The Intercept - Letters From Ice Detainees Expose Desperate Prison Conditions


Publishing Date: 2020
Role: Illustrator



In June, women held at Eloy Detention Center, a private immigration prison in Arizona owned and operated by CoreCivic, began to write down what they were going through. The letter writers did so despite the threat of retaliation, because, they said, people had to know what was happening. “You can’t speak freely here,” one woman wrote.

I worked with the editorial team at the Intercept to create an editorial illustration for their feature story: Letters from Eloy Prison. The letter was written by a detainee in Eloy Prison who took great risk to report on the conditions of the prison during lockdown.



The goal of the artwork was to achieve a tonal balance with the serious nature of the story, while at the same time feeling in line with the editorial design strategy of the Intercept.

To achieve this, I relayed heavily on the brand colors of the Intercept: blue, black, and green. The main character is heroed in red to draw attention of the eye as well as hit an emotional connection of alarm.