Andrew Young famously said that ‘anything is legal if 100 businessmen decide to do it.” I would add a more modern take. Nothing is too low, too immoral, too illegal if 5 or 6 Supreme Court justices decide to allow it.
Their recent decisions could fill a book on how corrupt they are. (I’ve discussed this before. But this post is looking at immigration and the cruelty that this administration is fomenting. We have always been a cruel nation. Patriarchy has honed cruelty as its worked to crush women’s bodies while silencing women. How else would women have agreed to our loss of power? Carol Christ has written eloquently about this. Immigration policy has blown the lid off this pot. Perhaps because it is too new, too shocking. Because ICE is in our faces with agents flooding neighborhoods and engaging in unfettered cruelty.
For example, when ICE raided an apartment building in the Bronx on Feb 24th, they arrested 19 year old Merwil Gutiérrez. When they realized they had the wrong person, their response was “take him anyway.” Read that again, “take him anyway.”
Merwil Gutiérrez was then deported to the notorious prison CECOT in El Salvador. For months, his family couldn’t find him. He was eventually sent to his native Venezuela.
Jeanette Vizguerra is a Colorado mother and grandmother and a well-known immigrant rights advocate who she found sanctuary in a church for 3 years during the first Trump administration. When ICE came to arrest her in March, one of them reportedly commented, “We finally got you.” Read that again: “We finally got you.”
She is still in detention in Aurora Colorado.
When Rümeysa Öztürk, was arrested the agents were specifically instructed not to tell her that her visa had been revoked. There can be no reason for that order except to foment terror.
Understand this: she was here legally and the agents were specifically instructed not to tell her that her visa had been revoked.
She has since been now released by order of a Federal Judge.
ICE are the people carrying weapons and given charge of enforcing laws of the US. Does anyone think they will stop with the Gutierrez’s, Vizguerra’s, and Öztürk’s?
By July 1st, over 600 flights of deportees had been sent to far flung countries. Some known for their instability and human rights violations including Kosovo, South Sudan, Libya, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland).
And you can be sure that lots of money is changing hands, from the airlines, to the private detention centers and even to the countries that take the deportees. Why else would they take them? Trump is making a lot of swarmy characters rich. And our Congress has given him billions of dollars to do so.
Dehumanized language fills this administration. It is their stock and trade. “Alien,” “monster,” “blood-thirsty” “worst of the worst” – all provocative words and phrases that work to bypass reason and draw on people’s ugliest fears.
Trump not only engages in abhorrent cruelty and what I consider amorality but perhaps his biggest sin is in finding avenues to make it normal, accepted and now in this country legal. I think of those ICE agents laughing and joking when arresting human beings and destroying lives. They are prioritizing humiliation and cruelty as they pillage. And now Trump and his depredations have the imprimatur of legality. Anything can if legal if our corrupt Supreme Court deems it so. Kilmar Abrego Garcia has had to ask the courts to have Ice Barbie and others stop trashing him in public while trying everything to deport him. The administration is now trying to send him to Eswatini (which has reportedly asked for $500 million to take in deportees.)
They are giving their concentration camps cutsy cartoonish names. I use “concentration camp” because many of the people there are being detained without due process or any process at all. I will not repeat the cartoon names. This is language reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984.
They have also lowered the age of ICE agents to 18. What this means is that teenagers and young adults are now being initiated into the culture of cruelty, bulling and a “power makes right” mentality. What’s next? Hitler-Jugend? Child soldiers? I would say this to the young people: “You are not only destroying other lives, but your own as well. Don’t give up your humanity for that is among the hardest of qualities to regain.”
In the movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko played by Michael Douglas famously popularized the phrase, “greed is good” in 1987. The counterpart today is “cruelty is good.”
Trump feels like the culmination of centuries of the cruelties of patriarchy. Our country was founded on the destruction of the native population, grew wealthy on the backs of black slaves and has been a cultivator of war abroad. But I did believe MLK, Jr. when he said, “the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice” [This is a line that has been traced to the abolitionist Thomas Parker in 1853 that MLK, Jr make popular during the Civil Rights movement.] I am hard pressed at this time in history to continue believing the truth of this line.
Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, while on a firing spree has talked about his goals: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought said in a private speech in 2023 unearthed by ProPublica. He continued, “We want to put them in trauma.”
Read that again: “put them in trauma.” From a government official, there are no words.
When Rümeysa Öztürk was released and arrived back in Boston, she said, “America is the greatest democracy in the world, I have faith in the American system of justice.”
She may have more faith than I do. I hope she is right. A side note: the government is still pursuing her deportation.
Here’s a little poetry with a nod to If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
*If you give a patriarchal, fascist, racist, misogynistic dictator (pfrmd) a Presidency, he’ll want a Popeship and a Kingship, a Nobel prize and even an Oscar too.
*If you give a pfrmd a Columbia Univ. he’ll want a Harvard, and Johns Hopkins too.
