Last weekend, on March 16, the Trump administration deported at least 260 people who it said were Venezuelan immigrants in the United States without documentation and/or who were members of the Tren de Aragua gang. These deportations are concerning not only because of how they were conducted and under what authority, but also because of where the deportees were sent.
Many of the deportees were arrested and deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a law giving the President broad powers to deport immigrants, but only if they are “alien enemies” and only during periods of war and invasion. Even then, each of the accused is supposed to be granted a hearing to demonstrate the accusations against them. Instead, the Trump administration arrested and deported these people even though we are not in a war or being militarily invaded, even though they did not receive a hearing, and even though at least a few likely had no criminal history at all. While a federal judge in Washington, D.C. attempted to stop the deportations, his orders were ignored and he was then attacked by the President as a “radical left lunatic.” This is a clear and dangerous concentration of executive power, with Trump exercising powers that the law does not give him, and without any successful checks from the court system. It also demonstrates how the reactionary right and Trump are willing to ignore previously accepted norms of legal behavior and norms of respect for the courts and judges.
While those hundreds were deported supposedly for illegally entering the U.S. or engaging in criminal activity, others are being threatened with deportation strictly and explicitly because of their political views. Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil and Georgetown professor Badar Khan Suri have both been detained threatened with deportation even though they have documented status for being in the U.S. and have no criminal activity. Both are being held because of their alleged support for Hamas, although even this obviously illegal motivation is also simply not true. This is a direct attack on the rights to free speech, intended not only to punish protest, but to chill all political activity. It’s pure political repression.
The other reason that these deportations are concerning is that for the first time in U.S. history, the United States is outsourcing its prison capacity to the government of an entirely different nation. The U.S. has for decades enriched for-profit prisons like Geo and CoreCivic to hold our convicted criminals, but never another nation to do so, especially when it is unclear whether any of those people have violated any laws. Yet in February Secretary of State Marco Rubio travelled to El Salvador, where he met with Nayib Bukele, the self-proclaimed “coolest dictator in the world.” After the meeting Rubio told the press that, “he has offered to house in his jails dangerous American criminals in custody in our country, including those with US citizenship and legal residency. No country’s ever made an offer of friendship such as this. We are profoundly grateful.” This astounding statement admits that even U.S. citizens may be vulnerable to being arrested, shipped overseas, and held in overseas prisons whose operators will profit from their incarceration. For Trump reactionaries, this is a dream come true. For wannabe dictators like Bukele who govern small nations that desperately need money and powerful friends, it’s even better. In another astounding statement, Bukele openly admitted the benefits for both sides: “We have offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system…The fee would be relatively low for the U.S. but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable.” In this case, they are now housing not U.S. citizens, but Venezuelans, citizens of a third nation, that has not had any part in the agreement.
This agreement sets a dangerous precedent. It helps the Trump administration offload its unwanted people, whether they are citizens or not. It helps an authoritarian ruler to expand his prison system and financially support that system and his state. This could be the first step in building a network of prisons outside the U.S., financed by the U.S. and housing whatever people the Trump administration wants to deport for whatever reasons. And, it can mean the disappearance of thousands into a prison system with no accountability to anyone, and from which they might never emerge.
These moves to silence free speech, deport people illegally, and potentially build a network of U.S.- sponsored for-profit prisons to imprison whomever the U.S. government deems undesirable is a terrifying new possibility in the Trump era. The reactionary right is setting the stage for more and more authoritarian methods of rule on a nearly daily basis. Everybody is vulnerable.
The famous poem from Pastor Martin Neimoller is as true today as it was when he first wrote it after the horrors of World War II.
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a CommunistThen they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a SocialistThen they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionistThen they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a JewThen they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
Now more than ever we, the working people in the United States need to organize ourselves and stand up and speak out! We can’t let people be taken away just because the government says so. We can’t let minorities be attacked because we aren’t that minority. We can’t let vulnerable people be attacked because we don’t consider ourselves vulnerable. For every person we allow to be taken without fighting back, we become more vulnerable ourselves.
We can stop this! We can stop even supposedly powerful people and governments and corporations. But we need to organize ourselves and fight back now!
