so we had a sort of series of ways that we thought about addressing that and the way that it, um.
It ended up moving forward was we have this case, DBU. DBU is the initials of ~are, I suppose, is?-- DBU, is the initials of, um,~ a person, our client, um, whose identity we have, um, filed to conceal from the public. Mostly because, um, our client faces danger in his country of origin if it were to be known that he was kind of in this situation, both in terms of gang allegations and in terms of bringing a [00:11:00] civil rights case. We filed on his behalf and on the behalf of a class of Venezuelan men and boys who were, um, at risk of being designated or already had been designated under the Alien Enemies Act for removal. And we asked a district court here in Colorado to say, you may not transfer people who are, will be designated or are designated or have been designated under the Alien Enemies Act out of Colorado, while this case is pending. Our sort of challenge to the Alien Enemies Act, which is a challenge, much like the challenge National ACLU brought in a couple of other affiliates have brought around the country. ~Um, ~so we asked the judge for that order and we received it on May 6th, which we're very excited about.
Um, we think we have stemmed the bleeding in our jurisdiction. Um, and I, ~I know I've, I've talked a lot, but ~I will, I will flag, um, because I think this is really important for our community here to understand, it's been really difficult to track who has been disappeared [00:12:00] in this way. Um, the government knows who they've taken, but almost nobody else does.
Um, people did not have a chance to call their families. They, if they had lawyers, they often didn't have a chance to call them. Um, so tracking who they've taken and particularly who they've taken from our jurisdiction has been kind of a mission. Um, I believe that the government took 15 people ultimately to CECOT.
I think 14 of those people were Venezuelan and removed pursuant to what we've been talking about. One of those people is Salvadoran, and I believe that he remains in CECOT today. And 14 of those folks I believe landed in Venezuela as part of the, the prisoner exchange. ~Um, ~but we're still kind of tracking proof of life.
I have what I would call reliable proof of life for eight of those Venezuelan folks, and I'm still searching for, for the following six. So we're really dealing with [00:13:00] this kind of unprecedented level of secrecy and danger and non-cooperation. ICE has always been much more apt to disappearing people than we see in most prisons and jails.
Um, and it's gotten much worse, especially as we have this kind of like international kerfuffle over these folks and their lives.
Tiffany McCoy: I am just like mind blown and confused right now because that just sounds crazy. That sounds insane. ~Um, ~I don't know a lot about politics, but from being incarcerated, I have seen things about like going from one country to another country and them not being able to lock you up in the other country.
So what I don't understand is how they can, I don't like take them from here to CECOT and they go directly to prison?
Emma Mclean-Riggs: Correct.
I don't understand it [00:14:00] either. Um, my understanding is that this is not something we've ever seen before. This, um, sort of "storage" of human beings who have not been convicted of crimes in the relevant jurisdiction.
~Um. ~In another jurisdiction's mega prison like this. And in the litigation there's been lots of back and forth over who has custody and control of these people. So the United States has said we don't have custody and control of these people. Once they're in El Salvador, they're gone and we have nothing to do with them being imprisoned.
Um, slight complication there. We've gotten somebody back from CECOT. So there's Kilmar Abrego Garcia who was returned, um, and also the United States is paying El Salvador, um, to quote unquote "house" these folks in CECOT. So: query as to who actually has, um, control and authority here. But you're completely right in that we haven't seen this before.
