Table Talk
ALIENS WHO are detained by the government in the New York metropolitan area are usually held on the outskirts of Elizabeth, New Jersey—about seven miles, as the crow flies, from the Statue of Liberty. The buildings that serve this purpose are the Essex County Correctional Facility and, across the parking lot from it, the more collegiately named Delaney Hall.
To reach these places, you drive down a long road lined with warehouses and frequented by large trucks. Spirals of razor wire top the chain-link fences that surround the facilities. After you enter one of them, you leave your valuables in a locker and go through a metal detector.
To reach the visiting room where you’ll end up meeting your client, you navigate a series of chambers, known in the security industry as man-traps. A guard somewhere buzzes you in at one end of a chamber, the door locks behind you, and you wait to get buzzed out the far end.
There is this pause in a chamber. Whatever noises there are in the wider world of the facility can still be heard in there, but they sound muffled and far away. Sometimes you use the wait inside to adjust yourself to the fact that you are now in a jail. Sometimes you use it to muster as optimistic an outlook on life on behalf of your
