Building An Economy That Works For Working Americans

• by: Gerald Epstein & C.J. Polychroniou

Prof.dr. Gerald Epstein

07-13-2026 ~ The United States is a plutocracy. Its economy works for the wealthy and powerful at the expense of working people. It is a broken politico-economic system in need of major repairs, but as leading progressive economist Gerald Epstein points out in the interview that follows, there is indeed an arsenal of bold policies to “defeat fascism, preserve democracy, and help create a greener, stronger and fairer economy for American workers.” Epstein is professor of  economics and a founding co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

C. J. Polychroniou: It’s often been said that progressives are good in offering stinging critiques of the status quo and even making appealing policy proposals, but there is still a short supply of game changing strategies. I take it that this is the aim of Game Changers: Economic Polices for a Working America, an exciting new project from the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. You conceived of the project and serve as its director, so tell us more about it. Why now the launching of such a project, what are the major issues covered, and what do you  hope will be achieved? 

Gerald Epstein: I launched the Game Changers project, along with my colleagues James Boyce of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Juliet Schor of Boston College, because of the emerging perception that progressives in the United States could not gain political power and defeat the fascists and MAGA simply by leveling criticisms and epithets against Trump and his associates. Working people in the United States are hurting and angry after decades of neoliberal economic policies  implemented, with some exceptions, by both Republican and Democratic administrations. Looking for answers to their legitimate problems, many American voters either simply sit out elections, or pull the lever for extreme candidates that seek to manipulate them by identifying scapegoats — such as immigrants — as the source of their problems.

So, we launched Game Changers to be a positive source of real answers to real problems facing working Americans. The idea is to offer activists, political candidates, and government officials with policy ideas that bridge the gulf between the transformative and the practical, ideas that can envisage the way to an economy that is fairer, greener, more productive and more democratic. These are ideas, we believe, that are also practical enough to offer hope to those who want to  help to mobilize the political forces that can help bring them into fruition.

Importantly, though, we are not intending to offer a comprehensive program for the American left. We felt that would be presumptuous for us to do and beyond our competence and standing. Ours is more of a menu of ideas that can be picked up by those who need them and who want to mobilize on their behalf.

We geared the timing of this project so that the policy ideas would be ready by the Congressional elections in November of 2026. In fact, we are launching policy proposals this month of July 2026. They can be found at https://gamechangerspolicy.org . Some of these ideas might be taken up by candidates. If they win, they might be taken up when they serve in Congress. Some of these ideas may percolate and emerge in future campaigns and legislative actions, as well as be taken up by progressive organizations. That is our hope, anyway.

The Game Changers project consists of 9 teams of experts and practitioners, (about 45 people in total) working on a range of subjects: Care, Finance and Financial Regulation, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Macroeconomics, Trade and Labor, and Work and Jobs. All in all, these teams have developed about 25 different policy proposals.

The range of policies is striking. They include: “The Wealth of Welcome: Immigration Reform that Works for America”; “America’s Workers Deserve a Four Day Week”; A Universal Basic Income for Children”; “Medicare for All”; “Polluters Pay – The Extreme Weather Superfund”; “Democratize North American Trade”; “Housing as a Human Right”; “National Rent Control”; “Public Banking”; “No More Bailouts”. (For the whole list, see GameChangersPolicy.org).

C. J. Polychroniou: Since the project is about advancing progressive economic alternatives to the problems and challenges facing the US economy, one would assume that the economists invited to be part of the project represent a common tradition in the discipline. If so, how would you define this tradition, and is it important that there is a consensus among them as to what constitutes  progressive economic policies over key issues? We know that the Left has always been divided over ideology and policymaking. It is divided over the scope of government intervention in capitalist economies, and there is even disagreement over several specific issues, such as the Universal Basic Income, how to reduce inequality, and how to combat the climate crisis.

Gerald Epstein: What unites the economists and other experts involved in Game Changers is a commitment to defeat fascism, preserve democracy, and help create a greener, stronger and fairer economy for American workers. We did not invite experts based on a theoretical, methodological or ideological litmus test. Indeed, I would say that is one of the strengths of our project. The left often has great difficulties uniting sufficiently to engage in practical tasks like winning elections, or even achieving small practical goals, because they are riven by ideological, theoretical or methodological differences. We are not subject to that problem. Big egos are also a problem in politics -left, right and center and, for sure, in academia. Thankfully, we have avoided that problem as well. For us, the litmus test was a commitment to the ideals of Game Changers, expertise in their subject areas, and, for the most part, a willingness to volunteer their time.

