Creating Concentration Camps

There are a lot of ways the Republican Congress have failed the people, including ripping healthcare away. But perhaps the most egregious is bringing concentration camps to American soil.

It’s time to talk deeply about something important. As I add to the Series of Unfortunate Decisions, we should really talk about America’s Nazi problem that the Republican Congress has helped to shield and cover up. Consider the DEI purge at the Department of Defense, specifically, and various other federal agencies. Consider the firing and re-hiring of federal workers, and who made the hire-back list and who didn’t. You didn’t think about that, did you? No, not all federal workers are being hired back, and many, especially minority women, are getting ejected from federal branches of government. I have to ask the question: why?

Here’s the reality: Congress runs the government. They dictate what needs to be done, and the executive branch is supposed to do their bidding. So one of two things is happening: either the Republican controlled Congress wants this behavior to continue, or they care so little about it that they refuse to act.

Their silence speaks volumes.

And it goes so much farther than the DEI purge.

Consider the Supreme Court ruling that ICE can stop people just for the color of their skin, or as I like to call it, the Kavanaugh rule. Let’s not forget that the reason Kavanaugh is even on the Supreme Court is because of the Republican Congress. In fact, it’s the Republican Congress that blocked Merrick Garland’s appointment as a justice, paving the way for the extremist takeover of the court. So anything this corrupt court does can be planted firmly at the feet of the Republican Congress.

Don’t mind if I do.

Even now, though, Congress could do something about that. Congress makes the laws, and it could place constraints on ICE as to what qualifies as justifiable cause for stops. They wouldn’t need to mention race at all in the process. They could fix the problem easily with a short bill that I can almost guarantee Democrats in Congress will sign onto.

They won’t.

Also, let’s remember it was the Republican Congress that made ICE into a paramilitary organization focused on harassing citizens. It takes money to do that, and the Republicans hiked the budget for the executive branch in the details of the so-called Big Beautiful Bill. Without that $75 billion over the next four years, ICE would not be able to create and operate its concentration camps, the same camps from which emerge continual reports of abuse, starvation, and neglect issue forth almost daily.

The same things are happening in these concentration camps, as in concentration camps throughout history: “undesirables” are being tortured and killed. I’m old enough to remember when we Americans would be shocked, or the Democrats would have been, while at least the Republicans would have feigned to be shocked, at such a prospect. We should have seen it coming with the kids-in-cages situations, the family separation, and the “let’s shoot them in the leg” comments made by the President in the first term. Any person who thinks that causing physical harm, possibly lethal harm, to people simply looking for a better life is cruel beyond reason.

Yet the Republican Congress ignores the mistreatment every single day. They allow the executive branch to run roughshod over the American people.

Even if one is so morally bankrupt that they believe that torturing immigrants is somehow a valid posture for immigration control, such a person hopefully would stop short of extending that to American citizens. Let’s be clear: concentration camps are in no way justifiable, full stop. But wouldn’t you at least want to ensure that your ICE agents are trained enough to know the difference between an American citizen and someone who has entered the United States without proper documentation? It’s unclear to me that ICE officers get any training at all on what proper documentation looks like, given the number of headlines I’ve seen on people who have documentation and yet are kidnapped anyway.

But also, since when is trespassing a capital offense, capital meaning incurring harm to the physical body and perhaps risking death to the same? In most states, trespassing is only a misdemeanor unless it can be proven that the person doing the trespassing had malicious intent or if they threatened someone. As far as I know, no law says that shipping someone to a concentration camp for trespassing is legal. Why would we think that such treatment is okay for someone who trespasses over our nation’s border? Surely at least we would have to be able to demonstrate malicious intent, right?

Right?

In the United States right now, thanks to Congress, no, you don’t. All you have to do is be brown or black skinned. This is the full requirement, according to Kavanaugh, and the Republican Congress has shown no interest in fixing that. Nor do they seem, based on who is actually attempting to inspect the facilities (i.e., Democratic, not Republican Congress members), intent on ensuring that people in their concentration camps are treated as humans instead of chattel or animals. Here’s a brief list of crimes for which the Republican Congress is complicit:

1. Abuse of pregnant women and children in U.S. Immigration Detention

2. Shackling and not feeding or giving water, crowding people together like pigs

3. Failing to feed and provide water and functioning toilets in degrading neglect

…among other abuses, including kidnapping people, including American citizens, and deporting people to nations that are unsafe for them. But back to the concentration camps: these are concentration camps, full stop. They’re doing exactly what concentration camps do: whisk people away from public sight into a nebulous state where their abuse and torture can go largely unnoticed. And it’s working.

When we finally get a change in leadership and open these doors, the stories that will come out will make your skin crawl. Mark your calendar. I said it today: when the doors open, watch and prepare your soul.

We haven’t heard the half of what goes on inside those walls.

That’s why Creating Concentration Camps made the list of a Series of Unfortunate Decisions by a complicit Republican Congress.