“Two Faces of Liberty,” by Lilith Quinlan

October 5, 2018

Quak­er Uni­ver­sal­ist Fel­low­ship has reprint­ed a 1984 Friends Jour­nal arti­cle by Lil­lith Quin­lan that sounds way too con­tem­po­rary despite the three and a half decades:

While school chil­dren in New Eng­land are sell­ing can­dy to rebuild the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, we have a large and quite dif­fer­ent project going on here in Louisiana: the “alien deten­tion cen­ter” in Oak­dale. This $17.1 mil­lion facil­i­ty with a pro­ject­ed bud­get of $6-$7 mil­lion per year will be able to imprison 1,000 “aliens” ini­tial­ly, then 2,000.

It has been described by Immi­gra­tion and Nat­u­ral­iza­tion Ser­vice (INS) offi­cials as a longterm hold­ing facil­i­ty and is the first such prison admin­is­tered joint­ly by the unholy alliance of the Bureau of Pris­ons and the INS. A new cen­ter is also being built in Alexan­dria to train 1,000 peo­ple for the bor­der patrol, dou­bling the present capacity.

https://​uni​ver​sal​ist​friends​.org/​w​e​b​l​o​g​/​l​i​b​e​r​t​y​-​q​u​i​n​lan