C. J. Polychroniou: The 1930s posed the biggest and most severe challenge in US economic history. The New Deal was a response to the calamity of the Great Depression and reshaped the United States in a major and profound way. But the New Deal ultimately gave way to the neoliberal order and the results have been nothing but catastrophic for working-class people. Is the US today in a similar state of affairs as it was in the 1930s in the sense that the system is badly broken? Is this the message behind the launching of Game Changers? If so, can different issues still be addressed separately, or does the entire system need restructuring before anything meaningful can be done?   

Gerald Epstein: You are certainly correct that the neoliberal order wreaked havoc on America’s workers, but now things are even worse. In the US, we are facing a particularly pernicious form of capitalism, an authoritarian, and profoundly corrupt version that is dominated by a self-seeking Presidential family and a lethal coalition of techno-fossil-fuel-financialized capitalists. While our specific issues and policy proposals stand on their own terms, we see them as part of a broader vision of what our economy needs to overcome this lethal form of capitalism. The antidote is to recognize the equal dignity of every human being and work to guarantee their right to economic security, the opportunity to thrive, a livable planet, a world free of racism, and democratic governance of our lives, societies, and economies.

More specifically, Game Changers is posing a set of policies to help defeat this form of capitalism by “changing the game,” based on three principles.

Changing the game means (1) investing in each other through public provisioning of care, healthcare and other critical services; (2) securing our future by, for example, breaking the power of the fossil fuel capitalists and addressing climate change; and (3) righting the rules, by ending reckless and predatory financial practices, changing tax policies so that the super-rich have less wealth and contribute a bigger share for the operations of our government, preventing capitalists from firing workers arbitrarily and without just cause.

At one level, these, of course, are not revolutionary demands in a traditional sense. But if widely implemented, they would bring about a revolutionary improvement in the lives of working people, not only in the short term but in the longer term as well. Read more

How Stories Change The Human Brain, Empathy, Memory, And Behavior

• by: Katherine Dolan

Katherine Dolan – Photo: Facebook

07-12-2026 ~ Psychology and neuroscience help explain why stories shape how we think, feel, remember, and connect with others.

Story, a spoken or written account of connected events, is one of the main ways we communicate with other people. Whether it’s reading a picture book with a child, watching a movie, listening to a podcast, gossiping over a cup of coffee, or daydreaming about a vacation, we participate in storytelling in some way every day.

Although stories have frequently been dismissed as “leisure” or “escapism,” they serve a basic human need. After all, every society has its stories that are passed down from one generation to the next. But what exactly is happening to us when we dive into a story?

Research in psychology and neuroscience suggests that stories are far more than entertainment. They are one of the primary ways human beings learn, connect, and make sense of themselves and one another. Stories allow us to simulate experiences, understand other minds, regulate emotions, and strengthen the social bonds on which societies depend. A recurring finding is that stories exercise our social brain. They strengthen parts of the brain we use to relate to and connect with others, especially the cognitive systems responsible for empathy, theory of mind, and emotional regulation. As neuroscience PhD and science writer Aditi Subramaniam observes, fiction in particular “is a kind of cognitive simulation that allows us to practice social and emotional skills in a low-risk environment.” Essayist Susan Cushman argues that this might also be true of literary or narrative nonfiction, which is often told as a vivid story.

By contrast, expository nonfiction, whose goal is to inform without forming a narrative or eliciting an emotional response, offers a chance to exercise a wide range of skills that help build social connection more indirectly by enhancing general knowledge, improving analytical thinking, and building self-esteem.

How Stories Organize and Share Meaning
The human brain has evolved to sift, sort, and integrate a massive amount of information to prioritize survival. It registers sensory input, evaluates the relative importance of that input, and integrates it into an existing archive of memory and consciousness. Of key importance in this process is Superior Pattern Processing, which allows us to detect small changes in the environment and to ascribe meaning to those changes. Neuroscientist Mark Mattson argues that this is the basis of most of what makes the human brain unique (“intelligence, language, imagination, invention, and the belief in imaginary entities such as ghosts and gods”).

