AMERICAN GULAG
Somewhere inside Camp Lemonnier, an American military base in the East African nation of Djibouti, eight immigrant men, all convicted of serious crimes in the United States, are housed in a converted shipping container under the guard of officers from the Homeland Security Department.
In this action, the White House is making a bold claim. The premise is that handing immigrants a one-page document, possibly even in language they don’t read, is sufficient to deport them after 24 hours to a dangerous country to which they have no previous connection.
In May, the Trump administration had planned to send the men to a prison the war-torn country of South Sudan. The move was part of T****’s plan for mass deportations. These men come from countries around the world, only one is from South Sudan. Then an order from a federal judge put a temporary hold on the operation.
On June 23, the Supreme Court ruled that T**** could, at least temporarily, continue deporting people to countries other than their own and could do so without redress from the courts. These men are still destined for South Sudan,
So what’s the deal? T**** is, in fact, beginning to create an American gulag. He is already sending men who have not been convicted of anything to a prison camp in El Salvador. South Sudan is apparently next. And there are undoubtedly other countries on other continents whose strongmen dictators will be happy accept similar corrupt arrangements.
The entire concept is illustrative of the depths of depraved indifference to the rule of law and regards for humanity that exemplify the essence of Donald L. T****.
As part of his plan for creating this gulag, T**** is doing it with the least sympathetic of people, noncitizens who may or may not have been convicted of crimes. This is a test of how much cruel, deplorable treatment of human beings and erosion of due process American voters will stomach.
We must loudly and forcefully and continually demonstrate to him that we will stomach none of it. The imperatives of humanity, let alone The 8th Amendment, make it clear that in America, “cruel and unusual punishment [shall not] be inflicted.” Farming his victims out to agents overseas who will do this for him is a travesty of justice and a perversion of that imperative, of that edict.
But, then, Donald Trump is a perverse man.
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