Give a Little Whistle

Support for This American Life and the following message come from Capella University. You know that feeling when there's a spark building inside you, that you were meant for more? That's your own drive pushing you towards what's next. Capella University gets that. With their FlexPath learning format, you can set the pace and earn your degree without putting life on pause. You've built experience and know what you're capable of. Now, this is your time to turn that momentum into more. The only real question is, what can't you do? Learn more at capella.edu. Immigration officials have been doing a lot of things lately that seem very hard to explain— ignoring court orders, shooting civilians. And when asked why these things are happening, as we've all seen, we don't exactly get a frank and honest account from officials, but we get our talking points, many of which don't turn out to be true. But recently, refreshingly, two different lawyers who work for ICE stepped forward, separately, and lifted the curtain to reveal all kinds of details about what is really happening right now inside our immigration system. And I know there have been a couple of quotes from each of these people in the news, but I have to say, when you dive into the details of everything that they witnessed, it's satisfying in this way that I really didn't even know I craved, because they're not talking about, like, this or that specific incident, but about the entire system being broken. And they lay it out. Today on our show, what we're going to do is we're going to bring you their stories, and I think you'll see what I mean. From WBEZ Chicago, this American Life, I'm Ira Glass. And we're just going to jump right in right now with Act One. Act One, I got the memo. OK, so this thing just happened two weeks ago that this lawyer from ICE walked into a room full of Congress people and gave testimony that basically just blew up his entire life, like everything he'd worked towards for years. What was so extreme that he decided to stop training ICE agents and stop lawyering for ICE agents and instead became a whistleblower? Our producer, Nadia Raymond, talked to him. This whistleblower, Ryan Schwenk, will tell you proudly that he's a public servant, doesn't make policy and doesn't want to, thanks very much. Not that he always agrees, but he's fine executing whatever the people in charge want to do, as long as it's legal. He started working for the government under President Biden. He'd been representing immigrants, but now he was representing ICE in the Department of Homeland Security, prosecuting immigration cases. The way he saw it, he was fulfilling the same purpose in both roles, ensuring procedural fairness, due process, making sure the system worked the same for everyone and worked smoothly. It bugged him if things got mucky or slow, like when the Biden administration was dragging its feet on immigration cases. But then, last May, under the Trump administration, all ICE lawyers got instructions that Ryan found alarming. They were told to ask for their cases to be dismissed when they went to court, which allowed ICE agents to arrest immigrants right there and then, often as soon as they walked out the door. Ryan was like, how could people have due process if there's no time to make their case and then they're getting immediately arrested? He wasn't sure what to do, but he's such a rule follower that he didn't tell anyone about these new instructions, not even his wife. That's kind of the problem with being a lawyer, right? I can talk to her about generalities. I can't talk to her about specific policies. Oh, so you were just like, I'm generally feeling this? Kind of, yeah. I try to be very careful with what I would say to, like, not give away agency practices. But I kind of explained to her, like, you know, this, this kind of thing happening. And then, of course, it was out in the news like two days later, right? Yeah. What did she, did she advise you to do something or was she like, here's what I think we should do? She just said, follow, follow your ethical guidelines, right? She said, you know, get it. She was one actually, I think, suggested calling the bar association. So that's what I did. And she's like, you know, you should call that hotline. I know they have one. So he did. He called the state bar association and they said, yep, that's not ethical. He talked to his boss. His boss said, OK, I get it. You don't have to do these. I'll do them. But Ryan figured that he could only dodge these for so long. So he started to wonder what was next for him. Then one day his supervisor told him, you know, with this surge of thousands of new ICE agents DHS is hiring, they need people to train them in Glencoe, Georgia. You interested? And to me, it seemed like a great opportunity. One, part of it was self-interested. Like, if I'm the attorney who's in Glencoe teaching, I'm not the attorney in the courtroom who's having to answer the ethical question of, am I OK prosecuting this case? You were just like, not it. I'm going to dodge and go do this other thing so that I don't get. I mean, I would love to say otherwise. I would love to