Kathryn Stelmach Artuso is a freelance journalist in California and author of Transatlantic Renaissances: Literature of Ireland and the American South.
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Inside an ICE Detention Center
I joined a retired minister on a visit to one of California’s largest facilities.
SHAFTS OF SUNLIGHT streamed through the clouds on an early November morning when I set out with three older women for a two-hour drive from Los Angeles to the ICE detention center in Adelanto, Calif. I was traveling with Rev. Betty Stapleford, a retired Unitarian Universalist minister, and her affable, wise-cracking friends, Maureen Kimberling and Ellen Deeb. While this was Kimberling and Deeb’s second visit, this was my first time visiting a detention center.
Rev. Betty—as she is affectionately called—began making these monthly trips in 2014, taking seriously Jesus’ command to visit the sick and imprisoned. Her outreach is supported by Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, a nonprofit coalition of inter-faith congregations that advocate for the rights of low-wage workers and immigrants.
She was dressed in vibrant purple, a color she wears every day, partly inspired by Jenny Joseph’s poem “Warning,” with its famous opening lines: “When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple.” Recalling her final day as a minister in a church, she said she delivered a sermon about “finding what you love that brings you joy”—even something as simple as your favorite color. Joy would be challenging to find at the place we were headed.
The Fallout From Trump’s ICE Storm
Churches act in the wake of immigration raids in California.
THE VAST AGRICULTURAL plain of Ventura County in California, where César Chávez first envisioned the United Farm Workers movement, is no stranger to grassroots activism. When federal immigration officers raided Glass House Farms in Camarillo on July 10, a rapid response network, the 805 Immigrant Coalition, immediately used its text app to mobilize citizens to protest and document the event.
“This is quickly becoming one of the largest operations since President Trump took office,” wrote Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on social media as the chaotic raid unfolded, a raid that ultimately resulted in the death of farmworker Jaime Alanís Garcia.