In the 1950’s and 60’s, I walked a mile to school daily, worked a door-to-door newspaper route, and joined a Boy Scout troop. The expectation in those days was that kids were safe. That was before the Boy Scout sex abuse scandal, and schools were forced to conduct “active shooter” drills. In 1970, while looking for work in Alaska, I slept in the back pews of unlocked churches to save my limited cash. Now churches, mosques, and temples are locked and guarded, some vandalized and murderously attacked. These changes happened over time. Individual and institutional decisions were made as noteworthy events changed our daily living, slowly redefining our expectations as citizens. Those changes didn’t directly attack, on a national level, our “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” as stated in the U. S. Declaration of Independence.
Current American expectations of daily life are changing at lightning speed. Judicial judges have noted “breathtaking violence” and ruled against clear constitutional violations. We have seen the ordinary lives of American citizens and others, young and old, quickly stripped of life, liberty, and happiness in Portland, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and additional cities outside mainstream news coverage. This is being done under the disguise of deporting the “worst of the worst”. If that’s the intent, it’s shocking that seventy-four percent of detainees arrested to date have no criminal record. It is also shocking how fast the increase in the budget of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has occurred. After an annual budget of approximately 10 billion dollars over the last decade, their budget skyrocketed to 85 billion in the past year of the current Trump administration. Eight-five billion dollars surpasses all but a few top-tier military budgets worldwide. That amount of taxpayer funding makes ICE the highest funded law enforcement agency in US history, eclipsing by far the combined budgets of all other current federal law enforcement departments as reported by NPR.
Where is all this taxpayer money going? Approximately forty-five billion is earmarked for expanded detention centers. Abandoned warehouses are being purchased to house up to one hundred thousand detainees. Detention facilities (sometimes called the “American Gulag”) are being run with no-bid contracts awarded to private prison companies. Taxpayers are funding an additional ten to twelve thousand new enforcement agents. Due to the unprecedented rapid build-up, these new recruits are poorly vetted and rushed through an abbreviated training and then armed with military-grade, deadly weapons. The new weapon contracts are awarded to established arms manufacturers without a bid process. Quoted in a report by USAspending.gov and the Federal Procurement Data System, “both agencies (ICE and CBP) of DHS have dramatically ramped up commitments to acquire sophisticated and deadly gear usually reserved for the U. S. Military and highly trained, specialized police units with specific and narrow emergency missions.” The very public actions of ICE and CBP do not fit the narrow application of such deadly weaponry. Certainly not to use against the Americans who are exercising their constitutional rights and paying taxes to fund DHS. Additional money is used to purchase “non-lethal” gear such as tear-gas, flash bangs, rubber bullets, and suppressors.
The suppressors caught my attention. That is a scrubbed term for what used to be called “silencers”. Silencers have historically been an assassin’s tool to muffle the sound of a gunshot to allow the murderer to escape after the killing. Silencers were used during WWII to execute military officers and politicians. As a gun owner and hunter, I don’t see the need for silencers for any other purpose than to “suppress” noise, evade detection, and escape consequences for killing a human. What is the intent of ICE and CBP to buy firearm suppressors? This question should trouble us all regardless of political or cultural alignment.
I have another question. What will private prison companies do when all the immigrants are deported? These companies are paid eighty to one hundred twenty dollars per day per person held. If the projected capacity of one hundred thousand detainees is met, the revenues generated will be twelve and a half million dollars per day. That is big money that private companies will hate to relinquish. So who might occupy those money-making faux prisons when the immigrants are gone? Given current clues, it is not hard to imagine further horror in America. The current Trump administration is demanding voter rolls in blue states. Is that to identify Democratic voters? How about the fabricated diagnosis of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) to house the “mentally ill” as other authoritarian regimes have done? What about the thirty to thirty-five percent of Americans who are not Christians? Maybe abortion rights advocates and LGBTQ could fill in some of those empty beds? Immigrants have a homeland for repatriation, but the above-mentioned Americans are home. Could these “immigrant detention centers” become new long-term prisons for those defending the US Constitution and advocating for their Bill of Rights?
Crazy speculation, you say? Political correctness? Woke? While we debate which sports team and bathrooms our children should use, federal government agents are invading schools and dragging children to modern internment camps. While politicians and business interests stymy the major population’s desire for sensible gun control, federal agents are promised immunity from shooting us in the streets. While big business popularizes easy sports betting, career scientists and medical professionals who keep us safe and improve our health are fired; their research and programs are destroyed. Professionals are being replaced with “influencers” without credentials, only a loyalty to a cult running our country. A heavily armed Department of Homeland Security (ICE and CBP), well funded and with immunity, represents an American para-military force on par with the Chinese force that killed thousands of protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard that recently killed tens of thousands of protesters. Authoritarian rulers need a loyal, private army. Recognize that this unconstitutional lawlessness is happening faster than legal challenges and the courts can manage. In many cases, the court rulings as a check and balance to Executive power are simply ignored. The Republican led congress appears impotent in its oath to defend the Constitution. Our U.S. Constitution, 250 years old and the first of its kind, is only as strong as the citizens’ belief and actions by those sworn to defend it. Much of American life depends on people’s beliefs. Driving our roads is only safe when everyone knows and follows the rules. Belief in the value of our American dollar worldwide is due to faith in the American economy. The Rule of Law is an ancient principle of trust that works well if everyone believes in the law and knows of enforced consequences for breaking laws.
Democracy only exists if we believe in it and actively participate in its maintenance. As long as we have a Democracy, we can always have our debates of opposing views and agendas while maintaining the power of the vote. I hope the vast majority of Americans can overlook our political divide to ensure that an authoritarian reign of illegality is brought to an end. Current and historic authoritarian governments are motivated to maintain power by suppressing the vote and imprisoning or murdering any opposition. Every one of our opposing views and agendas would fill a bed in the American Gulag if such a system were allowed to develop further. Make no mistake, and don’t shade your eyes, this process is underway.
