Valentine’s Day 2026: Emily was in South Carolina visiting her brother and sister-in-law. I texted her in the morning, because I knew she would still be asleep: “Happy Valentine’s Day, my love. On my way to prison. Will call when I get back home.”
I Dress for Decency
My game plan for the day was to visit a prisoner at GEO North Lake Processing Center, aka North Lake Immigrants Concentration Camp, in Baldwin, Michigan. I was prepared to follow all the rules so that I wouldn’t be denied entry. I took my driver’s license and a $20 donation out of my wallet so I could store my wallet with my keys in my knapsack. My pen and notebook I left there as well, comforted in the assurance that “3×5 note cards and bendy pens” would be available for note taking.
And I obeyed the unofficial dress code, which, we were warned, was being enforced:
- pants with no holes/distressed material (jeans preferred but khakis, trousers, slacks are OK. no leggings, sweatpants or pajama-type bottoms)
- closed-toed shoes and no Crocs
- long-sleeve shirt or sweater with no pockets, no hoodies, no quarter zips
- if wearing a bra, no underwire
I wore jeans but with no holes in the knees, and my usual tennis shoes.
The restriction on bras with underwires fortunately was no problem for me. More of a challenge was the requirement to wear a long-sleeve shirt with no pockets. I wear short sleeves all year round and all my shirts have pockets to carry my glasses. My only option was my pullover wool turtle-neck sweater, which seemed too overdressed and warm for the event and the day’s weather.
Then, lo and behold, I discovered a pocketless long-sleeve pullover on Emily’s side of our closet. With confidence in my masculinity, I prepared to wear it as my alternative, until I received the following message: “I believe a short-sleeve shirt for a man will be allowed. A breast pocket is probably ok, too. It’s sort of a ‘decency police’ dress code.” I’m nothing if I’m not decent. I went with short-sleeve button down over a T-shirt that said, “We were all immigrants.”
On the Road to Baldwin
Baldwin is located three and a half hours north of Ann Arbor. I drove up with friends Mary Anne and Amelia.
Mary Anne and I were going to meet another friend, Ramiro, and the three of us were going to make the visit.
Amelia brought with her eight cartons of Korans, thirty-six per box, a donation from an area mosque for the prisoners. We delivered them personally to the prison reverend as soon as we arrived. He was concerned to learn that they were hardbacks, which are strictly verboten as gifts because they may be hollowed out to hide contraband. However, he came up with a workaround: He would donate them to the prison library, which has many hardbacks, and prisoners can borrow them from there.
Mission accomplished, we went out front to join one hundred other patriots who had shown up to show their support for the prisoners.
Food for the Family
At 1 p.m, Mary Anne, Ramiro, and I went back to the prison for our visit. On our brief walk, a security guard approached us in her car. She made a point of telling us that she doesn’t necessarily agree with what’s happening but she needs food to feed her family. We’re pretty sure this is the plight of many of the employees. It isn’t uncommon for Trump/Miller concentration camps to be built in depressed communities that are forced to choose between principle and food. Baldwin is one of the most depressed areas in Michigan.
We had been given the name of one prisoner and instructions by a leader from No Detention Centers in Michigan, the leading statewide coalition working to abolish immigration concentration camps in Michigan. The prisoner was a Venezuelan asylum seeker who had been abducted in Chicago in October and brought to North Lake, where he has remained since then. His only family members in this country are an ex-wife and a daughter, who the ex-wife has kept from him. In other words, nobody.
I had so many questions, which I knew I would have to ask through Mary Anne and Ramiro because I’m not fluent in Spanish:
- Why did you flee Venezuela?
- What were you doing in Chicago and how were you caught?
- What are conditions like in prison?
- How is your health?
- Do you have a routine? How is the food?
- How can I contact your daughter?
Registering at the Prison
The reception area included two women behind the counter processing visitors, at one time or another about thirty visitors, and a handful of I guessed guards who were milling around not really doing anything. It appeared to be shift change time so some of the guards could have been waiting to leave. To the right side of the counter were two rows of chairs with twenty visitors, some of whom were standing behind the chairs, all waiting to be called.
