Mikie, the man at the gate is holding a cello. He plays a low note to steady the hearts of the men behind the wire who are starving. The food was already rotten when you sent the horses — maggots in the rice, insulin denied, medical care withheld from the women who were pregnant in your jurisdiction. The hunger strike was in its second week. The families were outside with signs, with noise, with the only leverage the detained possess: the presence of other bodies who refuse to look away. You sent the riot horses. You sent the teargas. You called it lowering the temperature.
You were a federal prosecutor who took office in January on a promise of sanctuary. The detainees inside Delaney Hall asked to meet with you — not for release, not for the place to be shut down, just for the governor who has the power to inspect the cages to walk through the door and look at what is being done in her name. ICE denied you access, you said, and you accepted the denial. You met with the families instead. You posted on X that you would fight for transparency. Then you sent state police in full riot gear on horseback against the people who were already fighting for those things outside the fence. The cellist, John Mark Rozendaal, had brought his instrument to the mutual aid tent. The police threw the cello aside. They pulled his mask from his face so the teargas could reach his lungs without obstruction. A local news crew was pulled from their vehicle and exposed to chemical agents. Journalists were held for a full day. You called it lowering the temperature.
There is a phrase for what your body did when the door did not open. Crisis psychologists name the incomplete defensive movement — the small refusal that begins and does not finish, the failed approach that freezes into passivity. Your hand reached for the door of the detention center. Your hand stopped when the lock held. Your hand then signed the deployment order for the horses. The signature was clean. The pen did not pause. The diaphragm did not drop. The incomplete defensive movement completed itself in the opposite direction — not toward the cage, but toward the people standing outside it with cellos and heart-shaped hands pressed against the glass for the men inside to see.
Let us speak of the temperature you lowered.
There is a heat in a room where three hundred men are refusing food because the food crawling with maggots cannot be eaten. There is a burning in the lungs of the men who have been pepper-sprayed in their cells by the Geo Group guards, and they are sent to the hospital while the state looks away. The heat is not the heat of the outside agitators you named from the Trenton podium. The heat is the heat of bodies kept in a box and told they do not matter. The man outside was playing music. He had brought a cello to the tent. He played a low note to bring calm. You sent the riot horses.
What does it cost a person to choose the horse over the cello?
I see you standing at the statehouse podium. You are wearing the suit of the serious executive. You talk about law. But the cello was music. The riot gear is iron.
When you say “lowering the temperature,” the words catch in your own throat because the temperature you lowered is the heat of the canister you authorized. The scratch you feel there is the teargas you fired at the news crew, and it will not heal. You swallow your water and the water tastes like the metal of the cuffs you placed on the man who asked you to come to the door. Your chest tightens with the knowledge that you have traded the sanctuary you promised for the baton and the shield. Your shoulders ache at bedtime because the weight of the horses you mounted has settled into the bone, and you did not sleep.
Mikie, picture your daughter at the Trenton steps where the horses came down. The teargas you ordered drifts up the stone steps. It finds her eyes. It burns the lungs you worked so hard to protect in the legislature. She coughs and falls back, and there is no one to pull her to safety because the officers in their helmets have made it impossible for her to breathe. The cold air hits her chest and it feels like the cage. You say you want to meet with the detainees. You say it on X. You say it to the cameras. But you are still not at the door. The lie is that you are blocked from entering. The truth is that you have chosen the barricade. Your jaw aches from holding the posture of the tough governor. Your teeth grind in the night to the rhythm of the horses’ hooves, and the grinding does not stop.
You have sent the state troopers to throw the cello down, and you expect the man inside the wire to believe you care about his hunger.
There is a taste in the mouth of every person who voted for you and is now standing outside your office with a sign. It is metallic. It does not rinse out. It is the taste of the gap between the campaign promise and the deployment order, between the sanctuary policy and the riot gear, between the tweet about accountability and the cello on the pavement. You said you wanted to meet with the detainees, and the door was locked, and you accepted the lock. The protesters have not accepted the lock. The detainees have not accepted the maggots. The pregnant women who were released last week — the one concrete victory in two weeks of hunger and labor strike — were released because the noise outside the fence and the refusal inside it made the cost of keeping them higher than the cost of letting them go. That is what works. Not the lawsuit against GEO Group. Not the twelve million dollars for legal services. The noise. The bodies. The refusal to let the governor manage the crisis at the comfortable distance of a press conference.
Your hand reached for the door and stopped. The signature was clean. The pen did not pause. The diaphragm did not drop. And the noise outside the fence is the only thing between the detainees and the silence that would let the rest of us forget they are there.
The witness turns to the tradition that holds the hunger and the music in the same weight.
The detainee making the heart shape with his hands through the glass is the one who is seen. The man who plays the cello while the horses charge is the one who makes us human. The gospel remembers the woman who said:
“Do not weep and do not grieve nor be irresolute, for his grace will be with you all and will shelter you. Rather we should praise his greatness, for he has prepared us and made us Human beings.” — Gospel of Mary 5:5–8
Mikie, the grace is not at the statehouse.
The grace is in the cello. The grace is in the men behind the wire who have made you see what you are. The maggots are in the rice tonight. The man with the cello is still waiting. The men behind the wire are still waving. The heart-shaped hands are pressed against the glass for someone who has not yet arrived.
Walk to the door, and let the music in.