be like, this was just like 100% like profile encourage type stuff, right? But it's not. It's a combination of I could see the writing on the wall and I saw the opportunity to do good, right? This was an opportunity to go teach, which is something I've always liked doing. But then, of course, I got to Glencoe and all of that changed the day I got there. So September 1st was the day I arrived in Glencoe, Georgia. I have to go back with my records, but I think it was September 2nd was the first morning that I went to the academy. I showed up early in the morning and I was, you know, I had to go through and get my badge. And then I went to the academy training building. And while I was there, the very first thing I heard was a conversation about background checks on cadets and how they weren't being completed before they came to the academy and that we already had problems with cadets showing up that had disqualifying criminal offenses. And the concerns that we were going to have cadets coming through that we couldn't background check sufficiently to know whether or not they were going to be able to finish the program, right? Are we allowed to carry a firearm? You took an agency that hires maybe a thousand people a year and told it to process 10,000 people in three months. There simply weren't the resources to run all the background checks ahead of time. They were just delayed. They were backlogged. They had people showing up to the academy who had not completed background checks. And my first response to hearing this thing about the background checks was, wow, that's a growth, like a teething pain, right? Like, this is a problem, but this is something they're going to solve very quickly, right? This was a mistake because we just started. We just started this big process. This was clearly an administrative error and they're going to fix it. As we later found out, it was an issue that recurred repeatedly at the academy. And there was another issue that came up on that first day. We're in like this big conference room and my supervisor and I are in there. I think there were a couple other people in the room. I couldn't name who exactly. But she shows me the memos. My supervisor shows me these memos and I'm told you can read it, but you're not allowed to keep a copy of it and you're not allowed to take notes on it. What did you make of that? I had never received an order like that ever in my career at any time. It was bizarre to me and it was a massive red flag when she told me that. I even read the memo to me was a massive red flag before I read the first word on the page. Then he read the memo. It was issued by Todd Lyons, the acting director for ICE, that instructed ICE officers that they could enter into a person's home without a judicial warrant. In other words, instead of ICE agents getting permission from a judge to go into someone's home, they would only need to get approval from ICE using a form called I-205. You know, it's funny. When I first read it, it was so innocuous sounding that at first I didn't think there was anything wrong with it. I read through it and was like, oh, OK, so we're going to use I-205s to go into houses. OK. And then it was kind of like when you see like a cartoon character, like their feet stop and they try to break and they kind of like skid, right? That's kind of what my brain did as I read this. I was like, wait a second. And then I read it through again more carefully the second time and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Heck. The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says a warrant is needed to enter someone's home. And courts have consistently said that this applies to everyone who is physically in the country, not just citizens. So Ryan saw this new policy and he thought, oh, no. Oh, no. I was by no means at the time an expert on the Fourth Amendment. Right. Obviously, I know the Fourth Amendment because I'm an attorney, but it's not like I'm a constitutional scholar on the thing looking for like things to nitpick. Right. I'm a lawyer who knows the Fourth Amendment the way most lawyers know the Fourth Amendment as a thing that you learned about and apply in generalities. Continues. So Ryan stays and teaches at Glencoe, Georgia, at the ICE Academy there. It's at a training campus by the beach. It has things like a mat room, literally a room full of mats to practice tackling someone down. It has a fake town, like a movie set, to practice arrests, classrooms, a cafeteria, shooting ranges. Ryan says it was strange to be right by the ocean, next to towns that are vacation destinations, and still hear gunshots all day long. Ryan started teaching after immigration agents had spent the summer blanketing Los Angeles, but before the big surges in Chicago and Minneapolis. He says his team was told that about 3,000 cadets who had no prior law enforcement experience were coming to the campus in Georgia. And his job was to help turn them into new ICE agents. DHS wanted them to graduate by Christmas. So Ryan is looking at the curriculum, and he's trying to figure out how to teach these cadets and teach them fast. Rules around the use of force, basic immigration