When a colleague and I arrived at the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan, on Feb. 24 to visit a potential client in U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement detention, we were completely unprepared for the indignity that awaited: Being told that we had to take off our bras.
I’m a lawyer on a fellowship with the ACLU of Michigan. My colleague, who is an experienced translator and advocate, went with me to visit a potential client who only speaks Spanish, and has been detained at North Lake, the largest ICE detention facility in Michigan, for months.
Degrading as it was, what happened to me pales in comparison to the cruelty more than 1,400 immigrants locked away at North Lake endure every day.