Thursday, November 13, 2025 |
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What happens to people after ICE officers snatch them off the street? Many of them are shipped off to a massive—and mostly unknown—detention center in the middle of the Arizona desert. Inside are federal courts, where judges quietly decide their fate. After months of phone calls, emails, and paperwork, reporter Rowan Moore Gerety and photographer Ethan Noah Roy gained access to the detention center and the court rooms, where they spent three days documenting and photographing everything they saw. It's an extraordinary, behind-the-scenes look at the Trump administration's deportation machine in action—and it will break your heart. You can read the story below. – Michael Sebastian, editor-in-chief Plus: |
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On the ground in Eloy, Arizona, our reporter found lives on hold, families broken apart, and a Kafkaesque system that seems to lead to only one way out. |
Eloy Detention Center lies nine miles east of Interstate 10 in Arizona, amid a patchwork of windswept mesquite scrub, solar farms, and alfalfa and cotton fields, with the jagged ridgeline of the Picacho Mountains visible to the southeast. Pass the reserved parking spots for the Employee of the Month, Supervisor of the Quarter, Officer of the Month, and Employee of the Year. Pass the little signs that say "Keep Off the Landscaping" and stop at a reinforced steel door painted blue, with an intercom button on the right. Employees may already be waiting there, carrying McDonald's bags and energy drinks. A sticker inside someone's see-through backpack: "I Don't Know, I Just Work Here." Look at the camera, announce yourself. The door opens past a twelve-foot fence ringed with razor wire and into a vestibule where a second button awaits. Past the second fence, electrified, fifteen feet high, a chain-link tunnel leads to the main entrance. The guard at the reception desk can only be a few years out of high school, with a mop of curly hair, an ear gauge, and a hint of facial hair. If it weren't for the blue CoreCivic polo, boots, and navy cargo pants, he wouldn't seem out of place at a skate park in Tucson. Here he shuffles paperwork, picks up the phone, stores each visitor's driver's license in a book with sleeves of color-coded clip-on badges. Having spent weeks exchanging emails with EOIR—"you do not need to work with DHS in advance regarding access to the Eloy Detention Center"—I point out that the place I'm trying to go is ultimately a federal court. "It still needs to go through us," the receptionist says. "It's a court in a prison." The escort rolls his eyes and looks over his glasses to correct his colleague's taboo: "It's a detention center." |
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"You? At a silent retreat?" a friend asked me before I left. I admit, it's a stretch. I've been surrounded by noise my entire life. As a Black man, it's how I know everything is all right. When I hear laughter and arguments all on the same block in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where I live most of the time, that signals safety. But as the area gentrifies, it quiets—a form of "silent colonialism," Willie Mack, assistant professor of Black studies at the University of Missouri, told me on a call—which makes me feel uneasy. When I think of Black joy, it's loud. I grew up in a duplex right off Walnut Hill in Dallas-Dallas, the two-one-foh, where CD players bumped Congolese rumba, the TV blared 106 & Park, and the kitchen smelled of hot peppers, ginger, nutmeg, garlic, and paprika. Aunts and uncles, rarely ever related by blood, always dinged the doorbell to eat, laugh, and philosophize. "For people that continue to be exploited in so many ways, celebration and noise is key," Mack says. "Most importantly, it's a way for their voices and efforts to be forefronted." I decided to head toward my discomfort: ten days of meditative silence. Maybe it wouldn't cure me of all I'd been feeling. But maybe it could provide me with a tool kit to better face the noise—or become more comfortable with silence. |
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He has everything because he has you. If he were a romantic—assuming this man is a husband or partner—that's what he'd say. But maybe he's just a guy you have to get a gift for, and he already has everything because, well, he's rich. Or he just has really good taste. Doesn't matter, you've got a serious gift-giving task in front of you. The man who has everything needs nothing, so skip the socks and AirPods. The man who has everything wants nothing, so he'll tell you not to bother with is favorite bottle of wine or bourbon. It can be intimidating, but let us be your guide. We know this type of guy inside and out. At Esquire, we know about seen-it-all dads and cooler-than-you brothers-in-law who need a gift that'll blow them away. And lucky for you, we know exactly how to do that. You could go for luxe gifts or practical treasures he'll actually use. This list of 60 unique, out-there, unheard-of gifts for men who have everything—everything except these gifts, that is—will show you where to start. |
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