I’m not sure he’s really comparable to the typical ICE case. Obviously if you’re fighting the deportation, you’ll be in the camps for months. But my understanding is that people in there are under constant pressure to sign paperwork agreeing to a rapid deportation. They get paperwork shoved in their face in a language they can’t read and are told to sign it. ICE agents actively try and trick immigrants into signing away their rights, thus allowing their rapid deportation.

Ultimately, all this is being run by racists who want as many brown people out of the country as fast as possible. They don’t just want to keep millions of brown people in cages for the fun of it; they want to deport millions of brown people. And as long as we’re not in full “extermination camp” territory yet, achieving that goal means moving people through the system as fast as possible. Stephen Miller’s aims are advanced by brown people sitting in plane seats, not brown people sitting in cages.

I remember a story from awhile back about a court case involving an immigrant that was voluntarily seeking deportation, but was still being held by ICE. But the article treated it as a surprising oddity. It was such a notable occurrence that it was the exception that proved the rule. As far as I know, generally, if you’re willing to sign away your rights to appear in immigration court, you can get out of the system pretty quickly by opting for voluntary deportation. That’s almost certainly what Milo did.

None of this to excuse any of ICE’s crimes. But as I understand it, if detained immigrants are willing to sign away their rights to fight the deportation, they can move through the system fairly quickly. Again, it does the racists no good to prevent the people they hate from leaving.