Mm-hmm. Um, and certainly [00:15:00] the ACLU's position is that this is wildly unconstitutional. ~Um. And, and our national, our national colleagues at the Immigrants Rights Project have been litigating, um, a little bit. This is a little confusing, so I'll just back up a little bit. There are a few Alien Enemies Act cases all across the country.~
~There's one in, um, Texas. There's one in New York, there's one in Pennsylvania, and they're all in sort of different phases. And so the Texas case and the New York case, I believe, are both a little bit ahead of ours. So National has been kind of litigating the more substantive issues around the legality of using this law.~
~Um, in those other cases, and we are sort of following behind, um, we filed here not to file sort of a cent, like a central substantive challenge because it, it had already been filed in other places, but to protect our people, um, in the short term. So, I mean, the very long and lawyerly way of saying you're absolutely right, this is unhinged.~
Tiffany McCoy: ~Do you have, um, any information on how long? ~
Herbert Alexander: ~Let's, sorry. Interrupt Tim. Hold that thought. Yeah. Oh. 'cause I want to get a question in there for you to ask or, 'cause that way we don't go too far in and have to do crazy edits. ~
Ryan Conarro: ~That's great. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't a tech issue. Okay. Sound, sound and images are good.~
~Yeah. Yeah. We're good. ~
Herbert Alexander: ~Okay. Um, two things. So, uh, that, that, uh, alien act ~
Trevor Jones: ~mm-hmm. ~
Herbert Alexander: ~Is that, uh, are those, is that broad or is it specific on specific cases that they slap on the people? Yeah, so, oh yeah. We'll want to ask, ask them the host to ask. Okay. Okay. Sorry. Okay. And then two, speaking of ilmar, that being on the national level, that's getting a lot of attention, but are there other, what is the percentage of other people that are getting done like that that we don't know about?~
~Mm-hmm. Is there, is there a number for that? ~
Tiffany McCoy: ~Okay. ~
Ryan Conarro: ~I'll let you, do you know the question you were about to ask? Yeah, yeah. And it's still on the topic, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So while we're in this current of the river Yeah. If you go with your question first and then I'll, ~
Tiffany McCoy: ~we've got these and I'll give it to him.~
~Okay. Yeah. Um, hi. Where were we? Where were we at? Un inched. ~Do you have any information on how long someone stays in CECOT once they go there?
Emma Mclean-Riggs: This is a great question. So CECOT is new and ~I, I would have to, we'll have to rerecord if you want the date that Akat opened, but Akata is relatively new. Um, ~it was set up as part of Bukele's, sort of anti-gang crackdown.
And the premise of CECOT is that nobody leaves. The Bukele regime will, uh, will openly say they have openly said to the media many times that the men who enter CECOT - CECOT does not currently hold women - will never see the sun again. So the explicit intention of that mega prison is that nobody ever leaves.
So we don't know yet how long people will actually stay there because it's new. But the regime's intention is that, um, people will stay there forever.
Tiffany McCoy: Wow, okay.
Trevor Jones: It's a very dire situation, obviously. Um, you mentioned Abrego a minute ago and, uh, there's been recent news on him.,~ Uh, coming back, uh, ~are there [00:16:00] any statistics or is any any way for you or anyone to track how many people have been in his situation?
Obviously his did receive national attention. Uh, is the assumption that there's others who have undergone a similar situation or is there a way to track?
Emma Mclean-Riggs: This is very complicated. And it's part of both how ICE is functioning right now, how the Department of Homeland Security is functioning right now, um, with sort of a, a massive increase in lack of transparency.
Um, also how they've always operated. ICE has always been very, very difficult, um, to follow people through, to sort of track where they are and what's happening to them, and, and release kind of even aggregate level statistics like you're asking about right, rather than where a particular person is. That's always been hard.
It's much, much, much harder now, um, under our current administration. ~Um, ~and then we also have this sort of layer of we are dealing with, um, foreign states and foreign regimes. So [00:17:00] we have sort of a second layer of information transparency. Um, and, and one of the things that our, um, NGO partners in Latin America report is that it's very, very difficult to track who comes into CECOT and where from.
So we have these kind of like layers of lack of transparency. My belief - and, and I say this with my own like kind of limited sphere of information - my belief is that Mr. Abrego Garcia is the only person to have been returned from CECOT. Um, again, we believe that there are 252 Venezuelans who are part of this prisoner swap, where I think it was 11 American prisoners were exchanged, um, for 252 Venezuelans to be returned to Venezuela.
