Trump’s “Defensive Operation” Against the World
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Authoritarian Watch
/ March 6, 2026
Trump’s “Defensive Operation” Against the World
From ICE detention centers in San Diego to the war in Iran, Trump has been trying to “defend” our country, while making the lives of many miserable instead.
Sasha Abramsky
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Protesters led by a coalition of interfaith religious leaders demonstrate against US immigration policy outside the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, California.
(Robyn Beck / AFP via Getty Images)
Fifteen miles east of San Diego, on a street called Calzada de la Fuente, there is a sprawling immigration detention center in the neighborhood of Otay Mesa. It is situated at the base of a hill, up and down which snakes the double row of border fencing separating the scrublands from the sprawl of Tijuana. The area, along a remote stretch of Route 905, is a dumping ground for society’s despised: Within a few minutes drive of the immigrant concentration camp are a juvenile detention facility, a county jail, and a large state prison. There’s a large Amazon warehouse and a massive water treatment plant. It’s the sort of place, out of sight, out of mind, one doesn’t drive through by accident. I have, over the years, been to similarly depressing epicenters of incarceration in South Texas and in Arizona.
The Otay Mesa Detention Center is run by the private prison company CoreCivic, which states that the facility has a capacity to hold 1,358 inmates. CalMatters recently reported that there have been days when more than 1,600 people have been held there. Legislators, including Senator Alex Padilla, have been rebuffed in their efforts to gain entry to the site, but inmates who managed to throw notes detailing their conditions of confinement, taped to shampoo bottles and pads of deodorant, to the protesters, part of a group called Otay Mesa Detention Collective, who congregate on the street outside the facility every Sunday afternoon, reported diets that don’t meet basic nutritional needs, a lack of medical care, damp and cold cell blocks, minimal outdoor time, and rampant overcrowding. Women have reported that if they couldn’t afford to buy sanitary pads, they were left to bleed on themselves during their periods. “Every day, we were coming and they were throwing stuff over, but the guards would race us to the notes,” recalls one of the protesters, Arturo Gonzalez.
Eventually, CoreCivic’s staff responded to the messages from the detained by locking down the institution during the two-hour protests, so that inmates could no longer access the outdoor exercise pods from which they were throwing their pleas. But by then, according to one of the …
Every delay has consequences.
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Current Issue
Authoritarian Watch
/ March 6, 2026
Trump’s “Defensive Operation” Against the World
From ICE detention centers in San Diego to the war in Iran, Trump has been trying to “defend” our country, while making the lives of many miserable instead.
Sasha Abramsky
Share
Copy Link
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Ad Policy
Protesters led by a coalition of interfaith religious leaders demonstrate against US immigration policy outside the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, California.
(Robyn Beck / AFP via Getty Images)
Fifteen miles east of San Diego, on a street called Calzada de la Fuente, there is a sprawling immigration detention center in the neighborhood of Otay Mesa. It is situated at the base of a hill, up and down which snakes the double row of border fencing separating the scrublands from the sprawl of Tijuana. The area, along a remote stretch of Route 905, is a dumping ground for society’s despised: Within a few minutes drive of the immigrant concentration camp are a juvenile detention facility, a county jail, and a large state prison. There’s a large Amazon warehouse and a massive water treatment plant. It’s the sort of place, out of sight, out of mind, one doesn’t drive through by accident. I have, over the years, been to similarly depressing epicenters of incarceration in South Texas and in Arizona.
The Otay Mesa Detention Center is run by the private prison company CoreCivic, which states that the facility has a capacity to hold 1,358 inmates. CalMatters recently reported that there have been days when more than 1,600 people have been held there. Legislators, including Senator Alex Padilla, have been rebuffed in their efforts to gain entry to the site, but inmates who managed to throw notes detailing their conditions of confinement, taped to shampoo bottles and pads of deodorant, to the protesters, part of a group called Otay Mesa Detention Collective, who congregate on the street outside the facility every Sunday afternoon, reported diets that don’t meet basic nutritional needs, a lack of medical care, damp and cold cell blocks, minimal outdoor time, and rampant overcrowding. Women have reported that if they couldn’t afford to buy sanitary pads, they were left to bleed on themselves during their periods. “Every day, we were coming and they were throwing stuff over, but the guards would race us to the notes,” recalls one of the protesters, Arturo Gonzalez.
Eventually, CoreCivic’s staff responded to the messages from the detained by locking down the institution during the two-hour protests, so that inmates could no longer access the outdoor exercise pods from which they were throwing their pleas. But by then, according to one of the …
Trump’s “Defensive Operation” Against the World
Every delay has consequences.
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Current Issue
Authoritarian Watch
/ March 6, 2026
Trump’s “Defensive Operation” Against the World
From ICE detention centers in San Diego to the war in Iran, Trump has been trying to “defend” our country, while making the lives of many miserable instead.
Sasha Abramsky
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
Ad Policy
Protesters led by a coalition of interfaith religious leaders demonstrate against US immigration policy outside the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, California.
(Robyn Beck / AFP via Getty Images)
Fifteen miles east of San Diego, on a street called Calzada de la Fuente, there is a sprawling immigration detention center in the neighborhood of Otay Mesa. It is situated at the base of a hill, up and down which snakes the double row of border fencing separating the scrublands from the sprawl of Tijuana. The area, along a remote stretch of Route 905, is a dumping ground for society’s despised: Within a few minutes drive of the immigrant concentration camp are a juvenile detention facility, a county jail, and a large state prison. There’s a large Amazon warehouse and a massive water treatment plant. It’s the sort of place, out of sight, out of mind, one doesn’t drive through by accident. I have, over the years, been to similarly depressing epicenters of incarceration in South Texas and in Arizona.
The Otay Mesa Detention Center is run by the private prison company CoreCivic, which states that the facility has a capacity to hold 1,358 inmates. CalMatters recently reported that there have been days when more than 1,600 people have been held there. Legislators, including Senator Alex Padilla, have been rebuffed in their efforts to gain entry to the site, but inmates who managed to throw notes detailing their conditions of confinement, taped to shampoo bottles and pads of deodorant, to the protesters, part of a group called Otay Mesa Detention Collective, who congregate on the street outside the facility every Sunday afternoon, reported diets that don’t meet basic nutritional needs, a lack of medical care, damp and cold cell blocks, minimal outdoor time, and rampant overcrowding. Women have reported that if they couldn’t afford to buy sanitary pads, they were left to bleed on themselves during their periods. “Every day, we were coming and they were throwing stuff over, but the guards would race us to the notes,” recalls one of the protesters, Arturo Gonzalez.
Eventually, CoreCivic’s staff responded to the messages from the detained by locking down the institution during the two-hour protests, so that inmates could no longer access the outdoor exercise pods from which they were throwing their pleas. But by then, according to one of the …
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