An Ever-Expanding Gulag of Concentration Camps for Immigrants: The US Under Stephen Miller
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When Donald Trump promised, on the campaign trail, to “carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history”, even the most observant critics would have been hard-pressed to realize quite what that would actually entail.
In the last year, however, we’ve come to see what it is, and the reality is truly horrific, as it involves nothing less than a concerted effort to turn the entire landmass of the United States into a hunting ground for masked and heavily-armed unaccountable thugs to terrorize entire cities, to abduct anyone who isn’t white, on the merest suspicion that they might be undocumented migrants, and to “disappear” them into increasingly overcrowded detention facilities where even the most basic human requirements — decent food and water, and adequate medical treatment — are routinely denied, where strenuous efforts are made to deny them access to lawyers, despite that being their legal right, and where institutionalized cruelty and violence are rampant.
When Trump’s second presidency began, ICE was holding around 40,000 people in 107 facilities. In just twelve months, those figures have both nearly doubled, with over 70,000 people held in 212 facilities. Most pertinently, despite the administration’s claims that it is only seizing and removing “criminal illegal aliens”, three-quarters of those held — 52,504 out of the 70,766 held as of January 25 — have no criminal record whatsoever, while many of those with convictions “committed only minor offenses, including traffic violations.”
Fascism in the US, as the Trump Administration Defends Death Squad Executions of US Citizens
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In the space of 17 days, US immigration enforcement agents — members of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and the Border Patrol — executed two US citizens, in broad daylight, on the streets of Minneapolis, who posed no threat to them.
We know that Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year old mother, and Alex Pretti, a 37-year old ICU nurse with the US Department of Veterans Affairs, were executed, and posed no threat to the agents, because of multiple videos recorded on smartphones at both locations.
Renee Nicole Good, who had just driven her six-year old son to school, was smiling at, and speaking to Jonathan Ross, the agent who executed her, as she began maneuvering her car past him, less than 30 seconds before he shot her, once through her windshield, and twice through the side window, and then called her a “f*cking bitch.”
Alex Pretti, who was monitoring immigration enforcement agents’ actions, as was his right, was filming on his phone, and trying to protect a woman from assault, when he was pepper-sprayed and set upon by officials who, after finding that he was legally carrying a concealed weapon, removed it from him and then, as he was kneeling on the ground, executed him with gunshots to the back of his head. In the space of 30 seconds, he was shot ten times.
“The Endless Shame of Guantánamo Bay”: Close Guantánamo Co-Founders Tom Wilner and I Are Profiled in an Article in The New Republic
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I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.
We’re honored that The New Republic magazine has profiled Tom Wilner and I, as the co-founders of the Close Guantanamo campaign, in their latest issue, in an article entitled, “The Endless Shame of Guantánamo Bay,” following interviews with Tom and I that were conducted in April by reporter Jordan Michael Smith.
When Smith first approached us, he stated that the intention of the article would be “focusing on people waging the lonely campaign to close Guantánamo, when so many Americans have forgotten about it,” and the finished article effectively weaves our recollections and reflections into a timeline of the prison’s unforgivably long history — 20 and a half years and counting.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