The brain is also overwhelmingly motivated by a need for social connection; our species is sometimes termed “ultrasocial” for the way large groups of unrelated individuals cooperate—a tendency also seen in some insects but in very few mammals. One of the ways we connect is through language and, by extension, story, which not only organizes our thoughts but also sends them to other brains. Story is like a delivery service that packs and transports a world of facts, emotions, ideas, sensations, and beliefs from one brain to another.

The Default Mode Network and the Social Brain
To understand why stories are such effective vehicles for transmitting ideas and experiences, it helps to look at one of the brain’s core networks for constructing meaning and imagining other perspectives: the Default Mode Network.

Since neurologist Marcus E. Raichle coined the term “default mode” in 2001, research on how our brains respond to story has incorporated a growing understanding of the default mode network (DMN). This is a system of connected brain regions that is inactive when we are focused on external stimuli but gets very busy when we are inwardly focused, for example, when daydreaming, thinking about the past, planning, or getting lost in a work of fiction.

In the words of Vinod Menon, director of the Stanford Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience Laboratory, the DMN “integrates and broadcasts memory, language, and semantic representations to create a coherent ‘internal narrative’ reflecting our individual experiences.” This internal narrative, he says, is central to our sense of self; it shapes how we perceive ourselves and how we interact with others.

In fact, one of the regions most active in the DMN is the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, which is involved in making predictions and in thinking about the thoughts and feelings of others.

Social neuroscientist Taylor Guthrie, of the “Sense of Mind” podcast, describes the utility of making predictions and imagining scenarios about social interaction:

In these social environments, there’s a lot of cost from damaging relationships. If a relationship is really providing us sustenance, is providing us a means of eating, of feeling safe and all of these things, then we need to make sure we’re not just reactive in the moment, that maybe we’re angry and we just say a bunch of things that we shouldn’t have said. Instead, it’s a lot more beneficial for us to be able to play out these scenarios. ‘If I said this, what would they maybe say?’ And ‘How could they maybe be thinking about this?’ and ‘What is their perspective? I know they have a mind of their own, they have emotions of their own.’ Read more

How Unions Pave The Way To The American Dream

• by: Roxanne D. Brown

Roxanne D. Brown ~ Photo: USW.org

07-09-2026 ~ Marcelo Assis recalled how his family arrived in the United States about 35 years ago, “poor as hell”—yet certain that America offered the path forward that they’d never find in their native Brazil or anywhere else.

The following years brought ups and downs, with Marcelo serving as a combat medic in the Army and then falling disillusioned with low-paying nonunion work that held him back instead of helping him move ahead.

But Marcelo ultimately landed back-to-back union jobs that catapulted him into the middle class and firmly anchored him there. Just as he clearly recalls his arrival in this country, Marcelo vividly remembers the moment years later when he looked around his newly purchased home, thought about the good life he provided to his family, and realized for the first time that he’d made it.

“This is the American dream,” he said to himself.

Marcelo’s experience shows how unions pave the way to a brighter future. That’s true even now—a time when the majority of working people feel as though the American dream has slipped out of reach because of rampant economic inequality, skyrocketing costs, and the callous indifference of the greedy rich.

In all, nearly 70 percent of Americans no longer see the country promising mobility or financial security to those who work hard and strive to get ahead, according to a January 2024 ABC News/Ipsos poll.

A separate survey, conducted in conjunction with the nation’s 250th birthday by AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that half of respondents lost faith in the American dream. Many see America working for the wealthy, not people like them.

But Marcelo, president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 12000 and a mechanic at Southern Connecticut Gas, will be the first to say it doesn’t have to be this way. After helping him fulfill the American dream, the union now enables him to hold on to it.

What Is Humanitarian Education And Does It Help Build Peace?

• by: Chloe Bruce

Chloe Bruce – Photo: Linkedin

08-07-2026 ~ Humanitarian organizations invest in education to promote safety, resilience, and social cohesion, but researchers continue to debate its long-term impact on conflict and human well-being.

Humanitarian education refers to educational initiatives developed or supported by humanitarian organizations to reduce suffering, protect vulnerable populations, and help communities recover from conflict and disaster. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees defines humanitarian education as an initiative that “is implemented in a humanitarian context and is inclusive of refugee and other marginalized learners.”

