“I want to live already in the future of all my beautiful things—the yarn in the crates transformed into the sweater I have planned for them, . . . books with my name on them ranged up on the shelf, my city calm and quiet.” – @olivalejandra.bsky.social www.christiancentury.org/voices/pract...

The Midwest Immigration Bond Fund:

You may have seen that 600+ detainees are eligible for release, which is amazing! BUT: you may not know that immigration detainees still have to pay for their freedom-- $1500 bond per person! The Midwest Immigration Bond Fund is raising money to help people get free, please donate: www.mibfc.org

I am personally matching donations up to $500 made to the Midwest Immigration Bond Fund by Friday at 5pm. Send me a screenshot & I'll post my match by EOD Friday. They've got a larger $20k match on the table. Courts are finally stepping in some so let's get these folks home. www.mibfc.org

I'll second this call. ICIRR, the main organization doing work to help the abducted immigrants in Chicago, is endorsing this organization & this link as the primary way to help pay the bonds to release those still held by ICE. Help them get home for Thanksgiving. www.instagram.com/mw_bondfund/...

The Midwest Immigration Bond Fund launched in 2020 to provide bond assistance to people navigating the complex immigration legal system. That mission has become more difficult under the second Trump administration, the group said. blockclubchicago.org/2025/11/17/b... via @blockclubchi.bsky.social

615 of the estimated 3,000+ detained immigrants who were kidnapped in Chicagoland during Midway Blitz are expected to be eligible for bond this week. The Midwest Immigration Bond Fund shows up for people in detention who need bond, but it costs, at minimum, $1,500 per person. Pls help them.

“The work I do in front of the stove, the daily care I take with meals—this isn’t just about sustenance or being healthy. It is an expression of my morals and concerns, reminding me that the smallest of my actions is performed in a web of mutuality and care.” – @olivalejandra.bsky.social

new newsletter on the 100th anniversary of mrs. dalloway and reading it from a less-than-generous lens born of my own frustrations open.substack.com/pub/ojosdesa...

Appropriate, because one of the worker survivors of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire was then deported as part of the first Red Scare.

"It has become clear to me in the past few months that the immigration legal system has dropped even the slightest pretense of its orientation toward justice." @olivalejandra.bsky.social: 'A Way in the Wilderness' www.commonwealmagazine.org/lent-reflect...

This is an endemic problem, by the way. Geo Group and CoreCivic regularly deny folks in detention their meds. I witnessed this practiced systematically at Krome for the 5 years I used to visit and communicate with guys there

For the Injustice Report today, my colleague @olivalejandra.bsky.social wrote a jaw-dropping, must-read post: "Yes, the El Salvador 'Deportations' Are Really Bad' open.substack.com/pub/injustic...

This post has gotten so much traction & I’d just urge everyone to check out Pitzer’s history of concentration camps: we want these things to shout out their evil, to glow red w malign intent, but they begin as seemingly pragmatic, almost ordinary answers to mass containment & transport/transfer.

if you find yourself reluctant to support the guy at Columbia because you find some of the politics he espoused distasteful or even abhorrent, you should know that this is exactly the reaction that they hoped for in choosing him as a target for unlawful detention based on political speech.

Since Obama administration, at least, leftists/radicals repeatedly warned that Dems pouring cash into ICE and militarized police was not just evil in its own right, but laying the groundwork for open fascism. We were dismissed, with various degrees of vitriol, for pointing this obvious fact out.

I think the more horrifying thing to sit with is this: the every-day operations of the jail, prison, and immigration detention systems are and have been dehumanizing, and we built them, and they lend themselves seamlessly to the fascist business of stealing and caging even more people

This is why we must fight for everyone. Whether they’ve been incarcerated or have had contact with the criminal legal system or are merely undocumented. When you accept that some people are deserving of detention and deportation the scope of who is eligible is always under threat of expanding.

every time i sit down to write a letter to a new pen pal in ICE detention, im struck mute. what could i possibly say to someone in such a place? here’s a reminder to myself, and an invitation to you. open.substack.com/pub/ojosdesa...

i wrote about the remnant prairie behind the artist residency where i work www.christiancentury.org/article/call...

