Concentration camps? Not in my back yard!

 

 

By Immigration Editor Emma Goldman with Florida Correspondent Jenny Herk in The Everglades

A funny thing happened on the way to the construction of a network of American concentration camps in which immigrants seeking status would be locked up and tortured on the orders of the Mad King and his trusted lackey,Sturmbannfūhrer Stephen Miller.

However much Americans enjoyed the spectacle of immigrants, especially black and brown ones, tormented, it turns out that they didn't want the camps in their own back yards.  All that nasty traffic, you see.

For those of you who weren't paying attention, which was about 77 million of you at least count, the Mad King kept his promise to afflict helpless immigrants, unlike all the other promises he broke or forgot.

One of the key planks in Miller's platform of sadism was to lock up hundreds of thousands of immigrants to pressure them into abandoning their claims for asylum or other status in the United States and accept deportation to their home countries, if they were lucky, or hellholes like the Congo, if they were not.

As we explained in these pages last month: 

In a free society, locking people up except as punishment for crimes has been traditionally frowned upon.  In the case of immigrants without or seeking status, detention is authorized only in narrow categories: (1) the detainee is a danger to public safety (like criminal bail), (2) the detainee is a flight risk, (3) the detainee is about to be deported following a removal order or (4) the detainee entered without inspection and was arrested shortly thereafter.

Note what's not on the list: locking people up either for the simple joy of watching them suffer (like Kristi Noem at CECOT), or to compel them to give up their legal rights.

But the rule of law matters not a whit to the Republican lords who control all three branches of what was once a legitimate government. 

Which is why Kristi and her very “special assistant” Corey Lewandowski, with the connivance of Miller and the possible acquiescence of the Mad King, embarked on a billion-dollar spending spree:

The idea was meant to supercharge President Trump’s mass deportation plan.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement would purchase more than a dozen empty warehouses across the United States to massively expand its capacity to detain people deemed to be in the country illegally, which in turn would spike deportations. A year into Mr. Trump’s term, it had bought 11 facilities at a cost of $1 billion. 

Note that removal proceedings against immigrants continue whether or not they are detained. The “supercharging” effect of concentration camps was simply to make life so wretched for these people that they would give up and leave.

ICE gleefully provided a schematic of what these camps would look like like once stuffed with humanity:

 

Each tiny line is a person, locked up in one of 72 cages, none of which are exposed to natural light or fresh air.  We think we know where ICE got the idea for this layout:

Like immigration detainees, the passengers on those ships hadn't committed any crime.

A funny thing happened on the way to building out Kristi's Gulag: the locals weren't having it:

With plans for detaining up to 10,000 people, the detention center would have tripled the local population, putting strains on drinking water and sewage, as well as on local police and ambulances.

Despite being located in a county where nearly 75% of people voted for Trump, residents of the rural town with 19th-century buildings downtown and surrounding horse and cattle farms began mobilizing against the plan.

The Guardian was the first to report that Taylor shut off the federal government’s access to water at the warehouse in February as the controversy took off. 

Note what the good white crackers of exurban Georgia weren't worried about.  They weren't worried that some future General Eisenhower would parade through the camp to confront them with the atrocities carried out in their name.

They were worried about trivia like how you supply water and sewerage adequate for a warehouse of perhaps 100 employees to an entire city of misery, comprising 10,000 souls who must drink to survive, not to mention what happens at the other end.

And they weren't happy about traffic and other sequelae not fitting to their rural paradise.

The scenario was played out at all these sites.  Apparently, neither Kristi nor Corey spent much time in their flying love shack thinking about how to supply these camps.

Now the Mad King's regime has surrendered to its base and admitted that they flushed $700,000,000 down $5,000 worth of toilets:

But in a major turnabout, the agency is planning to offload seven warehouses purchased for more than $700 million by either giving them to other federal agencies or selling them outright, 

The MAGA faithful were none too happy
about a gulag in their backyard.

Similarly, down in the swamps of Florida, Gov. Ron DeathSantis's proof of atrocity concept camp he named, with his customary charm and wit, “Alligator Alcatraz”, has been ordered abandoned, thus wasting the $300 million (or more) of state resources he poured into a state facility designed to enforce federal law for no purpose other than preening photo ops.

The reason for the closure of the vile tent prison?  Gov. Ron was shocked, shocked to learn that the camp was located in a hurricane zone and could not be evacuated in case of an approaching storm.

Wow, who saw that coming?   Other than the alligators.

But the cruel fascist campaign to lock up immigrants who pose no threat to anyone to persuade them to give up their legal rights will continue despite the billion dollars wasted thus far.

The Supreme Court is now in session at bay 29 (PBS)

And thus far the response from both white America and our beloved mainstream media to these concentration camps has been at best a carping meow, rather than the rolling thunder of outrage reserved for Biden's age or his decision to end an unwinnable 20-year war in Afghanistan.

The stain on this country,like those of slavery and the genocide of Native Americans,, will remain forever, unlike the paint in the Reflecting Pool which lasted about a week.

There is one bright spot though, as we have previously noted in these pages.   The warehouse purchased in the wilds of Maryland, while woefully inadequate for the immiseration of thousands, would be a perfect site to relocate the bent Supreme Court when their marble palace on Capitol Hill is repurposed as something more useful.  We'd suggest the Thurgood Marshall Center for the Study of Civil Rights, complete with a daycare center in the old courtroom and community access to Brett Kavanaugh's basketball court.

Now that would be a fitting way to celebrate America at 250.  We'll just have to wait another two years.