With wars and conflicts becoming increasingly common in the 21st century, education has taken on greater significance. According to a 2025 United Nations article, of the 234 million school-age children affected by conflict worldwide, 85 million are completely out of school. Helena Murseli, global lead of the UNICEF Education in Emergencies team, called the situation “unprecedented.” “These are not isolated incidents. They are part of a global pattern of escalating conflict that affects children’s right to learn,” she said.

There is an urgent need to help develop spaces to provide a caring environment, especially for children experiencing conflict and displacement. “Refugee children deserve an education of quality that will last them a lifetime. Education must be an integral part of our response to emergencies, not an afterthought that falls gradually into neglect,” states the UN Refugee Agency.

Humanitarian education encompasses a wide range of educational goals, teaching methods, and pedagogical approaches. To understand its effectiveness, this article examines its purpose and ultimate goal, its link to the humanitarian mandate to reduce conflict and human suffering, and, most importantly, whether it has achieved its objectives.

Why Humanitarian Education Is Important
Using education to develop a peaceful society has been foundational to the concept of schooling throughout human history. Two of history’s most prominent teachers, Confucius and Plato, both spoke of the purpose of education as creating “harmonious societies.” Over time, education was institutionalized, first by religious bodies and then by political ones. Colonialism rooted these educational structures worldwide. A 2023 Brookings article by Ghulam Omar Qargha and Emily Markovich Morris, from the Center for Universal Education, states, “In most countries under colonial influence, the colonizing forces used modern schooling to develop a workforce in the colony, spread culture and values, control the local populations from opposing colonial rule, and create a sense of national unity among colonized peoples.” Those purposes still rigidly define mainstream education today.

In the 20th century, following two catastrophic wars that engulfed large parts of the world, alternative models developed to recenter the role of education in nurturing peaceful, nonviolent societies. The United Nations created UNESCO to ensure a “peaceful coexistence between nations,” with the motto that “[s]ince wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” This helped pave the way for international organizations to highlight the importance of education, not only to sustain peace in conflict areas but also as a means to build a safe and nurturing environment for children in these countries and regions.

On a global scale, humanitarian educational endeavors focus on highlighting the value of education and ensuring universal access to it. Humanitarian education comes under the umbrella of Education for All (EFA). “Education for all is a principle advocating that all children, young people and adults should have access to quality education, regardless of background or circumstance,” the UNESCO website explains. The EFA declaration affirms that “education can help ensure a safer, healthier, more prosperous and environmentally sound world, while simultaneously contributing to social, economic and cultural progress, tolerance and international cooperation.” This shows that the international community’s push for wider participation in education stems from the idea that a more educated world is a more peaceful one.

There are, however, several limitations to this idea and its implementation. As UNESCO notes in its blog about the links between education, violence, and well-being, despite evidence that higher levels of basic education are associated with reduced national violent conflict, this claim remains ambiguous.

Although the number of people who receive at least a basic education has reversed since 1800, from one in five receiving a basic education to one in five who have not received any formal education, according to 2020 figures analyzed by Our World in Data, there is no way to prove this is a direct result of humanitarian education initiatives. The sharp uptick in education post-World War II suggests that the global shift in perceptions toward education, of which the UN was an integral part, has contributed to increased access to education. Other important developments include the recognition of education as a human right, which helped pave the way for another key humanitarian educational concept: education in emergencies (EiE). In her article in the Comparative Education Review, Julia C. Lurch emphasizes that “rights-based conceptions of education provided a powerful cultural frame that helped legitimate greater attention to EiE.” Education in emergencies has since become another pillar in humanitarian organizational responses to conflict.

Girls are often disproportionately affected in humanitarian emergencies. According to the UN Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI), girls are among those most excluded from education during crises and are especially vulnerable to dropping out of school. To cope with this situation, the UN argues that “Education in emergencies should become an integral part of a long-term strategy to develop inclusive education systems in countries affected by armed conflict.” Read more

Why Do Societies Normalize Harm To Children In War, Poverty, And Public Policy?

• by: Colin Greer & Reynard Loki

07-06-2026 ~ From war and environmental disaster to poverty and public policy, children face systemic harm that societies often fail to recognize—and can choose to change.