“The biodiversity of the prairie, its changing face across the seasons: this ecosystem is a community, living and breathing and renewing itself, older than the houses and the trees around it.” – @olivalejandra.bsky.social www.christiancentury.org/article/call...

I wrote about the ways that the Trump admin has been purposely fucking with the visibility of ICE enforcement/the increased invisibility of undocumented people in daily life/feeling called into visibility as a neighbor www.commonwealmagazine.org/ICE-immigrat...

I think most people are intuitively aware of this but something like the official White House account posting an “ASMR” video of shackled immigrants is not just cruel for its own sake, it’s intentional envelope-pushing to ramp up to desensitization over inhumane detention, camps, and deaths

I spent most of the past three years not writing and doing a lot of sewing and somehow becoming a public mender and sewing teacher—I wrote about how it changed my sense of community today in my newsletter. hedhouseman.substack.com/p/taking-you...

well, fuck ICE i guess

“We have a choice, these days, to be reborn into these times, to consent to change with them not in resignation to the fascist values …but in resignation to our truer, wilder selves, to shake off the mores of our time and to walk into the prairie.” wow, @olivalejandra.bsky.social

i wrote about dying and being reborn ungovernable also perfume and prairies and jackson pollock open.substack.com/pub/ojosdesa...

every single time jason sits down to read the dog will drag his toy over and stare at him unceasingly until he puts the book away and gets on the floor to wrassle

Alejandra's writing is so gorgeous and smart.

i am literally out here making collages for my newsletter about Orlando (novel), Jackson Pollock, perfume, gender, Shakespeare and decay, pls subscribe ojosdesantalucia.substack.com

fully and absolutely bizarre to realize that Wabansia Ave, to Simone de Beauvoir, was one of the most romantic places on earth

re reading Orlando for newsletter research, and i think i love it so much in part because it just…works beautifully as a novel but it’s also packed full of what feel like inside jokes and asides that you sort of grasp but u know are meant for Vita Sackville-West’s eyes only

This piece is SO GOOD

I’m really excited to get to work with @jessicagoudeau.bsky.social on Injustice Report—my first post went up today, on Chicago, ICE enforcement actions, the sensitive locations memo and knowing your rights open.substack.com/pub/injustic...

I’m relaunching my newsletter as a shared space with @olivalejandra.bsky.social and Lauren Pinkston called The Injustice Report: Reporting that bends the arc of justice. injusticereport.substack.com/p/the-injust... We’ll report on community stories of how unjust policies affect real people.

I don't trust any leader who isn't standing up for immigrants and trans people right now.

This is probably the most helpful resource I’ve seen so far in terms of keeping up with verifiable news on what’s happening around immigration raids in Chicago. No paywall too.

talking to @johndownesangus.bsky.social’s class was one of the highlights of last year—incredibly jealous of this reading list

wrote like 2,000 words of newsletter today, coming soon to an email inbox near you. ojosdesantalucia.substack.com

even a worm will turn

I reskeeted this earlier but there is now an extremely important correction: Secret Service says it was their agents that went to the school in Chicago, not ICE.

unspeakably furious after seeing this. grateful for local news, prepared educators, and a city with policies that stand by its people blockclubchicago.org/2025/01/24/i...

me, literally five pages into a new romance novel:

Sharing an incredible resource for people looking to follow the legal changes on immigration under Trump. A law professor and numerous students at Yale Law and Stanford Law will be tracking and summarizing every change in immigration policy. immpolicytracking.org/home/

made a stew feat. the entire ham bone left over from christmas and the temptation is proving too great for my dog, who is sitting at my feet and alternating between gently growling and snorting at me with the very occasional whine

Every time I ask someone what immigration policy actually accomplishes, including the immigration attorneys I know, there’s always a lot of handwringing to cover up that the answer is “racism, mostly.” And yet “then maybe we should get rid of it?” is treated as an unthinkably extreme solution

feeling very seen by these gifts from my in laws