law, how to react when someone's running away. All this stuff has to be so ingrained in these cadets that they don't even think about it when they're out in the field. They just do the right thing instinctively. Reach for the right tool, apply the right rule. Do I use verbal commands? Do I use handcuffs? Do I use physical restraints? Do I use pepper spray? Do I use a taser? Do I use a baton? Do I use a gun? Were you teaching all of that in the context of here's what you're legally allowed to do? Like that was your part of the training? That was something I was supposed to teach, but they cut it from the curriculum, right? There was a class the lawyers would teach that focused on the law behind use of force, right? And it was part of the broader scope of classes we would teach about the officer's constitutional authority and the limitations of their authority. Wow. When did you realize that that was cut? When I saw the curriculum. Ryan realized when he was comparing the new curriculum to the old one that a lot of stuff, like a comprehensive firearms exam, had been cut. While other stuff had been so compressed, he found it hard to believe it would be understandable, let alone absorbable. Like, for example, a class about the Constitution that used to be two hours and a class on the limits to use of authority that also used to be two hours. He says they were now squeezed into one short lecture that also covered other topics like immigration and civil liberties. And that's just one example of the ways the curriculum had been compressed. Total teaching hours had been cut by 40%. So have you ever seen a tree die from the inside? They rot from the inside outwards. No. So maybe you'll see this sometime if you ever go into the woods. You'll see a tree that looks completely solid on the outside. The bark is intact. The shell is intact. But if you push it, it will just snap and you'll look inside and the whole core is gone, right? It's just hollowed out on the inside. That's kind of how the training academy was. Meanwhile, Ryan still has to figure out how to deal with this memo. Does he teach it? So did you tell cadets when you were training them that they should go into houses without a warrant? No. Or did you find a way? No. So what I would tell cadets, I would tell cadets this policy is out. First and foremost, if I could avoid the subject, I would. But in the classes where it would come up and I would discuss the memo like this, I would tell cadets this policy is out there. This policy is the agency's position on it. It has not been tested in the courts. There is nothing that says you can do this, but it's the agency's position that you can. If you're going to go out and use this, you need to check with your local management, first and foremost, because that's what they told us to say. Okay. And I would tell them, if you have questions, I would say, talk to your local OPLO office first. OPLO, Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, a.k.a. your local on-call ICE attorneys. Because I know my colleagues in OPLO, by and large, are going to tell them that this is hoodoo, that it's absolutely unlawful. And I have confidence in my colleagues to say that. Often Ryan's job involved observing cadets during role-playing exercises in the movie set fake city part of the campus. Cadets would be given loose instructions like, target is inside that bodega, go get them. And instructors would participate sometimes, but mostly just watch and give notes. Sometimes scenarios would go like off script, right? Sometimes role players would change things. So you would sometimes see scenarios that don't normally involve firearms, for instance, right? Turn into a firearm scenario. And you would see when these would happen, you would see the cadets do things that would jeopardize themselves and others, like pulling firearms at times that are inappropriate or pointing firearms at people they shouldn't be pointing them at, making arrests of individuals that had not committed a crime. This pointed out to Ryan bad habits or instincts that they needed to teach out of the cadets. But there was so little time. And cadets started telling him that they were going to be sent to Minneapolis, which was already underway and all over the news. He kept thinking about that during the trainings. There's this scenario where they're making an arrest outside a business. OK. And the individual's not combative or anything like that. The officers are placing them under arrest outside a business. And in this particular scenario, we had enough role players that we had a few acting as observers. Right. A few acting as like people from the public doing exactly what is in Minneapolis, which is coming up with their cell phone and filming with their cell phone and yelling, hey, what are you doing? You know, telling the officers that they're fascists or whatever. Right. Just like they say in Minneapolis. And this one cadet was on what they call a perimeter. This one role player protester got, I guess, too close to the officer's comfort zone. I didn't think it was close enough. I don't think any of the instructors thought it was close enough, but they thought it