Jonathan P. Baird

America is becoming a concentration camp society. Although we incarcerate tons of people there is a reluctance to own that conception. It is not the way people want to think about America, especially in this 250th anniversary year.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is currently holding around 60,000 detainees. About 70% of those ICE detainees have no criminal record. Unlawful presence in the United States is not a crime. It is a civil infraction that can lead to deportation.

The detainees are concentrated in Texas, Louisiana, California, Florida and Georgia. ICE has made if difficult to track the location of those being held. The agency transfers detainees frequently, often sending them thousands of miles around the country making it hard for families and attorneys to locate loved ones or clients.

What has been most shocking and distressing is the problem of detention and deportation of immigrants who receive no due process. Andrea Pitzer, an expert on concentration camps, has written that what separates concentration camps from mere detention or prison facilities is the end-run around any legal process. The Trump regime has tried to remove immigration from judicial process so they can do whatever they want.

Detention is based on identity, not what the individual has done. The Trump regime is attempting a purge of people they designate as foreigners or outsiders. I don’t think it is far off to see fear of the great replacement behind the ICE effort. They are hoping the public will simply ignore the mass caging and pretend it is not happening like the German masses did in the 1930’s.

The regime has explicitly re-branded immigration judges as “deportation judges”. This follows on the heels of their removing more than 100 sitting immigration judges. Any sense of court justice has been replaced by a canned ,pre-ordained result.

Beyond the fact that immigrants are being held without due process, I wanted to highlight the difficulty of getting accurate information about the concentration camps where ICE is holding people. The ability to get such information has been consistently blocked by the Trump regime.

Reporters are not being allowed into ICE concentration camps. While they can request entry, access is extremely difficult and highly restricted. You might ask: why?

Members of Congress are not let into ICE facilities even though by federal law they have an explicit right to enter and conduct unannounced overnight visits. ICE has labeled such visits as “disruptive”. Congress people have sued in federal court to allow their access and they have won temporary restraining orders against the regime’s blocking tactics. Some Congress people have gained entry but the regime continues to block access as much as it can.

There are over 200 ICE detention facilities around the country and because of funding they have been expanding but the information lockdown remains. Without reporting, how do we learn about the actual conditions of the detainees? One Russian family described its four month ordeal at Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas in an NBC News interview:

“Worms in the food. Guards shouting orders and snatching toys from small hands. Restless nights under fluorescent lights that never fully go dark. Hours in line for a single pill. “We left a tyranny and came to another land of tyranny”, Nikita said in Russian. “Even in Russia, they don’t treat children like this.”

So many questions remain. What is detainee access to health care? decent food? basic hygiene? Are detainees beaten, abused or sexually assaulted by guards? The ACLU has reported many problems.

The fact that ICE generally refuses media and Congressional access is a terrible sign. We are supposed to have a free press that can report openly and transparently on our institutions. As noted, what is going on is similar to the early German Nazi years before concentration camps transformed into death camps. That transformation took years. There wasn’t reporting then either.

Democracies cross over into dictatorships when fundamental First Amendment rights are denied and concentration camps become off limits to the press. I wrote we are becoming a concentration camp society, not that it is a done deal. But as Andrea Pitzer has written:

“The longer the detentions and the more secret or hidden the facilities, the worse the possibilities for what can happen.”

Opponents to the creation of concentration camps in America must fight to have ICE facilities shut down completely. That should be a litmus test position for any Democratic presidential candidate running in 2028. Concentration camps are incompatible with democracy.