Welcome back to The Long Version by Jonathan M. Katz. An adaptation of this edition was published by The Los Angeles Times. Get this newsletter in your inbox every week by signing up here:
Imagine you’re in a hotel room. It’s morning. The breakfast you ordered on the door-hang thingie has come. You sit down to your coffee and eggs and flip on CNN. Alisyn Camerota is on with a look of concern. “Once again,” she says, “we start with the latest from President Trump’s concentration camps. First let’s go to our round-the-clock team monitoring the situation in Dilley, Texas.”
Behind the split-screened correspondent is the outline of a complex. For you and millions of others, it has become the instantly recognizable symbol of an international crime: the barbed wire and stadium lights of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s South Texas Family Residential Center.
Your heart sinks as the field reporter recounts the latest updates: The deaths of a toddler and a teenager. Transgender, dis…