Daily Newsletter

Hundreds Demand Return of SAIC Professor

Plus: devastating drawings by children held in ICE detention facilities.

Hyperallergic

August 6, 2026 — 4 min read

There are good people out there who are aware of their collective power and refuse to be crushed by the powers that be. In Glasgow, the building and archive of the now-defunct Centre for Contemporary Arts are being offered to the highest bidder. The local community is stepping in to stop it. In Chicago, art therapy professor Savneet Talwar was put on leave for the crime of asking students to imagine a treatment plan for a pro-Palestinian protester. Hundreds from the School of the Art Institute's community have signed a petition demanding her reinstatement. There's one group, however, that barely has anyone to fight for its rights: the children held in ICE detention facilities. Today we show you drawings made by these traumatized children. They'll break your heart, if you have one.

—Hakim Bishara, editor-in-chief

Drawings by Children in Texas ICE Facility Are a Cry for Help

One letter spells out “AYUDA POR FAVOR” (“HELP PLEASE” in Spanish). Another translates to “I am nine years old. Can you help me get out of this jail? We are children, not criminals.” These messages and other similar ones sprawl across the 91 pages that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seized in February from children detained at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas. Almost six months later, ICE has released scans of nine of those pages to podcast host Allison Gill after she filed a lawsuit in March.

Gill, best known as the host of The Daily Beans news podcast, shared images of the nine pages on her Substack on August 3, the same day that ICE fulfilled her request. In February, Gill’s lawyer, Kel McClanahan, filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), demanding that ICE provide her with the letters seized from children detained in Dilley. | Anna Lee

Over 400 members of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s community resume calls for the reinstatement of Savneet Talwar.
A new study finds that arts and culture organizations that received more funding from local governments during the COVID-19 pandemic tended to fare better in subsequent years.
Advocates, politicians, and artists are ramping up their campaigns against the sale of Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts building and archive, saying it would be a devastating loss to Scotland’s cultural history.