Few ideas command more universal agreement than the belief that children must be protected. Across cultures, religions, and political traditions, they are regarded as uniquely deserving of care, safety, and opportunity. Yet a glaring contradiction emerges when we look closely at the conditions under which millions of children actually live.

Around the world, childhood is routinely fractured by war, hunger, pollution, displacement, and poverty. Even within the United States, children face food insecurity, inadequate healthcare, environmental hazards, failing infrastructure, and unequal educational opportunities. We usually discuss these realities as separate crises—economic, political, or environmental. Rarely do we recognize them as interconnected symptoms of a larger pattern.

To a child, however, these bureaucratic distinctions matter little. The consequences accumulate in bodies, minds, and futures. This reality forces an uncomfortable question: if societies profess such deep concern for children, why does so much preventable harm persist? Why are conditions we would find intolerable in an individual case so easily accepted when they occur at scale?

The answer is not necessarily a lack of empathy. It is something more troubling: many forms of harm to children have become normalized. They persist not because societies openly endorse them, but because they have been quietly absorbed into the ordinary operation of institutions, policies, and social systems.

Consider how many of the gravest threats to children are discussed. War is typically analyzed in terms of territory, security, military strategy, or geopolitical interests. National debt is debated in the context of budgets, interest rates, and fiscal policy. Environmental disasters are measured through property loss, infrastructure damage, and economic costs. Immigration enforcement is discussed in terms of law, borders, and political conflict.

Yet children often experience these events differently. They encounter them not as policy questions but as disruptions to safety, stability, health, education, and belonging. The consequences can persist long after the original crisis has faded from public attention. Different in form, these crises share a common feature: the well-being of children is rarely the measure by which they are judged, even when children bear a disproportionate share of the harm.

Around the world, the pattern is remarkably consistent. Whether the source is armed conflict, environmental disaster, economic instability, forced migration, or political repression, children frequently bear consequences they neither created nor can control. The details vary from one society to another, but the underlying dynamic remains the same: the costs of collective failures are often carried by those with the least power to influence them.

Public expressions of concern for children are nearly universal. News reports on wars, famines, environmental disasters, and epidemics routinely highlight the number of children harmed. Yet these acknowledgments often remain symbolic rather than transformative. Concern is expressed, tragedy is recognized, and attention moves on, while the underlying conditions that produced the harm remain largely unchanged.

The suffering of children is often invoked as evidence of a crisis, yet it rarely becomes the standard by which the success or failure of public responses is judged.

The same pattern appears in the United States. While hunger is often debated through the lens of federal budgets and public spending, millions of children quietly rely on school meal programs as their primary source of daily nutrition. Similarly, environmental contamination is routinely assessed using regulatory thresholds and economic costs, even as emerging research documents developmental harms from pollution across childhood and adolescence. Immigration enforcement, too, is often discussed through the abstract language of borders and legality, while children endure the immediate fear, instability, and trauma of family separation. In each instance, the language of policy can obscure the lived realities of childhood.

The Evidence Is Already There
We do not lack evidence. We lack organized will. Year after year, global organizations such as UNICEF, Save the Children, and Oxfam document the scale of systemic harm inflicted on children. The data is neither hidden nor ambiguous. Yet a profound disconnect persists between public concern and institutional action. Societies routinely pass sweeping laws, sign international declarations, and voice collective outrage, but consistently fail to build the systems needed to turn concern into protection.

A stark, contemporary manifestation of this gap is found in the 2026 Global Out of the Shadows Index. Developed by Economist Impact alongside Together for Girls, the index benchmarked how 60 countries address child sexual abuse and exploitation. Its findings point to a familiar pattern. Many countries have developed legal protections for children, but far fewer have built the institutions, systems, and public commitments needed to make those protections meaningful in everyday life. Across the global index, governance and prevention emerged as the absolute weakest areas.

This points to a difficult truth. The failure to protect children is rarely a failure of knowledge. We know far more about the causes of harm than we did a generation ago. We know how poverty affects development. We know how violence shapes mental health. We know how environmental toxins accumulate in growing bodies. The question is no longer whether the evidence exists. The question is why societies continue to tolerate conditions that produce predictable harm.

The pattern extends across national boundaries and political systems. Wealthy countries and lower-income countries alike often struggle to translate concern into prevention. Some fail because of limited resources. Others fail despite having substantial resources at their disposal. The recurring challenge is not simply capacity, but the willingness to organize institutions around children’s long-term well-being.

