Content warning: This message references sexual assault and violence.

Hello,

This week, I was in Louisiana where my colleagues Senator Markey, Congressman McGovern, and I conducted oversight of two ICE detention facilities where Mahmoud Khalil and my constituent, Rümeysa Öztürk are currently being held.

Neither of them has committed any crime. Rümeysa should be back in our home state, in the Massachusetts 7th. Mahmoud should be with his wife and their newborn son.

Detaining them serves no purpose other than to silence dissent, to stoke and instill fear — which is exactly what a dictator does.

We had the chance to meet with Rümeysa and Mahmoud during our visit. What we saw and heard was harrowing. It was heartbreaking, and it is enraging.

They are being denied proper medical care. They are being deprived of sleep. They are not being fed nutritious meals.

Rümeysa herself shared the story of having to wait three days, despite repeated requests, simply for toilet paper. She has suffered multiple asthma attacks. The medical care is grossly insufficient and culturally incompetent. Rümeysa shared that a nurse removed her hijab without consent.

The cruelty is the point.

They are humiliated daily, degraded, and denied the basic necessities of any human being.

Despite these horrific experiences, Rümeysa and Mahmoud’s first priority was not to make an appeal for their own respective cases. Instead, they put their own well-being to the side to advocate for those who are detained with them.

Rümeysa is a qualified researcher. She's been actively listening to and spending time with the women that she is confined with, hearing their stories, and came with copious notes that she had collected.

She shared stories of women being ripped away from their babies, women with breast cancer who can't get the care that they need, and pregnant women denied prenatal care.

When I asked her if anyone she knew had experienced sexual abuse or assault, she told me she did not have the consent to share.

Before we met with Rümeysa, we went to one of the dorms. I was the only woman in our delegation. When I entered, women clad in orange scrubs fell into my arms.

They were desperate and crying and fearful. They kept saying, “I want to talk to you. I want to tell you what's happening here, but will you protect us when you leave? Who will protect us?” They were visibly shaking.

These are private detention centers operated by billion dollar corporations. Like my opposition to private prisons and profiting off of mass incarceration, I vigorously oppose these companies making money on disappearing immigrants.

This visit was not about optics. It was about accountability. It was about affirming that no one in America, regardless of background, immigration status, political beliefs, and more, should have their constitutional rights to free speech and due process ripped away.

I feel a responsibility to carry the stories that I heard in my heart and for that to inform my strategy and my advocacy.

This is what it means to conduct real-time oversight. This is the type of bold activist leadership that this moment demands.

We must hold ICE and this hostile, lawless administration accountable.

We must protect our democracy and the fundamental rights of everyone who calls America home. And we must bring Rümeysa and Mahmoud home now.

-Ayanna