MINALI: There’s, like, an internal conflict we have about whether to, like, be rude to the guards? Or to, like, be obsequious, and, like, really suck up to them because we don’t want them to harass our loved ones after we leave. And—when we went to go visit Rocko, they were, like, making it the most difficult experience for us, because they check everything you’re wearing, and everything you—like, the type of mask you have, your vaccine card, can’t be on your phone, and—they just make it such that it’s likely that you’re going to fail their checks, so you don’t get to have your visits after coming all this way.

And so it’s, like, hard not to get mad and frustrated and be rude to them, but then knowing that, like, Rocco got strip-searched twice—when he came and when he left—I don’t want to be nice to them.

CAREN: And we’ve got one chance, we traveled really far to have a three-hour visit with you, and, like, to compromise that—?

MINALI: Right. We were wearing, like, these nice N95 masks. And they made us put on these flimsy masks.

CAREN: Surgical masks—

MINALI: Surgical masks.

CAREN: —that were, like, just paper—like, so thin.

MINALI: And they made such a big deal about it, meanwhile none of them are wearing masks. Then—

CAREN: And Omicron is surging.

MINALI: Surging! The day we visit Rocko is the day before they go on an almost two-month lockdown.

CAREN: And, like, 90% of the facility got Covid, yeah. Within the next few weeks.

CAREN: I had to go to another facility and a programs person told me that they can’t have N95 masks, KN95 masks—folks inside—because it’ll make gas ineffective if they have to pepper spray and gas people. They’re too good. And they don’t want them to be that good. Yeah. Yeah. And that was just, like, said to me like it was just nothing.