After Breakfast we usually get to watch a little TV and its usually a Spanish channel with music and girls, letting us show a semblance of male bravado. At the tail end of that, 5 am or so, the guys assigned to cleaning crews go to a standing 10’ by 10’ steel cage by a hall door to take out cleaning materials. They come by, some with long brushes and some with spray bottles and towels, to clean what mess there might be and to half-earn the $1.00 a day we who work get paid.

Our pod consists of 6 cells on a bottom tier and 7 on the top, for a total of 183 beds. There is a dayroom with 28 metal tables, which have four attached metal seats each. That’s not enough seats for the people that go eat, and those that aren’t fortunate enough to find a seat ( or have friends holding one for them) end up eating on the shower walls; a 4 feet division separating each shower stall. There are 14 shower stalls in all, ten of which work, the showers are located on the bottom tier across from the dayroom adjacent to the cage. Shower times are anytime we are let out to dayroom and before 7”30 pm, lockdown.

Today though we may not be privileged enough to take a shower. We, as inmates/detainees, are not privy as to why but we have been locked down since after breakfast, and are being told it might be a week straight of lockdown. Conveying to us, without so much as saying it, that showers will not be available for at least 3 days/ 72 hours. I’m not sure what that sounds like from the outside, but being in a confined space with 15 other men for 3 days and without shower makes me chuckle as to what adventure the ensuing days will bring. There’s really not much more I can do then that. No point in yelling, and no point in cursing. You either grit your teeth and bear it or laugh out loud (lol, ha-ha) as to the idiocy of the situation you find yourself in. Otherwise, it feels as if you may pop a bolt and lose a screw.

More then likely, what happened is fairly major given it will be a week of lockdown. Conjectures of a fight with a shank or a prisoner attacking a correctional officer/ guard are wildly flying across our cell. You see, men in my pod are classified as low-level detainees. Meaning for most part they are in this type of situation for the first time, or it’s their first encounter with ICE. Therefore, we can only imagine what higher level prisoners in this facility have done or what they are willing to do, they also have the privilege of knowing what to expect in regards of the time they will serve, and from that can make a decision or determination on what they are willing to do while in here.  The uncertainty of my stint in this place continues to consume my thoughts…