The inspiration for this post came from an article that I read…..
In a criminal arrest, the legal system creates an immediate paper trail: police reports, court logs, and attorney filings. But inside immigration detention, the process works under an entirely different set of rules.
In this episode of “Inside Story,” host Lawrence Bartley and reporter Aala Abdullahi explore how rapid transfers across the country leave families unable to locate their loved ones. More than 1 in 10 detainees are moved out of state within their first 24 hours in custody, while the government’s online locator system frequently lags or shows no assigned facility. Because deportation is a civil administrative process rather than a criminal one, individuals face repeated transfers without the right to appointed counsel or stable court jurisdiction.
Drawing on federal transfer data and accounts from families and attorneys, they examine how the rapid expansion of detention isolates individuals across the country
(marshallproject.org)
That brings me to the idea of a gulag.
Gulag?
Most Americans, that could actually read, became acquainted with the term ‘gulag’ from a couple of books written by a former prisoner….Former prisoner and Nobel Prize-winning author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote two books about the Gulag: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago.
But what is a gulag?
A Gulag was a vast system of forced labor camps and prisons in the Soviet Union.
- The Acronym: The word comes from the Russian abbreviation Glavnoye Upravleniye Lagerey, meaning “Main Camp Administration” or “Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps”.
- Literal Meaning: It originally referred to the specific government agency that ran the Soviet secret police labor camps, but it came to mean the entire prison and camp network.
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- Conditions: Prisoners faced brutal conditions, extreme weather in remote areas like Siberia, starvation, and long hours of hard manual labor used to build Soviet infrastructure and industry
A horrific condition that Russians had to face if they were not in favor with the regime in power.
I bring this up because of Donny and his ICE thugs and their arrest of anyone with brown skin…..the excuse is the round-up of illegal immigrants….
I write this because there has not been sufficient reporting on this ‘camps’ that house those arrested by ICE…..and the conditions smack of gulag tactics.
This is what these ‘prisoners’ have to look forward to if arrested….
Conditions inside U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities are severe, overcrowded, and frequently inhumane, according to reports from oversight groups, medical experts, and human rights organizations
- Lack of Care: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reports that detained individuals face severe medical neglect, delayed treatment for chronic conditions, and outbreaks of infectious diseases like tuberculosis and measles. Sanitation Failures: Detainees and inspectors have documented overflowing toilets, lack of basic hygiene supplies like soap, poor ventilation, and insect infestations in various facilities. Physical and Verbal Mistreatment: Legal filings and witness statements gathered by the Vera Institute of Justice cite instances of verbal harassment, physical abuse, and intimidation by facility staff.
Punitive Isolation: A report by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) states that ICE frequently uses solitary confinement to punish minor infractions or retaliate against complaints and hunger strikes, worsening mental health issues like PTSD and depression. Packed Cells: Whistleblower reports and legislative inspections detailed by Human Rights Watch show that populations have swelled past facility limits, leaving people to sleep on concrete floors or in prolonged chains.
To me this treatment of ‘prisoners’ is ripe with human rights violations but we know that Donny and his Minions care little about the rights of humans.
Am I wrong in this thought?
But more of this……it is beginning to look very familiar to an old fart like me….
Recently, one is drawn to recognize the parallels between the NKVD bread trucks and black SUVs filled with ICE officers, who mask their faces and offer no identification as they snatch children and adults off the street because they have melanin in their skin or speak with an accent. Like the NKVD, ICE officers shoot people without substantive explanation, detain more than 66,000 people, many without criminal records, including occasional citizens, and ship them off to undisclosed detention centers. They have also deported hundreds of thousands of people, often without notice or due process.
https://thefulcrum.us/governance-legislation/stalinization-of-america-parallels-authoritarianism
We are better than this and as long as we ignore these deplorable conditions and treatment of people makes us a smaller people.
Americans should be outraged but instead they spend their time bitching about TikTok or Instagram….and that to me makes us a pathetic nation.
Anyone want to wade in?
I Read, I Write, You know
“lego ergo scribo”
I have read reports of ICE guards in detention centres raping women and even getting them pregnant. Also of them killing men and signing off the deaths as ‘natural causes’. Where Trump and his goons are concerned, it is impossible to know what to believe, but I am certainly prepared to believe the worst case scenarios where ICE is involved.
Best wishes, Pete.