WASHINGTON — They came out at 4:30 yesterday afternoon, when most people in Washington are thinking about dinner or the Metro ride home, and they stood in Upper Senate Park reading names of dead people killed by their government.
Alex Pretti was a VA nurse in Minneapolis. Renee Nicole Good lived there too. Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres, Geraldo Lunas Campos, Víctor Manuel Díaz, Parady La, Luis Beltrán Yáñez–Cruz...
All the names. Then silence. Then a prayer.
Behind them, the Capitol dome sat fat and white against the winter sky, and inside that building their bosses were fighting about money for the very agencies that killed these people.
The staffers—Senate aides, House researchers, legislative directors, the people who actually write the laws—called it a “reign of terror.” Not a policy disagreement. Not an oversight problem. Terror.
They said it straight: “The decisions that our bosses make have life or death consequences.”
Thirty-two people died in ICE custody last year. Thirty-two. That’s triple the year before. And it’s only February and eight more are already dead this year.
The agency stopped paying doctors for months. They cut facility inspections by more than a third. They shot Alex Pretti, who was a nurse, who took an oath, who was a public servant just like the staffers standing in the cold reading his name.
Inside, Chuck Schumer wants warrants before arrests. She wants agents to show their faces, wear their badges, turn on their cameras. She wants someone watching who isn’t on the payroll.
John Thune nonsensically says that’s a threat to national security.
Meanwhile, the government might shut down Homeland Security funding on February 13th because nobody can agree on how much money to give to its agencies that keep killing people in their care.
The staffers stood there yesterday until the cold won. Then they went back inside to their desks, to write memos for bosses who will vote on whether any of this matters.
The names don’t go back inside. The names stay out in the cold.
Alex Pretti. Renee Nicole Good. Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres. Geraldo Lunas Campos. Víctor Manuel Díaz. Parady La. Luis Beltrán Yáñez–Cruz….
Thirty-two last year. Eight this year already.
This week there have be more hearings. More negotiations. More memos.
And the cold is still there, waiting.