*If you give a pfrmd a raft of court opinions allowing inhumane treatment, he’ll want concentration camps all over the country.
*If you give a pfrmd a Steven Colbert, he’ll want a Jimmy Kimmel and a Jimmy Fallon too.
*If you give a pfrmd CBS, he’ll want NBC, ABC, and the rest of them too.
*If you give a pfrmd the Supreme Court, he will want all the rest of the courts too.
*If you give a pfrmd the Supreme Court, he will want all the rest of the courts too.
*If you give a pfrmd the right to strip the government of services, he’ll want a gigantic tax break for the very rich.
*If you give a pfrmd a private army, he will storm peaceful protests which unsurprisingly become suddenly violent.
*If you give a pfrmd Dobbs, he will want gay kids along with their families and trans families too.
*If you give a pfrmd the ability to ignore Congress, he’ll want to ignore the courts and all precedents as well.
*If you give a pfrmd a presidency he’ll want to further desecrate native lands in order to be carved into Mt. Rushmore. [Who’s going to tell him, it still won’t give him the immortality he craves?]
Afternote: As I was preparing this blogpost, a report came down that the Supreme Court is allowing ICE to engage in racial profiling. And I think to myself, “well of course, the Supreme Court is a relic from the time of slavery when the color of one’s body was policed without limit even unto death.” I don’t know if it’s salvageable as an institution. Here is Pema Levy’s article for Mother Jones explaining the decision. The Supreme Court isn’t even trying anymore to follow the law.
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Thanks Janet for this post. The news (every day) is so cruel and upsetting to most people, it’s easy to despair–something that comes easily to me. What I try to do is live more intentionally. Does that garner the result of keeping ICE from traumatizing individuals and communities? No, of course not. Being “intentional,” though, works to keep me focused. I cannot change the hatred spewed and the infliction of suffering from the White House daily. I can attempt to stay focused on my corner of the world, and (at the very least) not replicate the cruelty I abhor.
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Esther, I too try to live intentionally – I cannot listen to American news – the despair you speak of runs too deep – and my sanity is at stake BUT I WILL NEVER NEVER STOP ASKING THE QUESTION I JUST POSED IN A RESPONSE TO JANET’S POST. IT’S GOING TO GET MUCH MUCH WORSE UNLESS WE STOP IT.
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Oh boy, I hear you about the news. I have stopped listening to it. I read the news but then I can at least witness and stop when the overwhelm is too much. Serge Kahili King reminds us that there are things we can control and things we can’t. Then there are things we can influence. As Esther noted, we can’t control what is happening in the White House or in the hate-averse. But we can influence where possible. At least that helps me sleep at night (mostly).
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the images on the news annihilate – how DO people watch this stuff???? The news has become The American addiction – listen and tune out – how do they do it? We sure as hell can’t blame the media…. they couldn’t keep at it without an audience. I read the Guardian but only when I feel I can stand it – and always the question how can we mobilize to stop the carnage –
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Such good words Esther. Thank you for reminding me/us of the personal work we need to do to hopefully keep alive the “goodness” of the world and help it to grow.
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HERE IT IS JANET – THE GENESIS OF WHAT WE ARE LIVING:’Our country was founded on the destruction of the native population, grew wealthy on the backs of black slaves and has been a cultivator of war abroad’. WHY ARE WE SO SURPRISED? This had to come back on us – every hideous act has consequences and the rulers have LOST access to their humanity – when I read this most excellent critique I shudder – literally shudder – because it’s going to get worse. When you recruit 18 year old males into ICE you are twisting the minds of MALE children whose brains are not fully developed. Terrifying. Personally I have a friend who is a scientist who has been in this country since the early 80’s and he is being profiled – on the Reservations people are being arrested because they LOOK like Mexicans. What I cannot understand is why the rest of us can’t mobilize as one UNITED group – females males etc to STOP this atrocity – I grew up in the sixties and remember …. WE STOPPED A WAR …. WE CAN STOP THIS TOO – HOW THE HELL CAN WE BEGIN TO MOBILIZE?????
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I know, Sara, it feels like Sisyphus, doesn’t it? And that boulder is not only getting heavier, but I am also getting more tired. It’s a constant rear-guard action and it isn’t working. Not that it isn’t important. It is. But, in my view, we need whole new paradigms to go along with the actions.
And don’t kid yourself, the females are getting in on the ICE action as well.
I can’t say what scares me the most, but the inclusion and brain-washing of the young certainly stands out.
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didn’t know about the women – oh
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Thank you for this post Janet. You “speak the truth to power!” May everyone with ears to hear, eyes to see, and a heart to break, hear you!
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Thank you Elizabeth, you always express it so beautifully. Amama ua noa (so may it be without limit).
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What a powerful post, Janet. I, too, always believed in the arc of the universe turning toward justice — until now. These are troubling times, indeed. Thank you for exposing the truths mainstream media barely covers, for stating all of this so clearly so well.
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Thank you Beth.
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