Jonathan P. Baird

As a secular Jew, I would not pretend to any great knowledge of Jewish theology. I was bar mitzvahed and confirmed in the reform Jewish tradition a long time ago. However, there are some parts of Jewish thought that are so central to the tradition that they are inarguably Jewish.

Judaism emphasizes treating strangers with kindness and compassion. Obviously that is something that has often not happened in the Jewish world like everyplace else but the aspiration and practice have to do with the treatment Jews received in Egypt in ancient times. In the book of Deuteronomy, there is this famous passage: “Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt”. Passover is about welcoming the stranger.

That message about the stranger is central to a Jewish perspective on mass deportations of immigrants and their incarceration in concentration camps. More than many groups, Jewish historical experience has a repetitive aspect where we have been forced to flee or have been subject to expulsion and mass deportation. Being scapegoated, Jews have been herded into ghettos and forced into concentration camps.

I know when I hear of the Trump administration’s plans to deport millions and to build camps for them to be held, including at Guantanamo, it evokes Jewish history because our people have been subject to that same viciousness.

While most would immediately conjure up World War 2, there are earlier parallels. In the early 20th century, immigration to the United States became a hot issue. In 1911, Congress issued a comprehensive study known as the Dillingham Commission Report. It concluded that immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, many of them Italians and Jews, posed a threat to American culture and well-being.

Just as has happened now, a climate of extreme intolerance, nativism and xenophobia developed in the United States. Antisemitism reached new levels of acceptance. In her book, America for Americans, the historian Erika Lee describes it:

“Manhattan upper-class elite barred Jews from the most exclusive gentlemen’s clubs, resorts and private schools. Discontented farmers in the Midwest and South who formed a new political party known as the populists blamed Jews, whom they believed controlled the nation’s banks, for their economic suffering. Both Protestant and Catholic religious leaders promoted antisemitic stereotypes of Jews as Christ killers and as dishonest and greedy businessmen. Eugenicists argued that Jews were irredeemable and biologically inassimilable. The KKK actively promoted Jewish conspiracy theories and charged that they were congenitally incapable of virtue or patriotism.”

The exact same scapegoating that happened to Jews in the early 20th century is going on with those categorized as “illegal immigrants” today. Trump falsely says other countries are emptying out their jails and asylums. Instead of any effort to understand why so many people have sought to enter the United States, immigrants are unfairly slandered and fast-tracked for mass deportation.

Trump has suspended all refugee admissions. He is ending protected status for hundreds of thousands and he wants to deport millions who are not serious or violent criminals. Many have lived in the US peacefully for over 15 years. Trump is treating all immigrants, including legal and undocumented immigrants, as well as refugees and asylum seekers, as threats to the United States.

So many of the immigrants from Central America are coming because it became unsafe and impossible to live in their home countries. The U.S.-financed wars in Central America created crises of livability in their countries. We have seen the results in the greatly increased numbers coming to the Southern border since 2014, especially children and families.

Really since the 1980’s, many people who came from places like El Salvador and Guatemala had entirely legitimate asylum claims as civil wars forced people to leave. These were wars the U.S. played a major role in perpetrating by financing brutal military regimes.

As a Jewish person, I see immigrants as often fleeing for their lives much in the way Jews tried to escape the Nazi death machine. The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 formalized the unwelcoming of Jews in the U.S.. That law mandated tiny entry quotas to America while the Nazi terror ramped up. The United States could have saved millions of European Jews from the death camps but the Jew hating in America prevented that.

The extent of the antisemitism at that time remains under-appreciated just as xenophobia is today. It was not just the spewings of Father Coughlin or Henry Ford. Antisemitism kept escalating. Both Britain and the U.S. closed their door to Jewish arrivals. Even after two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population was killed in the Holocaust, in 1947, 250,000 Jews in Western Europe remained in Displaced Persons Camps. No one would take them.

Part of the argument used against allowing more immigration of Jews in the 1920’s-1930’s was that Americans would be displaced from jobs. The argument had some legs because of the Great Depression but the same argument is used now against immigrants. The truth is that we need more people to fill jobs that there are not enough Americans to do.

The mass deportation of Jews to concentration camps was the ultimate horror but Trump is following in that cruel tradition sending immigrants to Guantanamo. He signed an Executive Order about it. Guantanamo has been the site of torture and indefinite detention without charge or trial. It is a law-free zone, outside the United States’ legal protections. What could go wrong? The script writes itself.

Stephen Miller, a Jewish person, is the architect of Trump’s mass deportation/concentration camp scheme. One biographer titled his book “Hatemonger”. There is a Yiddish word , shanda, which perfectly describes Miller. The word means “shame”. “terrible embarrassment”, and “disgrace”.

As a kid, I remember these words on the wall of my temple: “Justice, justice shall you pursue”. It should be clear that mass deportations and concentration camps have nothing to do with justice. They are the opposite.