Not the land of the free, but the home of the caged

Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported that the Department of Justice has issued a memo saying DOJ attorneys were to strip the citizenship of immigrants that have committed certain crimes. Yeah, this is a historical thing, though rarely used. It’s usually reserved for literal Nazis who hid their past when they became citizens. The memo lists the usual crimes that can trigger denaturalization – torture, espionage, trafficking – but they added a really bad one: any other case determined sufficiently important to pursue. Yep, that can be anything. To make all that worse denaturalization cases will be done in civil court where the burden of proof is lower and the victim doesn’t have the right to an attorney.

Of course, the Trump administration was never going to stop at deporting undocumented immigrants who’ve committed violent crimes. And it was never going to stop at deporting undocumented immigrants with no criminal records or immigrants with temporary legal status. The inevitable next step was to strip citizenship from those who already have it. And after that, who knows? But rest assured Trump will figure out another way to hurt people.

Thom Harumann of the Kos community and an independent pundit posted an essay comparing Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, to Alligator Alcatraz. This comparison further pushes my belief that “Alligator Auschwitz” fits better. Dachau opened just three months after Hitler took power. It was described as a place for political prisoners. From the beginning it was known for its brutality. The first people sent there were not criminals or traitors. They were people the regime considered a threat or a convenient enemy.

The Nazis didn’t hide Dachau. They advertised it. It was a warning. A message. Step out of line, and this is where you go.

Only much later did they add extermination facilities. Alligator Alcatraz isn’t just a deportation facility. It is a political prison to humiliate, dehumanize, and broadcast terror. It is a symbol that American democracy is being publicly dissected, cruelly, and with calculation. It is also proof-of-concept. If it succeeds – as political spectacle – there will be more. Another similarity is the ongoing state of emergency. Florida declared an immigration state of emergency in 2023. It allows the governor to act without oversight. The Nazis used the 1933 Reichstag Fire to give themselves emergency power, which removed democratic guardrails. A third similarity is location. Both are in isolated places. Escape is close to impossible. Oversight is nonexistent. Rights lawyers and journalists will find it hard to access.

The most dangerous thing about Alligator Alcatraz isn’t the alligators. It’s the message. The message that some people are less than human. That caging them is acceptable. That they deserve no rights, no hearing, no compassion. Just mud and barbed wire. That was the logic behind Dachau. And it’s becoming the logic behind Trump’s America. This facility is being built not to solve a problem, but to create one. To manufacture outrage. To train the public to see brown-skinned immigrants not as workers or families or survivors but as invaders. Intruders. Animals. And that’s when the door opens for something far worse.

There are ways to engage: Lawsuits to challenge it, using any statute possible. Journalists to document construction, conditions, and policies. Peaceful protests. Using proper words – not “detention center” but “political prison” or “migrant concentration camp” and people were not sent there “for their own protection.” Learn how Dachau started and what happened there. Teach your neighbors. Democracy ends with a shrug. We need to commit to human dignity, due process, and liberty.

If we wait too long, we may wake up one day and discover we are no longer the land of the free, but only the home of the caged.

Today’s pundit roundup for Kos has a couple good cartoons. One posted by Jon Cooper and created by Bagley shows handcuffed men in suits boarding an ICE bus. The caption:

Something you will never see: ICE rounding up the CEOs who illegally exploited undocumented workers...

Cooper added, “I wonder why we aren’t seeing this? A cartoon posted by paulpro and created by Geoff Coats shows the nasty guy handing a sack of cash to a rich dude while beside them is a MAGA hospital patient with a high bill. The nasty guy says, “Don’t worry, little buddy. We can still hate trans people together.” Needham also reported Republicans of North Carolina introduced a state bill to replace over a third of state election staff jobs with political appointees.