was close enough that they told him to back up. And then immediately, I mean, I don't think they gave them time to respond, like to react to the command to back up, pulled out their pepper spray. And this cadet simulated using the pepper spray to pepper spray this role player. Right. And it was categorically. I mean, I don't think a single instructor there thought that it was an appropriate use. Right. Like it was not appropriate. It was not justified by the circumstances. And when we asked the cadet afterwards what happened, their explanation was that this is what they were seeing in Minneapolis, that they were doing it just like they would up there. For Ryan, what he was seeing on the news, which was experienced officers being too aggressive, too often, that made him more alarmed about what he was seeing during his own shortened trainings. And what he was seeing during trainings was making him more alarmed about what he was seeing on the news. He worried his cadets weren't ready. Some cadets worried, too. Did they seem scared? Like, did any of them come to you and say, like, we don't feel prepared enough. We don't feel ready. Yes. Yes. I had cadets say that to us. I had cadets on multiple occasions say they felt unprepared for the job. I remember one cadet was talking to us about, like, we were dealing with kind of the issue of like entry into a yard. And the cadet was having a lot of difficulty understanding how to apply that set of rules. We kind of walked them through it a couple of times. And he was talking about how, like, everything in the academy kind of goes in one ear and out the other because they're rushed from one thing to the next to try to meet that schedule. Of course, fast training can still be rigorous training as long as you test people to make sure they got it. And Ryan says that in this new compressed training, crucial real-world skills were not adequately tested, like using a gun correctly or subduing somebody in the field. Under the old academy structure, what existed before the surge, these practical exercises were graded, right? The students had to pass these exercises to graduate. If they didn't pass the exercise, if they demonstrated a lack of knowledge of the law or the tactics involved, they had to repeat the class. And if they failed twice, they were out. They did not get to graduate. Meaning they wouldn't become an ICE officer. But now, things were different. So now, no matter what we saw the cadets do in these scenarios, they still graduated. We could tell a cadet up and down that they were going to get themselves killed in the field or get arrested or violate the law with what they were doing. And I hope and I believe many cadets listened to that, but it didn't matter if they didn't. They could still graduate no matter what we saw them do. We reached out to DHS to ask about all of this. They didn't respond. They did claim, though, in a statement in February that, quote, no training requirements have been removed. The statement says that, actually, the training has been beefed up from eight hours a day to 12 hours a day. It also somehow claims that the hours are the same number of hours that recruits have always received. DHS says they're teaching the Fourth and Fifth Amendments in a way that is, quote, structured and comprehensive. They called it integral. When Ryan first made his report, it was about the memo. That was his In lots of ways, Ryan's unusual. But in one important way, he's not. He sounds just as alarmed about ICE as other people inside the government I've talked to. The Department of Homeland Security plans to train about 3,000 new ICE officers at the academy this year. Nadia Raymond is a producer on our show. Her story was edited by Laura Zdercheski. Coming up, a judge issues some court orders, tells the government to release a bunch of people from detention. The government doesn't do it. The judge calls him in to ask why not. And what the lawyer says was not what he or anybody expected. That's in a minute. This Chicago Public Radio one-hour program continues. 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Just sit back, relax, and talk naturally. Alexa's on it. Alexa remembers what you love, anticipates what you need, and makes it all happen. Alexa Plus brings thousands of possibilities to life, ready whenever inspiration strikes. And now Alexa Plus is free with Prime on your Amazon devices, like Echo and Fire TV. Amazon.com slash Alexa Plus. This American Life from our class. Okay, so we've named our program today after the song that Jiminy Cricket sings to Pinocchio. Give a little whistle. You know that one? When you get in trouble and you don't know right from wrong, give a little whistle. We have two stories today where lawyers from inside the government give us rare and factual accounts of what is really happening inside ICE with fascinating details of a broken, chaotic kind of mess. We have arrived at Act 2 of our program, Act 2, Don't Trust the Process. So this next glimpse inside the world of ICE comes from a transcript of a court hearing that happened last month. In it, this government attorney got increasingly kind of beaten down by the facts and by