SOS
Bluebonnet Detention Facility | Anson, Texas | April 28, 2025
Immigration detention centers are extensions of the prison-industrial complex which itself is propped up by propaganda and fearmongering from the “War on Drugs” and the “War on Terror” in attempts justify mass incarceration and surveillance, and police and border militarization.
The prison system regularly exploits the labor of imprisoned people through the exception clause in the 13th amendment that permits slavery and involuntary servitude if you are committed of a crime.
Similarly, immigration detention centers use a “Voluntary Work Program” (VWP) that pays pennies on the hour with the minimum pay set to $1 per day as a guise to exploit the labor of detained people.
In “Defining Forced Labor: The Legal Battle to Protect Detained Immigrants from Private Exploitation,” Dartmouth College; J.D. Candidate 2022, Samantha Sherman highlights:
“Although private detention corporations are obligated to provide detained people with basic necessities, plaintiffs allege that facilities regularly deprive them of essentials. Plaintiffs in one facility, for example, reported that CoreCivic did not adequately provide ‘basic necessities, like food, toothpaste, toilet paper, and soap.’ Instead, they had no choice but to purchase these necessities from the commissary. For people who do not have family members to fund their commissary accounts, working in the VWP is the only means of earning commissary credit. In sum, detention corporations allegedly operate a ‘deprivation scheme’ in which they withhold basic necessities in order to coerce people into working in the VWP and making commissary purchases.”
On December 21, 2017, the “U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Concerned with Alleged Abusive Labor Practices at Immigration Detention Centers” reported:
“One estimate of the cost savings predicted the company could have spent $125,000 in a one-month period on wages and benefits, but instead spent $1,680 through the use of detainee labor. These incentives could lead to detainee abuse in both government-run and private facilities.
Recently, detainees at numerous facilities have alleged being forced to work under threat of solitary confinement and restraint. In one case a detainee was allegedly punished for complaining about unsafe work conditions.”
Private for-profit facilities operate without transparency and accountability while absolving the government of responsibility. Transactional Records Access Clearing House reported that for-profit immigrant detention facilities held 86 percent of ICE detainees in January of 2025 (TRAC).
From the American Immigration Council on “New Report Details ICE’s Expanding and Increasingly Unaccountable Detention System”:
· “The number of people held in ICE detention on any given day increased by over 75% in one year.
· By the end of November 2025, ICE was using 104 more facilities for immigration detention than at the start of the year, a 91% increase.
· The Trump administration has dramatically changed the profile of who is being arrested by increasing the use of ‘at-large’ arrests in American communities by 600%, leading to an unprecedented deployment of federal law enforcement.
· With the funding provided by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, ICE has enough funding to operate upwards of 135,000 detention beds through the end of FY 2029.
· These changes in arrest practices have led to a 2,450% increase in the number of people with no criminal record being held in ICE detention on any given day.
· President Trump’s executive order calling for the maximum use of detention has created a ‘no release’ system where increasingly few individuals are able to seek release on bond. By the end of November 2025, discretionary releases from detention fell by 87%.
· With release on bond no longer an option for many people seeking relief, and deleterious conditions inside facilities, immigrants are increasingly giving up. As of November 2025, 14.3 people were deported directly from detention for every one person released from ICE detention pending a hearing.”
The prison-industrial and military-industrial complexes propagandize security and safety logics through mass incarceration, surveillance, and militarization. The trillions spent to prop up these systems of suffering could be used for rehabilitation, to end homelessness and famine, for universal health care, scientific research on disease treatment, environment restoration/regeneration, and/or countless other productive humanitarian projects.
Abolish private prisons.
Abolish immigration detention centers.
Abolish forced prison labor.
Abolish ICE.
Artwork Notes:
This design is based on the people forming an SOS after they were kidnapped and held at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas on April 28, 2025.
Seeing the SOS sideways reminded me of an abstract DNA helix and made me think about how protesting is in humanity’s DNA.
I made this artwork in the spring of 2025 for an art design course midterm at SMC. It measures about ~16x20”. I deconstructed a paper bag and PVA glued it to a 14x17” bristol paper. The design was cut from mostly “fadeless” paper and glued with a glue stick to the deconstructed paper bag. It took about a day for the PVA glue to dry and set, and each letter took me about a day to cut out and glue.