We Can Stop Trump’s Concentration Camps

Nearly 70,000 —men, women, and children (including newborns)—have been locked up so far in 212 federal facilities (warehouses, private prisons, public jails, tents) in 47 states as suspected illegal immigrants until proved innocent. A Reuters’ investigation just reported that 400 federal judges ruled 4,421 detentions by ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) in the last five months were illegal. Not only that, but 73.6 percent of those detained had no criminal records.

For thousands of others awaiting a court’s decision—four million immigration cases are on dockets—incarceration is averaging at least six months. Indeed, 20,200 detainees have filed habeas corpus petitions that they are being held without a “speedy” public trial and an “impartial” jury, violations of the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment. Yet even after a judge has ordered a release, the Trump regime may ignore it. One district judge in January tracked 100 release orders that ICE had violated.

Political cynics presumably suspect Trump of deliberately swamping the nation’s courts with his demand that ICE detain at least 3,000 suspects per day. Moreover, his Big Beautiful Bill Act allots $38.3 billion of our taxes for permanent expansion of his “Detention Re-engineering Initiative.” Some regional centers are to hold “1,000 to 1,500,” and for large-scale facilities, “7,000 to 10,000,” according to an ICE memo obtained by Wired earlier this month.

The appropriation specifies a need of 135,000 beds for this “initiative” up to FY 2029. That means significant profits for construction and the remodeling industries, not to mention private prison companies like GEO Group, which last year earned $254 million of our tax dollars, usually providing minimal services to detainees: food, clothing, shelter, and basic medical care. The less that industry spends, however, the greater its profits.

Currently, the Trump administration is focused on acquiring, constructing, or leasing sites for these facilities. Homeland Security agents may target community leaders desperate for any new industry to increase municipal tax revenues and “good-paying jobs,” according to San Antonio’s U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, about his city.

If Trump is successful, it will also bring timeless notoriety and shame upon this country, as did Hitler’s camps such as Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau from the 1930s to World War II’s end in 1945.

Now, to stop Trump’s concentration camps, several towns and cities are setting examples for others to follow when “visitors” from Homeland Security or ICE come calling at city halls around the nation for campsites. So are individuals unable to emulate Minneapolis’ anti-ICE demonstrators amid blizzard, subzero temperatures, and tear gas. But individual citizens can write anti-Trump letters or emails. Or call the White House or local Congressional representatives to vigorously voice objections. Or sign petitions against such camps to judges, bar associations, and protective organizations such as Indivisible, the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), Moveon, and the like.

Officials and angry residents of small and mid-sized cities are already fighting and stopping Trump’s plans . Sometimes it’s with special elections, petitions, ballot referendums, monumental taxes to property owners willing to rent property for concentration camps. But often it’s by “throwing sand into his gears” by fees, fines, and ordinances, according to Portland OR’s city council president.

Such movers and shakers know the limits of water, sewer, utility, and garbage systems and would be overwhelmed by 1,000-15,000 detainees, or 8,000 in a town of 8,500. Too, there will be spikes in health and hospital needs for aging and ailing detainees, or addiction withdrawals, childbirth, epidemics, and those brutalized by sadistic guards.

For instance, negative responses to the camps came from packed town halls in Surprise, KS, Shakopee, MN, and Hanover, VA . Portland, OR’s city council created an extraordinary Municipal Impact Fee on an ICE building lease. Others, like Democratic majorities in some legislatures, voted outright to ban camps. Some were imaginative, like the mayors of Oklahoma City and Salt Lake City, adjusting building permits and leaning on landowners not to sell or rent property to DHS or ICE. Kansas City, MO’s city council is weighing a proposal for a five-year moratorium on building permits for federal facilities. U.S. House member Pat Ryan (D-NY) reported that 25,000 people signed a petition opposing the use of a warehouse in his district. And California’s legislature is mulling a 50 percent tax measure on private prisons’ profits so hopefully they’ll look elsewhere for campsites. Congress also has the power of the purse to stop payment on Trump’s neo-Nazi ambitions.

At bottom, his legions of lawyers are no match for the inventive, nimble, and knowledgeable minds of veteran legislators—and us. Taken collectively—especially individual actions of “we the people”—we have the power to close existing camps and new ones on Trump’s hideous list.

For those despairing and disheartened by his frightening future, it’s time for ordinary and outraged Americans to rise from the kitchen table or TV, and do something, anything, large or small, to stop these camps. As advised centuries ago :

“The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.”

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