Outrage over ICE raids rings hollow while 2 million languish in prisons. America has always had concentration camps. We just reserve our anger for the ones with TV cameras.
Donald Trump is perhaps unique among modern presidents in his determination to fulfill his very retrograde vision for the United States. He goes beyond the cajoling and arm twisting that other presidents were known for, and dispenses with precedent, the Congress and the law itself in order to realize a key part of his vision, getting as many Global South immigrants out of the U.S. as he possibly can.
He was quite serious about enacting a mass deportation policy. Immigrants attempting to follow the law and legalize their status are set upon in courtrooms by masked agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and are taken to detention facilities. Farm workers, construction workers and others are also hunted down in the businesses that employ them. Inevitably, U.S. citizens and other legal residents are also snatched up by ICE. The administration is demanding 3,000 arrests per day, an unrealistic number, and consequently, any attempt to reach it is a recipe for abuse and illegal acts.
In New York City, a youth baseball coach intervened when ICE agents questioned children in his charge. In Los Angeles, a phalanx of ICE officers descended on MacArthur Park in a search for new victims. No warrants are produced and Tom Homan, the official carrying out the effort, claims that the constitutional right to due process is now null and void.
In Florida, immigrants have been detained in a facility which is literally called Alligator Alcatraz. They are denied contact with family and attorneys and held in unsanitary conditions, served inedible food, and left without contact with the outside world.
Governor Ron DeSantis and the Department of Homeland Security play a convenient game of pointing fingers at one another as both avoid accountability regarding conditions in the facility and haven't relented even as members of Congress condemned its very existence during a recent tour.
Inevitably, a term has reemerged that has come to epitomize the inhumane treatment of marginalized people by those who are more powerful and willing to oppress and exploit them for their own nefarious ends. Suddenly, everyone in opposition to the mass deportation plan is speaking of “concentration camps.” The cruelty cannot be ignored, and the meaning of this terminology should not become the focus of debate. But there is a danger in practicing U.S. exceptionalism by selectively forgetting that concentration camps are not new in this country.
The U.S. holds 2 million people behind bars, more than any other country, and has led with that dubious distinction for decades. Those people are held in horrendous conditions. In a Virginia prison, men set themselves on fire in a desperate effort to relieve their plight.
Prisoners provide slave labor for states and for corporations. Prisons have no air conditioning in extreme heat and lag in providing medical care. The U.S. also has the most draconian sentences in the world and police forces across the country who kill indiscriminately and keep prisons full of people who are a profit center for others.
Concentration camps existed as indigenous people were forced from their homes in the Trail of Tears and during other atrocities. Their lands were stolen to make way for a slavery based plantation economy, which was replete with conditions such as torture, starvation, and inhumane working conditions that, today, would be akin to those in concentration camps. Japanese Americans were held in camps against their will during World War II.
The current moment is one that requires telling the truth about U.S. history. Exceptionalist rhetoric claiming that Trump has brought the nation to a new and unprecedented low point is dangerous nonsense.
The damage Trump has done will outlive his presidency. When he departs, his successor will probably enjoy a political honeymoon, regardless of the actions taken by that person. Relief that the orange man is gone will likely encourage the tendency for wishful thinking and selective amnesia, making the next concentration camp all the more likely to be created.
If people are so upset about governmental cruelty, they can start by dismantling the mass incarceration state that exists throughout the country. That would be excellent preparation for closing down Alligator Alcatraz. But there is little interest in doing so. There is full support, however, for keeping thousands of other Black and Brown people locked away in the carceral state. They exist in the background and most people in the country want them to stay that way. Outrage is reserved only when the oppression is more visible and is carried out by the villain of the day.
Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on the Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley@blackagendareport.com.
The late Stuart Hall cautions us to be wary of turning to historical precedent without understanding the specific conjunctures of power that characterize the rise of the right.
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