To the horror of all who study history, the private, masked army of a wannabe dictator is patrolling the streets and abducting those deemed “undesirable” by the federal government. For around six months, starting with the inauguration of President Donald Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been searching for people deemed “dangerous, illegal immigrants,” insisting they should be sent behind bars, in many cases to foreign prisons, without a trial.
While the operations are supposedly targeting “illegal” immigrants, many of those detained have ended up being U.S. citizens the whole time. Let’s be perfectly honest here, the primary connection among many of the detained and deported isn’t criminal record, immigration status or even country of birth. The main connection by those swept up in this brutal campaign is that they aren’t white enough for ICE and the far-right to consider them citizens. When the motivating factor of mass removal from a country is the race and ethnicity of those removed, that is what we call ethnic cleansing, and that is exactly what’s happening in the United States.
To be honest, I face a degree of difficulty in writing an opinion column about this topic, as the very nature of an opinion article implies there is a legitimate argument to be made on both sides of the issue. I do not feel this is the case, or that there’s any room for reasonable discourse. On the subject of politics and debate, I am reminded of a favorite quote, from professor and public intellectual Noam Chomsky’s first political book, “American Power and the New Mandarins.” Near the beginning of the book, Chomsky critiques in great depth the factors that led the United States to being involved in the Vietnam War. Chomsky said, “By entering into the arena of argument and counterargument, of technical feasibility and tactics, of footnotes and citations, by accepting the presumption of legitimacy of debate on certain issues, one has already lost one’s humanity.”
He would later go on to support this conclusion on a 1969 episode of the public affairs program Firing Line, stating there is no more room for legitimate argument on Vietnam, due to the amount of Vietnamese lives being threatened. I believe the same stakes apply to non-white Americans in this instance. For this reason, I will not make any such attempt to debate the issue of immigration, for there is no longer a debate to be had.
I will not stoop so low as to even factor in the “legal status” of those detained, as without a trial or any method available to prove otherwise, that concept is worthless. Even if there were trials, this campaign by the Trump administration would still be an affront to humanity. People are being shipped off on a mass scale to countries they were never from— all because lines were drawn on the map hundreds of years ago by wealthy racists who stole land from Indigenous peoples. Apparently, I am a radical for pointing out the absurdity of this concept.
All I will do is call these deportations exactly what they are, cruel actions driven by a pursuit of power and profit, carried out with a disregard for human compassion and dignity. There is no more debate; the deportations must end immediately. No human is illegal.