Part of the answer lies in the unequal conditions into which children are born. Long before children make choices of their own, geography, family circumstances, health, environment, and social status begin shaping the opportunities available to them. Read more

The Public Isn’t Budging On ICE’s Immigrant Detention Policies

• by: Sonali Kolhatkar

Sonali Kolhatkar

07-03-2026 ~ Around the nation, citizens are resisting the mass warehousing of immigrants—and finding some success.

As the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency rapidly expands its carceral powers, immigrant detention centers around the United States have been facing relentless public scrutiny. It appears the pressure campaigns are finally having an impact as some centers are shutting down. While this doesn’t mean the Trump administration’s draconian anti-immigrant agenda is winding down anytime soon, it signals the importance of sustaining grassroots opposition.

The most significant closure—one that hasn’t garnered nearly enough media coverage—is Florida’s so-called Alligator Alcatraz. When it first opened in July 2025, the sprawling, hastily built complex located in the midst of South Florida’s Everglades became one of the ugliest symbols of President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda. Only a year later, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced it would be closed.

During its short lifespan, the center was notorious for its shockingly inhumane treatment of detained people, including torture and abuse. Republican Party officials, meanwhile, showed support for the center by selling “Alligator Alcatraz” merchandise, and Trump supporters were seen taking selfies before a large sign emblazoned with the prison’s nickname.

The detention center was named by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who boasted that the people being held there had “nowhere to go, nowhere to hide,” and that the facility was cheap to run because it was surrounded by alligators and pythons. While the Trump administration has claimed it wants to remove people from the country in a way that will “maximize efficiency, minimize costs,” it turns out Alligator Alcatraz was a money sink.

DeSantis justified the center’s $1.2 billion price tag, saying it had served its purpose because 21,000 people had been detained there at various times over the past year before being deported. But, compared to the average cost of holding people in immigrant detention, Alligator Alcatraz was more than 20 times as expensive.

Trump’s project of rounding people up just because he can costs taxpayers massive amounts of money during a time when ordinary Americans are suffering financially and seeing essential service cuts. The US Government Accountability Office released a report in June 2026 stating that millions of dollars were wasted on operating ICE detention centers.

While the Florida center was likely shut down in response to an environmental lawsuit, other immigrant prisons are also under scrutiny across the country. The most high-profile fight is currently playing out in Newark, New Jersey, where Delaney Hall has been the focus of a protest by hundreds of detained people engaging in hunger and labor strikes on the inside and public pressure from activists and family members on the outside.

Just like state-run prisons where incarcerated people are forced to work under harsh circumstances for extremely low pay, conditions inside immigrant detention centers like Delaney Hall are documented as being tantamount to slave labor. Private companies like GEO Group, which runs Delaney, pocket the profits made through immigrant indentured labor.

“Delaney Hall and GEO Group [detention centers] generally are known for having really horrific conditions,” said Rachel Marandett, a detention attorney at the American Friends Service Committee’s New Jersey Immigrant Rights Program. Marandett cited severe medical neglect, in addition to inedible food and foul-tasting water, among the conditions that detained people are forced to endure. “They’re treated as if they’re less than human,” she said.

Such conditions are systemic. Across the US, people detained by ICE report widespread medical neglect, as per an investigation by KFF Health News and the Associated Press. Physicians for Human Rights released a new report concluding that in-custody deaths between January 20, 2025, and June 4, 2026, jumped dramatically to nearly four times the rate under the Biden administration. And, in what might be considered a de facto admission of routine violations of the law and people’s rights, immigrant prison contractors are seeking similar immunity from prosecution that police have long (undeservedly) enjoyed.

There is no legal requirement for the government to detain undocumented people who do not have a criminal record. Setting aside the fact that many immigrants are unlawfully detained—such as a Newark city employee named Rafael Rubio, who was arrested and detained for 158 days when he appeared at a routine interview as part of his asylum application. He was finally released after city officials mobilized to push for his release—the decision to imprison them is a discretionary one. “Instead of only detaining people that the government has some actual reason to argue are a flight risk or a danger, [ICE is] detaining everyone and just claiming that these interests apply to every single non-citizen,” said Marandett. Read more