Mildred Pierre was driving her children to school one morning in January of 2025, when her car was suddenly boxed in.
“There was a car that pinned me in the front,” she remembered. “They had their guns drawn.” Her then 4 and 6-year-old children were sitting in the backseat. “The kids were crying… they were scared.” What unfolded in those moments has stayed with her. “That really is what we experienced, an abduction.”
Her partner, Rodney Taylor, was taken into ICE custody that morning. He has been detained ever since.
The barber and father of 7 was brought to the United States from Liberia when he was just two years old on a medical visa. “He came here to receive an operation [amputation],” Pierre explained. “This is the only place he’s ever known.”
Taylor is a double amputee and has three fingers on one hand. Pierre said he has lived his entire adult life navigating disability while building stability for others. Before detention, he was a master barber and a constant presence in the community. “He did a lot of free haircuts,” she said. “Church events… health fairs.” He was known, she added, for checking on people. “He was that guy saying, ‘Did you get your blood pressure checked?’”
Seeing him now requires a three-and-a-half-hour drive, each way, from their home in Gwinnett County to Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin. “It’s an all-day thing,” Pierre said. “There’s no touching… you’re behind thick plexiglass with a phone.”
The separation has reshaped their family. “They [our children] don’t like police officers now,” he said. “They believe they’re bad people because they took their dad.” The loss is ongoing. “It’s like a death,” she added. “We’re mourning the physical loss of him.”
Inside detention, Taylor continues to care for others. “He cuts hair inside,” he said. “When the men feel good about themselves, there’s less fights.” Even with limited resources, he gives what he can. “He’ll take a chunk of his commissary and give it away to new detainees… so they’re not alone.”
Rodney Taylor’s family is not the only one in metro Atlanta affected by ICE.
On Sept. 14, 2025, at around 7 a.m., multiple vehicles arrived at Gail Macklin and Amary Sal’s home while they were sleeping. “Five or six vehicles for someone who’s had no criminal record,” Macklin recalled. “They didn’t say anything… they didn’t give any paperwork.”
Sal, a Senegalese immigrant, had been in the United States for three years. Macklin said he was legally working and had been under ICE supervision during that time. “They’d already vetted him,” she said. “They’d already approved him.”
The married couple was building their life together. “We work together, live together, play together, build [our] restaurant,” Macklin said. “This [the restaurant] was our baby.”
Inside detention, Macklin said Sal’s Muslim faith was ignored. “He doesn’t eat pork,” she said. “And all of [the] food is pork.” Intake paperwork reflected his religion, she explained, but nothing changed. When she raised concerns, officials responded, “We think it’s depression.”
“No,” Macklin stated. “He’s Muslim.”
Over three months, Sall lost 40 pounds. Then he disappeared. “For four days, I didn’t even know where he was,” Macklin said. “He wasn’t in the ICE locator [an 800-number families can call to track the placement of detainees]… it said zero results.” “It wasn’t supposed to be a zero search.”
When Sal finally called, he told her he was no longer in Georgia, he was in Louisiana. What followed was devastating. “Ten of them [ice agents] beat him up,” said Macklin. “They left him bloody.” His last shower and meal had been days earlier.
On Jan. 13, 2026, Sal was deported to Senegal. “They made sure he was out of here,” Macklin said. Since then, she explained, he has struggled in a country that is technically his home but no longer feels like one.
For Macklin, the fallout has been immediate. “I’m losing my apartment,” she said. “I’m losing the business.” Tasks once shared now fall on her alone. “Just physically doing things… loading groceries, unloading them… It’s a project in itself.”
Both women stressed that detention reaches far beyond the person taken. “They’re humans,” Macklin said. “They’re not just a number.”
Pierre echoed the warning. “It doesn’t matter what your status is,” she said. “If you are of color, you are in danger of being abducted.”
Macklin continues operating The Food Dispensary, a ghost kitchen partnering with Southwest Munchies Tex-Mex in Decatur, holding on to what she and Sal built together. “Supporting the businesses of families going through this is very helpful,” she said. “If people come and eat food, I can be self-sufficient.”
To support Amary Sal and Mildred Pierre and their family, visit Rodney Taylor’s website and Instagram page.
