Bulwark Takes - A 7-Year-Old Trapped in Hell Is Begging Senator Katie Britt for Help

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

Tim Miller shares the story of a Venezuelan family — a pregnant mother, father, and their 7-year-old daughter — who have spent weeks detained at the Dilley detention facility in Texas, despite doing everything the Trump administration has asked of immigrants seeking to leave the country. The family followed every legal step: they applied for asylum, never missed an ICE check-in, and when they decided to return to Venezuela, they went through the official self-deportation process. Instead of being sent home, they were arrested and detained.For more on the Texas Immigration Law Council: https://txilc.org/Call Sen. Katie Britt: 202-224-5744Function provides 160+ lab tests for $1/day and member pricing on advanced imaging. Join at https://functionhealth.com/BULWARKTAKES and use gift code BULWARKTAKES25.

Hey, everybody. It's Tim Mel from the Borg. I received a tip on another crazy and enraging story out of the Dilly internment camp in Texas that I wanted to share with you. This is the same place that is housing the professors and their child from Iran who are here legally and are being sent for months to a camp for no reason against their will, even though they broke no laws. well, that same camp I learned this morning is also holding a Venezuelan family that is trying to self-deport back to Venezuela. They have at every step of the way tried to do exactly what this government and the immigration hardliners claim that they want from people. And still, it is a mother, a pregnant mother, a father, and a seven-year-old. who are being held for weeks in a camp with disgusting conditions that is not fit for anyone, certainly not a pregnant mother and a child that committed no crime. They have sent a plea for help to Senator Katie Britt of Alabama that the Texas Immigration Law Council has provided to me. And so I'm going to share that with you at length.

But before I do that, I want to focus on the process that this family has gone through. The names are Freddy's Revea and Edgariani Cortez Herves. In 2023, they came to our country with their four-year-old daughter. They were fleeing Venezuelan communism. They came to America and applied for asylum legally under the rules that were allowed during the Biden presidency. Since being in the country, they have consistently gone to their local ICE facility for the required check-ins as their application is being reviewed. They've broken no laws. They have worked legally.

Their daughter has gone to school and is learning English. But when Ed Gariani got pregnant and it became clear that during the Trump administration, they would not be approved for asylum. They decided that it was safer to go home. So they requested a self-deportation flight as the administration has insisted. And yet, they are still in week six in our internment camps. Let me say that again. This family had the opportunity.

had the opportunity to hide in the country and do the birth tourism that this administration rails against. And she's pregnant. She could have tried to stay in the country, delivered the baby, had a U.S. citizen child here, something that they could have done. But they didn't do that. These are rule followers. At every step of the way, they have followed the rules that we have laid out, even the kind of heinous rules that I disagree with, that the Trump administration has laid out. She got pregnant. They went to their CBP1 app. They filed for self-deportation and they went to the ICE office for removal. They did everything right. Our government is torturing them. This message is sponsored by function. So August is national wellness month and it feels like every wellness trend you see online comes with another gadget or a supplement that you're supposed to buy. I wanted to skip the guesswork and actually see what was going on inside my body. I want to know about it. baseline health before busy travel season and function gave me a way to do just that. Through

function, you get a set of tests that looks at more than just the basics. Their core biomarkers include white blood cell count, which actually maps your frontline immune defense, HSCRP, which can identify inflammation, and vitamin D and zinc, which are important for immune function, and are commonly love. They also cross-reference things like ferretin for iron levels, MMA for active B-12, and cortisol to understand how stress is affecting your body. And let's be honest, I got a lot of stress. I do the trio, I do the takes, constantly editing. It's stressful.

I need to know how it's affecting my body. So I use function, and you should too. I like having more information about what's happening inside my body so I can make more informed decisions. Check your health way I do. Function provides 160 plus lab test for a dollar a day and member pricing on advanced imaging. Join at functionhealth.com slash bulwark takes and use gift code bulwark takes 25.

As I mentioned this morning, I talked to a representative from the Texas Immigration Law Council. They said they've met with this family. The family's in hell. I'm going to list out all of the problems that they're facing in this internment, in the letter. And all the family wants us to be sent home. All they want is to be let free. It is unclear, according to their representative. whether this detention stems from disorganization and competence.

I'll throw on cruelty. We don't know. Maybe these internment camps are so overloaded that we don't even have the staffing to man them. You know, we had on Jonathan Bwitzer a couple of weeks ago, and he said, and he was talking about a different camp in Texas, Camp East Montana, and the horrific, unimaginable treatment of detainees there. And he said, the only way to get out of that place was to say you're going to self-deport. But now here we have a Dilley. You can't even do that?

