What keeps me up at night is the cruelty.
Tens of thousands of children, many of them American citizens and the vast majority of them kids of people who have done no harm to anyone, live with constant terror that Mommy or Daddy or grandparents or teachers will be snatched away at any moment. Those men in scary uniforms might break down the door, or snatch Mommy in the grocery store parking lot or take Daddy at the place where he works. If they are taken they’ll be sent to a place where where Mommy or Daddy might be hurt or even die or be sent off somewhere but we don’t know where. Sometimes, those mean men even take the children!
This is happening in America.
The paragraph above is not fiction; it describes innocent children, living all over this country, traumatized daily for no reason at all. Are they clutching teddy bears for comfort? Are they able to concentrate at school? What behavioral patterns are emerging from their underlying hysteria?
How can they possibly grow up not resenting this country? What is happening to the children of the ICE raids is child abuse, and a criminal act when done by the government is no less criminal.
Over sixty thousand people are in ICE detention on any given day now, and about 70 per cent of them have no criminal convictions. People who fled the worst violence elsewhere are now finding it here. People who were doing everything right, who were awaiting their green cards, showing up for their appointed immigration meetings, legitimately claiming and even granted asylum, all thrown into the mix as though they are common criminals. They are not granted Constitutionally protected due process, or even access to immigration lawyers.
We have put them in concentration camps. We have put them in concentration camps. We have put them in concentration camps. And the administration wouldn’t be spending $45 billion on a system of those camps if they weren’t planning on using them for a whole array of things.
When members of the Third Reich were called barbarians, Hitler said they were “honored by the title.” We should not ignore that for those who design and execute the ICE raids, cruelty is not avoided; it seems to be the point. Some people get offended when ICE is compared to the German gestapo, arguing that such a comparison dishonors victims of the Holocaust. But how? As a Jew myself, I feel the opposite. It dishonors the victims of the Holocaust not to make the comparison. Whether people were being sent to work camps or to death camps, their terror at being taken was the same. They had heard the stories; they knew their fate.
When President Eisenhower led the liberation of Ohrdruf concentration camp in April of 1945, he was astounded by the proof of evils that he witnessed there. German citizens ran after him shouting, “We didn’t know! We didn’t know!” Eisenhower was adamant that with the smell of burning flesh less than a mile away, they should have known. And he told them so.
Eisenhower is also known to have commanded his entourage, “Start taking pictures! Take lots of pictures. Someday some sons of bitches are going to try to say that none of this even happened.” It did happen, however, though even today there are those still trying to tell us that it didn’t. We must never, ever, forget that it did.
Am I saying that what’s happening in American detainment camps today is as bad as Buchenwald or Auschwitz? No I’m not. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not detestable. And am I comparing the terror of Jewish children then, to the terror of children of immigrants in America today? Yes, I am. A terrified child is a terrified child.
Close your eyes and imagine what the children of the ICE raids are going through. We can’t comfort them by saying the detainment camps are decent places, because by all accounts they absolutely aren’t. We must not minimize the horror of this circumstance. We should allow our fury and allow our tears. No matter what the administration does to distract us, we must refuse to be distracted. We must not look away.
Marianne, thank you so much for writing this. My best friend, a former teacher, now works at Marshalls and has seen exactly this happen over and over and over again this past year. Productive coworkers who had courageously left or often fled their home country, have been arrested or no longer allowed to work. And she's heard many other firsthand stories of spouses and other family members similarly treated so inhumanely. She and other coworkers have been heartbroken again and again.
People who do not have personal knowledge may wonder if these stories are true, but her experiences are plain verification. What is going on in this country cannot and must not be denied. And we must not keep silent. 💔🙏🏼
"What is happening to the children of the ICE raids is child abuse, and a criminal act when done by the government is no less criminal." NO, IT'S WORSE!! The government is supposed to protect the people they are responsible for. I worked in Social Services for 40 years - in Corrections and in Child Protection to name two agency's I worked in, and what I saw was the system treating its clients the way they were used to being treated. Child Protection isn't child protection - it's child abuse in the name of child protection. Corrections doesn't help correct behavior so they don't return - they treat them the way they are used to being treated to guarantee they return because the system's funding is numbers driven. The more people who are in the system the more funding is allocated. This entire system needs to be revamped and a question to throw out for you all to think about - how many of these kids are being raped, impregnated and sold into the sex trade because who's keeping track who they are, where they are and who they belong to? NOBODY!!!!!