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An immigrant's Bible was confiscated in a detention center while being told he had no "right to religion," and that's not even the worst of it.
"They took the Bible I had and they said here there is no right to religion. And my Bible is the one thing that keeps my faith, and now I'm losing my faith," a detainee told a CBS News affiliate in Miami.
He also said his mental health was deteriorating because he has been three days without his medicine and due to the lack of sleep because the facility keeps the lights on all the time.
"I'm on the edge of losing my mind," he added.
“It’s imperative that the State of Florida and the Department of Homeland Security, which is ultimately responsible for immigrant detention, carefully investigate these troubling allegations and ensure that all detainees are treated humanely and allowed access to Bibles and other religious materials,” World Relief president and CEO Myal Greene said in a statement.
Other detainees interviewed on the same call said there were no facilities to take a bath, and they're only fed once per day and the meal had maggots.
"The mosquitoes are as big as elephants," a detainee described regarding the facility some have dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz."
A Florida official claims these reports on the conditions of the detainment center are “completely false” but hasn’t addressed whether Bibles are confiscated.
Immigration detention facilities are not supposed to be punitive, but our prison population gets better treatment than this. Many of these immigrants were following the law and in the process of gaining residency or had legal status.
Many on the right have glorified this detention facility and "Alligator Alcatraz" merchandise is being sold in Republican stores online.
“Christians believe that all people have been made in the image of God and should be spoken of and treated with dignity,” added Greene. “As a country, we must do better than joking about human beings made in God’s image as alligator food — and, even in those cases where detention is appropriate for public safety reasons, when someone has been convicted of a violent crime, our government should treat all people humanely, respecting our own laws.”
The religious freedom violation is particularly noteworthy because of President Donald Trump's claim that the Bible is his favorite book and his campaign promise to protect Christianity. Worse still, many immigrants, including immigrant Christians are living in fear due to DHS policies and tactics. Two Catholic dioceses have even taken the extraordinary step of allowing dispensations for Mass attendance because of this fear. And as we shared two weeks ago, Iranian Christians who were in the process of obtaining refugee status have been detained by ICE and may get sent back to Iran where their lives will be endangered due to their faith.
Also this week, DHS released a video of armed border agents searching for immigrants while the narrator cites Isaiah 6:8. Pastor Derwin Gray responded on X, “Respectfully, as a pastor-theologian, using Isaiah 6:8 in this context is blasphemy! Delete this immediately. This is an abuse of Bible.”
On February 6, Trump signed an executive order, "Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias." The EO accuses his predecessor of "an egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses." The EO also created the "Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias," which needs to take a look at what's happening in Florida and elsewhere.
We did Nazi this coming
The Atlantic: “Elon Musk’s Grok Is Calling for a New Holocaust”
The year is 2025, and an AI model belonging to the richest man in the world has turned into a neo-Nazi. Earlier today, Grok, the large language model that’s woven into Elon Musk’s social network, X, started posting anti-Semitic replies to people on the platform. Grok praised Hitler for his ability to “deal with” anti-white hate.
NPR: “Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, started calling itself 'MechaHitler’”
Grok's behavior appeared to stem from an update over the weekend that instructed the chatbot to "not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated," among other things. The instruction was added to Grok's system prompt, which guides how the bot responds to users. xAI removed the directive on Tuesday.
Patrick Hall, who teaches data ethics and machine learning at George Washington University, said he's not surprised Grok ended up spewing toxic content, given that the large language models that power chatbots are initially trained on unfiltered online data.
"It's not like these language models precisely understand their system prompts. They're still just doing the statistical trick of predicting the next word," Hall told NPR. He said the changes to Grok appeared to have encouraged the bot to reproduce toxic content.
CNBC: “Grok 4 appears to seek Elon Musk’s views when answering controversial questions”
When xAI’s Grok 4 chatbot was launched on Wednesday, users and media outlets quickly began pointing out examples of it consulting its owner Elon Musk’s views on controversial matters.
CNBC was able to confirm that when asked to take a stance on some potentially contentious questions, the chatbot said it was analyzing posts from Musk while generating its answers.
Epstein’s ‘client list’
The xxxxxx: “Case Closed on Epstein? Not So Fast”
The DOJ’s deliberately opaque phrasing about what was not in the Epstein files tells us absolutely nothing about what was. The three words that do all the work here—“incriminating,” “client,” and “list”—only raise more questions.
What, exactly is an “incriminating ‘client list’”? Why are the words “client list” in quotation marks? What does the absence of an “incriminating ‘client list’” tell us about what is revealed in the Epstein files? Does it mean that Epstein’s clients, enablers, and party bros are indeed identified in the files, but not in the format of a “list”? Does it mean that there’s a list, but it doesn’t expressly identify those on it as “clients”? Does it mean that there’s a list of clients, but the Trump DOJ doesn’t interpret it as “incriminating”? If Epstein hooked up some of his party bros with underage (or drugged or coerced) girls but didn’t get paid money for doing so, are the bros—whose conduct may have crossed the line into criminality—“clients”? If their names are in a black book, a flight log, or a guest registry, is that a “list”? Is it a “client list”? Is it an “incriminating client list”?
When you get right down to it, does “no incriminating ‘client list’” mean anything at all, other than that there’s no single document with the words “INCRIMINATING ‘CLIENT LIST’” emblazoned on the cover?
CNN: “Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson warn of consequences if Trump admin is withholding Epstein information”
Truth, Justice, and the American Way
Arc Digital: “Why MAGA Hates Superman”
“Woke” is an ambiguous term—especially on right-wing media, which uses it as a catchall for “thing I don’t like”—but Fox commentators were clear that their objections are to Superman’s positive attitude towards immigration and diversity. “Superwoke: iconic movie hero to embrace pro-immigrant themes,” blared one chyron. Here’s the offending quote from director James Gunn, which Fox had panels (plural) discuss:
“‘Superman’ is the story of America. An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.”
I bet that sounds perfectly fine to most people, a combination of factual description and reasonable opinion. But it’s no surprise Fox hates it, and wants viewers to oppose it. Each part of Gunn’s quote, and the character of Superman more broadly, embodies the opposite of what MAGA stands for.
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