The new state elections director, Sam Hayes, had a very Trump-ish explanation for why he needs to eliminate experienced nonpartisan staff, NC Newsline reported: “These positions would just allow me the flexibility that I need to conduct that reorganization and make sure that folks that are surrounding me, certainly my direct reports and I, are aligned on the vision for the agency as I set forward.” That’s just code for “I want a bunch of stooges who will help continue the GOP project of undermining elections in the state.” But somehow, according to Hayes, this will also be nonpartisan. Yes, replacing nonpartisan staff with political appointees is totally nonpartisan indeed. It’s not surprising that Hayes only knows how to operate like a hardcore partisan, as his previous gig was as counsel for the GOP House speaker.

Any guesses to his “vision for the agency”? Dan K of the Kos community started a post with:

Lots of stories both here and elsewhere have been written in the past few days about how Republicans are committing political suicide by pushing the One Hugely Ugly Bill, how it will not only cost them the House but also the Senate. Very few if any have asked the obvious questions: Don’t you think they know this? And if they do, why are voting for it anyway? That’s because they may have come to the conclusion that they will not have to pay a political price because the next election is being rigged for them.

We don’t have one election system, we have fifty. And many of them are run by honest people dedicated to an accurate count no matter who wins (though see above). But Republicans have been tampering with elections since at least Nixon. Republicans may not be counting on this. There has been a lot of talk about cuts to Medicaid but no talk that the main cuts take place after the midterms. Three weeks ago Jeremy Kohler, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos wrote that Republicans are getting annoyed with citizens undoing their work. The citizens have been passing state constitutional amendments and voter initiatives. So Republican led legislatures are trying to make citizen initiatives harder to pass. Missouri citizens led efforts on two big measures, one of them restoring abortion rights. Abortion was also the issue in Arizona. The other Missouri initiative was sick leave benefits, which also passed in Alaska and Nebraska. In those states the effort is to undo what citizens did. Republicans in Florida, Utah, Montana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Ohio, North Dakota and South Dakota are trying to restrict initiatives, making changing laws outside of legislatures harder.

Republican elected officials across these states make strikingly similar arguments: They say the initiative process is susceptible to fraud and unduly influenced by out-of-state money. What’s more, they say that they, as elected officials, represent the true will of the people more than ballot initiatives do.

I’ve worked on a couple citizen initiatives in Michigan and likely gearing up for two more. The only ones associated with fraud were Republican efforts, such as in 2004 getting a same-sex marriage ban into the state constitution. Signature gatherers said they were working for one initiative while the actual forms were for the harmful one. As for out-of-state money, Republicans are good at collecting cash for a cause from across the country. As for elected officials representing the true will of the voters, I’ll believe that when gerrymandering is outlawed and every state draws district lines through citizen commissions, as is now done in Michigan. Needham reported that California is in a tough spot – it’s regular fire season started swiftly over the weekend. And a good chunk of its National Guard, who normally serve as fire fighters, are being used by the nasty guy as his personal police force. Which means California is asking the Department of Defense if, pretty please, the state could have the use of its own National Guard. The original request was for 200 guardsmen. The DOD was magnanimous in offering 150. How can a state have enough guardsmen for state-level challenges if the president can yank them away at any time? Back in 2018 the nasty guy punished Washington state by deliberately delaying wildfire aid. This year he isn’t punishing through money, but by yanking personnel. He’s got lots of ways to punish blue states. Last week Wednesday Alix Breeden of Kos reported that Jeff Bezos planned to marry Lauren Sanchez at the 14th-century Grande Scuola Misericordia in Venice. But locals planned to form a blockade in the canals around the venue, in addition to other protesting. Protesters won and the venue was changed to Tese 91 of the Arsenale, which is described as a shipyard. Part of the protest was a huge banner laid out in St. Mark’s Square saying, “If you can rent Venice for your wedding you can pay more tax.” Though protesters got the wedding venue switched, Bezos’ visit still caused havoc. He kicked out all the other paying guests at his chosen hotel so that he wouldn’t be disturbed. Breeden then listed several ways Bezos has been bending a knee to the nasty guy.