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Alligator Auschwitz: Call It What It Really Is [1]

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Date: 2025-06-30

In addition to the pure cruelty, inhumanity, and evil reeking out of the Republican term “Alligator Alcatraz,” one important point has been left out: nobody in that facility will have been tried and found guilty of a crime by a court. Nobody in that facility will EVER be tried and found guilty of a crime by a court. People in Alcatraz had been found guilty of heinous crimes and were, therefore, sent to prison. The innocent people in Auschwitz and other concentration camps were never tried and found guilty in any court. They were put there simply because of who they were as human beings.

The very definition of “concentration camp” per an AI definition is “a place where large number of people, often civilians, are confined without legal process, typically under harsh conditions and often for political or discriminatory reasons.” Don’t trust AI? How about our old friend Brittannica: “Concentration camps are to be distinguished from prisons interning persons lawfully convicted of civil crimes.” In other words, people in concentration camps have not been lawfully convicted of...anything. Throw in “harsh conditions (AI definition),” such as crowding (see above), sanitation (see above), and inadequate shelter/housing (see above), and...it’s a concentration camp. Heinrich Himmler, meet Kristi Noem. And her flunky-in-charge, Todd Lyons, Acting Director of ICE. You two have a lot in common with Herr Himmler.

And most definitions include political prisoners and “targeted groups” as inmates of concentration camps. Such as non-white immigrants.

The horror of the Nazi concentration camps was still fresh in people’s minds while I was growing up. Even as a child, I had an overwhelming sense that something like this should never, ever happen again, to Jews or any other group of people. As a people, as a country, the United States as a people were appalled by the concentration camps and felt great pride that our soldiers helped to liberate the survivors of the camps. By default, the policy of the US government was to oppose such facilities around the world where political and other prisoners were sent. Russia during Stalin’s time. Argentina in and Chile during my lifetime. Yes, I know the US has less than a stellar record in South America, but many people in this country were appalled by what was going on and said so.

One would hope that we as a country would know better by now. We all know — or should know — what happened in Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s. We know what the Nazis did, to whom, how they did it, and, perhaps most importantly, why they did it: out of a sense of superiority, with a large dose of hatred and scorn thrown in to the mix.

Nothing says “Republican” now more than the words superiority [white nationalism], hatred, and scorn. They ARE following Hitler and Himmler’s playbook. Therefore, they ARE acting like Nazis. Until January of this year, I thought one should use great caution when calling someone a “Nazi.” No more. We need to call things what they are. In this case, we need to call these facilities concentration camps.

Florida’s facility has way more in common with Auschwitz than it does with Alcatraz. It will confine people rounded up because of their nationalities and skin color, not because they’ve committed any crime — except the crime of seeking out a better life for themselves and their families. And for the vast majority of them, working jobs that Americans don’t want to do.

Putting this concentration camp in the middle of the Everglades was intentional, not just because escape will be difficult (like Alcatraz), but, more significantly, because it will be nearly impossible for the American people to know what acts of cruelty and inhumanity are being carried out there in our name. Ignorance is bliss, just as it was for many Germans. That way, people can maintain plausible deniability, and the Trump regime can carry on its crimes against humanity in secret.

Florida is building a concentration camp in the middle of the Everglades in Miami-Dade County. Period. Auschwitz. Dachau. Now Miami-Dade. Its purpose is the same as the concentration camps: contain thousands of people they hate in overcrowded and inadequate facilities, cut off from any communication from the outside, cut off from their families, cut off from decent health care. Treated as less-than-human.

It will be nothing like Alcatraz. It will instead be eerily like Auschwitz. Call it what it really is.

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