I meant to make a quick animated GIF about the detention centers that are now all across the United States of America, but as I worked on it, the project, like the problem, was too big for a quick snarky comment to satisfy. Below is an animation that is more like a list of what I want to investigate for what will be a found footage film about ICE, DHS, and the gigantic lawlessness, cruelty and irresponsibility of the “immigration policy.” Money, money, money seems to be behind much of it. Corruption seems to be the vehicle for getting that money.
Topics for this project may include:
- Money. Follow the money trail
- Corporate “partners” – who what when where and how
- Staffing detention centers and private police and incarceration forces
- ICE recruitment, training, deployment, chain of command
- Technologies and the companies who provide support for enforcement in the form of equipment and services, everything from clothing and masks to batons to vests to vehicles to ammo
- Government oversight
- Environmental costs of building camps in swamps, deserts, and other fragile ecosystems
- Reported events and encounters with ICE agents by individuals, families, groups
Update October 2026
This project is complicated by my wanting to show interconnections between the corruption of the Trump presidency and everything it touches and a philosophical-activist approach to visualizing this corruption. I need to forget the philosophy and stick with the facts. They speak the loudest and clearest.
I have too many sources of information. I doom-scroll incessantly looking for more information and knowing the entire time that I am not getting any information at all. More research needed and I need to find a way to center the piece.
I realize that I have had a soundtrack in my head, which is steadily building itself into a theme for the entire piece. It’s a sonic theme that defines my relationship to the facts of our lives in America today. I need to get that soundtrack out of my head and into the editing space. I have started working on the keyboard. I need time and money. I need space. I’ll work with what I have at the moment.
