Donald Trump is feeding detainees maggot-infested food. Rep. Jerry Nadler entered the Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, New Jersey, on Wednesday and documented the food as “very often” infested with maggots. The only medication detainees receive is Tylenol. A woman detained at the center has a breast lump and has been waiting over a month for a mammogram. A detainee with colon cancer is receiving no treatment. These are the conditions inside a federal immigration detention facility under the Trump administration, and the plain English word for what is happening is cruelty.
“I was sick and you did not visit me, I was in prison and you did not come to me,” Jesus said in Matthew 25. The woman with the breast lump is the body of Christ. The detainee with colon cancer is the body of Christ. The people eating maggot-infested food are the body of Christ. The detainees at Delaney Hall are the body of Christ. The detention center is the prison, and the failure to visit is the failure to treat the woman’s breast lump, the failure to treat the colon cancer, the failure to provide food without maggots. The Trump administration is doing to the body of Christ what Matthew 25 says we will be judged for.
Rep. Dan Goldman said the people held in the facility are not criminals and are “living in jail conditions.” Rep. Adriano Espaillat called the conditions “inhumane” and vowed to shut the center down. On Monday, Sen. Andy Kim and New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill led a delegation to the facility and were denied entry. ICE officers used an armored vehicle, pepper-sprayed the group, and fired pepper balls into the crowd. Kim posted on social media that “civilians were tackled and restrained, and agents fired pepper balls and spray into the crowd.” The Trump administration is pepper-spraying a United States senator and a governor for attempting to visit detainees in a federal facility. The threshold being crossed is new.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin denied the allegations of a hunger strike and said, “We’re giving them the calories they want. This isn’t a Holiday Inn.” The detainees are human beings. Human beings are not given “calories.” Human beings are fed. Human beings are given medical care. Human beings with breast lumps are given mammograms. Human beings with colon cancer are given treatment. The secretary’s statement treats human beings as less than human, and Fratelli Tutti §39 names what that is: when politicians treat human beings as “less worthy, less important, less human,” they “set certain political preferences above deep convictions of our faith.” Secretary Mullin’s “not a Holiday Inn” is the contempt for human dignity spoken plainly.
President Trump defended the center’s operations during a Cabinet meeting and said, “We run the finest facilities anywhere in the world of their type.” The woman with the breast lump waiting over a month for a mammogram is in “the finest facility.” The detainee with colon cancer receiving no treatment is in “the finest facility.” The people eating maggot-infested food are in “the finest facility.” The inversion of reality is complete.
Democrats are protesting the detention system they helped build. The privately-run Delaney Hall facility opened under a Democratic mayor in a Democratic city in a state that has elected Democratic governors for more than two decades. Those of us who accepted the bipartisan deportation consensus across thirty years — who voted for detention-bed appropriations under both parties, who accepted the framing that immigration was a policy question and abortion was the moral question, who remained silent while ICE detained hundreds of thousands of people — helped build the machine the Trump administration is now operating. The sin was bipartisan. The present cruelty does not erase that complicity, and the complicity does not soften what Trump is doing now. No prior administration defended feeding detainees maggot-infested food while denying medical care to a woman with a breast lump. The conduct is new. The conduct is evil.
The Torah names the wrong. “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt,” the commandment says in Exodus 22:21. The detainee is the ger — the stranger, the resident alien the commandment protects. The woman with the breast lump is the stranger. The detainee with colon cancer is the stranger. The people eating maggot-infested food are the strangers. When the Trump administration feeds them maggot-infested food and denies them medical care, it is doing to the stranger what the Torah forbids.
Pope Francis stood on the island of Lampedusa in July 2013 and named what the world had become: a globalization of indifference in which we have grown used to the suffering of migrants because their deaths no longer move us. The people detained at Delaney Hall are the migrants whose suffering we have grown used to. The woman with the breast lump has been waiting over a month. The detainee with colon cancer is receiving no treatment. The people eating maggot-infested food are eating it because the country has grown indifferent to their suffering. The indifference is the sin Francis named, and the sin is present at Delaney Hall.
An immigration system that honored human dignity would release detainees on bail or ankle monitors or into community-based alternatives to detention, not hold them in facilities where the food is infested with maggots and medical care is denied. The detainees at Delaney Hall are not convicted criminals. They are people awaiting immigration hearings. They can be released. They can be given medical care. The woman with the breast lump can be given a mammogram. The detainee with colon cancer can be given treatment. The choice to hold them in conditions Rep. Espaillat called “inhumane” is not a necessity. It is a decision.
Mr. President, Secretary Mullin: you can feed the detainees food without maggots. You can give the woman with the breast lump a mammogram. You can treat the detainee with colon cancer. The door of return is open. The Christ you claim is the Christ who said the prisoner is his own body, and the people you are holding at Delaney Hall are the prisoners Christ said we will be judged for. Stop.