So we know that those folks, um, have now left, came from here, left CECOT, and are now in Venezuela. That's what we think. Um, in terms of like how many folks remain in CECOT, the last estimate I saw was about 35. [00:18:00] Um, I know of, of our one human from our jurisdiction. Um, I haven't been tracking the rest of the 35, but, but a, a complicated question and it's a question that should be easy, right?
We should know what is happening to these folks. And we don't.
Trevor Jones: And I guess as a course of justice, if it was such a good thing that it was happening, we might have those numbers and a lot more transparency. ~Uh, ~could you talk to us about the scope of the Alien [Enemies] Act and maybe the purpose behind it and how it is intended to be used?
Emma Mclean-Riggs: ~Yeah, so it's um, the Alien Enemies Act and, and I will need to do some fact checking, so flagging that here. Um, but the Alien Enemies Act, as I recall, um, was originally used to deport Germans, um, as part of the US's engagement in the World Wars. So that's kind of what it was, um, written for. It was implemented very differently, interestingly than it is now.~
~Um, at that point we have very few cases under the Alien Enemies Act because it was never used very often. Um, and folks were sort of given time to return to their homes, um, settle their affairs and then leave. Um. ~The Alien Enemies Act is sort of invoked ~by these executive orders. So it's invoked~ by declaring that we are at war with a particular - the way it has always traditionally been used, and, and my position is the only legal way it can be used, um, is against a nation state.
~Um, so it was Germany, right under this particular time. They said, "We're at war with Germany; the Alien Enemies Act applies." ~The way that the Trump administration has tried to use it is to say that Tren de Aragua, the gang that we were previously talking about is, is, um, synonymous with the Venezuelan [00:19:00] government. Um, all of our experts say that that is nonsense.
~Um, ~there is no reason to believe that Tren de Aragua controls the actions of the Venezuelan government, um, or has significantly infiltrated the Venezuelan government. Um, so there are a couple legal issues here. There's sort of, have we declared war or we in a state of war? Um, we are not with Venezuela. Um.
Dunno that we can say that we are at war with a, a non-governmental entity. Um, and then there's: is Tren de Aragua, the kind of entity that can be designated under the Alien Enemies Act. So that's all kind of on the broader level, which is, um, who are we invoking the act against as a group. And, and Donald Trump has tried to do it against, um, Venezuelan men and boys affiliated with Tren de Aragua. then there's the application of the act to specific people. So there's been lots of kind of conflict over, um, notice requirements and how people find out they're being designated under the act. [00:20:00] Um, but what the government is doing now is they give people a piece of paper. That piece of paper is often in English that states that they have been designated under the Alien Enemies Act and are subject to deportation.
So we have sort of two levels. We have the group level designation of you can be designated, and then we have folks who are actually designated.
Emma Mclean-Riggs: ~It's a lot. ~
Trevor Jones: ~It's a lot. ~So Emma, you talked about a declaration of war being needed for, the Alien Enemies Act, and I think a lot of people who might, um, support or otherwise be moderately indifferent to maybe some of the functions of ICE right now, or even the use of the Alien Enemy Enemies Act, thinking that it actually could be protective of the American people or American society.
Uh, how would the ACLU, um, or you in particular, respond to the idea that, um, these deportations are actually helping or making us safer or, um, just necessary, uh, for our country?
Emma Mclean-Riggs: Yeah, I do think, um, there are people in the country that believe that. [00:21:00] I think for us, we sort of look to, to two pillars. And the first pillar for me is-- and for the ACLU-- is the Constitution.
So whether deportations in any individual case or in a collective case, make us safe or not, is irrelevant to the question of what rights do people have when they are being placed into that system? And one of, I think the, the great things about our very complicated, very historically nuanced, um, constitution, but one of the things I really hold onto as kind of our promise of America, is the idea that there are certain things that are principles for us and they apply when they're not convenient.
They apply when the person we're talking about is a serial killer. They apply when the person we're talking about is gang affiliated. They apply when the person we're talking about is, um, the most, uh, evil and unhelpful member of our community. Um, those principles hold, [00:22:00] um, and that is what our constitution promises.