the end really opened up about what it's like to do her job right now. You do not hear government lawyers talking in court the way she did in this hearing. She's very candid, very unguarded, very personal. The reason for the hearing in the first place was kind of notable. Basically, there's been an explosion of what are called habeas petitions in immigration cases. A habeas petition is sending the government, show why this person is being detained. Otherwise, you have to let them go. This is a bedrock legal principle that's been around since the Middle Ages to keep people from being locked up without any reason. It's in the first article of the U.S. Constitution. ProPublica has been tracking the numbers in immigration cases. Before President Trump came back into office, there were like 20 or 30 immigration habeas petitions being filed every week. In February, it was over 2,000 every week, which has completely overwhelmed the federal courts. So the judge in this case had ruled in a bunch of these habeas cases. These people have been illegally detained. You've got to release them immediately. And then it didn't happen. David Kestenbaum has our story. This all happened one o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon at a federal courtroom in St. Paul, Minnesota. There are just a handful of people there. The judge, Judge Jerry Blackwell, ordered the hearing because he was trying to figure out what on earth was going on with the government's lawyers. We got an actor to read the transcript here for you. It's been lightly edited, but just for clarity and length. Judge Blackwell, good afternoon. You may be seated. The hearing this afternoon concerns compliance with court orders, not policy, just compliance, nothing else. I've had so many issues with noncompliance in just this past week that I called for this hearing. The judge's issue is with five different immigration cases. The court had ruled that the people the government had detained had to be released because the government had no reason to hold them. But then the government was not releasing them or even giving updates. Hence this hearing. And you know how in some TV shows or movies, there's this moment where someone will give this kind of speech and it's good, but you're like, people don't actually do that in real life. Well, sometimes they do. It's like Judge Blackwell knew exactly what he wanted to say and it all came out. As I hope everybody here agrees and acknowledges, that a court order is not advisory and it is not conditional. It is not something that any agency can treat as optional. The authority exercised by the court is derived from Article 3 of the Constitution. That authority under Article 3 only has meaning if the court orders are obeyed, adhered to promptly, fully, and in good faith. The whole judicial system kind of depends on the executive branch doing what the courts say, more or less voluntarily. He doesn't have a great way to force them to do it. The judge says, if you don't comply with the court's orders, you've essentially painted the court into a corner because what are we supposed to do? Detention without lawful authority is not just a technical defect. It is a constitutional injury that unfairly falls on the heads of those who have done nothing wrong to justify it. The overwhelming majority of the hundreds seen by this court have been found to be lawfully present as of now in the country. They live in their communities. Some are separated from their families. When a release order is not followed, the result is not just a delay. In some instances, it is the continued detention of a person the Constitution does not permit the government to hold and who should have been left alone, that is, not arrested in the first place. I can't tell how long time-wise this goes on for because we just have the transcript, but it's like five pages. He says the court has been having a hard time even getting information about when these people would be released. In many instances, I have had to not just issue an order, but another order, another order, another order, about seven or eight different touches sent to the government simply asking for the date, time, and location of the release of someone who was ordered released in many instances a week or more in the past. And why is that so difficult? I cannot understand because there's obviously a person associated with the government who is going to the detainee to release him or her. You have their name. You can carry with you a form. The name is on it. Just write the time on it and send it to the DOJ. Judge Blackwell says to the government lawyers, it's no excuse to say that you don't have the staff to deal with this huge influx of habeas cases because it was the government that decided to do all these immigration raids with apparently no plan for how to deal with them in the court system. So I'm going to stop there just by way of background and follow up on the responses I received from Ms. Lee and from Ms. Voss. And if you want to come up to the podium, Ms. Lee. Ms. Lee is Julie Lee, an attorney for ICE. Ms. Lee. Your Honor, may I approach? Judge Blackwell. You have approached already. She