At the counter, we filled out the visitor form, which indicated who we were visiting, his “A” number, our driver’s license numbers, our relation to the prisoner (we all wrote “friend”), and our addresses.
We each brought a $20 donation for our prisoner’s commissary account. The bills all went into one envelope, which I signed after writing our prisoner’s name and “A” number. Then one of the women directed us to watch as she sealed the envelope and dropped it into a secure box.
To join the waiting visitors on the right side of the counter, we had to pass through security on the left side. I put my coat and shoes in one basket and my glasses case in another and pushed them through the X-ray machine. I retrieved them after passing through the scanner and then joined the visitors.
Driving while Brown
While we were waiting to meet our designated prisoner, we talked with a young woman who was here to visit her boyfriend, another Venezuelan, who had been abducted in his car because he was driving while Brown. He had been imprisoned for six months but this was her first opportunity to visit him.
She tried futilely to hold back tears as she described his growing pessimism as he awaited his court date in December 2027! She was uplifted when we told her about Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC), which provides free legal help (but which is always in righteous need of donations).
We learned from one of the milling men, who described himself as a processor, that the prisoners come from all over, including Chicago, Grand Rapids, Detroit, and other cities. Many are from prisons. “It’s all about money,” he said. “Democrats, Republicans, ministers making over $200,000. I don’t trust any of them. Governors from both parties call ICE, and ICE takes them to federal prisons so the state doesn’t have to pay.”
He says it is common for immigrants to be sent to camps and prisons far from their homes to reduce visits.
Waiting for What?
We waited an hour before being told to line up in front of the vestibule that led to what we guessed would be the meeting room. At last, we thought, we’re on our way. We waited in line for another ten minutes. And then our names were called. Here is what we were told: The prisoner we had travelled from Ann Arbor to visit “already had a visit today and inmates only get one visit a day.”
What? That’s it?
That was it.
My friend Rich and his wife, Nancy, who, like us, had driven up from Ann Arbor to show support for someone who they didn’t know, got the same message.
What the hell?
Ramiro knew one of the women who had been picked up recently in Ypsilanti. “Can we visit her instead?” he asked. No, we couldn’t because today was visitors’ day in Delta cell, which was for the men. Visits are on a rotation basis. Bravo is the women’s cell and visitation day there was Monday.
That was it. A three-and-a-half-hour ride to Baldwin, an hour wait in the reception area, and then a three-and-a-half hour ride back home. Good company for sure, and we were on hand to join the one hundred others outside the camp, but that was not our anticipated outcome.
Guests had other ways of being screwed also. A family of five drove in from Cincinnati only to learn that the maximum number of visitors at a time is four, so one of them had to remain in the waiting room.
Now we began to wonder, would our prisoner even receive the donation we had left for him? Will he even know a donation was given to him?
Happy Valentine’s Day
Our treatment in Baldwin’s Trump/Miller Concentration Camp is an extension of the dehumanizing treatment inmates receive. For one, we don’t even know if indeed these two prisoners really had already received visitors. But even if they had, why are they only allowed one visit per visitors’ day? The men’s and women’s cells are open for visitors each only one day a week. So, in effect, prisoners are allowed one visit a week. Visits are limited to ninety minutes.
How can members of the resistance—aka, immigrant supporters and family members—be given access to visitors’ logs, or provided relevant information by prison staff, or allowed to make reservations, so duplicate assignments of prisoners to receive guests can be reduced and eliminated and out-of-town visitors can be assured their trips won’t be in vain?
What other support groups besides No Detention Centers in Michigan are lining up volunteers to visit prisoners who otherwise would have nobody? How can they coordinate their efforts so prisoners aren’t paired up with more than one group a day?
And how can we be assured our designated prisoner received our donation?
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone. ICE Out of Existence.
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Ken Wachsberger is an author, editor, speaker, and book coach. His memoir, Thumbs Up: Memoir of a Joyful Organizer, was released in July 2025 and is available for purchase here.