So for me, there's, there's sort of a first answer to that question, which is that it's not about, "Is it helping, or is it making us safer?" It's about, "Is it in accord with the American Constitution and American principles about how we treat people?" I think the second pillar for me is the data. And the data does not, um, support the idea that these deportations are making us safer.
In part because what we're seeing is our most rapid expansion of deportation, including in Colorado, is deportation of people who have no criminal record, no previous contact with ICE, often very significant ties to the community. That's who we're seeing fill these detention centers. We are not seeing "the worst of the worst" as this administration has claimed.
~Um, ~and we are also not in accord with data about what reduces violent crime. Um, and you guys know, I mean, I'm, I'm sure I am speaking [00:23:00] to folks who know more than me about this, but the things that reduce violent crime are reduction of poverty, um, reduction of child abuse, reduction of lack of access to opportunity, um, access to medical care and therapy.
Um, all of these things that are about taking care of our community. ~uUm,~ In the same way that we know incarceration does not work, deportation in this way is also not going to work. Um, so, so that would be my answer to those folks is, is first I challenge the idea that we get to do anything we want simply because we believe it to be effective.
Um, and secondly, it's not effective.
Trevor Jones: so we're seeing people labeled as affiliated being transferred out of the country, mostly El Salvador, potentially South Sudan, at some point. And these people are designated as illegal immigrants, uh, not here lawfully.
Is there any talk or has there been any concern that, um, actual US citizens, people who have their citizenship, uh, [00:24:00] eventually being sent overseas or outta the country as a part of an incarceration program?
Emma Mclean-Riggs: Certainly there's been concern. Um, Mr. Trump has articulated that as a thing that he is considering.
Um, certainly we have concern about error, um, US citizens being kind of caught up in the system and, and moved because there's not enough process to prove that they're US citizens, which is sort of a different question than you asked. I think. Um, here's what I'll say. Clearly, obviously unconstitutional, explicitly illegal.
Um, not a thing that could happen under our current framework of law. Um. And, and not to be alarmist. ~Uh, ~we are seeing, we are seeing some things, um, in our communities, in our courts that we've never seen before. We're seeing the breaking of norms to a really, really frightening extent. [00:25:00] Um, so I really hesitate in this current moment, in this current political climate to say, "It is unlawful so it will not happen." What I can say is that it is unlawful, so it will be met with the full force of resistance from our citizens and also our bar, our civil institutions because that is not a thing that we can lawfully do to folks.
What Motivates & Sustains Emma in Her Work
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Trevor Jones: so Emma, with everything that we've been discussing, obviously, uh, very hard truths, uh, very difficult things to be thinking about, that these things are happening to people, these are the fights that the ACLU is engaged in. Uh, what is your motivation? Like, where do you find the passion and the fire and just the ability to get up every day and go attack this stuff?
Emma Mclean-Riggs: Oh, for me it's the humans. It's, um, if I did not think that all of these cases that I had on my docket had [00:26:00] real human beings behind them, I couldn't keep doing it. Um, and we have these transcendent little victories occasionally that keep me in it. I mean, um, sort of tying back to, to [the case] DBU [vs Trump], one thing that that happened to me recently is I got a picture from a family member of one of these young Venezuelan men.
(It feels very weird to me to call him a young man, I know we're doing that now, but he is 19 years old and to me, that is a kiddo.) Um, but I received a, a picture from one of the families of him in Venezuela at a family party, and I have to tell you, I just cried.
Emma Mclean-Riggs: Um, because I had thought about that kid every day while he was in that mega prison.
Um, and to feel like he was out there in the world with his family safe.
And when I am feeling just like we, I can't see one more horror. Um, I think about him um, at [00:27:00] his party. Um, and to me like those, those little wins, those little, like this human person, um, are what keep me in it.
Trevor Jones: Well, that's a beautiful motivation and thank you for explaining it.
Why Call Prisons "Cages"?