The Texas Immigration Law Council provided this letter from the family to Katie Britt because she chairs the subcommittee on Homeland Security. They also provided it because they saw the story of Katie Britt saying that she was moved by the kid in the blue bunny hat in Minnesota. They're hoping that she might also be. moved by their story. They provided, in addition, this heartbreaking kind of picture that was drawn by their daughter who was begging for help and begging to go home. That's where we are at this country. You have to hope against hope that one Republican senator will randomly show mercy to a child

who's being held for no reason who did nothing wrong in an internment camp on our soil. That's where we're at. I'll read from the letter now. Ducender Britt, our names are Freddy's Padilla Ravilla and Edgariani-Cortez-Herves. We are a family from Venezuela, and we're asking with all our hearts for your help to free us so we can go back home to Venezuela. We found out that you really cared with the little boy with the blue bunny hat was taken. We were also detained at Dibley with our seven-year-old daughter. Edgariani is pregnant. We've been detained here since July 7th.

For nearly three years, we lived in Pecos, Texas, where we worked lawfully. Our daughter attended school, and we built a life for. for our family. We regularly complied with our ICE check-ins. I'd never missed an appointment. We have never been in trouble. Earlier this summer, when we learned that Edgariani was pregnant, we made the difficult decision to return to Venezuela. We believed we are following the instructions of the U.S. government. We downloaded the CBP Home app, submitted the required information and travel documents, and were told that we had been approved for self-deportation. On July 6, we went to our ICE check-in appointment as instructed. We believe we are going there to finalize our travel home.

instead after we signed all the forms waiving all our rights we are arrested we are immediately taken into custody and transferred to dilly we do not understand why we are still being detained senator britt we understand that you have a significant oversight role of the department of homeland security and the resources used for immigration detention we are asking you to use that role to help our family our daughter is seven years old she is not doing well she is frightened and increasingly withdrawn she barely eats the only foods we can reliably get her to eat are cookies and instant news noodles. She tells us that she feels trapped. She misses her cousins and the life that she had outside these walls. Most frightening of all, our daughter has recently told us that she wants to die. She's seven years old. Edgariani is pregnant and is not receiving the medical care she needs. She has not received an ultrasound, so we do not know whether our baby is okay. When she reports pain, she has been told that it's normal and has given Tylenol. But she has not been taken to a doctor for the evaluation we are asking for. She is struggling to eat the food and drink the water here because they make her sick. She had complications during her previous pregnancy, which makes us especially

afraid for the baby. We are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for our family to be allowed to go home. Thank you for taking the time to read our letter and for anything you can do to help us. May God bless you with respect and hope, Redis and Edgariani. And here is the drawing from their daughter that says, Senator Brett, please help me. I want to go home to Venezuela with a picture of a house and the three of them and a couple trees. What are we doing?

Like, what is this? This is fucking sickening. Okay? I hope that everybody sends the students that publishes to Katie Britt's office and I hope that they call the Dilley Detention Center immediately and let these people free. Why are any children living in these conditions at all?

like these people are not criminals. We do not need to have internment camps in the country. It is one thing if you need a place for criminal aliens that have broken the law, need to figure out how to deal with them and any kids that they have. Like that, okay, but like this, that is not the situation. Like, these people came under the legal process at the time. And so if we're going to go through this stupid mass deportation process, you can at least do it with humanity, let children and their mothers live and exist in what is

supposed to be the land of the free, putting them in tent camps and feeding them slop and not giving them access to medicine. This is the fucking pro-life party that's not letting a pregnant woman who has broken no laws get an ultrasound. They're keeping her in a razor wire cage for weeks on end. there is no reason for this. Like their cruelty is obviously why they want to do this. They want,

it's the way that Stephen Miller feels like a man, but I mean, like there is no tangible reason for that. So you can do the mass deportations without this. Like they're doing this out of just a despicable malice that is at the heart of this administration. And it's wrong. And,

you know, I was not like this family was moved by Katie Britt's comments about the boy in Minnesota and the blue bunny hat because I understand that Katie Britt has actual power and she could stop this. In her role as chairwoman, they could stop funding this horror that is going to haunt our country for decades to come. And so the least that she can do is, help a pregnant woman and a child who did everything that this despicable government wants, and as their reward for that, are still being interned in hell against their will with no recourse.

And there's so many great groups doing work down there in Texas. But given their help in this case, I do want to once again mention the Texas Immigration Law Council. I'll put a link to their website in the show notes, and you can go support them. their work because it's critical that there are people now offering legal support for folks that don't have money, don't have opportunity, don't have people to lean on. They're just being terrorized by our government to advance, you know, these despicable nationalist, racist policy ends.

So that's where we're at. We're going to keep you posted on this. sort of stuff and I'll keep you posted on the story of Freddison and Ed Gariani, hopefully they'll get out soon. So appreciate you guys. Subscribe to the feed. We'll see you soon.