Alligator Alcatraz: The Concentration Camps Coming Back to America
It's not the first time the U.S. has built concentration camps
When I hear the term ‘concentration camp,’ the first thing that comes to my mind is the infamous gate over the entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ — Work Sets You Free. The last words far too many innocent people heard in their minds as they were herded along the tracks in the last moments of their lives.
The imagery is horrific. For many, it’s too much to think about.
But while the term has become synonymous with the horrors of the Holocaust, concentration camps were never limited to Nazi Germany — Hell, even during World War II they existed across multiple countries on both sides of the war.
Even the United States and Canada had several in operation. Yes, I’m serious. No, I’m not exaggerating. We had several camps dedicated to citizens of Japanese, German and Italian heritage during the war — mostly Japanese.
After the assault on Pearl Harbour, our governments became paranoid that people of Japanese descent might secretly be spies here to infiltrate our countries and sabotage the war effort. As a result, every individual of Japanese heritage became a target.
Even children were collected and taken away.
People were arrested, detained in camps under armed guards, their homes and businesses confiscated and their lives reduced to squalid conditions behind barbed wire. Many people died of sickness and violence in the camps.
It’s one of the great shames our two countries share, and to see the U.S. returning to this stage of history as if it were a wise decision is chilling in a way that I cannot put into words.
History doesn’t necessarily repeat in the exact same fashion, but it certainly follows down familiar paths.
Like the old saying goes; those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
The United States recently opened a brand new concentration camp in Florida.
Dubbed ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’ the facility is a cramped, mosquito infested center in the Everglades. It is surrounded by swamplands full of dangerous animals — hence the name.
It has been abundantly clear from the start that the location and high-risk nature of the internment camp is intentionally designed to be a scare tactic. This is a situation where the cruelty is very much the point, with officials making comments about the risk of death by hurricanes, pythons and gators acting as an encouragement to ‘self-deport.’
Self-deportation is a very fancy, high-brow way of saying ‘flee the country in fear for your life.’
Recently lawmakers were allowed to tour the facility now that the first detainees have arrived, and they were treated to an awful sight. They describe seeing people crushed into small cages, packed in on top of beds like sardines.
Naturally, Trump’s Republican allies are defending the camp and calling the complaints ‘overblown political theater.’
Democratic party members who toured the location report feeling ill at the sight of ‘wall-to-wall humans’ inside the small cages.
Concerns have been raised about the quantity and quality of food provided to the detainees, safety and health considerations, and about who precisely holds authority over the location.
The one thing that everyone is sure of is that the construction of internment camps like this, in connection to the expansion of ICE and the doubling-down on Trump’s mass kidnapping and trafficking campaign, represents a huge escalation.
Note: I say kidnapping and human trafficking because that’s what’s happening. This is not a mass deportation — deportation follows due process of law, and that is not in evidence in many of these cases.
The history of racial segregation in the United States is a long and painful one.
Most of us both within and without the States are familiar with the legacy of chattel slavery, Jim Crow, the Tulsa Race Massacre and the Civil Rights Movement.
Some of us know about the Chinese Exclusion Acts, anti-Irish hatred and discrimination following the Famine, and the awfully named ‘Operation Wetback’ of 1954.
In a country as large and prosperous as the United States, particularly one with such a deep history of racial apartheid and an insular, nationalistic culture, immigration has never been a simple or easily-handled issue.
Particularly with the strong history of eugenics and ableist thinking that once inspired the Nazi movement — yeah, Hitler was partially inspired by the U.S. — and has even survived into the modern day.
We see this thread in Trump’s chatter about how immigrants ‘poison the blood’ of America, and how there’s ‘something in their DNA’ with regards to crime.
We see it in the laissez-faire attitude that Trump and his buddies have towards the potential for loss of life in their Florida camp. He quite infamously joked about escapees running in a zig-zag pattern to get away from the alligators if they try to flee.
To someone like Trump, these people have no value in and of themselves — human life has no inherent worth, and those they consider to be inferior in some way, be that because of race or disability, are less human.
They joke about their potential maiming and death as if it’s a silly joke that nobody could possibly take seriously. Meanwhile, the families of those in detention are terrified.
He doesn’t care. His followers don’t care.
To those of us with a shred of human decency, though, the prospect of concentration camps popping up in more states around the country is sickening and atrocious.
Now, as I said in the beginning of this piece, concentration camps are often viewed as being synonymous with the Holocaust. This is not necessarily the case.
I bring this up because there are a lot of right-wing pundits decrying the use of the term as being an exaggeration, commenting that these are not extermination centers, and calling them concentration camps is nonsensical.
So, a point of clarification; a concentration camp is not a death camp.
A concentration camp is a prison camp — a location where people are detained for long periods of time. The Nazis built well over 40,000 concentration camps through World War II. These were places where their victims were incarcerated and put to work, held without due process for years.
While people did often die in the concentration camps, that was not their primary purpose. They were holding centers. For the exterminations, they used only 6 camps — the aptly named ‘death camps.’
These were Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The concentration camps came first as the Nazis attempted to institute mass deportations to remove ‘undesirables’ from Germany.
When it became clear that this would be virtually impossible to accomplish due to expense and a lack of manpower, that is when the ‘Final Solution’ was raised as an option. That is when the death camps were built, not before.
So, while this facility in Florida is not yet a death camp, you can see why we’re worried all the same.
Again, history rolls out in familiar patterns. This is one we have seen before.
The construction of ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ is a disturbing escalation in the Trump administration’s war on basic liberty.
Make no mistake, this represents a direct threat — not just to immigrants, but to U.S. citizens as well. Remember the Imperial Boomerang. When this kind of infrastructure is built, it gets used against the average civillian eventually.
It’s too expensive to let it languish if they actually complete their horrific goal.
I’m not making this up, either; Trump has referenced the potential for removing citizenship from political enemies and criminals who were born in the United States.
He’s mentioned sending them to the CECOT facility in El Salvador, and even mentioned sending them to the camp in Florida.
He’s making off-hand comments right now, but that’s always been his way of testing the waters for future actions.
So, keep your eye on how this situation unfolds, don’t ignore it, and don’t let anyone minimize it.
The return of concentration camps to American soil is not something any decent person ought to condone or accept.
Solidarity wins.
You could also mention that Hitler had a difficult time deporting Jews and others, especially in large numbers, because other countries did not want them and would not take them. Including the USA, Canada, and the UK.
I was horrified to discover that freelance bounty hunters are being paid $1000 for every human being that they capture and bring to ICE. Has the US become so much of an utterly wicked country that such acts are now apparently 'legal'.