They Cut My Mic. They Called the Police. I Finished the Statement Anyway.

By Martha Jean Schindler, Woodstock CAN

Martha Jean Schindler is escorted away from the podium by two police officers while council members watch from the dais.

There are children from Cherokee County sitting in a detention facility in Lumpkin, Georgia right now. Children who were here, in our community, going to school with your kids, and who are now locked up in a place with decades of documented human rights violations. Their families are terrified to talk about it. The only reason we know is because of organizations that have spent years earning the trust of people who have every reason not to trust anyone.

The Woodstock City Council knows about this. I have brought it to them more times than I can count.

They have done nothing.

On March 9th, I went back. I gave a public comment about ICE detaining Cherokee County students, about fake lawyers stealing from desperate families in our community, about a six-year-old boy named Aiden whose mother was deported, about a four-month-old baby left behind when ICE took the mother, about the one-million-square-foot detention warehouse being established 45 miles from here in Social Circle. I had practiced it and timed it at under five minutes. Apparently I speak more slowly when I'm standing in front of people who have made clear they do not care what I have to say, because I went over time.

They cut my mic. They called the police. They had me escorted out.

I finished the statement anyway.

As I was being removed, Mayor Caldwell accused me in front of the room of spending over a year violating rules and threatened me with a misdemeanor charge. This is the same Mayor Caldwell who has has a documented record of procedural irregularities, misleading his constituents, and using his position to protect his political career rather than the people he was elected to serve. For the record: the police escorted me out and let me go without incident. No charges. Because whatever Caldwell wanted to perform for the room, the officers present apparently saw a woman leaving peacefully after finishing a public comment.

The first and only time Caldwell has ever acknowledged the issues of ICE in our community at all was at the February 23rd meeting, when he mentioned — at the very end, almost as an afterthought — that he was preparing a statement from his legal team. His conclusion? The city would be following state law. That was it. That was the whole response to months of community members showing up and begging this council to acknowledge that our neighbors are being terrorized.

Mayor Caldwell wants to focus on following state law. While ICE violates federal law. While children disappear from records. While families are torn apart in our streets.

And as I was escorted out Monday night for saying so, council member Tracy Collins smiled. Not a polite smile. Not an uncomfortable smile. A satisfied smile. On camera. While police removed a constituent for talking about detained children.

These are your elected officials. This is what they do when someone refuses to be quiet.

Watch the full video here — skip to the public comment period using the buttons in the viewer: https://woodstockga.granicus.com/player/clip/619?view_id=1&redirect=true

Or find it on the city's meetings page: https://www.woodstockga.gov/your_government/meetings_agendas_and_minutes.php

Look for the March 9, 2026 City Council meeting. Or just watch the embedded video here:

The Girl Scout Who Stayed

Mayor Caldwell has a habit of scheduling recognitions and proclamations at the top of meetings — Girl Scouts, fire chiefs, local businesses — and then, once the honorees have had their moment, announcing warmly that "this is a great time to leave if you don't want to stay for the whole thing." It is framed as a courtesy. And maybe sometimes it is. But a mayor who genuinely wanted residents to engage with their local government would want people to stay. He would want them to see how decisions get made, who gets heard, and who gets silenced. The fact that Caldwell is most enthusiastic about offering exits when he knows someone like me is signed up for public comment tells you everything you need to know about how much public scrutiny this council actually welcomes. It keeps the room thin. It keeps accountability minimal. It is, like so much of how this council operates, designed to limit who sees what happens when the cameras are still rolling and the real business of the meeting begins.

Most of the Girl Scouts did exactly what they were implicitly invited to do. They led the Pledge of Allegiance, received their proclamation, and left.

One stayed. Before the meeting I had asked her mother whether they were planning to stay for public comment, because I was going to talk about children in detention and I needed to know whether girls that age would still be in the room, and how to speak in a way that was appropriate for them. The mother chose to stay. And so her daughter stayed with her.

I don't know what that mother was thinking. I don't know what the girl was thinking as the room shifted around her and the meeting moved into the business of governance that most people her age are never meant to see. I don't know what either of them made of the adults in that room — the mayor, the council members, the police — as they worked together to silence someone who was standing at that podium talking about little girls just like her.

When I got to the part about being her age and reading about girls who were taken and girls who fought back, I looked up and found her eyes. She was sitting stiffly in her seat. Watching. Taking in every bit of what was happening around her. Watching the adults in that room silence someone who was fighting for other little girls.

I don't know what she was thinking.

But I know what I would have thought when I was her age. I would have known that what the adults were doing was wrong.

I hope she knows it too. I hope she remembers it. And I hope it makes her angry in exactly the right direction.

What I Said

The meeting opened with a prayer. The pastor spoke about people who come to this city looking for something better — a city on a hill — and asked that the leaders of this city take that into consideration in their decisions.

I took him at his word. Here is the script of what I planned to say, though there may be some ad-libbed moments in the video:

Tonight the pastor prayed about people who come to this city looking for something better — a city on a hill — and he asked that the leaders of this city take that into consideration in their decisions. I want to hold you to that. Because there are people in this community who came here looking for exactly that, and what they found was ICE at their door. So let's talk about what you are doing to His creations, including girls just like the ones sitting in this room.

