These detention camps are grotesque money-making machines for the well-connected
This is the May 28, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday.
MIKA’S NOTE
Rosalba “Rose” Chiaromonte came from Italy when she was 3.
She’s lived in America for over half a century.
Rose raised a Marine who was awarded two Purple Hearts.
She raised three other children and became the primary caretaker for her husband — a disabled Gulf War vet.
Last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement called Rose and her family in for what they believed was a routine green card appointment. ICE agents then arrested Rose and sent her husband on a four-hour chase to find paperwork they already had.
By the time the disabled vet got back, his wife was gone.
It’s another example of why anyone who tells you ICE is only taking the “worst of the worst” is a liar.
The Trump administration now mostly seizes the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, teachers and friends who fight our wars, build our economies, and fill our churches.
In fact, the Cato Institute estimates that only 7% of those the Trump administration now throws into Internment Camps have actually committed violent crimes.
Rose is currently jailed 300 miles from her home. And ICE denies her the diabetic medication she needs to stay healthy, so she is getting sicker by the day.
The wife and mom is one of roughly 60,000 people thrown into internment camps where most members of Congress are blocked from inspecting facilities so they can uncover the ugly truth.
One member of Congress who did get inside described what he found: maggots in the food, a woman waiting over a month for medical treatment, a man with colon cancer receiving no care.
Then there is the Associated Press investigation uncovering how 10 detainees died by suicide since President Donald Trump’s second term began. In a normal year, ICE records no deaths, or perhaps one.
An interned young man spent his final days sick and isolated, slipping handwritten notes under his cell door — begging to hear his mother’s voice on a phone. A guard collected the note and walked away.
Within an hour, the internment camp victim was dead.
These gulags have turned into grotesque money-making machines for the well-connected. Private contractors get paid for filling beds — whether those souls trapped inside have committed a crime or not, and whether they are American citizens or not.
Not that any of that matters under the law.
The U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of due process for every person on American soil is ignored daily by Trump’s internment goons.
So mothers get sick. Husbands slowly die. And sons trapped in hopeless despair take their own lives.
This is happening in Trump’s America, and it is all being rubber-stamped by Republican politicians who still have the gall to call themselves pro-life.
STEVE RATTNER’S CHARTS
INFLATION HITTING CONSUMERS HARD
PROFITS UP, WAGES FLAT
RICH SPENDING MORE
MS NOW
NO WAY TO MAKE A DEAL
—Jonathan Lemire
We have been here many times before.
President Trump teases that a deal to end the Iran war is close. And then it’s not.
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It happened again last weekend: Trump skipped his eldest son’s wedding and held staff back in Washington over the holiday, expecting that a deal with Tehran that he said on Saturday was “largely negotiated” would soon be ready.
His secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who was on a four-day trip to India, said on Sunday that a deal could come that day. Then he said the same thing on Monday. And yesterday. And yet there is still no deal. As I write in The Atlantic:
“Trump has grown deeply frustrated with his inability to get Iran to fully capitulate, aides told us, and angry at the commentators who have said the persistent stalemate has left him looking weak.
And his failure to make a deal doesn’t stem from a lack of desire.
He has spent weeks casting about for a way out of the conflict.
He has tried to force Iran’s surrender with a series of escalating threats and deadlines.
But each time, Iran has called his bluff, and Trump has found ways to extend the cease-fire.”
And so Trump and Iran remain in this cycle.
The Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, while Iran’s nuclear program remains unaddressed.
And now more hostilities have erupted, endangering the ceasefire. Trump desperately wants out of this war.
But it’s getting harder to see his exit.
ON THIS DATE
On May 28, 1972, burglars working on behalf of the Nixon White House broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., installing surveillance devices on telephones and taking photos.
WHAT THEY SAID
Jonathan Martin on Trump’s back-and-forth on Iran
“Even Trump seems fatigued by his own spin — this rinse, wash, repeat pattern to what he’s saying. And he knows that nobody’s buying it anymore.”
John Heilemann on the midterms
“Trump seems unconcerned with the midterms, flexing his political muscle purely for self-satisfaction rather than any longer-term political interest.”
Ed Luce on Russia
“Putin is not winning this war — he’s in a trap of his own making.”
$10 billion
— The amount in damages Trump is seeking in a fresh lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over its reporting on a lewd birthday note he allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein.
ONE MORE SHOT
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Mika Brzezinski is the co-host of MS NOW’s Morning Joe, founder of “Know Your Value” and author of four best-selling books, including “EARN IT!: Know Your Value and Grow Your Career, in Your 20s and Beyond” (Hachette Books; May 7, 2019) with co-author Daniela Pierre-Bravo. Prior to joining MSNBC in 2007, Mika was an anchor of CBS Evening News Weekend Edition and a CBS News correspondent who frequently contributed to CBS Sunday Morning and 60 Minutes.