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Tiffany McCoy: ~Um, ~earlier in the conversation you mentioned cages, like you just feel like these are "cages." Um, what does that mean to you?
Emma Mclean-Riggs: Yeah, I mean, I think we use-- "we" in sort of like the media, the professional spheres-- we use a lot of euphemisms. So you'll hear people call the capacity of a facility, whether that's a prison or a detention facility or anything like that, "bed space."
Um, or say a person is "housed" in a special housing unit. Um, for me that feels very odd. Um, it's a very odd way of speaking because I think for anyone who has been into a jail or a prison-- and I feel very weird explaining this to the two [00:28:00] of you who know much more about cages than I do-- it doesn't feel like a house.
It doesn't, I've seen very few cells where it even looks like a bed. To me, it looks like a slab. ~Um,~ and I feel like when we speak about these places in ways that obscure how deeply violent they are, we risk making this system out to be much more potentially rehabilitative and effective than I believe it actually is.
I also think there's a really simple definition for a cage for me: it's a place that you are locked into that you have no liberty over your life in. Detention facilities are cages, county jails are cages, prisons are cages. Um, and I try to be really honest about what those things are and how they feel. ~Um, ~and, and I believe, and I believe the constitution articulates that every person has a right to be free. Every person has a right to their liberty. Um, [00:29:00] and to me, the right to be free, um, is associated with our humanness. And there's nothing, and I, I'll say I'm speaking for myself, but for me, there is nothing a person can do, um, that justifies the subjugation of their liberty.
That is one of the things that belongs to us because we are people. ~Um, so again, feel weird telling y'all about my definition of a cage, so feel free to jump in. But, but that's kind of how I think about it. ~
Tiffany McCoy: So I've seen pictures, a couple of pictures. Um, what these detention facilities or holding facilities for ICE look like.
Um, I don't know. I really am interested in like: who's there? Like are people there with their families? Are the kids and the moms and the dads in separate rooms? Are they all in the same room? Like what is it like?
Emma Mclean-Riggs: Yeah, so we don't have family detention here in Colorado. We have, um, detention only for adults.
Um, we don't have any place for, um, detention of children either. So it looks really different in places like Texas where they have family detention and detention of children. And I'm sure you guys have seen those, those pictures of like these very literal chain [00:30:00] link cages full of children. ~Um, ~Geo is a, a fascinating place to be in, particularly if you've someone, if you are someone who's seen a prison or a jail before, um, because it is both... The best way I can think about it is like, think about the most chaotic and dirty county jail you've ever seen, only with way less personnel and way less security, and no one is even pretending we have a safety risk going on here. ~So everything, ~The doors do lock, um, and people are caged, but they're not, um, it doesn't have sort of the order that I would associate even with a county jail, let alone a prison, which in my experience has sort of more rules and order and stringency.
~Um, ~to me, I, I often say that the detention facilities feel to me like camps. They feel very temporary. Um, they don't feel super settled. Um, the population is obviously very transient. Um, people kind of [00:31:00] go in and out of the facility. Um, and also, um, are are transferred between facilities very often. So you never get that sort of stability that sometimes you get in long term units of like connection or relationship.
And you also have this additional language situation, which is kind of interesting. There are lots of people who speak lots of different languages. So the level of communication that, um, is available between people who are incarcerated there can really vary. Um, and you don't have the same kind of, uh, structured access that you do in some of the, um, prisons and jails. In terms of like, "What does it look like?"
Fascinating question. Um, I have been to, uh, the legal visitation areas of Geo. Um, I have never been inside a Geo pod. I think there are very few people who don't have legal monitoring authority, who have, um, who are obviously, you know, not the folks who are incarcerated there. My understanding is that they [00:32:00] look, um, more like a jail or prison dorm than they do like cells.
It's like collective housing. Um, my understanding is that it is gender segregated. Um, so women and men, um. I've never seen them. And I think in some ways that's a big problem, right? Mm-hmm. Like I've seen more of what it looks like in like a Sterling [Correctional Facility], um, or like even in a DYS juvenile facility than I have at the detention facilities.