presents some documents to the judge and starts talking. Ms. Lee. Just to have some background, I was put on this special mission to help with the U.S. Attorney's Office with all the habeas claims that they have received. They are overwhelmed and they need help. So I, I have to say, stupidly enough, to volunteer. So on January 5th, when I started with the agency, I have to be honest, we have no guidance or direction on what we need to do. And so when you showed up, they just throw you in the well and then here we go. She explains that it's been kind of a mess. Like she has two different government email accounts now, but could only access one. Some of the court's orders were going to the other email that she couldn't access. She's spending hours and hours just not even doing the job, just trying to figure out how to do the job. Judge Blackwell, so are you telling the court that you were brought in brand new, a shiny brand new penny into this role, and you received no proper orientation or training on what you were supposed to do? Ms. Lee. I have to say yes to that question, Your Honor. Judge Blackwell, I'd like to hear about the Oscar case, Oscar 26167. The Oscar case is the main one discussed in the transcript. The details of it are particularly troubling to the judge. Oscar is apprehended on January 10th in Minneapolis where he lives. Five days later, on the 15th, the court ordered him to be immediately released. But by then, this is very common, Oscar had been flown all the way from Minnesota to a detention facility in Texas. The judge, when ordering his immediate release on the 15th, required an update to be filed within 48 hours. Judge Blackwell, there was no 48-hour update that was filed on the 17th. That hadn't happened. And so then the court is saying that, that I wanted a letter no later than 3 p.m. Ms. Lee, I do. And I share the same concern with you, Your Honor. I am not white, as you can see. And my family is at risk as any other people that might get picked up, too. So I share the same concern. Our email just never stops. And as you can see, I would love to undo all of this stuff, because no one wants to be in jail. And actually, honestly, you know, being in jail a day to catch up with sleep is not bad right now with all the hours I have to put into this job. Ms. Lee, I appreciate your candor. That's basically where the transcript ends. What to make of all this? You could say this is a document about the chaos of this moment and how the legal process is not working. The judge had to call this hearing, after all. But he did call it, and we have the record of it. In reading it, I kept thinking about Oscar, because while all this was unfolding, all those days Judge Blackwell and Julie Lee were talking about and going back and forth about, those were all days in his life. Days when, as the judge says, he should not have been detained in the first place. What happened? For Oscar. At the end of the hearing, his attorney urges the judge to please read docket entry number 67, which actually answers all these questions. It's worth hearing, so here. We've edited this for length and clarity. Each paragraph is numbered. That's the way things are written. Declaration of O. I, O, declare the following is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge and recollection. 1. My name is O. I am a 20-year-old man from Guatemala. I have lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota for about four years. I have pending asylum and special immigration juvenile status applications. 2. I am filing this declaration under my first initial rather than my full name due to fear of retaliation against my family or me for opposing the federal government. My full name is known to plaintiff's counsel. 3. On Saturday, January 10th, 2026, I went to work and then got lunch with my father and my cousin. We drove back to my work together after that. On the way back, a car passed me quickly, sped up, and stopped in the middle of the street. A few men got out of the car in front of us and ran towards us. I turned off the car. The men told me if I didn't get out of the car, that they would force me out. I got out of the car. They told me I was under arrest but didn't say why. They handcuffed me. I left my keys and phone in the car. I felt like I was being kidnapped. 4. They took us to the same place, the Whipple building, where the immigration court is located. 5. In the garage, ICE agents checked our belongings and IDs, and then they took us inside and put us in a cell where we waited to be processed. The cell was small, but it was already holding about 40 people. We were there close to 20 hours in that cell. It was really hot and dirty. There was food scattered on the floor. The floor was sticky with mud, and everything stuck to your shoes. I was so tired. There was one toilet, but there was no privacy. I worried about viruses and bacteria since there were so many of us in the cramped space. We were only given food two times in that almost 20 hours, both times a sandwich, an apple, and a cookie. I tried to sleep, but there was no space to sit down. When some people got up from the floor, I would sit down, but it was painful to be on the cement floor. 