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Slavery, Concentration Camps, and Who is Next? | Opinion [1]

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Date: 2025-07-07

Donald Trump has proposed a system of indentured servitude for Latinos to remain in America. As a part of his offer to farmers, he suggests that they be able to vouch for their workers until such time that they are no longer needed. They would be required to pay fees to the government yet have no path to citizenship; however, they would be able to temporarily stay, work, and pay taxes in the country. The policy would, in effect, condemn workers to the whim of their ‘employers’ before eventually being deported—maybe not to their home countries, essentially depriving them of their freedom. The similarity with the Black Codes in the Old South that instituted insanely enforced laws for freed blacks, with the punishment for conviction being de facto slavery, is cruelly eerie. America had moved beyond that sort of fascism, and now Mr. Trump, with his new powers, has singular, unfettered power granted by the Supreme Court to kidnap, rendition, and, in the name of national security, kill immigrants.

This slide into full-fledged fascist cruelty has become a one or two-day story in the news cycle, and the media is failing us by not snapping their pencils and tossing their legal pads while on air. That sort of demonstration would not be a liberal response but a response to the desecration of American values. When the death camps in Germany were first opened, they were labeled as detention and deportation camps. Later, as they morphed into killing camps, we know the outcomes for the men, women, and children sent there. During a nasty Republican campaign and primary, President Donald Trump and current Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida had their animosity for each other on full display. What has reunited them is their cruelty. What Trump and DeSantis are musingly calling Alligator Alcatraz; moral and compassionate people are calling it Alligator Auschwitz.

Trump and DeSantis are touting the prospect of death for anyone attempting an escape. “Clearly, from a security perspective, if someone escapes, there’s a lot of alligators you’re going to have to contend (with),” DeSantis said. “No one is going anywhere once you do that. It’s as safe and secure as you can be.” The cognitive dissonance in DeSantis’s deplorable statement is only rivaled by its moral vacancy. Suggesting that a human being, whose goal was seeking safety, work, and freedom in another country, who an alligator may eat, assures the protection for the rest of us is so devoid of humanism that it is beyond appalling.

The slide into authoritarianism should make us all ask what and who is next. Trump has made opaque and transparent assertions about locking up and deporting Americans. In April, during a visit with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele in the White House, Trump told the leader, “The homegrowns (sic) are next,” he said. “You gotta build five more places… It's not big enough,” Trump concluded. This is not the first or last time Mr. Trump will move forward with his efforts to make America a white Christian state. Before the breakup of the Trump/Musk bromance, he said of Tesla protesters, “I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20-year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla., Trump continued. “Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!”

I have been called an alarmist and doomsayer, but so were a lot of others before the fascism of Hitler’s Germany; I think I am in good company.

Your Vote is Still Your Voice

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