“We left one tyranny and came to another kind of tyranny.”
“In Russia, police tell us, ‘We are the law, as we say goes.’ We came here, and they tell us exactly the same thing.”
NBC news’ Mike Hixenbaugh attributes these quotes to a Russian man named Nikita, whose last name is withheld because he fears retaliation if he is forced to return to his home country, Russia. Nikita, his wife Oksana, and their three children ages 13, 12, and 4, fled Russia for fear that Vladimir Putin’s brutal régime would retaliate against them over Nikita’s anti-war activism. Following both international and U.S. law intended to protect political asylum seekers, they presented themselves at the U.S. border and requested asylum. An asylum judge agreed that the threat against them was credible.
Under most previous non-Trump administrations, the family would likely have been allowed to live freely in the U.S. while awaiting their hearing. Instead, as of the time of NBC’s article, they had been living in the Dilley Detention Center for 131 days, which is more than six times the length the law states the government is allowed to keep children in immigration detention.
Hixenbaugh summarizes the conditions they live with at Dilley: “Worms in their food. Guards shouting orders and snatching toys from small hands. Restless nights under fluorescent lights that never fully go dark. Hours in line for a single pill.” The couple’s 12-year-old may permanently lose the hearing in one ear due to poor medical treatment.
The article notes that CoreCivic, the private company running the prison, defers all questions to DHS. Dilley, CoreCivic, and DHS all have one thing in common: they are beyond reform. They need to be shut down.
Russia isn’t the worst one ↘️