6. On Sunday, January 11th, after breakfast, an ICE officer came and got me. He took my fingerprints. I was finally allowed to make one call. One call, no time limit. I wanted to call my attorney, Kim Bochen, but I didn't have her number. The ICE officer said I was being moved to Texas as soon as possible, and I will face a judge in Texas. 7. Around 11 a.m. on January 11th, an officer gathered everyone in the cell, chained our hands and feet, and we were put in trucks. ICE took us to the airport. There were around 120 detainees on the plane. 8. I remained in chains the whole plane ride. I was very hungry. No food or water were offered for a while. I was finally given a snack and water on the plane about 12 hours since I had last eaten and had to eat with handcuffs on. 9. I arrived in El Paso, Texas around 6 or 7 p.m. on January 11th. When I arrived at the El Paso, Texas facility, I was given a small bag with two thin blankets, a towel, two T-shirts, and a pair of boxers. 10. I was told by the security official at the prison that the place I was brought to in Texas was supposed to be temporary, but I spent 10 days there. 12. There were about 72 of us in the cell. The cell was the size of a small gym where they fit about 40 bunk beds. There were only two flip phones for all the detainees in this center to use. Over the 10 days I was in El Paso, the officers probably brought the phones into the cell for our use two to three times for two hours each. We would get together and beg the officer to let us call our family or our attorneys. If we could get the phone, we could only use it for two minutes. You had to be ready when it was your turn. If you didn't have an attorney's number memorized, you couldn't call them. There were signs everywhere in the detention facility offering us $3,000 each if we agreed to self-deport. The officers would frequently try to get people to sign forms agreeing to self-deport. 15. After five or six days, I'm not sure exactly, I was finally allowed to make a two-minute phone call. I was able to obtain my lawyer's phone number from my dad, who I saw through the window in a different room. I asked a security guard to ask the other security guard to get my lawyer's phone number from my dad. I was finally able to talk to my attorney, Kim Boce, for one minute only. She said she was trying to arrange a call with me. The security guard started yelling at me that my time was up, so I couldn't understand much. I don't remember much of the phone call. I was so nervous. 16. On Saturday, the 17th, I talked to my attorney, and she told me I was supposed to be released the next day or the day after that. She told me a judge had ordered my release. I also received two letters and a list with phone numbers in the mail from one of my teachers. She also sent snacks, clothes, and a notebook, but I wasn't allowed to have any of this, only the papers and letters. 18. ICE did not tell me that my attorney had been trying to call me and contact me while I was in Texas. They didn't tell me my attorney had retained another attorney to file a habeas petition on my behalf, or that a court had granted it and ordered my release. They just kept holding me there and occasionally trying to get me to self-deport. 19. I was in detention in El Paso, Texas, for about 10 days. On what I think was the 10th day, I was moved. A transportation officer asked those of us in the cell if we had eaten, and when some people said they hadn't, he told them to shut up. 20. I was moved to a detention center in Torrance, New Mexico. The bus ride to Torrance was scary. The bus swerved a lot because the driver was falling asleep. I thought we would die for sure, and I wouldn't be able to do anything because I was chained. After I arrived in Torrance, I had to wait for about 12 hours to be processed. They took our temperature, blood pressure, weight, and height, and I think gave us some type of vaccine against measles. Then I was moved to a room with about 50 other people. The food there was awful. It looked like dog food. I stayed at Torrance for six days. 22. In Torrance, I was able to message and video call with my family, lawyer, and friends. I was only able to do this because teachers at my school had pooled money and put it in my account. You needed to pay to use the tablet. On Sunday, the 25th, after dinner, I was moved to a single cell. It was small and cold. I couldn't sleep because it was so cold, and because the guard had the TV on all night. 24. On Monday, January 26th, I got breakfast around 4:30 a.m. Around 10 a.m., I was told we were going to Cibola jail. Nobody explained why. I was handcuffed and loaded into a car and taken to Cibola jail in New Mexico. 25. This Cibola jail was horrible. It was cramped. I was chained up again. The officers mocked me and called me their enemy. They laughed at me. I wasn't given an explanation for why I was there. 26. Security guards then put me on a bus. I think it was around January 27th. I was handcuffed. It was freezing cold in the bus because the driver had the AC on. We had no jackets. The bus eventually took me back to El Paso in the early morning of Tuesday,