u/PrestegiousYak77

I was inside Mesa City Hall as this happened. There was an agenda item about permits for a data center that was pulled from the City Council Meeting at the very last minute. City Hall also banned signs and protest materials inside.

Protests about ICE began in City Hall last year. Mayor Freeman has continued to add new restrictions, finds any excuse to shuffle or deny anyone in the liberal groups one of the paltry three, three minute slots citizens have to raise concerns. He will create extra slots for his LDS friends though.

This all is escalating and it is an effort for many people to be heard about local issues and about human rights violations in Mesa, the ICE detention center in Gateway Airport. But good job, MPD, why let ICE get all the glory?

Credit: thejenniwren

Amir stopped speaking. Kaleth stopped eating. Amalia lost consciousness in a detention facility and was given Tylenol.

These are not statistics. They are toddlers. And since Trump retook office, at least 500 babies and children aged 3 and under have spent time in ICE custody; 25 of them on any given day.
The facility holding them is the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, run by a private prison company called CoreCivic. It was closed under Biden.

Trump reopened it in March 2025.

Pediatricians call infancy and toddlerhood the most critical window of brain development in a human life — a million neural connections forming every second. Toxic stress doesn't just traumatize children in the moment. It rewires them. The damage can follow them for decades.

At least 175 babies and toddlers have already been held past the 20-day federal limit set by the Flores settlement, the court agreement that has protected children in immigration detention since 1997. During Biden's last year, zero children under 3 were held past that limit.

ICE says conditions at Dilley are safe, sanitary, and appropriate. Attorneys who have visited the facility nine times called that account "fanciful." Lights stay on all night. Stuffed animals are banned from sleeping areas.

Parents have hidden cereal in their socks so their children wouldn't go to bed hungry.
These children's families shared their photos and their names so you would know them. Remember them.

Sources: MS NOW / The Marshall Project investigation, June 2026 | Deportation Data Project, UC Berkeley | Flores v. Reno settlement, 1997 | American Academy of Pediatrics, Council on Immigrant Child and Family Health | Zero to Three | Columbia Law School Immigrants' Rights Clinic

Source: https://x.com/i/status/2064064507467505669

The heckler was the real leader in the room.