Multiple students from a Cherokee County school are being held right now at Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, a facility with decades of documented human rights violations. We know because what we know always comes the same way: slowly, through fear, through whispered word of mouth, from people terrified to speak. Not every family talks. Not every person taken has someone to come forward. What you are seeing tonight is what managed to surface. Nobody on this council has any idea what isn't surfacing. And you are making policy decisions in that dark.

The public ICE detainee locator does not show any minor under 18. Blocked entirely. Lawyers can try to contact field offices directly, but only if a family can afford one, only if ICE cooperates, and only if they haven't already disappeared the child from the records. And we know — because we have seen it here — that people are posing as immigration lawyers and stealing money from families who are already desperate. ICE creates the chaos. Predators move into it. Families pay twice. One of these students is 19, still in secondary school here, confirmed at Stewart, and does not appear in the records at all.

Are you OK with children from this community disappearing? Because your silence says you are.

2025 was the deadliest year for ICE detention in over two decades with 32 people dead. Seven in December alone. Six more dead in the first two weeks of 2026, including one man at a facility right here in Georgia. One death in Texas was ruled a homicide after detainees described guards slamming a man against a wall while he gasped that he couldn't breathe. The oversight offices supposed to investigate? Shut down. More than 500 open abuse investigations halted. Senator Ossoff's investigation has documented 18 credible reports of children as young as two years old being mistreated in custody. A child left on the floor with appendicitis, told to take Tylenol. A child who suffered permanent hearing loss because an ear infection went untreated. A 10-year-old U.S. citizen recovering from brain surgery deported to Mexico in 24 hours. A 13-year-old attempted suicide. Research shows 100 percent of children detained for 12 months or longer develop PTSD.

We know two little girls in this community whose father was taken by ICE. Their family was already poor. He was the primary breadwinner. Their mother is barely surviving. Those girls go straight home from school every day and stay inside. No extracurriculars. No childhood. Because their mother is terrified of losing anyone else.

This past weekend I went out with volunteers to visit Latino-owned businesses in this community. I met a six-year-old boy named Aiden. His mother, a woman who raised multiple U.S. citizens, was detained and deported. Aiden doesn't know when he'll see her again because his family can't afford to go to her. At the same business, I heard about a different woman taken by ICE while she had a four-month-old baby at home. Not taken with her. Left behind. That infant is now being cared for by friends while the father works every hour he can just to survive. What would have happened to that baby if no one had been there?

That is the world you are building.

Now look at what I am wearing. My shirt depicts the building they are constructing in Social Circle, Georgia, 45 miles from where we are sitting. A one-million-square-foot warehouse. About 20 football fields. They plan to hold up to 10,000 human beings inside it. The city of Social Circle has said repeatedly that their water and sewer infrastructure cannot support that many people. DHS has not answered those concerns. Intake could begin this spring. You don't build something that size without the logistics to support basic human survival unless you have already decided the people inside don't deserve to survive it.

150 years of federal government data, collected under administrations of both parties, always showed the same thing: immigrants commit crimes at significantly lower rates than native-born Americans. Not once did it show anything different. That is our government's data.

Mayor Caldwell, it took over a year of pressure to get a single statement from your city attorney. And after all that, you told us you are going to follow state law, while ICE violates federal law, constitutional rights, due process, and basic human rights. You had no answer for that. Georgia law requires agencies to seek a 287(g) agreement. It does not dictate terms. It does not prevent negotiation. Any party can withdraw at any time. You have more options than you are admitting — and you know it. Hiding behind state law while a federal agency operates lawlessly in your city is not leadership. It is a choice. And the only reason to make that choice is if you care more about your political career than the children in this community who cannot stand here and ask for help themselves.

If you want to prove me wrong, then act like it. Stand up for the little girls in this room. Stand up for the ones who aren't here because they can't be.

To the Girl Scouts in this room: when I was your age, I read about little girls my age who were taken by Nazis, and about other little girls their age who fought back. I made a promise to always stand on the right side of history — even when it was hard, even when the adults around me were on the wrong side. Don't wait for the adults in this room to do the right thing.

Do it yourself. Even when it's hard. Especially when it's hard.

This Is Not Going Away

The pastor asked the leaders of this city to remember the people who came here looking for something better. Mayor Caldwell and this city council have had every opportunity to be the leaders that prayer was asking for. They have chosen, repeatedly and deliberately, not to be.

Children from this county are in detention right now. Families in this community are being destroyed right now. And the people elected to lead this city are following state law, smiling, and calling the police on anyone who won't let them pretend otherwise.

We are not going to let them pretend otherwise.

The next Woodstock City Council meeting is Monday, March 16th at 7pm at The Chambers at City Center, 8534 Main Street, Woodstock, GA. Show up. Bring someone. If you can't come, share this post. If you want to get involved with Woodstock CAN, join us.

These children cannot speak for themselves in that chamber.

We can. And we will not stop.