Children & Trauma from Family Separation
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Tiffany McCoy: And when you say "women and men," ~does that start at 18 or does it start at 15 like we were talking about earlier, ~when can you go to this adult detention facility?
Emma Mclean-Riggs: ~Yeah. Flagging for fact check, I think it's 18. Okay. But ~
Tiffany McCoy: ~so ~where do the kids go?
Emma Mclean-Riggs: So there are juvenile facilities, we just don't have any in our state.
Oh. Oh. And what often happens when families come into detention is they are separated. So the adults go into adult detention and the children go, um, into either Office of Refugee Resettlement custody, um, which can look like [00:33:00] facilities, it can also look like foster homes. Um, when we had really significant family separation at the border, sometimes we would have: mom goes into adult detention at the border; child goes to a foster family in New York; and no one can find child. Not mom.
Not family. Sometimes not even DHS [Department of Homeland Security] themselves knows where a child is in relationship to where mom is.
Tiffany McCoy: That sounds, uh, pretty scary to me. I was a foster kid. I went to foster care when I was 14, so I couldn't imagine going to foster care with people who maybe don't speak my language or don't understand me and like I just, I knew where my parents were, but to not know, like that sounds super scary.
Tiffany McCoy: To me it's like-- you're already scared going in foster care, but to have like those added things on?
Tiffany McCoy: That's crazy.
Emma Mclean-Riggs: I think it's unimaginably traumatic and I think we are creating a whole generation of young people who have this separation trauma. ~I mean, uh, one sort of local story, I'll tell if we have time, um, is that ~we had a detention at the Denver Immigration Court.
So a, a [00:34:00] family that had come in for their check-in, um, with the court was detained by ICE in the hallway of the court. Um, and they took the father. So it was the father that they actually wanted to detain. Um, and I actually, uh, responded to that scene. So I was there and there was mom and about, uh, an 8-year-old child.
And that child was making this sound. And I think um... Like a wailing sound that I had never heard before, before I started doing detention work. I had never heard that sound before. And it's like-- I could not describe to you the sort of emotional impact of like hearing that child wailing. Like it felt like everything that was human in me, like needed to do whatever needed to be done to get that child to stop making that sound.
You know, the experience of having ICE detain this family and then [00:35:00] drag Dad away in front of this child. And, and an, you know, I would say the, the other significant time I've heard that was during a, a raid. We had a big raid in an apartment building where ICE came in and took Mom of several children.
And I entered the hallway-- and this was like hours after ICE had been and gone-- and I heard this child making this sound. Like just this wailing sound. And I say all that just to convey how much I think we're gonna be dealing with this in a generation. Because we're gonna be dealing with this like, incredible violence that has happened to this child, but also the traumatic impacts on everyone around them.
The trauma of, you know, that child's mom or auntie or sister trying to get that sound to stop, right? Like trying to soothe that grief. That's like also a [00:36:00] traumatic experience. So I think, you know, we are-- right now, we are in it, we are in the emergency response, stop-the-bleeding moment.
But 20, 30 years from now, we are gonna be in the moment of that 8-year-old boy trying to process this thing that has happened to him.
Tiffany McCoy: You are exactly right.
Emma Mclean-Riggs: Yeah.
Tiffany McCoy: You know, ~um, ~like I said, I went to foster care when I was 14 and I'm 36 and I'm still dealing with the separation from my family and my brothers and my sisters and my family's just starting to get back together and like all those things and being in that situation is like a forever thing that impacts you for the rest of your life.
Emma Mclean-Riggs: Yeah.
Tiffany McCoy: So,
Emma Mclean-Riggs: yeah.
Tiffany McCoy: Mm-hmm.
Emma Mclean-Riggs: And you know, like you're still doing it and we're gonna have to figure out, um, and I think it's gonna take folks like you to, to teach us as a community how to help those kids figure that out when we get past "911, siren on, [00:37:00] emergency," which is where we are right now.
