It's hard to keep track of all the atrocities trump and his thugs are inflicting on the United States, but this one back in June really stood out as they were pulling this shit in my backyard:
Pandering to the harsh anti-immigrant war on our American communities, Governor DeSantis and his cronies are fast-tracking a migrant detention center in South Florida (via Rachel Treisman at NPR):
Despite resistance, Florida officials are turning an airfield in the Everglades into a migrant detention center, which they've nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz" due to its proximity to the apex predators.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier proposed the project last week, saying in a video posted to X that, in support of the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had asked state leaders to identify places for temporary detention facilities.
"I think this is the best one, as I call it: Alligator Alcatraz," Uthmeier said, referencing the infamous prison island in San Francisco Bay...
If anyone's paying attention to the overwhelmed ICE "detention facilities" right now, there are serious overcrowding, food availability, and wellness problems to where people are dying in custody. Even this horrific attempt to alleviate crowding at existing facilities won't stop this new prison - it's not a detention center, trust me - from being overcrowded itself. Stephen Miller wants his fucking quotas filled, and doesn't give a damn about treating his and ICE's victims with any basic decency or civil rights.
From what people can see happening at the airfield - there are already protestors gathering, bless them - it's looking like a bunch of portable classrooms getting converted into barracks, which I guarantee you will not be adequately air-conditioned. I doubt there will be any serviceable water or sewage considering that abandoned airfield would need months of dedicated construction efforts to make it genuinely livable.
This isn't going to be a safe or healthy place to get imprisoned...
And it turns out I - and the environmental and civil rights activists as well - was right about that hellhole being unsafe, unsound, and inhuman. Last week, federal judge Kathleen Williams gutted the anti-immigrant bastards for their sins (via AP News / NPR):
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams' injunction formalized a temporary halt she had ordered two weeks ago as witnesses continued to testify in a multiday hearing to determine whether construction should end until the ultimate resolution of the case...
The judge said she expected the population of the facility to decline within 60 days through the transferring of the detainees to other facilities, and once that happened, fencing, lighting and generators should be removed. She wrote the state and federal defendants can't bring anyone other than those who are already being detained at the facility onto the property. The order does not prohibit modification or repairs to existing facilities, "which are solely for the purpose of increasing safety or mitigating environmental or other risks at the site.,"
The preliminary injunction includes "those who are in active concert or participation with" the state of Florida or federal defendants or their officers, agents, employees," the judge wrote in an 82-page order.
The judge said state officials never sufficiently explained why the facility needed to be in the middle of the Florida Everglades. "What is apparent, however, is that in their haste to construct the detention camp, the State did not consider alternative locations," Williams said...
DeSantis and Uthmeier never explained why they put the concentration camp there because they didn't want to repeat under oath their gleeful desire to "witness alligators eating any detainees trying to escape." Cruelty may play well on Fox Not-News but not in a courtroom.
While the legal ruling focuses mostly on the environmental impact of the camp, it helps stall the ongoing efforts by the Far Right under trump and Stephen Miller to incarcerate every dark-skinned person they can find in majority-Democratic cities/states. With any luck, it'll at least end that tasteless and profane merch industry that sprang up promoting "Alligator Alcatraz" like it was fcking Disney World.
If there's any good news right now, it's that ICE and the Florida AG aren't ignoring this court order: reports are that camp is emptying out and should be cleared in a few more days.
The bad news is: Where the hell are those poor detainees - most of them honest working people, family members, not at all the criminal rot the fearmongers insist upon - going? There is no way these haters are going to give up the targets of their fear/rage: ICE is most likely shipping these people to the other concentration camps they've been setting up in other Red states across the country.
This is all going to turn into a sick and cruel game of "hot potato": moving immigrant prisoners from state to state dodging the lawsuits that will get filed in response to any legal abuses the Far Right leaders across those states will inflict on their victims.
If only we had a working Congress that would use its' constitutional powers to rein in a lawless, vulgar, monstrous president shitgibbon.
Keep fighting. Keep protesting. Stop every concentration camp from getting built. Stop these hatemongers.
No comments:
Post a Comment