The Trump administration is honing a well-oiled deportation machine that it hopes will move millions out of the country.
By Michael Gould-Wartofsky, Tom Dispatch
“Flights to Guantánamo Bay have begun. The worst of the worst have no place in our homeland.”
With those words the U.S. government announced the fate awaiting “criminal aliens” in its custody.
On a military base in El Paso, Texas, masked men in combat fatigues paraded a group of young Venezuelan immigrants, their hands cuffed and their ankles shackled, in front of the cameras, before loading them onto a waiting Air Force C-17, which was to deliver its human cargo to Naval Station Guantánamo Bay overnight.
Once there, they were to be incarcerated in the infamous Camp 6, held incommunicado in the same cells where al-Qaeda suspects were once held in indefinite detention, and guarded by the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment. Meanwhile, a tent city, which could ultimately house as many as 30,000 detainees, rises around the prison.
Though most of those immigrants have since been returned to Venezuela, the Pentagon has pledged to continue using the base for the “temporary detention of illegal aliens who are pending return.”
Back on the mainland, the Department of Defense (DoD) is deploying thousands of troops to “seal the borders”; the Department of Justice (DoJ) is deputizing its agents to round up undocumented immigrants; Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is mobilizing to meet its daily quota of 1,200 to 1,500 arrests, armed with target lists, surveillance technology, and “less-lethal” weapons; and immigration detention facilities are to be built on military bases across the country.
And that’s not all either. Entire families are set to be detained, and the grim family-separation policy of the first Trump administration revived. Humanitarian parole is to be revoked, refugees rejected, and asylum seekers returned. And cities, counties, and states that dare to defy the deportation regime are to be punished.
Recent Posts
The Theft of Bodily Autonomy is Central to the Authoritarian Playbook, and Texas Has Been Its Proving Ground
Take Action Now Texas houses the country’s only family detention centers and has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the U.S., but it is…
Humanity Owes Cuba: Unilateral Coercive Measures and the Politics of Punishment
Take Action Now “There can be no clearer example of a violation of human rights than the economic embargo imposed by the United States against……
Israel Didn’t ‘Drag’ the U.S. Into War—American Hawks Have Wanted This for Decades
Take Action Now Blaming Israel alone for this catastrophe lets U.S. leaders off the hook for their actions.By Khury Petersen-Smith, Institute for…
The Supreme Court Looks Likely to Cave On Mail-in Ballots
Take Action Now The GOP shouldn’t win this case, but the fact that Trump has been throwing a tantrum about it for years means they likely will.By…