This footage was recorded on Friday, May 8, 2026. It is being posted on a delay to protect the immigrant involved from additional targeting by the Trump Administration.
I have spent my career in national security. I have sat in rooms with some of the most dangerous people in the world. And I will say this clearly: there is a special place in hell reserved for those who designed this cruelty and called it policy. Stephen Miller, I’m talking about you.
Friday was one of the hardest days I’ve had in a long time. And it made me more certain than ever that I cannot walk away from this fight.
I drove to the Elizabeth Detention Facility in New Jersey with my best friend and her four-year-old son, my godson, to say goodbye to her husband. On Saturday morning, he was deported to a country he hasn’t called home in years. We waited to post this until we knew he boarded safely and arrived. He did. He’s there now. And this family, like thousands of others, is left to pick up the pieces of a life that was torn apart by a system that has lost its humanity.
I stood inside that facility and watched a four-year-old boy hold onto his father. He doesn’t have the words for what’s happening. But he knew enough to not let go. And as I stood there, I thought about what was on the other side of those walls. No windows. No daylight. No sky. No connection to the outside world whatsoever. This man had not seen the sun in eleven and a half months. Not once. That is not detention. That is not a system. That is a deliberate choice to strip human beings of their dignity, one windowless day at a time.
And earlier that same day, the Virginia Supreme Court struck down our voter-approved redistricting map, a 4-3 decision that threw out the will of the people and handed Republicans a structural advantage heading into the midterms. The rules changed overnight. Not because voters decided it. Because four justices did.
Two gut punches in one day.
But here’s what I need you to understand: I did not leave that detention facility broken. I left it furious. Furious in the way that clarifies everything. Furious in the way that makes you stop second-guessing and start moving.
Because the families being torn apart at facilities like Elizabeth, and the voters being stripped of their power by courts like this one, they are not separate stories. They are the same story. It’s about who gets a voice. Who gets to stay. Who gets to be counted. And who gets to decide.
We are just one story. Across this country there are families who never got the goodbye we got. Families who lost loved ones inside these facilities. Families whose nightmares didn’t end with a deportation flight, they ended with a phone call no one should ever have to receive. The horror is extensive. The suffering is vast. And most of it happens behind windowless walls, out of sight, by design.
We are just one of so many. And that is exactly why I’m telling this story.
Friday sucked. I won’t dress it up. It derailed things I had worked incredibly hard for, and I’m still processing what comes next. But I keep coming back to this family. And I know that whatever I’m navigating right now, it pales in comparison to what this family is living. What thousands of families are living.
So no. I don’t have it all figured out. But I know which side of this fight I’m on. And I’m not leaving it.
More soon,
Olivia
