By Ben Meiselas
I’ve covered countless hearings over the years, but few moments have landed with the moral clarity and human weight of what unfolded this past week when Jim Brown stood up in a congressional chamber and told the truth about his vote. Brown is a Navy combat veteran who served his country in Panama and the Gulf War. He is also a minister who spends his free time helping people in need. At a live hearing, he did something rare in American politics. He admitted he was wrong.
Asked why he voted for Donald Trump, Brown did not hedge. “Because I was an idiot,” he said. “Eighty percent of the evangelical Christian people were lied to. They said ‘criminal,’ and I believed criminals need to be off the street.”
Brown’s reckoning was not theoretical. It was personal and devastating. His wife, Donna, who came to the United States legally from Ireland when she was 11 years old and has lived here for nearly five decades, has been locked in an immigration detention center in Kentucky for more than four months. Her alleged offense amounts to two bad checks totaling $80 written a decade ago. Since her detention, she has been placed in solitary confinement for eating a cup of ramen, denied adequate medical care, and subjected to conditions that would shock the conscience in any democracy.
This week, Brown attended another hearing, this time as Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem sat just feet away. Rep. Seth Magaziner of Rhode Island forced the administration to confront the consequences of its policies not with abstractions, but with faces.
“Madam Secretary,” Magaziner said, pointing behind her, “the man behind you…His name is Jim Brown. He is a Navy combat veteran.” He went on to explain that Brown’s wife, Donna, had been imprisoned for four months despite having committed no serious crime and living peacefully in the United States for decades. “What possible explanation can there be,” Magaziner asked, “for locking up his wife for four months?”
Noem responded with bureaucratic deflection, insisting it was not her prerogative to exercise discretion, an assertion that flies in the face of the broad authority her office wields. When pressed, she offered only a vague promise to “review the case.”
After the hearing, I spoke with both Brown and Magaziner to understand how this happened and how often it is happening to others.
Magaziner was blunt about the administration’s approach. “Fundamentally, we’re trying to make the point that the Trump administration doesn’t know how to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys,” he said. “By all means, if there are people here who are violent criminals, get them out. But that’s not what they’re doing.”
Instead, he explained, the administration is chasing arbitrary deportation quotas, targets reportedly set by Stephen Miller, by sweeping up honest, hardworking people, children, U.S. citizens, and military families. The goal of the hearing, Magaziner said, was to humanize the damage. “The way we change public opinion on this issue is by telling stories of real people who’ve been impacted.”
Brown’s story is not an outlier. In detention, Donna has encountered women arrested while legally applying for green cards, people with serious medical conditions denied care, and individuals whose next hearings are scheduled years into the future. One woman from Venezuela with heart valve problems has been detained for months without proper treatment. Another from Guatemala has been told her next hearing will not occur until October 2026.
“These are not the ‘worst of the worst,’” Brown said, directly contradicting the administration’s rhetoric. “It’s ridiculous what they’re doing with innocent people.”
The conditions Donna has described are harrowing. Clogged toilets. Humiliation. Retaliation for filing complaints. Isolation used as punishment for minor rule infractions. Communication with her husband has grown more limited, not because there is nothing to say, but because speaking out can make things worse.
Yet Brown continues to speak. He has contacted more than 100 members of Congress. Most turned him away with scripted responses about “due process.” A few stepped up. Magaziner did. Sen. Tammy Duckworth did. Too many others did not.
There is a temptation, especially in polarized times, to dismiss people like Jim Brown as latecomers to the truth. That would be a mistake and a moral failure. Democracy does not survive by shaming people for admitting error. It survives when accountability replaces cruelty, when facts replace fear, and when stories like Brown’s are heard rather than buried.
As Magaziner told me, public pressure matters. “When there is a public uproar, they will back off,” he said, noting recent reversals driven not by conscience but by exposure. In a moment when institutional checks are strained, storytelling becomes a form of resistance.
I hope you enjoy my interview with Rep. Magaziner and Jim Brown. I found this one to be particularly powerful, and I’m certain it will leave a lasting impact on me. I hope it does the same for you. Like this post, share it, let me know your thoughts in the comments, and consider subscribing now to support our reporting.
