I came down to the federal building in downtown Baltimore this morning to accompany a friend to an ICE check-in. When I arrived, the field office was closed. A sign on the door told people to return tomorrow. It was 9 degrees outside.
People came and went as they realized their check-ins weren’t happening today. No one seemed to have received any notification from ICE about the closure, which means many probably made difficult trips into the city that cost time and money for nothing.
This happens to be the same building where a leaked video recently circulated online showing what appears to be overcrowding at the temporary holding facility. The immigration court was open and holding hearings, but the ICE field office for check-ins was closed.
Getting to the front of the building was treacherous. The steps themselves were cleared, but the entire area leading up to the federal building was completely unshoveled and dangerous. My friend had recently injured her leg in the snow and ice, so she arrived on crutches, picking her way carefully across the frozen snow all the way to the building and back to her car.
In the scope of everything happening in the country right now, this might not seem like the most pressing issue. But it matters because in the midst of the larger waves of enforcement and attention on ICE/CBP violence, there is still the constant everyday grind: cost, inconvenience, worry. This lasts years, sometimes decades, for people who are following the rules, doing everything they’re supposed to do, and still living in prolonged limbo.
This is how it’s been for a long time before this administration, and this is how it will be after unless Americans can come together around actual solutions. The everyday machinery of immigration enforcement grinds on regardless of who occupies the White House.
Unexpected office closures create wasted trips. Hazardous conditions pose real danger. Mounting costs accumulate over years. These aren’t aberrations or failures of the system. They’re features of how the system is designed to function, treating compliance as an endless obstacle course that extracts time, money, and dignity from people simply trying to follow the law.
For more information about these everyday costs and consequences, check out “The Cost of Being Undocumented and read more by those authors over at La Cuenta.
And if you want good reporting on what’s happening in Baltimore right now, I recommend following The Salt Box on Substack.
