As a Hertford County native son, I share the frustration and anger of the residents who still live there.

When it was merely a rumor that the former Rivers Correctional Center outside the county seat in Winton could become “a federal immigration processing center,” you began your fight. Your voices were heard, but in the end, they weren’t listened to.

On Wednesday, the GEO Group, which owns the 1,320-bed facility, signed a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to turn the prison into what amounts to an internment camp under the Trump administration’s obsessive guidance to round up as many illegal immigrants as possible — seemingly, and sometimes realistically, by any means necessary.

You, like me, probably knew you were fighting a losing battle because in this dystopia we find ourselves living in, it’s not an administration that likes to be criticized, and it doesn’t take kindly to dissension.

The only civil disobedience this administration respects is the kind we saw on January 6, 2021, the day red-capped treasonists stormed the U.S. Capitol in support of the president’s lie that his 2020 election was stolen.

On that day, we saw so-called patriots who once claimed love and respect for the rule of law clash with officers who took an oath to protect citizens under their jurisdiction.

That included many violent felons — the same people the anti-immigration folks say must be dealt with. That’s all good in my book. Send the violent offenders back to their home countries, while letting the ones who didn’t come here legally earn a pathway to citizenship.

In our Orwellian world, however, violent offenders who storm one of our shrines of freedom are pardoned, while many of the immigrants here legally are harassed, sometimes with fatal consequences.

I try not to romanticize my childhood in Hertford County. I’m not one of these folks who share posts of an idyllic life where pies were cooling on windowsills, doors were always unlocked, and the Golden Rule was always applied.

It was far from bucolic. It was a place where my parents lost their first child — a brother I never knew — in the most horrific way imaginable. It was a place where I lost my father when I was 15. I left Tennessee mid-semester to return to Murfreesboro to see my dying grandmother one final time and tell her that I loved her.

But within those bitter moments, there was a feeling of security. I had friends. I had a family. I received a good education, although I could have taken it more seriously, but it definitely wasn’t the worst place on earth to live.

Hertford County began to see an economic resurgence with Nucor and then with the recent announcement of US Forged Rings, a company that in three phases plans a total investment of up to $875 million and is expected to bring around 625 jobs to the area.

Things were looking up until the rumors began swirling that ICE was coming to my home county.

Citizens prepared for what they had to realize was going to be a tough and unwinnable battle. Rivers is a private facility. County commissioners were powerless and, of course, the federal administration didn’t listen, because as long as it doesn’t affect their bottom line, they don’t care.

And you know you’ve faced a Sisyphean battle when GEO Group CEO George C. Zoley says, “We are proud of our 40-year public-private partnership with ICE, and we stand ready to continue to assist the federal government in meeting its immigration enforcement priorities.”

If there’s any solace, it’s that the contract is for five years, and before that expires, the current president will finally be out of office and perhaps less draconian measures will be in place to address our nation’s immigration issues.

I, for one, hope my fellow Hertford County residents will continue their fight and hopefully find some loophole tucked away in law books.

For now, I can only appreciate your efforts and share in your frustration and anger — Lance Martin